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The Following Message Has Been Transcribed For
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In Proverbs, I was reading in the 24th chapter during the [UNINTELLIGIBLE], and I came across something that [?I -- told?] me to take out of the meeting itself, but it says in the 33rd and 34th verse: “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like a bandit,” and I was sitting here pondering it [?and?] pondering it [UNINTELLIGIBLE] I am -- you know, I just wanted to get your interpretation of what this might -- or what does it mean? That is all.
It means that if you do not work, you do not have money. Sleeping means that you are not getting up and going out and going to work, you know. Some people just use every excuse to stay home and sleep, and that -- what that means is you will always have just enough money for the day, but you will never have enough; and then if you have a bad day, you will be in poverty. If you do not have a little nest egg laid up, you have a couple of bad days, and you are in poverty. So that means you have to work hard, and you have to manage your money properly, OK?
OK, I will just -- please just be w- -- silent with me for a few minutes. I am just waiting for the move of the Spirit here.
Well, I have a pretty serious message for you tonight; just waiting on the Lord to see how I am going to get into this. Brethren, we are living in very serious times. The church for many generations in this country has perceived Christianity as a pastime. You go to church on Sunday, you go to church a couple of times a week, and that means you are holy or it makes you feel good, but Christianity is much more than that. It is a very serious business. A lot of people have not recognized it in United States -- have not recognized how serious it is because things have been so good here, but I do not know how much longer things are going to be good here. We are entering into very serious days.
I have spoken to several ministers recently who have told me that the Lord is moving their church from a visible location. What is a visible location in a church-type building? Where everybody knows you are a church. He is moving out to farms. He is moving them into houses. Great persecution is coming. Great persecution is coming, and the only people that are going to survive this thing, really, are the people that have an intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we will survive. If you are afraid, rebuke it because if you are in Christ, there is nothing to be afraid of. It is the people who do not believe this thing that have something to be afraid of, and they are not afraid. They are not afraid because they are in ignorance. OK. This Bible is real. God is real. Everything He says in it is real, and we are told in this Word that men stumble because judgment is not visited quickly. God does not visit judgment quickly. You do not rob somebody, and then get hurt the next day. A nation does not sin and feel the recompense for it the next week. It could take years; it could take generations.
There is a Bible principle which Jesus expressed by saying: “Of he that hath much, and he that hath much knowledge, much is required.” He said, “Some will get -- for the same offense, some will get many strokes and some will get few strokes,” and how is that determined? Depending on the degree of knowledge of what you are doing. Ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law, but the penalty that comes with your breaking the law can be little or great depending on whether you did it knowingly and willingly and rebelliously, just did not care, or whether you were ignorant; but there will be a penalty, and there is judgment coming upon this country.
Now, we have -- almost all of us -- yeah, not all of us, but most of us here, have been in the church a long time, and we have seen an evolution of doctrine. Most of us have heard the -- what we call the condemnation preaching. Well, you know, repent and get saved, or you are going to burn in hell for eternity. Most of us have heard that, and most of us here have rejected that, and we know that our God is a good and a loving and a merciful God.
And we also know that every sin will have its just recompense, says the Bible, but to burn in hell for eternity for a crime that you commit in this lifetime is not a just recompense. It is not a just recompense. So some of us here who have gone on in doctrine have found out that the chastening of the Lord, it can be very severe, but He is not a monster who burns you in hell forever in a place that you can never get out of; no matter how much you repent or how hard you try, there is no mercy and there is no way out. This is the mind you -- we -- I have just described to you Satan’s mind. I have not described to you the mind of our God who loves us, OK.
So we see an element in the church which has taken hold of this revelation that God does not do things like that to people because He loves people. He created us. He is our Father, and He wants nothing more than for us to be righteous and in His in image. And everything that He does, every correction that He gives to us, every rod that He breaks across our back, every painful experience that He gives us, He has one motive behind us, and that is -- does anybody know what it is? To teach us what? Righteousness. To teach us righteousness because in sin is death and in righteousness is life.
And His own Word says if you do not chasten your children, you hate them. If a parent does not chasten a child, God says he hates that child. We have a whole country of parents that hate their children. If a minister sees sin in one of the believers and does not correct them, he hates you. That is God’s Word -- he hates you. If God sees sin in your life and does not correct you, He hates you.
