When Jesus and His disciples had finished what we now call the Lord's Supper, the Lord then spent some quality time with His disciples. Judas had gone out into the night to find those who would eventually send Jesus to the cross. But before that would occur, Jesus poured out His heart in love to those who would be the founding fathers of the Christian Church.

To the disciples it seemed as though everything they had hoped for was falling apart. Jesus had told them clearly that He would be betrayed; but only later did they understand what He had been trying to say.

One of the promises He left them was, "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also" (John 14:1-3).

Friends, I believe that next to Jesus' words that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life," the words in John 14:1-3 should be the most precious.

I am sorry for two things, that: 1) in recent years we have spoken little of the coming of Jesus, and 2) often when we have spoken of it, it has been more a message in the nature of a threat than of comfort.

Though we look back to the cross of Christ as the place and the time in which our salvation was purchased by the precious blood of Jesus, the cross will not have fulfilled its final purpose until the Lord Himself descends from heaven with a shout, and with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. We will then shout "Hallelujah" when death has been swallowed up in victory. Then we which are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will be caught up with the resurrected ones to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will ever be with the Lord.

Jesus not only comforted His disciples that night, but He prayed for them. It is a portion of that prayer that I will use as a springboard for this sermon, which I have entitled, "When United We Fall."

The words of our Lord in John 17:20-22 are: "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one."

These verses are not difficult to understand. Jesus was praying for His church in every age, and I am sure He was praying especially for us here at the end of the age.

Jesus' prayer for us was that we might be in unity. What does it mean to be in unity? Unity is the bringing together of entities unto a whole. It is the state of individuals who are in utter agreement. It is the condition of being one, and the identity or coincidence of interests, purposes, or sympathies among members of a group.

Unity is an indispensable aspect, not only of the church but also of human society--be it at the family level, the community level, or at the national level. These functions can be effective only to the extent that there is unity.

This country has unity built into its name--The United States of America. Our nation is comprised of 50 different states, and its citizens represent a sampling of many of this earth's people groups--male and female, young and old, and of practically of every nation, kindred, tongue, and people.

So strongly do we believe in unity that we affirm it in the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag when we say, "One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

This nation has been blessed by God. Though we are not officially a Christian nation, we have been a nation whose government is based on Christian principles. Because of this, it is not surprising that the majority of the citizens consider themselves Christians, at least in name.

Neither is it surprising that a nation based on Christian principles, whose citizens mostly considered themselves Christian, would develop a culture which, when seen from the perspective of those who were not Christians, would be called a Christian culture. Or so it was until just past the mid-part of the 20th century.

In the 1960s things happened in our country that changed our culture fundamentally and permanently. Some of you will remember. I surely do. I was a recently married young adult when it happened. A war was being fought in Southeast Asia. A group of young people known as hippies protested against the war. Along the way they began to establish a subculture whose outstanding characters were drugs and free sex. In those difficult times there were riots and even deaths.

At the same time a new type of music that had sprung up during the fifties began to sweep the country and even the world. It was called "rock and roll." The sound was created by mixing several types of music. Soon rock and roll took on a life of its own, and as a medium was used to promote rebellion, drugs, and sex.

A group of young men from Liverpool, England, became this new music's worldwide ambassadors. Soon they were using the sound to promote heroin, as in the song "Bridge Over Troubled Waters," and Hinduism, as in the song, "My Sweet Lord." During those years the Eastern religions began to come into American culture in an organized way.

The Beatles were soon joined by a host of other pop musicians. In the meantime, the drug culture spread. No longer would we be able to safely walk the streets of our cities. Using the freedom of speech provisions of the Constitution, sex, which was meant to be private, became public. With the drugs, the homosexual lifestyle came out of the closet, bringing with it a new curse, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Millions have died, and many more millions who have been infected are on the waiting list to die.

Interest in Eastern religions and the occult continued to multiply. Gurus from the East were successful in introducing Eastern religious philosophy into the schools and universities under the guise of science. During the same time a concentrated effort was made to eliminate all reference to the true God and to Scripture from public life.

