Samuel W. Williams - "Will God Succeed with Man?" (January 11, 1970)

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	(bright piano music)	0:03
	(choir singing in foreign language)	1:14
-	Let us offer unto God,	2:04
	our unison prayer of confession,	2:06
	and for pardon.	2:10
	Let us pray.	2:13
	Almighty God,	2:15
	we humbly acknowledged before thee,	2:17
	that we have sinned,	2:20
	in thought, word and deed.	2:22
	By our fault, our own fault,	2:25
	our own most grievous fault.	2:29
	Merciful Lord, we confess our sins,	2:32
	have mercy upon us and help us.	2:36
	Blot out our many sins and offenses.	2:40
	Pardon and deliver us	2:44
	and give grace of amendment to us	2:46
	and to all thy faithful people.	2:49
	Make us worthy to offer onto thee glory and Thanksgiving.	2:53
	Wash away oh Lord,	2:59
	the foul pollution of our souls	3:01
	and cleanse us with the water of life	3:05
	that in all purity and holiness,	3:08
	we may be accounted worthy to enter thy presence	3:11
	through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.	3:16
	Hear these words of the assurance of pardon,	3:23
	as they are found in the 103rd Psalms.	3:28
	As the heaven is high above the earth,	3:33
	so great is God's mercy	3:38
	toward them that fear Him.	3:42
	As far as the east is from the west,	3:46
	so far have God removed our transgressions from us.	3:51
	Like as a father pitieth his children,	3:58
	so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.	4:02
	Therefore, if we confess our sins,	4:07
	God is faithful and just	4:11
	to forgive us our sins	4:15
	and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.	4:18
	Be of good courage.	4:25
	(bright piano music)	4:32
	(choir singing in foreign language)	5:08
-	The scripture is taken from Genesis 6:1-8,	8:27
	"When men began to multiply on the face of the earth	8:32
	and daughters were born to them.	8:36
	The sons of God saw that	8:39
	the daughters of men were attractive	8:40
	and they married such of them as they chose.	8:42
	Then the Lord said,	8:46
	'My spirit will not abide in man forever	8:47
	for he is flesh,	8:50
	but his lifespan shall be 120 years.'	8:53
	There were giants on the earth in those days.	8:58
	And also afterward.	9:00
	When the sons of God had relations	9:02
	with the daughters of men,	9:04
	they bore children to them.	9:06
	These were the mighty men of old,	9:09
	the men of renown.	9:11
	And God saw that the wickedness of man,	9:14
	was great in the earth.	9:16
	And that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart	9:19
	was only evil continually.	9:21
	And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth	9:25
	and it grieved Him to His heart."	9:28
	(bright piano music)	9:35
	(choir singing in foreign language)	9:43
-	The Lord be with you.	10:17
-	And with your spirit.	10:19
-	Let us pray.	10:20
	Let us offer a prayer of Thanksgiving.	10:28
	Oh God who has commanded us in everything	10:33
	to give thanks.	10:38
	We praise thy name for all thy goodness and mercy unto us.	10:40
	For the way by which thou has led us	10:46
	and the gifts thou has bestowed.	10:50
	For the joy thou made us to abound to us	10:55
	and for the sorrows and trials thou did overrule for good.	10:59
	We give the thanks.	11:06
	For the measure of success thou has granted our labors	11:10
	and the guidance thou has given us	11:15
	in every path of duty.	11:18
	We praise thee.	11:21
	And chiefly at this season we thank thee	11:24
	for the good gift of Jesus,	11:28
	the Christ, thy son, our Lord.	11:30
	Grant that we show our thanks	11:37
	by walking in his ways,	11:39
	all the days of our life	11:42
	for His name's sake.	11:45
	And let us offer two prayers of intercession.	11:49
	First for all who need us.	11:54
	Oh God, who has formed us for fellowship with one another.	12:00
	We pray for all who need us.	12:06
	For all who are underfed, starving.	12:11
	For all refugees.	12:17
	For the victims of oppression,	12:21
	injustice, cruelty, and racial prejudice.	12:24
	For all who are frustrated.	12:33
	For the sorely tempted	12:37
	and for those who fall.	12:40
	For little children and youth who are neglected	12:45
	and have never known what it is to be cared for and loved.	12:51
	Lord, hear our prayer.	12:59
	And let us pray for the church.	13:05
	Oh God, who has built thy church	13:09
	upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.	13:11
	Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.	13:16
	Saved the community of life.	13:22