Now, I have heard people say to me, God does not hate anybody. I was rebuked by someone once. Oh, how -- God does not hate anybody. What kind of a thing is that to say? Well, brethren, pick up your concordance and look up under ‘H,’ and you will see God hates -- God hates! But God hates righteously. God hates sin. He does not hate like a man hates. When a man hates, it brings destruction and death. When God hates, it destroys destruction and death and sin and raises you up in the newness of His life. God hates sin.
He is a holy, righteous God, and we have trillions of people across this world today running in the vain imaginations of their own mind saying there is no God. There is no just recompense. Where is He? Where is He? Since our fathers fell asleep, where is the promise of His coming? Two thousand years since Jesus was crucified on the cross and supposedly rose again, and look at this world. And we have a whole world full of people running hither and thither and doing whatever they want. They are eating and drinking, and they are marrying, and they are giving in marriage, and they are sinning, and they are doing every sin in the world just like the Hebrew children did when Moses ascended into the mount to get the Ten Commandments. They are into every form of wickedness. Humanity, we are one h- -- one living soul, all of us.
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So we see in the church today a whole group of people that have now gone to the opposite extreme. They are saying, we found out that our God is merciful. We found out that He loves us. We found out that He would not burn a rat in hell forever. If someone is destructive to society, well, you just kill it. Why would you torture it forever? And there is a whole group of preachers and people in the church believing that there is no judgment, that there is no judgment, that there is no recompense for sin. Some believe there is no hell. Some believe there is no devil. There are many preachers out there each preaching whatever they are preaching, but we have a whole category of ministers in the church saying there is no judgment coming; just live out of Christ and everything is fine.
Well, there is a middle ground. I think maybe we are going to change the name of this ministry to the Middle Ground Ministry. God keeps bringing us back for [sic] the middle ground. We all here or most of us here, we believe the first message of eternal damnation; then we believe the second message of ultimate reconciliation, but what is coming forth here now is the middle ground -- the middle ground. It is true, God does not burn you in hell forever, OK. It is true He loves you. It is true He is merciful, but He is also righteous, and He is holy, and He judges sin.
Now, if you believe the message that every single human body -- human being that ever lived is going to be saved, you might have trouble believing that they are about -- that we are about to see upon this Earth people begin to die. They have already begun to die. Judgment is falling, and it is falling faster and faster and faster. There will be many people dying, and it is going to speed up, and before we know what is happening to us, there is going to be a shower of death, which is -- well, we are already under a cloud of death in this nation. It is going to increase. There is only one place of safety. Do not leave the country, do not leave the state, do not leave the city, but get into Christ. The Scripture says get into that secret place.
It says in another place in the Scripture, kiss the Son. Now, let us be spiritual here and not carnal. It does not mean go over and kiss an image of Jesus on a cross. Jesus is a Spirit. He is a glorified man. He is not on that cross anymore. He got up off that cross. The Father raised Him from the dead, and He ascended into heaven. He is not on the cross anymore. And He is a Spirit, and He is the only safe place in the universe.
It is not a safe place that is out there, but it is a safe place that is in your mind and in your heart. Behold, the kingdom of God is within you. Do not run out; do not run away; you have got to run in, and that kingdom, we are told, begins as a mustard seed. It has to grow in you, and it grows by listening to the Word of God, by reading the Word of God, by sitting in meetings like this and by asking God every time the thought comes to your mind to have mercy on you and to help you. His life must be inside of you. Your help -- your ready help in time of trouble is within. There is nothing outside that can help you. If you are given over to death, there is no doctor that can help you. There is no drug that can help you. There is nothing that can help you. There is no spiritualist that can help you. If God has said, “This one is for death,” he is for death.
Now, I can hear these preachers raging at me and these believers that believe this message that everyone is going to live. I have read it in my Bible the other day. The Lord said, “The one that is for the sword, let them die by the sword. The one that is for death, let them die. The one that is given over to famine, let them starve.” You read that in your Bible. I am not the only one that read it. It is in there.
