(Acts 17.16 onwards) “Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Therefore he disputed in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with those who met with him. Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoics, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? Other said, ‘He seems to be a setter forth of strange Gods’ because he preached to them Jesus, and the resurrection. And they took him, and brought him to Areopagus, saying, ‘May we know what this new doctrine is about which you speak. For you bring certain strange things to our ears. We would know therefore what these things mean. (For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.) Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, ‘You men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, him declare I to you. God Who made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwells not in temples made with hands, neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though He needed any thing, seeing He gives to all life, and breath, and all things, and has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us. For in Him we live, and move, and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring’. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like to gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commands all men every where to repent, because He has appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He has ordained, of which He hash given assurance to all men, in that He has raised Him from the dead. And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and others said, ‘We will hear you again of this matter. So Paul departed from among them. Howbeit certain men clave to him, and believed, among whom was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.”

I should like to call your attention this evening to that great incident in the life and the ministry of the Apostle Paul which is recorded in the portion of scripture read, namely the seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles from verse sixteen to the end of the chapter. But I want in particular to emphasise the twenty first verse. The twenty first verse in the seventeenth chapter in the book of the Acts of the Apostles. ‘For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.’

Now this incident is of very great interest and importance, judged from many standpoints. It is interesting in the life and story and ministry of this great man, the Apostle Paul. But what makes it particularly interesting is that here we find Paul in the famous City of Athens. It is one of the greatest encounters that has even taken place. Here is the Apostle, the Christian preacher; and here he is standing up and preaching in the Mecca of all philosophy and the centre of art and of culture. It is a very dramatic incident, but I want to try to show you that it is also a very important one for every one of us who is here tonight. Because what we really have here is an explanation of the whole human history.

Now we are living in days of history and of crisis and nothing is more important, as most people are ready to grant, whether they are Christians or not, is our view of history and of our view of the whole course of the world, of what is happening today and what may well happen in the immediate future. I say that here we have the key to human history, because human history in the last analysis can be reduced to this. It has been a great conflict between two powers - two great forces. One has been man's culture - man's wisdom - what you can call if you like 'civilisation'. On the other hand 'The Word of God' and everything that has called men to view themselves and their lives, and everything else, in the 'Life of God'. It would be a very simple thing for me to show you how this conflict has been proceeding, and sometimes one seems to be in the ascendant, and sometimes the other.

The Old Testament, in a sense, is nothing but a picture of this continuing conflict - the Nations of the world and their civilisations and cultures - and this people of God who have gone on - and the tension and the fight.

Well now here it is concentrated for us in a very interesting and in a very remarkable manner - and it enables us therefore to see the entire situation in which we have found ourselves. Because the other thing that stands out here on the every surface of this is, that our understanding of this conflict between these two views and these two ways of life is not something which is of merely theoretical, or an academic interest, it is something that applies to every one of us. Something that calls for a decision on the part of every single human being.

You notice how this chapter ended. The Apostle was preaching and we read that ‘when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and others said, We will hear you again of this matter. That is one group! But there was another. ‘Howbeit certain men clave to him, and believed, among whom was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

You see there was a division! Some believed what Paul was saying - others mocked and rejected the message. And what I am going to try to show you is this. That we are all confronted by this choice! Everyone one of us indeed in this congregation at this moment is in one or the other of these two positions. We are holding either on to the world and it's civilisation and culture - or else - we belong to the 'People of God'! And it is a tremendously important decision, because we are being carried along every moment we live towards the ultimate, final, irrevocable decision.

So I want to try to show you that there is nothing that is more important for every one of us at this moment than to know for certain on which of these two sides we are. I am going to try to do in my feeble way what the great Apostle did in Athens - he reasoned with them - and, my friends, Christianity is something that causes people to reason.

I say that because there seem to be some today who think that Christianity is here to call people to sing. Well you can sing if you like, but in times like these surely we must 'think' and 'reason' and 'face the facts'. This idea that Christianity is some kind of sob stuff - or the opium of the people - that it is just a matter of pulling down the blinds and singing hymns and choruses and getting emotional - it is a travesty of Christianity.

Look at this man here reasoning, arguing with the Stoics and the Epicureans and with many others in this famous City of Athens. And I say that as we value our life in the present moment - and as we look to the uncertain future and above all to our deaths, which are bound to come - here is the most vital question of all! Which is it? Are we trusting to civilisation or are we trusting to the living God?