We could go on and on. Step by step, first slowly then faster and faster, our culture has been morphed until there is little remaining of the "Leave It to Beaver" lifestyle of the mid-20th century.

You might ask, "Pastor, what does this have to do with anything? We don't remember what you are talking about, or if we do, what does it matter?"

You will soon find out, because I will stop talking in poetry and reminiscing about the past and get on to the point.

However, before I do, I would like to remind you as I do so often in my preaching, that we don't need prophets to tell the future of what is going to happen to us. As I am wont to say, those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it. It is no accident to where we have come, and it is predictable where we are going.

Lest you think that I don't believe in prophecy, let me hasten to assure you that I do, and I am convinced that God is in control.

Yes, friend, I know God is in control; and the question is not, "Will prophecy be fulfilled?" Of course it will. The issue for each one of us is simply whether or not we ourselves and our families will be saved out of the destruction that is soon to come upon the entire world, or will we be like the frog in the story of the frog in the kettle. Having become so acclimated to what is going on, that when zero hour comes and the Judge of all the earth says, "He who is holy, let him be holy still; and he that is unrighteous, be unrighteous still," will it be too late for us to turn around?

Brothers and sisters, the sudden and not-so-sudden changes in our society, and now even in the church, must not be lost on us. As the world has sped up in its intractable course toward destruction, the church, at first without knowing it, has allowed itself to be drawn into the vortex of change.

We used to preach that being a follower of Christ meant we had to separate from the world. Those days are nearly a thing of the past. The devil has now convinced us that, if we are to save the lost, we must ourselves be on board their Titanic.

Under the guise of saving the unchurched, we have allowed ourselves to believe that to do so effectively we must live like the unsaved. Instead of calling the world to take up the cross and die to self, we now, as followers of Jesus, have taken up the world and are actually preaching that we must love ourselves first.

Rarely are we hearing a call to sinners to come out of the world. Rather, now we are teaching our young ministers and members that we cannot win the lost until we come down to where they are.

Jesus lived in a society that included the Roman Circus and gladiator events. Though He occasionally ate with those who were not part of the religious establishment, nowhere do we find evidence of Him hanging out with the boys at the local pool hall or even standing and passing out literature as the people exited or entered the theater to see the latest Greek drama.

It is a giant leap of fantasy to say that the church of Pentecost integrated itself into the local pagan cultures and adapted heathen philosophy and methods in order to save unchurched Claudius.

From pre-flood times it was not meant to be that the people of God share a common culture with the people of the world. And when the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful and set up housekeeping together, the result was disaster, and only eight escaped with their lives from the destruction of the earth by water.

If there was ever a time in which we could trust our culture to uphold the principles of the Kingdom of Heaven, it is not now; and the truth is, there never was a time in which the things of the world and the interests of the kingdom were compatible.

Every time God calls out a people, He requires that they come out from their contemporary culture. From the time of Abraham it was a call to separate. Lot literally had to be dragged out from among his culture and lost most of his family, who had chosen to live among the people of Sodom.

I can only guess, but when Lot made his decision to take his family to Sodom, he might have explained to his uncle, Abraham, that living in Sodom would give him a better opportunity to witness and enable him to reach the unchurched Sodomites.

I cannot understand how we have somehow come to the conclusion that, in order to reach the unsaved, we must place ourselves on their level. Bringing the gospel down to the level of the lost will not cause the lost to be saved, but rather to corrupt the gospel to the point that those who profess to be the savers are in danger of losing their own salvation.

It is said that water will find its lowest level. But the gospel is not to accommodate itself to the level of sinners. The unsaved must not be allowed to decide the terms on which they will be saved.

The purpose of the gospel is to lift the lost up and out of their selfishness, pride, bitterness, lust, and lack of self-control.

We must not deceive ourselves and others when we repeat the quotation that Jesus met the people where they were. Though He indeed met the people where they were, it was not everywhere, neither was it all people. We must not come to conclusions that are not compatible with His holiness and purity.

In Luke 15 there are stories of how God reaches the lost, and in every case He brings them up and out of their lost condition and, I am safe to say, out of their lost lifestyle.