Now, you cannot throw away whole verses and chapters of the Bible. The whole Bible has to be reconciled. God is a God that has many sides to Him. Yes, He is a loving Father, but He is a righteous, holy God that rains down judgment; and when that judgment falls, it includes the death of these bodies in some instances, and we have to face that fact. There will be people dying. There are people dying, and there will be people dying.
Now, they are not going to hell forever. They are not going to burn in eternal torment, and I would like to just take a minute to review the understanding of God’s purposes that He has given us here at Living Epistles. There is a spiritual man. God formed him. His name is what?
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Well, at the time of the creation, his name was Adam. God made one man. He is a many-membered man. Just like that plant is one plant and it has many leaves, Adam is a spiritual man. He is a many-membered, spiritual man. We are some of the members of him or, we could say, some of the leaves on his spiritual plant. No matter how many of these leaves die, the root of the plant still continues on.
So we have a creation here which was designed for the specific purpose of being a covering for God. God is invisible, but He wants to be seen. And this creation, amongst other things -- because Paul did say, “Eye hath not seen and ear has not heard what God has in store for us,” but the best -- to the best of my knowledge or where I am in Christ, my understanding of what we were created for is that God wants to be seen. He desired to become visible, and the way He is becoming visible is by wrapping Himself in flesh, which we are, which the -- our bodies and our souls are. Our true nature is spirit. Our true nature is spirit. We are spirit. Our -- this body is perishable; this soul is perishable, but the spirit always goes back to the Father.
So there is some misunderstanding in the church today saying, well, Sheila, you just said the same thing. No one dies. Someone -- no one dies. The spirit goes back to the Father. Brethren, this personality dies. This personality dies. This experience dies. This consciousness known as our lifetime dies. Yes, your spirit goes back to the Father, but everything that you know yourself to be in this lifetime will cease to exist, but there is no eternal torment.
So this is the reality. There is a man in the Earth. His name is Adam. He was righteous at the beginning of time. He was without sin, but he fell; and when he fell -- when he fell into sin, he died. And it is the purpose of the Lord to raise him from the dead, and the way He is raising him from the dead is by joining him to Christ, to the -- by raising Christ from the dead in him. Is everybody following me? OK.
Every human being on the face of the Earth is not going to see the resurrection of Christ in them at this time. It is a warfare going on. There is a spiritual war going on. Fallen Adam by his carnal mind has no intention of giving over these bodies, or as the mysterious way that the Scripture puts it, these kingdoms. Each of us is a kingdom where spiritual life dwells. The carnal mind has no intention of giving us over to Christ. You can quote me the Scripture that says all power and authority has been given over to Jesus Christ. I heard it, and the carnal mind heard it. I have got news for you; he heard it, and he does not care and has no intention of giving any one of us up over to Christ, and Christ is going to have to kill him to get us out of his hands.
Christianity is not a -- it is not a passing fancy. It is not th- -- it is not a p- -- you know, if you go to church and you hear a song and it makes you feel good, that is wonderful, but, brethren, that is not where it is at. Our life is on the line because it is now the end of the age, and the promise of this Bible is coming to pass. You see, if you lived 50 or 100 years ago, well, the promise of this Bible was not coming to pass, so if you got a good life out of God and you were blessed in your marriage and your children and financially, that was all you could hope for.
But this is the end of the age, brethren. This war is raging like a venomous beast in the realm of the spirit right now. Christ is taking away the kingdoms of this world from Satan and his carnal mind, and Satan and his carnal mind will kill you if he can do it. He will wreck your life, if he can do it, rather than let Jesus appear in your body and in your mind and in your personality.
So this is the point I am trying to make. We are a many-membered creation. Look at that plant. Jesus fully intends to take us back. If three of those leaves die, they die, but He is going to get the whole plant. Jesus is going to get this whole plant. We belong to him, but -- if you want to take it in military terms, we are a hill that has been taken by the enemy, and He has every intention of getting us back; and if a couple of people die along the way, a couple of people die along the way. The root of the plant is going back to Christ. If three leaves die on that plant, it does not kill the plant.