	People from cowardly surrender to the world.	13:24
	From rendering unto Caesar,	13:29
	what belongs to thee.	13:32
	From forgetting the eternal gospel,	13:35
	amid the temporal pressures of our trouble days.	13:39
	We pray for the unity of the church.	13:44
	For her fellowship	13:48
	across embittered lines of race and nation.	13:50
	For her growth in grace.	13:56
	For her building in love.	13:58
	For her enlargement in service.	14:01
	For her increase in wisdom,	14:04
	faith, charity, and power.	14:07
	In the spirit of Jesus, the Christ,	14:14
	whose church it is.	14:18
	And let us offer a prayer of supplication for ourselves.	14:22
	Almighty God, God of our fathers and our God.	14:28
	We pray thee graciously to lead us	14:37
	through the uncertainties of this new year	14:39
	of our roughly pilgrimage.	14:43
	Protect us from the dangers of the way.	14:47
	Prepare us for the duties,	14:52
	the trials, the joys and sorrows	14:55
	that awaiting us.	15:00
	And grant that each change the year brings with it,	15:04
	may bring us nearer to thy self.	15:08
	Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.	15:14
	And now as our savior, Christ has taught us,	15:19
	we humbly pray together saying:	15:21
	Our father who art in heaven,	15:25
	hallowed be thy name,	15:28
	thy kingdom come.	15:31
	Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.	15:33
	Give us this day our daily bread	15:38
	and forgive us our trespasses.	15:41
	As we forgive those who trespass against us.	15:44
	And lead us not into temptation	15:48
	but deliver us from evil.	15:51
	For thine is the kingdom	15:53
	and the power and the glory forever.	15:55
	Amen.	16:00
-	I think I'm properly adjusted now.	16:25
	I have certain some limitations this morning.	16:29
	First of all,	16:33
	I was given some couple instruction,	16:34
	yesterday evening on how to get harnessed up here.	16:36
	The second limitation is I'm fenced in, in this pulpit.	16:42
	The Baptist preacher has to have more room, so.	16:47
	(congregation laughs)	16:50
	If I happen to break out of these harnesses,	16:53
	you understand that the spirit has me.	16:55
	(congregation laughs)	16:57
	It is a joy	17:00
	and a pleasure for me to worship with you this morning.	17:04
	I have many friends in Durham.	17:11
	One of my very close and dear friend,	17:15
	a former student, Dr. Samuel DuBois Cook,	17:20
	and I regret very much that he cannot be with us today.	17:25
	Will you bow your heads for just a moment.	17:32
	Dropped thy still dews of quietness	17:41
	until all our striving cease	17:45
	and take from our souls the strain and stress.	17:49
	And let our ordered lives confess,	17:54
	the beauty of thy peace, our father, Amen.	17:58
	Will God succeed with man?	18:08
	Man is a problem.	18:20
	He's a problem both to himself and for God.	18:25
	God created man and freedom.	18:32
	Freedom is of the essence of man.	18:37
	I think it was Tolstoy who suggested that	18:42
	if a man is not free, he is not a man.	18:46
	The divine expectation is that,	18:52
	this creature man made in freedom,	18:55
	would use that freedom responsibly.	19:00
	And I would like to suggest this morning	19:05
	that God has been disappointed in this.	19:07
	Man has not yet learned to use freedom responsibly.	19:11
	And I'm not so sure that he ever will.	19:18
	I would suspect that God has discovered	19:22
	that His greatest era in creation	19:28
	was to make man and the freedom.	19:31
	Now to act responsibly,	19:38
	first one needs to know,	19:41
	how to way and to consider alternatives	19:45
	and then to decide to make up his mind.	19:47
	It was Paul Tillich, I think who said that,	19:51
	the three dimensions of freedom are:	19:54
	deciding or deliberating	19:56
	and deciding and answering.	19:58
	This business of deciding is tremendously important.	20:04
	I like sometimes to use an illustration such as this,	20:09
	a courting young man.	20:12
	And I suppose some of you young fellows do some of that.	20:13
	While you are in the stage of,	20:18
	the early stages of courting,	20:21
	you are up against the problem of considering.	20:24
	There is Yvonne and Yvette and Mary and Susie and Karen.	20:29
	Now under our system you can't marry all of those,	20:36
	but you have them under consideration.	20:43
	And you've got to look at them and weigh them.	20:47
	The word deliberate,	20:51
	the Latin root means to weigh, to balance.	20:52
	Now the real problem comes	20:57
	when you get to the point	21:00
	that you've got to decide among those five	21:03