Speaking of lifestyle, we err if we think that the gospel is not about lifestyle. The gospel always comes head to head with lifestyle. A gospel that leaves the sinner with his same attitudes, philosophy, and ways of living is not truly the good news, but simply a bandage on a cancerous sore.

In order for God to liberate Israel from bondage, He had to take them out of Egypt. In the 21st century, if we are truly being saved, we must separate ourselves, not only philosophically but also practically, from the world and its sinful ways.

We have come to a time when we must make a decision, because we can't have it both ways. The Bible teaches that the stone that strikes the image in its feet will destroy the cultures of this world. We make a mistake if we think that somehow at the last minute we will jump off this sinking ship.

We must be aware that sin is not something that can be put off like a pair of gloves. Sin stains the soul, and only the blood of Jesus can wash it out.

We must also be aware that it is written that the Spirit of God will not always strive with men and women. Continuing to refuse to come clean will result in a numbing of our conscience until the day comes in which the voice of the Spirit falls on ears that can no longer hear.

The values of our society are at odds with all that represents the principles of the Kingdom of Heaven. In our rush to be culturally relevant, and in our earnest desire to reach the unchurched, we could find that we ourselves have become infected by the tainted blood of the contemporary environment in which we live.

The call to the people of God has always been to "Come out of her, my people." It has been a call to ". . . touch not the unclean thing." Though we live in the world, we are not to be of the world.

Jesus prayed that while in the world we would be kept from the evil that is in the world. If this prayer is to be answered, we must back away from our culture, which is in free-fall. The ship that is this culture is going down, and the Lord will save those who are willing to abandon it, not those who chose to stay on board singing, "Nearer, My God, to Thee."

A person would have to be blind not to realize that the contemporary culture is more and more being accepted into the church, at least in this country and perhaps Europe and Australia.

This is putting tremendous stress on what used to be something that, in changing times, we could count on as giving us a reference point. Other generations have had their problems. Yet in days gone by, though we were far from perfect and though we didn't always agree, we generally did agree that the Bible had the last word and that the Spirit of Prophecy would help us to understand how to apply its principles to our lives.

Now days what used to be outside is increasingly inside. We are now confronted with challenges that in other times we could not have imagined would be this way. It used to be simply truth against error, and we believed that as long as you were in the church you would be protected from error, because error was seen as something outside the church.

Church standards used to be high. There were clear rules of do's and don'ts. We knew that as long as we upheld the standards, we would be separate from the world and would be safe from the error that was and that was to come. Times have changed. What will we do?

Some years ago I read something written by A. W. Tozer entitled, "Divisions Are Not Always Bad." It contains principles that we must consider if we are to survive the age in which we live--not only in respect to society, but also to the society as it begins to leak into the church.

Tozer asks:

"When to unite and when to divide? That is the question; and a right answer requires the wisdom of Solomon.

"Some settle the problem by rule of thumb: All union is good and all division bad. It's easy, but obviously this effortless way of dealing with the matter ignores the lessons of history and overlooks some of the deep spiritual laws by which men live.

"If good men were all for union and bad men for division, or vice versa, that would simplify things for us. Or if it could be shown that God always unites and the devil always divides, it would be easy to find our way around in this confused and confusing world. But that is not how things are.

"To divide what should be divided and unite what should be united is the part of wisdom. Union of dissimilar elements is never good even where it is possible, nor is the arbitrary division of elements that are alike; and this is as certainly true of things moral and religious as of things political or scientific.

"The first divider was God, who at the creation divided the light from the darkness. This division set the direction for all God's dealings in nature and in grace. Light and darkness are incompatible. To try to have both in the same place at once is to try the impossible and end by having neither the one nor the other but rather dimness and obscurity.

"In the world of men, there are at present scarcely any sharp outlines. The race is fallen. Sin has brought confusion. The wheat grows with the tares, the sheep and the goats coexist, the farms of the just and the unjust lie side by side in the landscape. The mission is next door to the saloon.