It is -- you know, it is a hard word, but it is just time to grow up. The church has been in kindergarten for centuries. I am telling you the truth. There is one creation. Each of us is a leaf on the plant. We are in a war the extent of which, Jesus said, the world has never seen before and will never see again, the most vicious thing that mankind has ever witnessed or experienced, and there are going to be casualties. But I read the back of the book, you see. I know Jesus is taking this creation back, but there will be casualties. And there will be people who have heard this message. There will be people who Christ has called and who have turned an evil heart towards Him, and He is going to turn them over.
Oh, I hear them screaming in the spirit. I am telling you the truth, brethren, and anybody could say anything that they want about me. I really -- at this point -- there was a time that I cared. I really do not care anymore. I am telling you the truth. This wonderful God of ours that is so high and is so great that we cannot even comprehend His mind -- we are like a canary brain next to Him. It is like me talking -- giving this message to my parakeet in his cage. That is how much higher God is than us in His wisdom and in His righteousness that we cannot even comprehend.
This book declares that there are people that He is going to turn over to destruction. And whoever -- you all listening to this message -- I doubt that it is anybody here, but I never know -- if you think that this is terrible that God would do this, well, you take it up with the Lord, but you have to be pretty much a fool to do that. It is like arguing with a lightning bolt. This is what He has ordained, and if you think that that is a lie or that I am preaching some antiquated message out of hell and damnation because nothing has happened yet, get ready because the sparks are already flying. There is going to be a big speed up very soon, a big increase. There is going to be death everywhere, and the only way we can survive is by joining ourselves to the one who has life.
God is gathering up small groups of believers. Yeah, it is not likely that you are going to see groups of 200 or 300 moving in power in this hour. It is going to be small groups, mostly home fellowships. We are going to be very hidden because the persecution is going to be intense. Now, when I say persecution, it may come through the formal authorities, but it will not necessarily come through formal authorities. I am talking about people walking down the street having their carnal mind rising up and attacking and not even knowing why.
I have been preaching on this for a year. Satan is becoming very bold. People that have a normal life, all of a sudden, they are going to find their mind is out of control. They are going to find themselves hating, and they cannot stop hating. They are going to find themselves envious, and they will not be able to stop it. It is going to overtake them. Where they can repress it before, they will not be able to repress it. People are going to be snarling at each other and attacking each other, and all of the social graces that they were taught as children are going out the window because that is all that it is.
When we were children, we were taught, that is not nice. That is not nice. That is not nice. And this teaching has helped us to date, but as the carnal mind increases in strength, he is going to overcome this childhood training. And if you do not have Christ in you, he is going to be doing anything he wants out of your mind and out of your mouth and out of your hands, whatever you might do; and great destruction is coming upon the Earth.
Now, the Lord told me something. It is absolutely blowing my mind. I am not even sure I want to put it on this message, but I am going to put on this message because my cowardly days are over. You know, most of you know here that I have been engaged in a dialogue with a Hasidic Jew for two years -- an Hasidic Jewish rabbi, who I am very fond of, and the Hasi- -- the Chabad, they are called, or Hasidim, they are an ultra-Orthodox group of Jews who study the Scripture. Probably knows -- he probably knows the letter of the Scripture better than me, and I believe they are -- that they are walking in all the light that they have. My personal opinion is that on some level they have connected with the Spirit of Jesus Christ. They do not know who He is. They think He is Jehovah. Well, there is not -- you know. They have connected with the Spirit of Jesus Christ. They believe him to be Jehovah, and they do not understand.
But those people who are pouring over these Scriptures day and night, God is not looking away from them. He is going to get them out of their error. He is going to get the people that believe in the eternal damnation out of their error. He is going to get the people that believe in ultimate reconciliation out of their error. He is going to get everybody out of their error whose heart is truly turned towards Him, whose heart is truly saying, Jesus, I am not going to make it if You do not pull me through.
And I have told you this before, in this last day, we are going to see Hindus and Buddhists and every religion who have turned to the only God that they know -- Mo- -- Muslims who have turned to the only God they know with all the strength they had and said, please help me. You are going to see these people getting a revelation of Jesus Christ and coming into the kingdom. And there are going to be Christians who have been going to church every Sunday for 40 years, and they are going to be locked out, and I tell you the truth, because there is no wishy-washy Christian. Jesus said, “Either you are for me, or you are against me.”