	and the word decide the Latin root means to cut off	21:09
	and brethren, that's an awful moment, isn't it?	21:14
	When you've got to start eliminating.	21:17
	And that's the hard time.	21:21
	I recall when I got married,	21:23
	everything was all right	21:25
	until the day I placed the engagement ring on her finger.	21:26
	And frankly my friend, brethren especially,	21:33
	I got nervous and shaky and it was just terrible	21:36
	because when I put that ring on her finger,	21:39
	I realized I cut off all the others.	21:44
	And there it was, I was stuck.	21:50
	(congregation laughs)	21:53
	Some of you know Howard Thurman	21:57
	and I'll give you Howard Thurman's definition of hell.	22:00
	He says, hell is something like this.	22:04
	If you were at a dance party	22:06
	and you had to dance throughout eternity	22:10
	with one uninteresting sister.	22:15
	Just think what that would be.	22:19
	Having to dance throughout eternity with one lady	22:21
	that's not interesting.	22:24
	That's hell.	22:25
	So there I was having made that decision.	22:28
	Now, once the decision has been made,	22:30
	the next thing comes,	22:32
	and this too is really rough	22:33
	because you now must and so for having made that decision.	22:39
	You are responsible.	22:44
	There is a song that Negroes sing,	22:48
	Jesus walked that lonesome valley.	22:51
	Had to walk it by Himself.	22:53
	There was nobody else who can walk it for Him.	22:55
	Deciding leads us to having to answer.	22:57
	Now I'm suggesting that God made man,	23:01
	hoping that he would know how to do these things,	23:04
	or we even learn.	23:06
	But I declare he hasn't done much with it.	23:08
	Now all responsible action involves the doing of justice.	23:12
	He has shown the old man,	23:17
	what you should do,	23:18
	love mercy and do justly and walk humbly with God.	23:19
	Only free men can do justice.	23:22
	And if justice is not done,	23:25
	freedom is impossible.	23:26
	What is it that must be done?	23:32
	And by whom such that man will become good and kind	23:34
	and loving and just?	23:38
	We all know that man is not loving.	23:42
	He's not kind, he's not good.	23:44
	And he's not just.	23:46
	Now whether or not man can become good	23:48
	and kind and loving and just is another question.	23:51
	If we seek to answer the question, we are raising,	23:56
	we must first understand	23:58
	that we are not raising an ordinary question.	23:59
	In asking this question,	24:04
	can man become good and just and kind and loving.	24:06
	In asking that we are inquiring into the very nature of man.	24:10
	In a sense, we are trying to find out ourselves.	24:15
	Something about who we are.	24:17
	It is a search for our real, our true self.	24:20
	In a word, the search for our identity.	24:24
	Perhaps we can get a start on our inquiry.	24:28
	We begin first with what the Bible has to say.	24:32
	In the book of Genesis,	24:35
	we noticed one account of a man to be the following.	24:36
	God created man in His own image.	24:42
	Without struggling too hard with the idea of image,	24:46
	I think it is reasonably safe to suggest	24:49
	that the image is something good.	24:53
	And Genesis 1:31, we read,	24:58
	"God looked at everything that he had made	25:00
	and found it very pleasing."	25:03
	Yay, very good.	25:05
	But when we move away	25:08
	from this initial satisfaction on God's part	25:09
	with His own hand to work,	25:13
	that is when God had a chance to see man acting on his own.	25:16
	God then expressed regret	25:21
	of having created man.	25:24
	He became very sorry that He did it.	25:27
	The experiment was not, or is not working out.	25:30
	All of the, not all,	25:35
	but most of the theologians were the contrary,	25:36
	not withstanding,	25:39
	I wish to contend that God created man was an experiment.	25:40
	God's creation of man was an experiment.	25:43
	And I would like to suggest	25:47
	that the experiment is not working out so well.	25:48
	The Bible gives as the cause.	25:54
	That is the reason for God's being disappointed with man,	25:56
	is man's wickedness.	26:01
	When God saw how great was man's wickedness on the earth	26:03
	and how every scheme that his mind devised	26:07
	was nothing but evil all the time.	26:11
	God was sorry	26:14
	that he had made man on the earth.	26:16
	And there was sorrow in God's heart.	26:19
	The meaning is clear.	26:23
	God did not create man to sin i.e. to do wickedly.	26:26
	It was not God's intention to create a doer of wicked deeds.	26:33