"But things will not always be so. The hour is coming when the sheep will be divided from the goats and the tares separated from the wheat. God will again divide the light from the darkness and all things will run to their kind. Tares will go into the fire with tares and wheat into the garner with wheat. The dimness will lift like a fog and all outlines will appear. Hell will be seen to be hell all the way through and heaven revealed as the one home of all who bear the nature of the one God.

"For that time we with patience wait. In the meanwhile for each of us, and for the church wherever she appears in human society, the constantly recurring question must be: 'What shall we unite with and from what shall we separate?' The question of coexistence does not enter here, but the question of union and fellowship does. The wheat grows in the same field with the tares, but shall the two cross-pollinate? The sheep graze near the goats, but shall they seek to interbreed? The unjust and the just enjoy the same rain and sunshine, but shall they forget their deep moral differences and intermarry?

"To these questions the popular answer is yes. Union for union's sake, and men shall brothers be for a' that. Unity is so devoutly to be desired that no price is too high to pay for it and nothing is important enough to keep us apart. Truth is slain to provide a feast to celebrate the marriage of heaven and hell, and all to support a concept of unity that has no basis in the world of God.

"The Spirit-illuminated church will have none of this. In a fallen world like ours, unity is no treasure to be purchased at the price of compromise. Loyalty to God, faithfulness to truth, and the preservation of a good conscience are jewels more precious than the Gold of Ophir or diamonds from the mine. For these jewels men have suffered the loss of property, imprisonment, and even death; for them, even in recent times, behind the various curtains, followers of Christ have paid the last full measure of devotion and quietly died, unknown to and unsung by the great world, but known to God and dear to His Father heart.

"In the day that shall declare the secrets of all souls, these shall come forth to receive the deeds done in the body. Surely such as these are wiser philosophers than the religious camp followers of meaningless unity who have not the courage to stand against current vogues and who bleat for brotherhood only because it happens to be for the time popular.

"'Divide and conquer' is the cynical slogan of Machiavellian political leaders, but Satan knows also how to unite and conquer. To bring a nation to its knees, the aspiring dictator must unite it. By repeated appeals to national pride or to the need to avenge some past or present wrong, the demagogue succeeds in uniting the populace behind him. It is easy after that to take control of the military and to beat the legislature into submission. Then follows almost perfect unity indeed, but it is the unity of the stockyards and the concentration camp. We have seen this happen several times, and the world will see it at least once more when the nations of the earth are united under the anti-Christ.

"When confused sheep start over a cliff, the individual sheep can save himself only by separating from the flock. Perfect unity at such a time can only mean total destruction for all. The wise sheep to save his own hide disaffiliates.

"Power lies in the union of things similar and the division of things dissimilar. Maybe what we need in religious circles today is not more union but some wise and courageous division. Everyone desires peace, but it could be that revival will follow the sword." So writes A.W. Tozer.

Brothers and sisters, our current trend toward unity with the world must be stopped. Would someone please show me, when in the past the church reached out to become like the world, that souls were won for the kingdom.

Would someone please show me when in the past the church reached out to become like the world, that the world was converted. The record shows that it has always, without exception, been just the opposite.

The worldly culture and all that it represents will be destroyed when Jesus comes. Those who are saved from this destruction will be those who have answered the call to come out and be separate. The world is calling us to join with it. It is promising that if we will make the gospel relevant and contemporary, then it will accept and souls will be saved. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As Pastor Tozer wrote, "We must know when to unite and when to divide." This is the time to unite with all that is true to the Word of God and the time to disaffiliate ourselves from all that is of the world and its sinful ways.

Some may feel that, because the world has in some places crept into the church, now is the time to disaffiliate ourselves from the church. To do this is a mistake. In the first place, Jesus is the head of the church. When He was here on earth He did not disaffiliate Himself from the church but faithfully attended every Sabbath. Neither did He start His own synagogue.

Though many in the church have allowed the values and perspectives of the world to come into their lives, there are huge numbers who haven't. We must not repeat Elijah's mistake when he thought that he was the only faithful one. God will have a pure church. This is His problem, not ours. Our task is to remain true, and by His grace we will.