So what the Lord told me that really blew my mind was this. Well, I have spoken to the rabbi. His name is [?Yussi?], and he confesses, and apparently all of the Hasidim acknowledge, that God was responsible for the Holocaust in Germany. Now, the reason they are confessing this is because they know enough of their God to know that He is in control of everything, that there is no red freak called Satan that is stronger than God, that if it happened to the Jews, God had to do it because He does everything. So what [?Yussi?] says to me is he says, “I cannot understand it. I cannot understand it, but I know that there is no one greater than my God; and if it was done, He had to do it.”
Well, the Lord has been speaking to me over this last week, and He has been -- had me in the Old Testament, some of these hell and fire and brimstone Scriptures in the Old Testament, and He said to me, “You know, Sheila, that was the fulfillment of some of these Old Testament Scriptures.” I want to tell you, people. It -- this blows my mind. I cannot even bear it myself, but this is what the Lord is saying to a people that has known their God intimately, to a people that have seen His miracles and His mighty wonders and the move of His Spirit, to turn and to go into idolatry. He turns them over to severe destruction, and that was the judgment that fell -- or part of the judgment that fell through Hitler. I cannot even deal with this.
And why am I telling you this now? Because it is coming on the church. I tell you, I have been walking around with my mouth open. He has been telling me this for two weeks, and I have been saying, no, I cannot be hearing from God. I cannot be hearing from God. I started studying early this morning. I tried to do two other messages before I got to this one tonight, and I got nowhere. This is His message for tonight.
For those who have known their God and have turned away to worship other gods, this is what one can expect: severe persecution and torment. And the Lord has been telling me for years -- He has been telling me for years that there were Jews in Europe that got out. There were Jews that were on the line to go to the death camp that were pulled off of the line to safety. There is [sic] all kinds of testimonies. He got the faithful out.
I do not like this message. It is upsetting me, but it is what I am preaching, and anyone hearing this message is going to call me anti-Semitic. I am not anti-Semitic. I am not anti-Semitic. I am preaching the message that God has given me. To know God and to deny Him and deny His servants and deny His Word because of self-preservation results in not only destruction, but painful destruction. Now, why they could not just lay down and die, I do not know.
You see, I am a very carnally minded person. I have a parakeet brain next to the Lord. See, I could not do this to anybody. If I really felt that they had to die -- I believe in capital punishment -- take a gun and shoot them. Why do you have to torture them? I cannot see it. I cannot comprehend it. I do not understand it. It is beyond my brain, but I know one thing, that God is righteous; and if this is the way it happens, this is the way it happens, and I had better shut up because I am not ready to take on God.
So there is a great tribulation coming upon the church. For those who are faithful, for those who are serving God, the tribulation will be intense, but the result of it will be what?
[?Full righteousness.?]
Full righteousness, full stature, deliverance from the destruction of this world system. Not deliverance from an army, not deliverance from someone with a gun, but deliverance from our fallen condition. We will be raised up to a place where nothing in this world can harm us. And for those who have not developed their relationship with Christ to the extent that satisfies the Lord -- what do I know? What do I know? I do not know anything -- they are going to be caught in this mess that is rapidly coming upon the world and this country.
So this is the message He has given to me for you tonight. We are in Deuteronomy 31. I am going to read verses 16 to 30, and then I will expound on Moses’ song, which is Deuteronomy 32.
Starting with Deuteronomy 31:16: “And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, and this people will rise up and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and they will forsake Me and break My covenant which I have made with them. Then My anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured. And many evils and troubles shall befall them so that they will say in that day, “Are not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?” And I will surely hide My face in that day, for all the evils which they shall have wrought, in that they are turned unto other gods. Now, therefore, write ye this song for you and teach it the children of Israel. Put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for Me against the children of Israel.”
Does anyone here not know that we are the modern-day children of Israel? We are Israel today.
“Teach it to the children of Israel. Put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for Me against the children of Israel. For when I shall have brought them into the land which I sware [sic] unto their fathers that floweth with milk and honey, and they shall have eaten and filled themselves and waxen fat, they will turn unto other gods and serve them and provoke Me and break My covenant.”
Now, for the Church today, this is speaking about people that were delivered from drugs, delivered from alcoholism, delivered from prostitution, delivered from homosexuality and come to the Lord and turned against Him after they got their miracle and break their covenant with Him.
