THE DEVIL’S BIBLE THE DEVIL’S CHURCH THE DEVIL’S SLAUGHTERHOUSE -BY Oliver B. Green To begin this message, I want to say, THE DEVIL WAS THE FIRST COUNTERFEITER! He tried to counterfeit everything that God has ever had. The reason he was cast out of Heaven was because he said he would be like the Most High God, and he would ascend to His throne. Because of that, God pitched him out of Heaven. He has a counterfeit Christ, which is the antichrist, who will come on the scene of action at the rapture of the church. Then the beast and the false prophet are counterfeits of the devil who will be used during the tribulation period when he poses as The Christ. Yes, the devil is a shrewd counterfeiter and has counterfeited everything God has that is good. The devil himself is transformed into, “an angel of light,” and even his “ministers are transformed as ministers of righteousness.” You or I certainly are no match fort the devil; he has six thousand years of experience at damming souls and he knows how to deceive them. WHAT IS THE DEVI’S BIBLE? First, what is the Lord’s Bible? The Lord’s Bible is a Book of Life. It is a Book that tells us about the glories of Heaven and the blackness of sin. It is a Book that reproves us of sin. It is a Book that tells us how to find a better life. It is a Book that magnifies honesty, decency, purity, love, and home. It is the unchanging Book. It is the Book without a lie; the God who wrote it “cannot lie.” The devil’s bible is just the opposite. Do we have any Scripture in the Word of God that tells us anything about the devil’s bible? I think we do; let us look at AC.19:18,20, “And many that believed came and confessed and shewed their deeds. Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, AND BURNED THEM BEFORE ALL MEN; and they counted the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. SO MIGHTY GREW THE WORD OF GOD AND PREVAILED.” They brought their books and burned them”, 50,000 pieces of silver worth! My what a bonfire that was. Some of you reading these lines have some books you need to burn. The devil’s bible is every book that denies and condemns what God’s Word teaches. Every book that has been written on the Bible and yet denies its teaching; every book that has ever been written condemning the doctrines of the Book of Books; every book that has ever been written glorifying crime; every book ever written glorifying sex and immorality; every book that has ever been written to entice the young people to go to Hell; every book that does not hold up the standards of Christ is the devil’s bible. There are a thousand carloads of books in your town and mine that ought to be burned! And the sad part of it is, thousands of them are in the homes of Christian people. There are many of God’s people who need to clean house, they need to get rid of some books. What a tragedy when, Christian parents allow filthy books to come into their homes to entice the youngsters to immoral living. Thousands of people see no harm in the little books their children buy off newsstands up and down the streets of America. But many of these innocent looking books are as poisonous as a rattlesnake. I could not believe my eyes the other day when a friend of mine showed me a book that a young man had given him to read. He wanted me to read a few lines in one of the chapters dealing with sex. It is hard to believe that it would be lawful for such stuff to be sold across the counter, but it is being sold just the same by the carload. The filthier the book, the better some people like it. It takes a dirty mind to enjoy a dirty book! Some of the most damnable books and magazines being sold today are the true story type magazines and those that Hollywood publishes. If I ever come home and find my wife lying up in bed reading a true story, I will know good and well that she has her eye on another man! I know some of you good sisters may not like that, but I want you to know I do not care. I have read filthy things and I know what they contain and I know what they put into the minds of those who read them. Most of the women who read such magazines and books try to live and act like Characters they read about. And many of them do not just try, THEY DO ACT LIKE THE CHARACTERS THEYREAD ABOUT. My wife does not read that filth, and I repeat, I would not trust her if she did! (I HEAR SOME SISTER SAY, “well, old boy, I will not read any more of his sermons.”) Yes, but sister, you got your little tree pruned up while you were reading! And the only reason anyone would get mad at the above statement is because he is guilty. It is always the guilty dog that hollers; as long as you rub a cat’s fur the right way he purrs; but just start rubbing it the wrong way and you have some spitting and scratching on your hands. It is not my intention to make folks angry, but if the truth makes you angry friend, you will just have to get angry and stay angry. Nothing in the world hurts my heart more than to see a poor mother with two or three babies hanging on her arms, walk up to a cheap true-story stand and pick out two or three lewd books and pay the cashier for them and then walk away to feed her mind on lust and filth when her little babies need clothes and food. There are poor little children who have not had an ice cream cone in six months but their mother has money to keep a good supply of the devil’s bibles on hand. I firmly believe the habit of reading lewd books is next to the liquor habit in binding its victim and preparing him for Hell. It is a disease of the mind. The more