Well now then, let us have a look at these two things. Here they are. They are set out before us. Here is a picture of the long history of the human race. Let us start by looking at 'civilisation' - human culture! This of course is the thing to which most people of today cleave. That is why everybody knows that our chapels and churches are becoming emptier. Only 10 per cent of the people in this country even claim to be religious. What about the others, what are they trusting to? Well, they are trusting to 'civilisation', they are trusting to human knowledge and to human ideas. Then this decision is being made! Everybody is involved, so let us have a look at civilisation, so called!

One of the things that I must mention because it comes in here. One of things that it is very important for us to remember as we take a glance at the whole course of history is that we notice that civilisation varies in its ascendancy. I have said that there have been periods when civilisation seemed to be in control, and Christianity and religion seemed to be dying and moribund and practically finished. But civilisation has had its kind of 'periodicity'. There have been great periods when the world seemed to be advancing towards perfection - then suddenly there is a change. Now that is important for this reason, that when the Apostle Paul arrived in Athens, the real Glory of Greece had already passed! It was already in decline!

Another great manifestation of civilisation was rising and that was the great Roman Empire, but you see that also declined. Then you went through the dark middle ages to what was then called the renaissance - the revival of learning. Actually they went back to this Greek teaching, and that came in, and it has in a sense been controlling ever since, particularly since the eighteenth century when we had the so called 'enlightenment' - and it was then that men began to deride and to criticise the Bible and its message and to turn their backs on it and to turn to 'civilisation'.

Well now, the point that I am establishing is this. That you and I are living in a period when the vaunted civilisation of the world is again in a state of crisis. It is in a state of decline! In other words - you and I here tonight are very much in the same position as obtained in Athens at the time when the Apostle visited it.

Now I do not want you to take my word for that so let me quote you no less an authority than Doctor Henry Kissinger, until lately the Secretary of State of the United States of America. Doctor Kissinger is not a Christian, he says so! But he is a man who probably knows more about the state of the world than most people and this is what he has said recently. "We are at the watershed. We are at a period which in retrospect is either going to be seen as a period of extraordinary creativity, or, a period when really the International Order came apart, politically, economically and morally!" That was Doctor Henry Kissinger! That is his observation!

And there are many others who are in entire agreement with him. We are clearly at a point when a civilisation that has been in control for a long time is shaking before our eyes and is coming to an end. "We are at the watershed," says Doctor Henry Kissinger. So then, never was it more urgent for us to make quite sure that we understand exactly what it is that civilisation has to offer us. And then what it is that the Biblical Christian Message has to offer us on the other side.

Well now let us have a look at civilisation and what do we find? Well here I want to put its main characteristics before you. It is something that always starts with 'man' - man is the centre! Now these Greeks whom Paul was confronting here - they were great teachers. They have taught that "Man is the measure of everything!" You see man is supreme, and there is nothing beyond 'man'. 'Man'! They trusted his reason, his intellect, his brain power, his understanding, his capacity for search, seeking after truth, experimentation - and the arrival at 'ultimate knowledge'.

Now this was its great characteristic and they were full of confidence in this ability of men to make a perfect world so that we could all live harmoniously in it and enjoy our lives. This is the basis of civilisation - and as you know, most people who are not interested in tonight are in this position. They say that they believe in man!

Now there is a good deal to be said at first sight in favour of their view. Look at the achievement of civilisation. Take this great Greek civilisation which had obtained in Athens and in Greece before Paul went there. The achievement was really quite astonishing. What were they interested in? Well, they were primarily interested in 'life' itself. Their great men were the so called 'philosophers'.

What is a philosopher? A philosopher is a man who on finding himself in this world, and finding problems and difficulties and unhappinesses, begins to ponder and to think and to ask questions and to say, "Well now why is this? Were things meant to be like this? What is man? What is life? What's the object and the purpose of it all?" And so they began to evolve their theories. And it worked out in many directions. They were very interested in 'politics' - they introduced the very term. It applied to the sort of government of their City 'states' and they were very interested in this. They said, "Well now surely we can bring some order into the chaos!"

So they began to work out systems of government. It is they who invented the term 'democracy' of which we hear so much at the present time. They were the people who began to teach about democracy. They said, "It is no use people living anyhow/somehow. We have got to analyse the whole of life and we have got to divide up men and women according to their respective gifts and abilities into various grades, and we have got to appoint them various tasks." And they have done so with great thoroughness! POLITICS!