	God had in mind something higher for man.	26:39
	God expected man to be the doer of good thing.	26:42
	One who would take fine actions.	26:49
	Man however is not found doing this.	26:52
	Every scheme God said,	26:56
	man comes up with is evil all the time.	26:59
	God thought man would fulfill God's expectation for Him	27:03
	if He created him free.	27:08
	That experiment has not yet established the truth	27:11
	of that assumption.	27:14
	One psychoanalyst has dared to suggest	27:16
	that man is a disease in the air.	27:19
	I've never delivered a sermon on that.	27:25
	I've been tempted to.	27:28
	And every time I read the book	27:29
	in which this idea is expressed,	27:32
	I can never move beyond that chapter.	27:34
	Man is a disease in the air.	27:37
	And so far as I can see,	27:44
	God has not yet been able to	27:45
	come up with an effective antibiotic for man's disease.	27:47
	They told me I had just a certain amount of time up here.	27:54
	So I'm gonna have to leave off some of the things,	27:56
	the Holy Spirit telling me to say, but,	27:59
	God hasn't been able to find	28:03
	an effective antibiotic for man's disease.	28:05
	I should like to deal with the notion that Jesus	28:08
	is that effective antibiotic	28:11
	but I'm not so sure that He is.	28:13
	A lot of Christian theologians wish to suggest that He is.	28:19
	But I do not see that Jesus had done very much	28:21
	to curing man of this disease.	28:25
	And particularly has he not done very much	28:31
	to church Christians.	28:34
	I just saw in Atlanta on Thursday,	28:40
	an exhibition of a failure	28:43
	and the moral insipidness of church Christians.	28:45
	The Atlanta Christian Council,	28:49
	confronted now with the kinds of problems we face	28:52
	with all over the country,	28:55
	on school desegregation came up with an innocuous,	28:56
	morally insipid resolution.	29:00
	And I wish to God,	29:03
	churches will stop passing resolutions.	29:04
	If they can't do any more than pass resolution	29:09
	they ought to stop, shut up.	29:11
	But they did good Christians in Atlanta.	29:15
	Sorry to waste time with passing resolution.	29:16
	And you know, what they asked for?	29:22
	They want the church of today to pray.	29:24
	And what do they want to pray for?	29:27
	That the Lord would help them find	29:29
	a solution to our problem.	29:31
	Well, they don't need to pray	29:35
	to find that solution,	29:37
	is right before them?	29:38
	It's just clear as the news on our faces,	29:39
	but yet they wanna pray.	29:42
	Then the resolution is that they want the pastors	29:44
	to offer pastoral counseling to the children.	29:46
	And our governor gave them pastoral counseling	29:51
	the other day.	29:53
	He said, violate the law.	29:54
	There's been, I don't think any cure for man's disease.	30:00
	Now let me try quickly	30:05
	to say a word about man's evil action.	30:07
	And I should like to mention three big problems,	30:10
	which confront us.	30:14
	And all three of them are the results,	30:17
	the consequence of man's evil behavior.	30:19
	Well, I stopped for a moment and think,	30:24
	how can anybody justify war as a civilized action?	30:35
	How can anybody justify war as a civilized action?	30:46
	Let me put this another way.	30:50
	Can you make a case	30:53
	for civilized human beings making war upon themselves?	30:57
	Since my high school days,	31:08
	I have not committed any poems to memory,	31:10
	but I wish to goodness,	31:12
	I could remember this one about the monkey,	31:13
	have you ever heard that one,	31:16
	about the monkey saying that,	31:17
	people call him cousin to man or something like that?	31:20
	And when the monkeys got to thinking about that,	31:24
	he said, "Oh, but God, that's a terrible slam on us	31:26
	to say that we are related to man	31:31
	because we don't do any of the dirty things,	31:33
	men do to each other.	31:36
	And one is we don't go around using our intellects	31:38
	to try to devise means to exterminate monkeys."	31:42
	And this is precisely what men do.	31:46
	I grew up in Arkansas	31:49
	and there was a dirty statement,	31:51
	we would make about one another.	31:52
	We would say you are a low down dirty dog.	31:54
	You ever heard that one?	31:57
	We would call people that when were really mad at them.	31:58
	Call them a low down dirty dog.	32:00
	Well, that's an insult to the dog.	32:02
	(congregation murmurs)	32:05
	Because it is absolutely impossible	32:07
	for a dog to be as low down and as dirty as a man.	32:10