rubbish one forces upon his brain, the more it takes to satisfy that lustful mind. Maybe someone says, “Preacher, what do you know about it?” Thank you for that question. I will tell you what I know about it. I am sorry, but I tasted everything that Hell had to offer a poor soul. My poor mother at my request would beg true-story books for me from her customers to whom she sold produce and eggs for a living. I can prove that statement by my gray-haired mother. She was not a Christian then, and naturally she thought she was doing me a favor. I have had her beg books for me more than one time from her customers. And then I would sit up half the night and feed my mind on the lust and filth that was in them. When you have read one true story, so called, you have read them all. They all begin and end alike. Some woman falls in love with her neighbor’s husband and steals him, or some married man falls in love with some young girl and she steals him from his wife and family; usually there is bloodshed or dirty fights. TAKE THE FILTH OUT OF THEM AND YOU WOULD NOT SELL ENOUGH TO PAY THE PRINTERS FOR PRINTING THEM. Do not tell me, brother, I know; I have traveled that old road before, I am not proud of it, but I know what I am talking about. There is another devil’s bible that I want to mention right here and some of you are going to be astonished beyond measure. That is the “Funnies,” yes, the little harmless funnies. There used to be a time when the funny papers were funny, but now it is not so. I read them off and on for some time after I was saved, and told myself that there was no harm in them, but they ceased to be funny and became a continued story of crime and lust; boys and girls necking, drinking parties, and crime of different species. Yes, the funnies have ceased to be funny, but there are lots of good church folks who see no harm in them, and they feed their minds on them for at least one half-hour on Sunday morning before they ever get their Bibles open. I am not going to say that person who will do that is not saved, I am not their judge, but I will say they need to get closer to God if are saved. There is no good in the funnies, and don’t you fool yourself into thinking that there is. I want you to notice this interesting article that came out sometime ago in one of the leading newspapers of our locality: * “A juvenile delinquency expert thinks that comic strip characters should replace King Arthur and Sir Galahad in reading matter for kids. And if the heroes need backing up, why not ring in Van Johnson, Gregory Peck, and some of the other movie stars?” The writer was at one time Director of the Special Services Division of Schools in New Orleans, Louisiana; she was in Atlanta to address a juvenile delinquency conference. In that address, she balked against teaching today’s children in terms of King Arthur and Sir Galahad. “The comic strips or the movies,” she said, “would be much more interesting.” She went on to add, “If you get the child’s interest you have a better chance of keeping him happy and out of trouble. Our generation is a generation of comic strips and movies. That is more than a figure of speech. Why can’t we teach children to read by teaching them to read comics? In other words, suit instructions to the present, not to the past.” My answer to that article is, “TRAIN UP A CHILD IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO AND WHEN HE IS OLD, HE WILL NOT DEPART FORMIT” PR.22:6. There are some poor children in this old world who do not have a chance in this life. Their poor little minds are poisoned before they get out of the cradle. I thank God, I have had the privilege of leading some little boys to love their Bibles and junk the devil’s bibles, the Funnies. I have here on my desk right now a picture that I clipped out of the newspaper of a little boy reading funny papers in his jail cell he killed his little eight year old playmate, and he said he got the idea out of the funnies and the movies. And yet some good church members see no harm in the little harmless funnies! Well, I am praying that God will open your blinded eyes someday. Oh, you say, your preacher reads them, is that so? Well. Dear child, do not get your eyes on the preacher, if you do, you might land in Hell! Keep your eyes on Jesus and not on preachers. Not all fellows that hear the same preacher have their orders from God. Some of them get their orders from man! Sonny boy, be a real little man and throw away those old devil’s bibles and get you some good little Bible story books and read them. Learn about characters in the Word of God, not in the comic strips or in the movies. Some of the devil’s bibles are under religious names. Some of you folks have the devil’s books in your bookshelf right now. You have books there that teach there is no Hell. Those books say that a loving God would not let a burning Hell exist. Some woman or man came to the door and tried to sell them to you and you would not buy them so they gave them you, is that not right? You had better get them out of your house and burn them before they burn your soul in Hell fire. Thank God, I have a letter in my mail today that told about a dear man being saved that the No-Hell-ites had been trying to confuse with their damnable doctrine. Get that stuff out of your house! Burn it, if it will burn. They are so cheap, some of them will hardly burn. Then there are many other book agents that make their living, off poor people who do not stop to think, by selling books that teach damnable heresies. A man brought me