God saves his people, and he does it without any help. God does not need the help of puny man to do his work. If God cannot do his work without our help, he certainly could not do it with our help. It takes a mighty arrogant attitude for anybody to think that after God has done the best he can to save sinners, and failed in the effort, that we can pitch in and help him to do what he could not do without our help.

     When God created the world, he took six days to do it.  Now I am careful to say that God took six days to create the world. That is not the same as to say that it took God six days to do the work. He could have created the universe in an instant of time, if he had wanted to, but, for some reason he took six days. He spread the work out over six days. He created Adam on the sixth day. There are probably a lot of reasons that God created Adam onthe last day of creation, but one reason that he created man last was so that man could not take any credit for any part of creation.

     And then after God had done everything he intended to do, on the seventh day he rested. He did it all by himself. He created the universe all by himself --- and then he rested. He rested because he had created all the worlds he intended to create. He could have created ten million worlds like this, if he had wanted to, without taxing his energies in the least. He did not rest because he was tired; he rested because he had finished the work. He went to Calvary and provided redemption all by himself --- and then when he arose from the dead, he ascended back to heaven and sat down.  Why did the Lord sit down when he ascended back to glory? He sat down because the work was done. That is what he said in the Garden of Gethsemane. He said, "I have finished the work thou gavest me to do."

     The old Jewish priesthood was in many ways a symbol of the Lord Jesus Christ. There were many ways in which the Old Testament priesthood was different from the Lord Jesus, our great high priest, but for the most part it was symbolic of his priesthood.  There is a text in Hebrews chapter seven, talking about the Jewish priesthood. It says, "Every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices." I memorized that verse years and years ago, and I quoted it a lot of times before I noticed what it said. It is amazing how you can read a verse over and over, and still not see what it says. Notice that the priest STANDETH daily. For fifteen hundred years the Old Testament priesthood did their work standing up. Why did they do their work standing up? There were two reasons. First there was no place to sit down. There was no chair in the tabernacle. The reason there was not a chair was that they did not need a chair; their work was never done. But Paul said, "For by one offering he (Christ Jesus) hath perfected forever them that are sanctified." After the Lord made that one sacrifice at Calvary he ascended to heaven and sat down. He sat down because the work was complete. By that one  offering the Lord accomplished what the Old Testament priesthood could not accomplish with their thousands of offerings. God can do what he chooses to do. And he can reach into the most wicked families and save those whom he chooses to save.

     Back in 1917 in the Bolshevik Revolution the Communists took over Russia; they overthrew the Tsar and set up their own Communist regime, and over the next sixty or seventy years they very nearly conquered the world. They established Communism as an officially atheistic government. They outlawed God. They put up an "iron curtain" to keep God out of Russia. But they could not keep him out. Their scheme would not work. In the last three or four years we have seen Communism fall apart in Russia. It fell apart in the Eastern Block nations. It is falling apart all over the world. And no sooner did that Communistic regime fall apart than the world discovered untold numbers of people all over Russia hungering, starving, for the truth of the gospel. They are sending messages to America, saying, "Send us Bibles; come over here and teach us from the Bible." We hear reports of people in previously Communistic countries who have a great appetite for spiritual things. They have lived for seventy years under an atheistic government, and now they do not know how they ought to behave themselves. They have no absolute standard by which to govern their lives, and many of them are crying out for just such a standard to tell them what is right and what is wrong. Something inside of them teaches them that there is such a standard. That is proof sufficient to show that God has been saving people in Communist Russia all the while.

     But suppose salvation is really based on chance. Suppose the sinner must hear the preached gospel and respond to it in order to be born again. On that basis is there any way to show that, for the last seventy years, those people in Russia had an equal chance with people here in America? During those years when the gospel was outlawed in Russia, did they have an equal chance? When the Bible was outlawed, and preachers were outlawed, do you believe those people had an equal chance?

     Salvation is not based on chance. It will take somebody with more power than Joseph Stalin, or Leon Trotsky, or Nicolai Lenin, or Karl Marx, and that crowd of Communists to keep God out of any country. During all those seventy years God reached down into Communist Russia and saved those he meant to save.  A lot of those whom God saved do not know a lot about him. They don't know his name. They don't know what to call him. But they  do know that something has happened in their heart. A lot of them are worshipping God in a manner that we would not approve, but with the limited light they have some of them are searching for the truth, and trying to worship God.

     During the conflict we call Desert Storm there were some terrifying stories that came out of Iraq, but there were some heart warming stories as well. There was one young woman who was interviewed on television just after the conflict started. All of the Americans and Europeans were trying to get out of Iraq. The conflict broke out so quickly they had trouble leaving the country.  They were getting out the best way they could. This young woman told how an Iraqi citizen had loaded several Americans and Europeans in a Land Rover and drove them across the desert to safety. She told how he went bouncing along at breakneck speed to get them out of the country. Sometimes they would be stopped by soldiers, and they would turn them back, but he would just go far enough to get out of sight, and then he would turn and head for the border again. As soon as he reached the border, he unloaded them and headed back for another load. They tried to pay him, but he did not want any money; he just wanted to help these people who were in great danger.

     That man was very likely a Moslem. He was involved in a religion that does not recognize the God of the Bible.  They call their God Allah. It is unlikely that he ever heard very many, if any, Christian sermons. He probably has no idea what the gospel message is.

     That man could very well have lost his life trying to get Westerners out of Iraq. We have no way of knowing if he is alive today. Now, if the most popular religious notion is right, if that man did lose his life in that heroic effort, he is burning in the flames of eternal damnation right now. He never heard the gospel message; he did not have an opportunity to respond to it, and now he is lost forever. I ask you, how can any right thinking person even imagine that such a system as that is fair. If that system is  right, how can anybody imagine that man had an equal chance to be saved?

    I thank God that system is not right. That man has more evidence that God's Spirit lives in his heart than most of the people in our churches today. The preacher may not have reached him, but God's Spirit did. People do not behave the way that man did unless they have been saved by the grace of God. You can be sure that God loves him; Christ died for him, and God's Spirit lives in his heart. He may be confused in his religion, but he has the evidence that God's Spirit lives in his heart. The wicked do not behave the way he behaved.

     Joseph Stalin could not keep God out of Russia; Adolph Hitler could not keep him out of Germany; and Saddam Hussein cannot keep him out of Iraq. The puny efforts of man cannot hinder God, and they cannot help him. Salvation is not based on chance. It is based on the firm and sure decrees of God. It is based on the love, and mercy, and grace of God. Folks may complain that God is not fair, but you can be sure that God will save every person he intends to save, and all the most wicked regimes in the world will never be able to keep him out, nor to hinder him in his work.

     Joseph Stalin was one of the most wicked men in this century. You hear more about Adolph Hitler than you do about Joseph Stalin. Adolph Hitter was just as mean as history says he was. He did the very best he could to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the earth. He intended to rid the earth of Jews, and gypsies, and the mentally retarded, and any others that he considered undesirable. It was not just Jews; he attacked others as well. He killed millions and millions of people, just because he did not like them. You don't hear as much about it, but Joseph Stalin did the same thing in Russia that Adolph Hitler did in Germany.  He slaughtered millions of his own people in order to establish his regime.

     Joseph Stalin thought he could keep God out of Russia.  But in the middle 60's, Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alleyeva, defected to the United States. The very first thing she wanted to tell when she arrived was her experience with the Lord in Communist Russia. Stalin could not keep God out of Russia; he could not keep him out of his own family. In spite of the wickedness of that terrible tyrant, God reached right down into Stalin's own home and saved his daughter.