Then of course they proceeded to try to put this into practise. But not only that, they said, "Man is a creature of marvellous powers and these are to be used and to be exercised." So they had great poets, they had great dramatists. Probably with the exception of Shakespeare, the greatest dramatists that the word has ever known. And there again you see, they were concerned about understanding the great mystery and the great problem of life. And they put forward their view of life!

But beyond that they were very interested in architecture. They put up magnificent buildings, and wanted to express the sense of beauty and of wonder. The same applied to sculpture. It is worth visiting the ruins of these buildings and these bits of sculpture, even at the present time. And they went into all of this with great thoroughness.

Not only that, they were very interested in 'speech'. The greatest orators that the world has ever know were Greeks! Look at that man Demosthenes - he still stands out as one of the greatest orators of all time. Another man called Pericles - who delivered his great orations when the City of Athens was being attacked. These things have come down the centuries because of their grandeur and because of their sheer magnificence. These were mighty achievements.

And they had a kind of rudimentary science. There are many in this congregation who have had to struggle with geometry and you have come across the names of Pythagoras and Euclid. These are the men who founded it all, everything that we are taught is based upon the original thinking of these mighty men. And on top of all this they were very interested in 'sport' and in the culture and the cultivation of the body. Well there is a very brief summary for you of what 'culture' and 'civilisation' stood for and represented, and there is no question at all that it is one of the most remarkable and amazing achievements that the world has ever known.

There it is and Paul was in the very centre, the Mecca, of it all. The great City of Athens. Here comes this little man, this little Jew. Nothing to look at at all. Dismissed as a babbler. Here he stands in the midst of this mighty achievement. And he is opposing it!

Very well now that is what the civilisation was. But what I am anxious to show you is this. That that is not the end of the story of civilisation. It was a magnificent achievement, but it was already failing to satisfy. How do I know that? Well you notice one defect at once. When the Apostle Paul appeared, you notice what they said about him - they dismissed him as a 'babbler'. ‘What will this babbler say?’

And alas - that tends to be a characteristic of those who believe in culture and civilisation. They were supercilious! They were conceited! They were the 'elitists' as they are called now and they looked down upon the ordinary men, the common men. Of course to dismiss the Apostle Paul as a babbler was just the confession of their failure to understand. They had no insight at all! But he was not well dressed and he did not pose as one of the great teachers so he was dismissed as a babbler. And you know 'civilisation' has very little use for the 'ordinary man'. They look down on us from a great height - these great people who write their clever articles for the Sunday newspapers today, and you can hear the pundits on the television. Have you noticed the conceit - the affected accent - the superiority, the air of superiority? The ordinary man is all right for menial tasks, but he does not understand! Now that is a weakness and it is one of the weaknesses that shows the ultimate hollowness of civilisation!

But you know I have got something more striking to tell you and that is why I have chosen this twenty first verse. Listen to this again. ‘For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.’ What does that tell us? Well it tells us that they had not got anything. People who are always waiting for something new, are confessing that they are not satisfied with what they have got. And that was the trouble in Athens as I have told you!

The great men, the great teachers, had gone some two or three centuries before Paul visited Athens. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, the mightiest philosophers that the world has ever known, with their incomparable teaching as I have described it to you. And yet you see these people are not satisfied. Waiting for some new thing! Anybody who turned up with a new theory or a new idea, they rushed after them. Why? They were not satisfied! There was a dissatisfaction!

Here were the Stoics saying one thing. The Epicureans were saying the exact opposite! Then there were various other schools. You had these great schools, these Porches, these Academies, and they were rivals and there they were arguing and debating and confuting one another and the people were utterly confused. So that anybody who came along with a new idea, they rushed after him. Is THIS going to be it? Actually of course there was nothing new in any of the teachings that came along, the new things, the fashions, the intellectual and other fashions that they were running after. As somebody has put it very well, "It was not new as such, but sufficiently diverse from what had gone before to stimulate a jaded and languid society." THAT was Athens!

Is it not this country tonight? A jaded and a languid society! And here they were you see, without realising it confessing a bankruptcy. All that they had, all that they had been taught and all that they had learned, it did not satisfy. They still needed something more. So they rushed after the new.