a book in one of my meetings and asked if I would look at it and tell him what it was. I did not have to look inside, I knew what it was by the fancy trimming it had on the outside. He paid seven dollars for it, but he burned it after I showed him what he had. FRIEND, BE CAREFUL WHEN SOMEONE COME TO YOUR DOOR TO SELL YOU A BOOK!! There are many wolves in sheep’s clothing roaming around with a little satchel on their arm, posing in religious garb, when inside they are dirty, rotten, and sinful, denying God and the Lord Jesus that bought them with His own precious blood. BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU READ UNDER THE NAME OF RELIGION, AND DO NOT FORGET THAT THE DEVIL KNOWS MORE SCRIPTURE THAN MOST CHRISTIANS CAN QUOTE! So, the devil’s bible is every lewd, lustful, misleading, dirty, filthy, demoralizing, degrading, character-wrecking, sin-glorifying, devil-praising, Hell-denying. home-wrecking, Bible-fighting, soul-damning book that has ever been written! God help some of you to go to your bookshelves and have a bon fire right now! So much for the devil’s bible, now let us see what his church is. WHAT IS THE DEVIL’S CHURCH? Again, I want us to begin by asking a question: “What is God’s Church? The Bible answers. God’s Church is a place where people go who are alive. That is, Jesus is the resurrection and the life; Christians are alive, they have life. People who are not Christians are dead, “dead in trespasses and sin.” The church is a place of light; the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is a place where people go to hear the truth; the church is a place where people go to get rid of their burdens; the church is a place where the Word of God is read and prayer is made to the Lord Jesus Christ; the true local church is a place where people are saved and taught how to live decent lives and have decent homes; the church is a place where we sing about the old rugged cross. The church, that is God’s church, is a place where the work of the devil is fought and condemned. Sin is exposed and evil is fought in the true church of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Well,” I hear someone say, “They do not fight sin at my church.” Friend, you had better check up to see it you belong to God’s church or not; you might be in the synagogue of Satan, my friend. Last, I want to say, the Lord’s church is a place where God’s children go to worship, and to fellowship with their brothers and sisters in Christ. What is the devil’s church? It is none other than the modern theatre. I think booze is doing more to damn our nation than any other thing, but the movies are close on its trail until they are almost twins of destruction. Very few people realize how much evil the movies are sowing among our young. Yes, I said the movies are sowing evil among our young people. I can hear some back-slidden fossilized church member say, “Why preacher Green, don’t you know the movies are educational?” Yes, I agree with you, they are very educational; they are educating more people for Hell than anything I know of in this old sin-cursed world. We are living in a movie-mad world. The average church member sees no harm in the movies; he keeps “harping” on the movies being educational, if some of these people like educational so well, I wonder why they do not go to college or a university where that can get a degree in some line of arts? You know why the average person goes to the movies? They do it to satisfy the lust of a sinful heart. The average movie is not fit for a decent person to sit through. I know some of you lovely church members do not appreciate what I am saying about your little god, but I want you to know it is mutual, I DO NOT CARE! I am not for making people angry; I do not like to have enemies; I like to get along with everybody, but if I have to compromise the Word of God to keep your smile and friendship, I will just have to lose it because I will preach my convictions or die trying. The movies and beer bottle almost sent me to Hell, and I am against them tooth and nail! And I shall be until I die and go to Heaven! Why do I say the theatre is the devil’s church? * First: It is exactly the opposite, or counterfeit, of the Lord’s church, that is the reason for my making that statement. The Lord’s church is a place of light. The theatre is a place of darkness. Do not deny it! It is a place for men and women to pet, and for women, who run after other men, to meet their men. Do not tell me I am a liar; I have been down the old road and I know hereof I speak! It is a place where poor little grammar school boys and girls go to see lewd sex scenes, and their lustful desires set aflame in the semi-dark room with the jazz and the suggestive scenes. Take the lust and filth out of the show business and the show business will go out of business! THERE HAS MANY A POOR GILR LOST HER GOD-GIVEN VIRTUE AFTER A LEWD MOVIE. * Second: I say the theatre is the devil’s church because it glorifies the devil and sin, and the church of the Lord Jesus STANDS AGAINST the works of the devil and sin. The theatre glorifies drinking and lewd parties. The church and the preacher of the Gospel are against them. Some of the back-slidden, dried-up, ear-tickling, back scratching, pussyfooting, soft-soaping, modernistic preachers might not preach against sin and the devil, but GOD’S PREACHERS DO! Not, “everything” that wears his collar backwards, and a claw hammer coat is a preacher! There are some “hirelings” according to the Word of God. There are also some “men-pleasers” in