	He doesn't have the brains to be.	32:15
	It takes an extraordinary set of brains	32:19
	to be able to devise the cruelty,	32:23
	the inhumanity, the meanness,	32:26
	the cussedness that man can do.	32:28
	And I've had a lot of dogs	32:30
	and not one has ever did anything like that.	32:32
	Matter of fact, I had one dog that I was so,	32:36
	I loved Jim.	32:38
	My daddy wanted to whip me one day.	32:40
	And Jim thought that was not a good thing my dad to do.	32:44
	So he bit him.	32:46
	(congregation murmurs)	32:47
	And that was a great bite too,	32:48
	because my daddy turned on Jim	32:51
	and rather than getting on me, you see.	32:53
	And my dog stayed mad two weeks about that.	32:55
	Couldn't anybody go to him but me.	32:57
	Man is a disease in this earth.	33:02
	And was one expression of that disease.	33:05
	I need not talk about economic and social oppression,	33:08
	institutionalized poverty	33:13
	and pollution of the total environment,	33:15
	are expressions of man's disease.	33:17
	Racism is the other one.	33:25
	It was Kierkegaard who said that,	33:31
	the big job in this century	33:34
	is to try to make Christians out of Christians.	33:36
	I wish to goodness we could.	33:39
	In my moments of deep despair and pessimism,	33:41
	I even dare to suggest	33:45
	if we could just eliminate Christians out of the world,	33:46
	we could probably build a good world.	33:48
	Did you ever thought that the worst wars,	33:56
	the meanest kinds of institutions	33:59
	that mankind have suffered in the world,	34:01
	have been built by Christians?	34:02
	Did you ever stop to think about that.	34:05
	The meanest things we are now doing to mankind	34:08
	are been done by Christians.	34:10
	And I suppose the worst thing in the world,	34:17
	is that we got a lot of good folks around.	34:19
	If we could just eliminate the world of good people,	34:21
	we might be able to do something.	34:23
	Good people are so good they're good for nothing.	34:25
	Some sociologists have said	34:32
	that the 20th century has confronted our society	34:32
	with unprecedented progress	34:36
	and unprecedented problems.	34:38
	Economic and scientific and technological advances	34:39
	have brought material abundance,	34:42
	improved health standards	34:44
	and the phenomenal ability to control nature	34:46
	and turn it to mans uses.	34:48
	Existing however alongside all of this wealth	34:52
	and mastery over nature	34:55
	are continuing states of international warfare and tension,	34:58
	persistent poverty and despair among millions	35:03
	and the growing in ability of many to control	35:08
	the social and political processes	35:11
	that so significantly affect their lives.	35:14
	What a contradiction.	35:18
	I'm convinced that we shall never find,	35:21
	solution to our problems	35:24
	until we are willing to reexamine	35:25
	and remodel our existing values and institutions.	35:29
	This is one of the usefulness of these young radicals.	35:37
	I'm not so sure they gonna succeed,	35:46
	but at least they are challenging us and making us see,	35:49
	that we need to re-examine	35:52
	and remodel our existing values and institutions.	35:54
	It is this I fear that man is unwilling to do.	36:02
	I do not think that we are prepared to replace profit	36:06
	as the supreme value with persons as the highest value.	36:10
	We do everything with the view to profits.	36:16
	Persons are important in so far only	36:20
	as they are useful in profit-making.	36:23
	Our society is schizophrenic at this point.	36:28
	But on the one hand,	36:33
	we talk so glibly about human dignity	36:34
	and the democratic process,	36:36
	yet our actions belie, all our talk.	36:38
	I was visiting in Virginia one summer near Norfolk.	36:44
	There was a wreck on the highway.	36:49
	An automobile ran into a man riding a mule.	36:51
	When the state patrol came to investigate the accident,	36:57
	they charged the driver	37:01
	with destroying private property	37:04
	because he killed the mule.	37:06
	The man was badly injured,	37:08
	but there was no charge	37:12
	about anything wrong happening to the man.	37:14
	They were concerned	37:18
	that private property had been destroyed.	37:19
	And one of my visits back home,	37:22
	when I was in college,	37:26
	I lived in Arkansas in the Delta area,	37:27
	and I would take the train	37:31
	from Memphis down to McGee Oakland.	37:33
	So on that took us through a good section	37:35
	of the Mississippi Delta.	37:38