And of course we are living in a similar age today! There are certain advantages in getting old you know! You can look back. And when I look back at the fashions that I have seen in this kind of respect, my friends if it were not so tragic it would be very amusing and very laughable - and let me be honest this is what has been happening in the so called 'Christian Church'. The fashions that I have seen coming in! Names that everybody was quoting and everybody was reading, quite forgotten. They have come one after the other. I remember the time when Karl Barth's name first came in and everybody was reading Karl Barth. He went on till a man called Bultmann came and pushed Karl Barth out. And there have been many others. Dr.R.Davis.... John S Whale... Whale is still alive, but whoever hears of him? Here they are you see.. The Fashions! What does it mean? They are not satisfied. With all that they had there was something deep down that was dissatisfied.

But let me show you the failure in another respect. Did you notice what we were told in the beginning? ‘Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.’ Now remember we are reading here about Athens! The centre of 'philosophy'. Yet when Paul got there before his companions and while he was waiting for them to come along, he walked around the city and what struck him was that the place was cluttered up with temples to the various gods. And he found that strange temple with the peculiar inscription "TO THE UNKNOWN GOD."

But the point of interest is this... that Athens, of all places, was full of temples! Now why was this? Well Paul says, ‘I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious.’ You can translate that if you like, "You are too religious! You are too idolatrous!" But what is the meaning of this? Well can you not see that the meaning is quite obvious! These people had come to the realisation that 'philosophy' and 'human reason' were not enough. There seemed to be 'something else'. Again to quote an authority, "Where human learning most flourished, idolatry most abounded!" This is a most amazing thing.

Now I am calling attention to it all as you see because it is such a perfect description of this country of ours at this present time. We have never had more learning. We have never had more idolatry! But what does it tell us? Well, what it tells us is this, that these people had a profound uncertainty! A profound dissatisfaction! I agree with Professor John Kenneth Galbraith, "This is the age of uncertainty!" And it is uncertainty about the great facts of life - death and eternity! What was the matter with these people? Well it was this. They had listened to the great teachings of the great philosophers, and it took them so far and then they felt, "Oh there must be something else. There are some unseen influences."

They said, "There is a god of war, a god of love, a god of peace, there is a god in the moon, another in the stars." And they believed that these were influencing the world and that they had a greater power than the understanding of men. So they said, "There is only one thing to do as we are in the hands of these unseen gods and unseen spiritual powers - we had better build temples to them. And we will go there and present offerings to them!" And they made temples with their own hands as the Apostle reminds them! They had made their own gods, their own idols - built temples to them and then bowed down and worshipped them! These learned people, these philosophers and the people who had been listening to the philosophers, I say that it is just a confession of complete failure.

And then this strange temple with this peculiar inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD! What did it mean? Well it meant this. They said, "Well now we know the god of war, the god of peace and the god of love. We know these various gods!" And then they felt that there was a god behind them all. There seemed to be some mighty god at the back. They sought after him and they tried to find him and they could not. And the most that they got to was, ..The Unknown God! They feared this God, but they did not know Him. As Paul reminded the Corinthians later, ‘the world by wisdom knew not God’. They tried to find Him.

The philosophers have ever been trying to find God and they cannot. And they are as far away tonight as they were in the first century. So they put up the inscription TO THE UNKNOWN GOD! The failure of civilisation!

And my dear friends look at our world tonight. We have multiplied our schools, primary, secondary, universities, further education. I am not here to denounce these things. I am simply here to say that there is no greater folly in the world than to put your faith and trust in them. And to believe that they can solve all of your problems - that man with his learning and understanding is supreme. He is NOT! They fail!

Look at your modern world - with all of our culture and all of the lectures and all of the books that are coming out of the presses day by day and week by week - and all that we have got. But what is the state of the world? There is a greater interest perhaps in Astrology today than there has been for a very long time. Cultured, educated people turn up their horoscope in the daily newspaper. "What is going to happen to me today?" The belief in Astrology! A belief in Spiritism! Or their endless Transcendental Meditation! These are the things that are popular. The cults that are springing up round and about us.

Look at a man like the late Mr Aldous Huxley, the novelist. The man who started off as a youth in the twenties - Scientific Humanism, Brain, Reason, Understanding. And he believed it! But you know he ended his life as a Buddhist. And in one of his last books he said, "The only hope for the world is mysticism." Just like the Athenians! The theory of Philosophy and Human Thinking and they have to fall back on something Transcendental, something Beyond...and they do not even know what it is!

And look at the drink, the alcohol that is being consumed. Never has it been greater. Rational man, philosophical man, he has to take drink to keep going! He has to take drugs! He has to take his sleeping tablets and then his stimulants in the morning to keep going. Never has this been more true of life - the whole world has become idolatrous again.

