ADDRESSES ON ROMANS them up. They hated everything that pertained to God, and loved unrighteousness. Then from Genesis 11 on through Malachi you have the history of Israel. God called Abraham and formed a new nation, through whom he was to give the world Christ and the Bible. What were the Gentiles doing then? They were walking in their own ways. The heathen in Chipa, Africa, and other countries are descendants of these people who forgot God. They are just like their fathers because they love un~ righteousness. You hear people say that the heathen want missionaries to go to their lands and preach the Gospel, and hundreds of thousands are open to the m~ssage. But when the missionary begins to preach against such a sin as having more than one wife, we find that often the heathen do not want the truth, any more than the people do who live in this country of the open Bible. All men once had the light, but they refused to have God in their knowledge. And the dark, dark picture of man's degenerate condition out of Christ is graphically portrayed for us here in this first chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans. MAN'S EVOLUTION DOWNWARD l :21 : 23 Paul describes man's downward course in verses 21~23 of this chapter. Let us pause here to note the five steps speci~ fled in this bill of indictment: 1. "WHEN THEY KNEW Goo, THEY GLORIFIED HIM NoT AS Goo." There are thousands of people in Los Angeles who know that there is a personal God; yet they glorify Him not as God. 2. THEY GAVE No THANKs-"neither were thankful." What a thankless age we are living in! .Look at the averag; prayer meeting today. In our country approximately seventy~ eight million of the one hundred and twenty million people never enter a church. 3. THEY "BECAME VAIN IN THEIR IMAGINATIONS"; that , Page 28]
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