At the dedication of his $27 million, 40,000-square-foot commemorative North Carolina library May 31, Billy Graham said, “What I desire to hear when I meet the Master is for Him to say, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ ”

Jordan said of this comment by Graham, “You know, my friend, the way you hear that is to be in the One in whom God says, ‘It’s with Him I am well-pleased.’ Now what five minutes of your life would you like to lay before God to have Him make that evaluation about you?!

“You know better than that! You?! Five minutes?! Five seconds wouldn’t get you by, would it? You know, there’s, ‘Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.’ There’s, ‘Have no other gods before me.’ How you doing with that?! You can’t even get past the first one!

“I mean, do you really have five minutes that you’re going to live for nothing but God? Are you sure?! Well, you get the point. You have an identity in Christ and you share what God has given Him. He’s the one God’s well-pleased in.

“And to be one of the elect, you share His election. Because of these titles God bestows on us in Christ this is who I am.”

*****

Jordan observed in a Bible study last week, “People think they’re good when they’re not. They’re religious to try and make people think they’re good when they’re not.

“They’re trying to get away from the persecution of the Cross. Now, the persecution of the Cross says: ‘You’re no good, your momma and your daddy aren’t any good, your kin folks aren’t any good. You’re all just going to bust hell wide open. There’s no hope for you except in what somebody else did for you and if you don’t take it as a free gift you’re going to burn.’

“Now how does that make you feel? That really doesn’t make you feel like a $5 bill. You feel like half of a $3 bill. And people don’t like that. But it’s the truth.

“See, the good news is set against the backdrop of the bad news. You want to know one of the reasons people don’t get saved? One of the reasons people follow all of this ‘ask- Jesus-into-your-heart; make-Him-a-part-of-your-life’ watered-down gospel? One of the reasons people believe you can lose your salvation; people believe you can do something to get your salvation? It’s because they never get lost. If you get lost, and understand how lost you really are, you know you can’t save yourself.”

*****

China missionary R. Dawson Barlow writes in his 2004 book, The Origin of the Races, “Old age is rarely a time for a philosophical search for a living, workable faith and philosophy . . .

“Statistically a small percentage of people 35 years and older are ever brought to a decisive ‘change of mind’ that brings them to a living faith in the gospel of our great Redeemer.

“Most conversions that lead to a life of loving, faithful service to the Lord take place in the teen-years, or perhaps in the early twenties.

“By the time old age creeps up on the sons and daughters of Adam, most have hardened themselves by their cynicism and their futile outlook on the meaning of human existence and destiny.

“Unfortunately, many older people develop a superficial interest in religion merely because of their fear of death. Consequentially, they often fall into the clutches of a man-made philosophy. In Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Karl Marx wrote in 1844, ‘Religion is the opiate of the people,’ and he was right.

“Hitler said it more eloquently: ‘Religion (is) the means of doping the people so as to exploit them afterward . . .’ (Hitler, by Allan Bullock, Pg. 38). An opiate-like religious philosophy seems to dissolve any anxieties that result from the reality of one’s increasingly obvious mortality.”

*****

The story of the Prodigal Son is really about the older brother; that’s the whole point in that parable.

Jordan explains, “He says to his father, ‘I’ve been here, I’ve stayed home, I’ve done everything you told me to do and you never did all that wonderful stuff for me.’

“And when you read that, that’s just the way arrogance is: ‘I’ve done everything you told me to do.’

“He’s standing out there in the field sulking, refusing to do what the father told him to do. The father said, ‘Come and rejoice my son that was lost is found.’ And the brother won’t do it, professing to do everything the father wanted him to do.

“You see how nutty that is?! That’s the spiritual blindness of pride and religious arrogance.”