pulpits today. I am not judging, I am merely stating a fact. Yes, the theatre glorifies crime, lust, and sin. The dirtier the picture, the more who attend. Put just an ordinary sign out front of your theatre that some ordinary film will be shown and there will not be much excitement, but put up a sign out there that NO ONE WILL BE ALLOWED UNDER SIXTEEN, and every old buzzard in the country will be there before sundown looking for a seat. You know, and I know, that nothing good or clean could come out of Hollywood as filthy as the movie stars are. “Can a clean thing come out of an unclean?” Those are the words of God’s Word. Oh, I will grant you that there might be one half-decent movie in ten thousand, but as well as I love apples, if I must eat ten thousand rotten ones to get one good one; I will just take pears from now on, thank you. I want not to be caught in a movie when Jesus comes; therefore, I am not going at all. I do not want to go, if I did want to go, I would be afraid to spend God’s money to go. The Bible says you are guilty of a thing if you support it, so I do not want one red cent of my money going Hollywood; and that is not all, if I stay in my right mind, not one cent of my money is going to Hollywood! * Third: I say the theatre is the devil’s church because it instructs men and women in immoral living. It teaches young people how to pet. It teaches them how to drink. No person reading these lines who goes to the movies will deny the fact that three out of four you see will have drinking scenes in them. The movies teach divorce, and practically all movie stars are divorced people. The movie has no place for a happy home with a house full of children. That is what God said to do; “replenish and multiply,” But Hollywood raises cats, and poodle dogs instead of babies. You cannot name one thing that the church of the Lord Jesus Christ stands for that the modern movies are not against. And the tragedy of it all is that the average teen-age child spends four times as much time in the movies every week as he does in Sunday school. Well, I may lose some do-called friends because of my stand, but I want you to know just how I feel about the modern theatre, and I want you to know that I sincerely believe it is doing more to damn our youth than any other one factor on earth. One of the most subtle tricks of the devil in a long time is the much increasing patronage of the open-air theatres. Any person who has a grain of sense can see through that scheme of the devil. I could tell you some things that I know to be true, but I had better not get too plain on paper; I would tell you and tell you plenty. Anyway, you notice practically every little berg in the country has one, do you not? This nation is going to rot and cave in if we people who love the Lord do not start praying more than we ever have. WHEN THEATRES DRAW A LARGER CROWD ON SUNDAY NIGHT THAN CHURCHES, WE need a revival of Old Time Religion! WHEN MOVIE STARS GET MORE PUBLICITY THAN THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, we need a revival of Old Time Religion! WHEN THE MOVIE STARS BECOME THE IDOLS OF THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN CHILDREN, We need a revival of Old Time Religion! WHEN A NATION HAS NOT ONE PREACHER WHO WILL DRAW A CROWD TO EQUAL A LEADING MOVIE STAR’S CROWD, That nation needs a revival of Old Time Religion! Yes, I will agree, modern movies are educational. They certainly educate people to live in such a manner that they can expect a shortcut to Hell. I hear somebody say, “Preacher, do you not know that over four million Americans go to the movies every week?” I answer you in Bible language: Did you know if you follow the crowd, you will go to Hell, did you not know that the “broad way leadeth to destruction; the narrow way to life everlasting and few there be that find it?” I may be crazy; I may be narrow, I may be fanatical, but I AM HAPPY! I tried movies, I tried the beer bottle, I tried everything the devil had to offer, but I accepted Jesus one day and I have found Him to be just exactly what I needed. I did not say that every person who goes to a movie is going to Hell. I believe there are some honest people who are weak spiritually and have not been convicted of the sin of it. I believe there are some saved people who will read this sermon who will never return to the movies again. If you are saved and you are a movie goer, God help you to wake up lest you be a stumbling block in someone’s way and cause them to go to Hell. If you have been saved and still go to movies, may God convict you is my prayer. And I believe if you will have an open heart, He will convict you. I say with no apologies, that the modern theatre is a synagogue of Satan. WHAT AND WHERE IS THE DEVIL’S SLAUGHTERHOUSE? First let us find out what a slaughterhouse is: it is a place where animals are killed. It is a place where animals are slaughtered for market. All right, what does the devil’s slaughterhouse do? The devil is in the slaughterhouse business, he slaughters souls, he slaughters character, he slaughters everything that is near and dear to a lady or a gentleman. The devil’s slaughterhouse is none other than these little ten-cent piccolo joints alongside the American highways. The dance hall, if you please, is what I am talking about. I hear someone say, “So you are against the dance?” I surely am, and so in the Bible, so is the Lord Jesus Christ, so is every godly preacher in the United States. The dance is one of the most cunning, subtle tools the devil has with