Verse 21: “And it shall come to pass, when many evils and troubles are befallen them that this song shall testify against them as a witness, for it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed; for I know their imagination which they go about, even now, before I have brought them into the land which I sware [sic].’ Moses, therefore, wrote this song the same day and taught it to the children of Israel, and he gave Joshua the son of Nun a charge and said, ‘Be strong and of a good courage, for thou shalt bring the children of Israel into the land which I sware [sic] unto them, and I will be with thee.’
“And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book until they were finished that Moses commanded the Levites” -- that is [sic] the priests -- “which bare [sic] the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, ‘Take this book of the law and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God that it may be there for a witness against thee, for I know thy rebellion” -- this is the church. Now, Moses is a type of Christ. “For I know thy rebellion and thy stiff neck.” That is pride. “Behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the Lord, and how much more after my death?’
“Gather unto me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears and call heaven and Earth to record against them, for I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves” -- this is speaking for Jesus, saying that after His death the church will utterly corrupt itself and turn aside from the way which the Lord showed us, and evil will re- -- befall the church in the latter days “because ye will do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger through the work of your hands.’ And Moses spake in the ears of all the congregation of Israel the words of this song until they were ended.”
Verse 1: “Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.”
The heavens, as we have learned here, refers to the mind, rational thought; and the Earth refers to the soul or the personality or the emotions. Soul, personality, emotions, they are all the Earth. That heaven is rational thought. So Moses is saying, “That part of you which can understand rational things, listen; and I am also speaking to your emotions, to your soul. Listen to what I have to say.”
“My doctrine” -- now, this is Moses speaking through the Lord. This is a prophecy. “My doctrine shall drop as the rain. My speech shall distill as the dew, as a small rain upon the tender herb and the showers upon the grass.”
The Lord is saying, “In the last days, My doctrine is going to come down like the rain.” You have heard of the former rain and the latter rain. The former rain is when you receive the Holy Ghost. You get a measure of the Spirit. And the latter rain is the fullness of the Christ because the doctrine is a Chri- -- the true doctrine is in Christ, and it is going to fall down like heavy rain in the last days.
And He said His speech -- these words, I looked them up. They are just other words for flowing down. They are going to come down like the dew. OK, and I looked up these words, as I said, and what it is saying is that it is going to -- this doctrine is going to be coming out of people’s mouths, people like me, other human beings. And when it comes out of the mouth, it is going to be coming out of an individual’s mouth, but it is also going to be coming down through the realm of the spirit. And when it comes out of the spirit, it is not going to be individual jobs. It is going to be coming down like a mist because in the spirit, we are all one. The body of Christ is joined in the spirit, right? So His doctrine is coming out of the mouths of individuals. It is also coming in from the spiritual realm out of people’s spirits, and there is -- and at that point you will not be able to distinguish the individual that it is coming from. OK? You following me? OK.
“And the small rain is going to fall upon the tender herb and as the showers upon the grass.” You may remember we did a series called “Grass,” and it was not about marijuana. It was about the symbol in the Scripture, grass, and grass in the Scripture typifies human beings. And we found out that there were three different Hebrew words translated grass. These are two of those words here, and one of them is referring to the young believer who has conceived Christ, and the second word, which is -- the first word is tender herb, is referring to the young believer who has conceived Christ; and the Hebrew word translated grass is referring to the mature believer who has the ability to reproduce the nature of Christ.
OK, now, the ability to reproduce the nature of Christ can occur without you being in full stature. If you are sitting under a ministry, and they are truly preaching out of the mind of Christ, and after a year or two you begin to see signs of that mind manifesting you, that is the proof that the preacher has been preaching to you out of a mature mind of Christ or out of a mind of Christ that is made mature enough to procreate, to bring forth children for God.
Paul said to the people he was teaching, “Ye are the signs of my apostleship.” When you are manifesting or when there is present in you a Christ that is mature enough to reproduce the nature of God in the people you minister to, that is at least one of the signs of a apostleship. That is a major sign of apostleship.