	And on one of these trips I said to one of the train men,	37:41
	as I looked out on a plantation and saw,	37:44
	a barn with electric lights in it.	37:47
	I understood what was out there,	37:50
	but I wanted to see how he would react.	37:51
	So I said to him,	37:52
	what house is that out there	37:54
	with the electric lights in it	37:56
	and it's painted and has a good tin roof on it?	37:57
	He said, that's the barn where they keep the mules.	38:00
	I said, "Oh, keep mules in that house?	38:03
	That's fine for the mules."	38:05
	I said, "Well now tell me, I see a rundown shack,	38:07
	just a little distance from the barn	38:10
	which is lighted with electricity.	38:12
	What's kept there hay or something?	38:14
	He said, "Oh no, that's where the farm workers live."	38:16
	I said, this is strange to me.	38:22
	I don't understand why the mules have a better house	38:23
	than the people have.	38:26
	He said, "Oh, that's easy.	38:28
	A good team of mules will cost you $500,	38:31
	but you can get a field hand for $1.5 a day."	38:35
	This is our society.	38:40
	Man is a disease in the earth.	38:47
	Let me say a word about racism	38:53
	and I will not burden you with that	38:56
	because I suppose in this university center	38:59
	and in this chapel great preaching and goes on	39:03
	on that subject.	39:07
	And I do not need to inform you further on that.	39:08
	But I was awfully dismayed	39:14
	when I left the city of Atlanta yesterday.	39:15
	It was after 16 years,	39:20
	the federal courts have said to our city and to the state	39:22
	that you've got now to do what the law says.	39:27
	You've gotta obey the constitution.	39:29
	Some of us have been pleading with our school board	39:32
	to go ahead and do this.	39:34
	It is much better to make the decision yourself	39:37
	than to be forced to do it.	39:39
	But they wouldn't do it.	39:41
	Now that they are being required by the courts to do it,	39:43
	everybody's nervous and frustrated.	39:47
	And we hear arguments like this,	39:53
	which I don't understand.	39:54
	We need a little more time.	39:57
	Let us work this out.	39:58
	But my God, the courts told you 16 years ago to work it out.	40:01
	The human situation said to you 300 years ago, work it out.	40:07
	And now after all of this time, you begin to say,	40:11
	let us work it out.	40:14
	Now that the truth is that nothing	40:16
	in terms of human dignity has been done by this nation	40:18
	vis-à-vis the Negroes except by force.	40:22
	The institution of slavery as damnably as it was,	40:25
	the Christians in this country could not resolve the problem	40:29
	until we had to find a wall over it.	40:32
	And that was a shame.	40:33
	And then we instituted segregation as another way	40:37
	to try to maintain the status quo	40:39
	and now we're saying,	40:41
	you must do away with that.	40:41
	And there are those who are say,	40:42
	let us have time and we will work it out,	40:44
	which means we shall never do it.	40:46
	Will God succeed with man? I doubt it.	40:51
	Well what about young folks?	40:54
	The newer radical.	40:55
	I just bought a book the other day on the new radicals	40:57
	of Stokely Carmichael and a whole a lot of other folks.	41:00
	Well, the reason that I doubt them is	41:04
	that they're gonna keep on getting old.	41:10
	Now they are radical because they are not yet 30	41:14
	but by the time they get to be 30 and then get a job,	41:18
	they're gonna become establishment oriented to.	41:23
	So they don't get this job done in the next five years,	41:27
	we'll have to look to a new group	41:31
	and then they will do the same thing.	41:33
	The Negroes have a spiritual, which they sing,	41:38
	and I'm sure you heard it.	41:40
	My Lord is gonna move this wicked race	41:42
	and raise him up a nation that will obey.	41:46
	Now if you look at history a little bit,	41:51
	you will see that God has been doing that.	41:55
	Moving, destroying,	41:58
	having crumbled civilization after civilization.	42:02
	The history of man on this earth	42:08
	is strong with wrecked civilizations.	42:09
	And every one of them is wrecked on the moral question.	42:13
	This one is going to wreck itself on the moral question.	42:20
	And the question is still open.	42:28
	Whether or not this being who calls himself homo-sapien,	42:30
	is ever going to be able to on this earth,	42:36
	to build what God expected him to build,	42:39
	namely the Kingdom of God.	42:42
	And God looked and saw that everything man did was evil.	42:47