And there is a revolt of course as a result of all of this against reason itself, and some of the most intellectual people of the world have become irrational. They are going back to the land - living in communes - renouncing the world and all of its learning and trying to go back to nature. The same failure as you had in the first century. And yet you see people scoff at religion and turn to man and civilisation and knowledge and culture. It had ALL been tried with a great thoroughness before the Son of God ever came into this world.

But on top of all that there was a terrible moral failure. And the statistics of the time, they are not in the Bible, but you can find them in secular books, indicate that the suicide rate amongst the philosophers was higher in proportion than that in any other section of the community. And it was not surprising! These men were the greatest brains and they had come against a brick wall and they could not go further. So they just 'went out' in despair, in cynicism and in final hopelessness.

And the life that was being lived by the common people was so terrible that there are some people who even think that the second half of the first chapter of Paul’s 'Epistle to the Romans' should be expurgated from the Bible. But I am going to read it to you. You have got to face facts my friend. It is no use saying... "Man, Civilisation, Culture! Religion. Nonsense. The preacher.... A babbler!" This is what it leads to - this is how people were living.

It is found in Romans 1.29. ‘Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful. Who knowing the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in those who do them.’

It was a sink of iniquity! That was true of their great Cities in Greece as it became true in Rome! What was the result of all of this? It was a collapse. I have described to you the great achievements and yet you and I read books today "The Glory that WAS Greece." It is no longer there! They have only got their ruins and it has become a little and comparatively 'unimportant' nation. It once dominated the world. The Glory that WAS Greece!

And the great Roman Empire that followed.What about it? Well there was a man by the name of Gibbon who was born in 1776, and he wrote a famous book, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." That is what happened. So the great and the boasted and the vaunted civilisation to which mankind has always been ready to trust - vanishes! It disappears!

Very well there we have taken a hurried glance at the position of civilisation. Now my friends let me hold the other side before you as briefly as I can. What a contrast! There is great Athens and here comes this little man the Apostle Paul. This man that they tend to dismiss as a babbler as I have reminded you. The contrast between them and Paul was not one of ability and understanding and learning. Paul was one of the greatest brains that the world has ever known - a mighty intellect! You will simply need to read his Epistles to see what I mean. What is the contrast then? Well the contrast is this you see. It is not a matter of ability - they had ability - he has ability. What makes a man religious is not ability. Paul is as able as any of the philosophers. They reject his truth, but he believes it. Nothing to do with ability! Nothing to do with general knowledge! It is something else.

What does it lead to? What it leads to is this. This is what strikes you about Paul.... Listen.... ‘Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, “You men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious.” Then he goes on, “Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, Him declare I to you.” GOD! Now then what is the difference? Well. The first thing that one notices is this. The 'certainty'. The 'assurance'. THEY spent their time in ‘either to tell, or to hear some new thing.’ Always waiting for a new theory. Always ready to believe any whisper that somebody has got a theory that is going to explain everything! Dissatisfied! Seeking! Looking! Hoping!

The Apostle Paul stands. He is there because he has found - because he knows. He has not come to seek and to search after truth, and he has not come to make a voyage of adventure. And you know my friends that a Christian Church which does not know what she believes is a travesty of the Church! And yet a big denomination in this Country last year - having set up a commission to define Christian Doctrine - produced a report under the title of "Christian Believing". And the man at the head of the whole organisation in the preface recommending this Christian Believing used these words, that he was, "Very glad that this great 'voyage of adventure' was being published." He said that we are, "Out in this great quest for truth."

That is not Christianity! Christianity is not a quest for truth! The Christian is a man who has 'found it'! He has it! He is certain! He Knows! It is the great characteristic of all the preaching of this man. ‘I know whom I have believed.’ He is not uncertain. He would never have been there, but for his certainty. And then he speaks, you will notice, with an 'authority'.

They had built their temple to The Unknown God. They could not find him! They were worshipping him in ignorance in a spirit of fear. When they began to think - they had a feeling that they were after all in his hands - and so they built their temple to The Unknown God. So Paul addresses them saying, ‘Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, Him declare I to you.’

What is this? Well this is a revelation! And this is the whole message of the Bible. Man trusting to himself tries to find the truth and he does not succeed, as I have shown you. But the whole glory of the position is this..... and that is why I am here tonight! That is why there is such a thing as a Christian church....... God has revealed the truth.... ‘Him declare I to you.’ Not because Paul was a better philosopher than the others and had got a step further. No. No. He 'received' the revelation when he was fighting against it! He 'received it' - it was 'given' to him! A 'commission' was given to him when he 'met' the Lord Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. So he declares the truth to them! It is not 'reason'. It is the message that is given by God Himself.