I know that you may have heard some preachers tell you that an apostle is someone that starts up a physical church and turns it over to someone else, but in our message, “The Signs of Apostleship,” I could not find that anywhere in the Scripture. We found many signs of apostleship, and that one I could not even find, so it is my understanding that the most significant sign of apostleship is that you are building the church of Jesus Christ by reproducing His nature. Not by building a building in a city somewhere, but by reproducing His nature in an individual human being. You are building that -- you are building the church spiritually.
Verse 3 -- well, just to review verse 2, he says, “My doctrine is going to come down and My speech is going to come down upon the immature and the mature believer because I will publish the name of the Lord and ascribe greatness to the Lord.”
The word publish can be translated preach. So what He is saying is that “My doctrine is going to come down like rain. It is going to be filling up in the realm of the spirit because I am going to raise up preachers that are going to preach it and that are going to speak about the greatness of God.”
Verse 4, and then they are going to tell everybody that He is the Rock. He is perfect.
[AUDIO CUTS OUT]
“Just and right is He.” He is the Rock. Some of us here know that that is one of Jesus’ titles, that He is a rock, and the reason He is called a rock -- let me remind you that most, if not everything, that we are told about the Lord is symbolic. Why? Because we are carnal and we cannot understand spiritual things, so Jesus says, “I am like a rock. I am hard. I am impenetrable. You cannot break me, but when I get thrown at someone, I break them.”
He is the warrior. He is the ultimate strength in the universe, and He describes himself as a rock. He is immovable. He is great. He is our great defender. He is everything that we are not, and, therefore, our help is in union with Him. He is our help. He is our ready help in time of trouble. He is never busy when we call on Him. He is never out on a business appointment. He is never on another phone call when you call Him. He is never out of town. He is never eating dinner. He is never sleeping. He is never taking a shower. The minute you say, “Lord, help,” He is right there. He is beyond our understanding. He is beyond our ability to understand how He can be ministering to trillions of people at the same time. He is God. He is a life form that is so far superior to us that we cannot even comprehend Him.
And man in the darkness of his mind mocks God and blasphemes against Him. It is amazing that He has not wiped us out, but He loves us, and other rather than wipe us out, He will correct us. He will beat us if necessary unto the point of death, but He will correct us. He will bring us -- He will bring our mind into a condition where we might live.
You see, He is a righteous God. He forgives sin, but that does not mean you c- -- it is OK to sin. Jesus’ forgiveness of sin rips the sin out of you so that you stop doing it because as long as you sin, if you are truly a son, He will beat you. As you sin, He will beat you without mercy. His mercy is to help you stop sinning because He will not stop beating you until you stop sinning. He will beat you to the point of death if necessary, and if you die, He will raise you from the dead; but if you are truly a son, He will rip that wickedness out of you.
See, He does not have to torture you in hell forever. He does not have to execute you. He does not have to -- He does not have to do anything that men do to criminals because He has the power to change your heart, to take that criminal heart and make it into a righteous heart and make you a productive citizen in the kingdom of God. He can do it. He is strong enough.
So He is the Rock. We are in verse 4. “His work is perfect,” and the Hebrew word translated work means His undertaking. We are the work. Are we not the work of His hands? That is what the Scripture says. We are the work of His hands.
And we are perfect. Now, that sounds confusing. How could we be perfect? We all know that we are fallen sinners. In the heavenlies, brethren, in the blueprint, we are perfect. You see, we are not in this fallen condition, we are not in this torment because of any imperfection of God or because of any failure on His part to create us perfectly. We were created well. We were good. Jesus formed us -- the Lord formed us, and the creation was God.
And we were given instructions that would produce life, and our ancestor Adam disobeyed, and that does not make God an unrighteous God or a monster. He is a righteous, good God. We are in this mess because our original ancestor, Adam, disobeyed God and failed, and now the Lord is breaking a rod across our back to bring the spiritual correction that will help us to begin to live again. We ca- -- He will not give us life of the ages in this fallen condition. He loves us too much. He would rather beat us and change our nature from evil to good, so that we can live in peace and contentment as He has promised us.
Now, brethren, while the chastening is going on, it is not a blessing. The chastening is painful, and it is grievous for the moment, but it what? What does it yield?