	Every scheme he came up	42:54
	and God repented that he had made man.	42:57
	I think God is gonna have to decide after a while	43:03
	that His kingdom, His kingdom,	43:08
	can never come on this earth	43:12
	with this creature, man.	43:16
	God is gonna have a look around in this universe	43:19
	and try to find another instrument	43:23
	to do His will.	43:28
	You prayed before I got up to preach.	43:32
	Our father who art in heaven,	43:35
	hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come.	43:37
	Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.	43:40
	You are to always stop,	43:49
	when you get there with this prayer	43:52
	because there is no commitment of mans part	43:57
	to have the will of God done in this earth.	44:06
	Let me tell the story that's old,	44:13
	but it makes the point I wanna make now.	44:15
	The hawk and the hen,	44:20
	run down the street one morning early	44:22
	and they saw a restaurant	44:26
	which offered ham and eggs for breakfast.	44:27
	And the hen said to the hawk,	44:30
	let's go in and make our contribution to this breakfast.	44:31
	And the hawk said to the hen,	44:36
	"That's easy for you to say.	44:37
	The cost for you it is only the commitment."	44:40
	I'm sorry, "It's only a contribution	44:45
	but for me, the hawk, it's total commitment."	44:46
	I would like to suggest to you as I close now	44:52
	that man, if he ever is going to do the will of God in earth	44:55
	has to be like the hawk.	45:03
	It must be it's total commitment.	45:08
	All we've got now is the hen.	45:12
	We make our little contribution,	45:17
	here and there.	45:19
	I wish I had time to talk to you	45:23
	about the insipid, contribution we make.	45:25
	We have the Baptist,	45:28
	some sort of National Baptist Youth something,	45:30
	another to come to Atlanta the other day,	45:33
	whites and Negroes together.	45:36
	They had a great time, those Baptist did.	45:37
	And you know what they thought they would do	45:40
	to prove that,	45:42
	to make that witness to Jesus.	45:44
	They went over into one of the slum areas of our city	45:46
	and racked up some trash and painted a few fences.	45:49
	And they went back and had a good inner feeling,	45:53
	that we really cleansed our spirits.	45:57
	Well, that was a really an insult and a disgrace.	46:00
	What in the world all these young people to be doing	46:05
	instead of running around on the slump sweeping up trash.	46:06
	Seeing to it that the system reproduces slums are changed.	46:10
	They ought to be trying to change	46:15
	the value orientation of the society	46:16
	so that people whom we call to,	46:19
	will not be pulled to force the common deed	46:21
	to here undo the total economic process of this nation.	46:23
	And here they are running around raking up trash.	46:26
	And so many of you in this room	46:31
	feel that you are doing God's service	46:33
	when you send some clothes over some place	46:35
	or move into a community and paint some fences	46:38
	and pack up a one or two fillings on a fence.	46:40
	This is insulting and nauseating to God, Almighty.	46:45
	No wonder God said, I'm sorry	46:50
	that I ever made man	46:53
	and told him loose up on the earth.	46:55
	My God, it's going to move this wicked race.	46:59
	And raise Him up a nation that will obey.	47:06
	That's another one that I close with, this one.	47:09
	If men, says another spiritual,	47:13
	do not praise God and do His will,	47:17
	He's going to make the rocks cry out and sing His praises.	47:21
	God, if He can't make it with us,	47:29
	will turn.	47:36
	Find some other instrument	47:38
	to do His will in the earth.	47:41
	Let us pray.	47:42
	Forgive us our father for our sins.	47:47
	For our pride and severed will.	47:52
	Our stubbornness, our unwillingness	47:55
	to commit ourselves to the doing of thy will in this earth.	47:59
	Hear our prayer.	48:05
	Well, we pray in the name of Jesus	48:07
	who tried to show us the way, Amen.	48:11
	(bright piano music)	48:18
	(choir singing in foreign language)	49:10

Item Info

Title:

Samuel W. Williams - "Will God Succeed with Man?" (January 11, 1970)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4ff3r17n

Date:

January 11, 1970

Speaker:

Williams, Samuel W.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0505
ref6215_cdh
uachapelsermaud
duke:628500
dcrau002495
ark:/87924/r4ff3r17n
3e276b2c-5fad-43af-b4a0-c23fbd6f9da3

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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