What is the message? Let me summarise it for you very hurriedly - and this is the great difference between Christianity and Civilisation. This does not start with man - it starts with GOD! Here is his message..... ‘God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.’ And so on!

In other words it comes to this. Why is our world as it is tonight? It is because we do not understand it, and our minds are too small - too puny. We do not understand the world. We do not understand ourselves. We do not understand why we are behaving as we are. We do not understand why in this highly sophisticated, educated twentieth century we are building bombs that can ruin the whole world and smash it. We do not understand it - do we?

And in spite of all the seeking and the searching and all the talking of the clever pundits, the philosophers and others, we are as far away from an explanation as we have ever been - and men are turning, as I say, to scientism and transcendental meditation, any cult that comes along - and finally DRUGS! And let us not forget this. Where did the drug taking habit come from? Well it was actually started in one of the greatest Universities in the world - Harvard University in the United States! And by a Professor at Harvard of the name of Timothy Leary!

Why did he do it? He did it for this reason..... He said, "What is the use of thought? We have been living too much in the realm of reason and cerebration. We must go back to nature. I am interested in sensations. You will never arrive anywhere by reason - it has already failed. Very well take a 'trip' - take that drug and you will rise into some heights where you will not be thinking with your brain, but you will be feeling instinctually or instinctively and you will have experiences that will transcend anything that man can ever express."

This is the position... Man does not understand and he is admitting his failure. And he does not understand of course because he does not start with GOD! You do not understand the world. You cannot understand history. You cannot understand yourself, UNLESS YOU START WITH GOD!

This world is not an accident! At the back of it all is this great eternal God who made the world and all the things therein - seeing that He is the Lord of heaven and earth. The Biblical message that ‘in the beginning God created everything, including man - and made man in His own image and likeness! Here is the world as made by God. And what is the matter? Well. "What is the matter,” said Paul, "is this...........! That though you live and move and have your being in Him - you do not know Him. You should have sought the Lord, if haply you might feel after Him and find Him - though He be not far from every one of us. But instead of doing that you have become fools."

The original sin was to defy God and to say that man was equal to God, that was the original sin. And man fell and he has been trying to live independently of God ever since - and look at the mess he has made. Read history my dear friends. This idea that the world is getting better and better is being belied by the facts of life today! We are back at the collapse that happened in Greece and in Rome - there is no question about this. And it is all because like these people, we are trusting to man and reason instead of submitting ourselves to the revelation of God! The world is as it is, because of man's rebellion against God! And it happened away back! That is why the story of man is a repetition of the same thing century after century!

But God did not abandon the world and Paul brings this out here. He tells us here quite clearly that God is still in control of the world. ‘And has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation’.

This is the true explanation of history. There is the history that man makes! There is the history that God makes! And you see it in the Old Testament. You read about these great nations, these great civilisations. But THEN God acts and He creates His own nation and this little nation can defeat the great nations. The great nations go down! This keeps on going on. In spite of many imperfections and rebellions it goes on!

God has got a plan! God has got a purpose! And THIS is the only hope for the world tonight. There is NONE other! All that man has tried to build is coming to nothing and his understanding is failing him. But the message of the Bible and of Christianity is, 'that God has got a plan'! And He has put a limit on evil!

It is God who created governments! It is God who created nations and appointed their bounds! It is God who taught man to be orderly. If He had not the whole world would have festered into nothingness. But God has directed man. He was even directing these great Greeks to keep order - to keep sin within limits. That is why you must have government and order. God has ordained this - 'the powers that be' are ordained of God!

Man did not have a bright idea and have magistrates. No! No! It is God who had taught him to do this. "God has been guiding," says Paul. In His providence, in His common grace, He has been guiding through the centuries. "Now," says Paul, "He has winked at certain of the things that have happened. But now there is something new!" And so he brings them to this, that Man is responsible before God!

There have been many judgements in the long history of the human race. Many a man has risen against God, and God has struck him down. Many a great Empire, a great Dynasty, has risen against God and defied Him, and He has 'blown' on them and they have disappeared. There have been many judgements in the long story of the human race. Look at the great civilisation that was once in Egypt. In Assyria. In China. They have 'gone' in the manner that I described to you at the beginning and it is all because GOD is over all!