which to damn souls. “What do I want to do?” Is that what you said? In Bible language I answer, “Whether ye eat, drink, or whatsoever you do, do it all to the glory of God.” If you can take another man’s wife in your arms and hold her tight to your body and sway back and forth to the tune of a jazz band and do it to the glory of God, I am crazy! But brother, I am not crazy; I have good sense and I got it when I found the Lord Jesus! I hear some of the old married men say, “I dance for exercise.” I wonder why that “bird” does not try mowing the lawn sometimes that is good exercise; I notice most lawns are mowed by women. No, you do not dance for exercise, Bud, you dance for the same reason others do, to satisfy that old demon lust in your bosom. More homes have gone to the rocks on the dance floor than any other one place on earth. I would not have a wife that would let another man hug her. And I had just as soon see a man hugging my wife in our front room as on a dance floor, I HAD BETTER NOT CATCH SOME OLD BUZZARD TRYING IT IN EITHER PLACE! No, thank God, my wife does not go to dances. If she did, I would not trust her. I would have no confidence in her. Maybe I m a fool, but she is my wife and I am not sharing her on the dance floor with any lop-eared, lustful monster! One of the outstanding reasons for my being against the dance is because IT COST ONE OF MY BROTHER PREACHERS HIS HEAD, and that is reason enough for me! John the Baptist preached a sermon, you remember, against Herod having his brother’s wife, Herodias. You will find the account in Matthew fourteen. Of course Herodias got “very angry” at John for preaching against her adultery. When her chance came, she took out her spite on John by asking for his head. The occasion was a birthday party where Herodias daughter danced before the king. I suppose she had on about enough clothes to make a jay-bird a decent as she danced before Herod, and his old lustful nature was so set on fire that he promised her anything in the world, even to the half of his kingdom. That is the effect the dance had on the old boy, and you must admit that you are not much different from him. Every unsaved man is just about like the next one. But she did not ask for half the kingdom, she did not ask for his wealth, she did not ask for fame or fortune, her mother told her to ask for the John’s head, and she did. So, that dance cost John his head. I AM AGAINST ANYTHING that could cause a man like John the Baptist to lose his head! The modern dance does not cost so many heads, but it causes many slaughtered hearts; it causes many slaughtered lives. There is nothing good that can be said about the dance. There is not one good word that could be truthfully spoken in its behalf. Many poor mothers give their children dancing lessons thinking they are doing their child a favor; they are instead giving them a ticket to hell fire. I feel sorry for the poor young woman who has no more forethought than to give her little daughter dancing lessons. The Word of God says. “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart.” Yes the devil has counterfeited everything God has that is good. He is a faker, a parasite, a liar, a thief, a fraud, a murderer, a deceiver, a wrecker of lives and homes, s destroyer of the souls of men; and HE IS DETERMINED TO DAMN EVERY SOUL IN THIS UNIVERSE HE CAN. He has no more respect for your soul and mine than he had for the thousands who are in hell today. The tools with which he does his best work are back-slidden, worldly-minded church members who see no harm in anything that they want to do. He can use a worldly-minded church person to lead more souls astray than he could lead astray with a half-dozen drunkards in the gutter. We need more Christians with the spirit of Paul, “If eating meat offend my brother, I will eat no meat” 1 CO.8: 13. In other words, we should be willing to leave off anything we are doing that might cause some young child or Christian to stumble; we need the old motto back on the wall and take the Hollywood stars down: “Go no place you would not like to be found when Jesus comes. Say nothing you would nit like to be heard saying when Jesus comes. Do nothing you would not like to be caught doing when Jesus comes.” If everyone reading this sermon will do that, I will be satisfied with your daily living, and so will the Lord Jesus. There are two ways this sermon can be taken: you can get angry and cast it aside, or you can be reasonable and accept it as from the Lord. If you do the latter, you will not be angry at the preacher, but you will be angry at the devil and do something about the worldliness in your life. It might do us good to close this sermon with a message from the Lord Jesus in 1 jn.2: 15, “love not the world, neither the things that are in the world, for if any man loves the world, the LOVE OF GOD IS NOT IN HIM.” What is the world? Anything that is not of the Lord is of the world. Anything that is not Godly, is worldly. May God help us to check upon our life lest we be a stumbling block in our neighbor’s path. If you are not a Christian; God help you to be saved is my prayer. Put your faith in the Lord Jesus and let Him redeem your soul by the precious blood. He died that you might live; He is seeking and saving whomsoever will come to the fountain of life. Then if you have been born again and you are a careless Christian, God help you to surrender your whole life and soul to Jesus right now. “Present your body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service” RO.12: 1.