And He does the same with the individual. "Yes!" says Paul, “Listen! There is to be a final judgment!" ‘And the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commands all men every where to repent, because He has appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He has ordained, whereof He has given assurance unto all men, in that He has raised him from the dead.

"Listen." says Paul. "In your collapsing civilisation I am here to tell you even this is not the end - another one may rise and go down, but beyond it all the whole world is moving in the direction of a Final Judgement!"

Now when Dr Henry Kissinger says we are at a watershed, he is thinking in human terms only! He is probably right! It may be the end of all we have known and we may go back to some terrifying, horrible, dark age again. Or he says that it may be an age of great creativity. It does not matter. The point is that whatever it is the whole of civilisation is moving steadily towards that one far off Divine Event to which the whole creation moves!

And do you not feel that there is judgment in the air at the present time? Do you not feel that there is something beyond the mere failure of politicians and these men who are trying to order our affairs? There IS! There is to be a great judgement of all of the Nations and of every individual one of us! We will all stand before God. A JUDGEMENT!

"Listen!" says Paul - and remember that he was preaching to philosophers, Stoics and Epicureans. He was not preaching in a little mission hall to people regarded as babblers and ignoramuses, he was addressing the mightiest intellects of the ancient world and he preached the 'judgment' of God to them. And that is what I am here to preach tonight! I am not here to tell the government of this country what they should do about President Amin. I am not here to tell the new President of the United States what he ought to be doing, because I do not know. What I do know is this...... That THIS Country, the United States, Presidents and Princes and all others are going to stand before God and give an account of the deeds done in the body, whether good or bad. It is an absolute certainty! It is the revelation of GOD!

But thank God that is not the end of its message. "There is going to be this judgment," says Paul. How does he know it? Well, he says that we have got a certainty, we have got an assurance about this, because there is someone who has been raised from the dead! And this is what Paul really preached. This is the positive aspect of his message. THEY you see, when they first heard him said, "What is this man?" They said. ‘May we know what this new doctrine is. whereof you speak? For you bring certain strange things to our ears. We would know therefore what these things mean.’

Why did they say this? We read earlier that they said, ‘What will this babbler say?’ Others said, ‘He seems to be a setter forth of strange Gods.’ Because he preached to them Jesus, and the resurrection.

That was his message! What does it mean? Well it means this...

My dear friend, what a privilege it is again to be here to remind you of this old message. It's the only hope for the world at this moment. JESUS of Nazareth! Who is He? He is the Son of God! This is still God's world. God has not abandoned it. ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son’ (John 3.16).

God has sent His own Son into the world. "I am not a babbler," says Paul. "And I am speaking with authority!" Why? Well because of a fact. This is not the philosophy. This is not the theory. This is not the supposition. There are facts. This is AD 1980. Why? Because Jesus of Nazareth has been into the world and Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God!

He was a man - yes! But they took Him; they condemned Him; they crucified Him; He died; they buried His body in a grave. They rolled a stone over it and sealed it up and put soldiers to guard it; He burst asunder the bands of death. GOD raised Him from the dead! Paul would never have been in Athens, but for that! This is FACT!

There would be no Christian Church, but for this FACT! This is where, you see, it differs so essentially from civilisation and culture and philosophy. Theorising? Seeking? Searching? God has ACTED! The whole Bible is a record of the action of God. Look how He reacted in the old Testament with His own people and against the others. Here you see it supremely in this blessed person....JESUS! Who is He? Son of God! Son of Man!

Why has He come into the world? He has come into the world to reconcile us with God. Our troubles are all due to the fact that we are sinners in the sight of God. We are under the wrath of God. And if we die in that condition then we go to eternal misery. ‘But God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.’ And gave Him even to death ... that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

"Listen!" says Paul. "You can stop your seeking and searching - you can stop hankering after some new thing - the latest novelty - the latest fashion - the latest idea. Listen! It's all in this one person. Repent! Acknowledge that you are in trouble because you do not know God and that you are under the wrath of God. Confess it, acknowledge it - that is the meaning of repentance. And believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then," says Paul, "remarkable things will happen to you. You will not only have forgiveness of your sins, you will become a new person. You can have a new start!" Jesus spread the parable about a prodigal son who felt that he had sinned away his sonship and was not fit even to be a servant. But he was the son! And he was given a new start. And God is like that. You can have a new start.

"You know," said Paul in effect to these Athenians, "you think that what you need is to hear something new. That is not your need! What you need is to be 'made' new. Not some thing. Not some new idea. Not some fad. Not some new craze. Not some new cult. What you need is to be made 'anew'! You need to be renewed in the very spirit of your mind. You need to be created afresh. Then you will not be looking for something 'new' ever and always. You will have 'got it'. You will be related to God. You will know how to live and you will know how to die and you will know how to face eternity!" Now that was his message. He was interrupted, but that is what he had been preaching everywhere and this is the essential Christian Message.

Now then my friends, I want to leave you with a question. To which are you trusting tonight? It is a very practical question. You are trusting to one or the other! Are you trusting to man and his reason and his politics and his sociology and his education and culture? Are you trusting to that? If you are then you are going to end in the same position as Greece and Rome and many an other great Dynasty and every individual who has trusted to it. It all comes to nothing! Or are you trusting to this old message that God is over all and that in spite of our folly He has sent His own son to deliver us, to give us a new life. So that even in this world if everything should go wrong we will be unaffected - we will be filled with a joy unspeakable and full of glory.

Which is it my friend? Here some mocked. ‘And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and others said, We will hear you again of this matter. So Paul departed from among them. However certain men clove to him, and believed.

Which is it? Shall I leave you by reading to you quotations. It is one or the other I say. Let me then read to you some words written just before he died by one of the great Historians of this present Century - Professor G.M. Trevelyan of Cambridge. He was a great man, a great thinker, a great humorist. He was not a Christian and said so! But he was a man, who from the standpoint of culture and all that man can do, was at the very acme. Now this is what he wrote. ‘I do not understand the age we live in. And what I do understand I do not like." That is it! You will never get better culture, a more civilised person than the late Professor G.M. Trevelyan.

Then he wrote a biography of Sir Edward Grey - afterwards Lord Grey - he was the Foreign Secretary at the time of the outbreak of the First World War and I must read it to you, because I want you to see my dear friend that if you are trusting to philosophy you are going to be grievously disappointed and you are going to end in despair. This is what he wrote about Sir Edward Grey. "He was the most perfect human being personally that I have ever seen. There will never be anyone like him again. For the hectic conditions of our modern world will not breed the particular type of which he was the finest example" Listen! ‘He was the last, best flower of the English nineteenth century public life, based on family tradition of public service and on the country house and the rural background.’ Elitism again!

Then Trevelyan about himself. ‘The things that I care about most are literature, art, imagination and free intellect. They seem to me to be conditioned by a certain amount of leisure for some people.’ Not for all, you will notice! ‘Conditioned by a certain amount of leisure for some people and independence of mass orders. A certain amount of inequality of opportunity and leisure seems to me essential to the things that I care about. But it is going fast and in fifty years time will be gone.’

And then finally his last word. ‘I am eighty-six and it is time I was off!’ That is the end of civilisation! Is this what you are trusting to? Is it because you trusted this that you do not attend a place of worship, and that you ridicule the Bible and laugh at Christianity? That is how it ends! NOTHING. ‘I am eighty-six and it is time I was off!’ Everything failing. The great culture demands a certain amount of leisure for the elite, for the few. But it is going. All these ideas of the levelling of people today makes it impossible, and with the levelling you will not have a decent life, says the great man. So here he is, he ends in final despair. His last word is - ‘I am eighty-six and it is time I was off!’ That is the civilised man!

Listen to another man. Listen to this Apostle Paul writing at the end in 2 Timothy 4.6. ‘For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. From now on there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only - (not the elitist few!) - and not to me only, but to all those also who love His appearing.’

My dear friend which side are you on? That is where culture ends! Let me give you another example, Walter Savage Landor one of the poets of the last century. This is how he put the cultural point of view. Here he is at the end of his life:

Complete hopelessness!

Oh, my dear friend make sure that you are on the right side. The other side is this:

Are you going to be among them? Make sure of it. Repent! Which means, "Think again! Change your mind!” See that all of your troubles are due to the fact that you are a rebel against God - that you have made a god out of man - and that you are trusting to man - and that he fails and will fail. Repent! Believe the message of the gospel and you will be amongst the ransomed hosts that throng these lights eternal - and you will spend your eternity with all the spirits of just men made perfect with God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Angels, Archangels, Cherubim and Seraphim in glory everlasting. Which is it my friend? Is it civilisation or is it the message of the Apostle Paul? Make sure ere it be too late!