[UNINTELLIGIBLE]
The peaceable fruit of righteousness. So bite the bullet and hang on. Praise God. Hang on to the horns of the altar. It is all right if you scream and yell a lot.
OK, He is the Rock. We are perfect, and the only reason -- I do not know if I made that clear. The only reason we are imperfect now -- we appear to be imperfect, is that He is not finished with us yet. His work is perfect; we are just unfinished. Glory to God.
“For all of His ways are judgment.” The Hebrew word translated judgment means motivated according to the law. Everything that He does is according to His holy law. If He punishes sin, it is righteous.
You know, I heard something the other day that may -- confirmed in my mind that this society is coming insane. This society as it moves further and further away from God is becoming insane. I heard a story about a situation in jail where they had convicted murderers and people that were dangerous to society in states where they wiped out the death penalty, for whatever their reason, and now the jails are overcrowded. So instead of executing these men that are proven criminals -- they are going to go out; they are going to rape again. They are going to kill again. They are going to hurt people. They are going to hurt people -- they are letting them out in the streets rather than execute them. That is not normal. That is not normal. That is an insane mind making this decision.
Now, look, when you take a step away from God’s law, you just take one step and you keep on going downhill. God’s law says if you have murdered for gain, that your life should be taken. If you have murdered criminally -- I am not talking about an accident or manslaughter. I am talking about premeditated, criminal murder for criminal purposes -- the Word of God says you lose your life.
Now, going back about 30 years ago, I remember when I was amongst a group of lawyers who were fighting to have the death penalty repealed. So here it is 30, maybe 40, years later. Now, they have no room in jail for the criminals. So not only have they repealed the death penalty, but they are letting them out on the streets and innocent people are not protected. This is not normal. It is the sign of a demented mind. And it is going to keep going down because you have to obey God’s laws, or you will be in an insane asy- -- in an insane society. God’s law is the only law that will produce a sane society, and we are rapidly moving into insanity.
As a matter of fact, I was just told a story yesterday by a woman whose daughter -- her daughter was kidnapped and murdered. An adult woman, a mother of two children -- small children, 3 and 5 years old -- was kidnapped in a shopping center parking lot and murdered. And they caught the man, and he was given two life sentences -- one for kidnapping and one for murder. He has been in jail for eight years, and he is getting out. This is not sane. This is not sane. Because they have no room in the jails. They have no room in the jails. OK. But they will not kill him. You cannot take a life. That is insanity. OK. He left two babies motherless.
“His work is perfect.” That is us. We are just not finished yet. “For all His ways are motivated by righteousness.” You see, if God says that someone is convicted of criminal murder, that they should be killed. He is not a vindictive God. He is a righteous God because He is looking down the road, and He saw that the jails would not be able to hold them.
Now, some people say, well, what if it was a mistake? What if the man was innocent? Brethren, if you are in trouble, you turn to Jesus, and if you are innocent, you are going to get out. You turn to the Lord in your time of trouble, and if you are innocent, you will get out. God works through the legal system. He influences the judges. He influences the prosecuting attorneys. He influences the juries. He is sovereign. He is above the highest court in the land. You turn to Jesus; if you are really innocent, you will get out. That is the answer. You do not let criminal murderers without a conscience who are going to do it again out on the streets. It is not rational.
So we are still in verse 4. “He is a God of truth, and He is without iniquity.” He is the truth. He is the real thing. He is the only reality. Everything other than Him is a spiritual lie, a shadow, an illusion. He is the only reality. Every form of existence outside of life in Christ is a counterfeit. And this whole world that we live in is death, and we are all dead, even those who are in the process of being raised from the dead. You are either dead, or you are not dead. You may be the in the process of being raised, but you are still dead until you are raised up from the dead. We are all dead.
How do I know we are dead? If you shoot me, my body will die. If I was alive, if my spirit was alive, and you shot me, I would not die. How do I know? Well, it happened to Jesus. He died, and did not [sic] the Father raised Him from the dead? How come so-and-so died last week and they are in the ground? Jesus was up out of the ground in three days --
[?Yep.?]
-- three days and three nights, --
[INAUDIBLE]
-- and He never corrupted. I know I am dead. Please do not shoot me. I want to stay in this body until Jesus finishes raising me from the dead. I do not believe I am going through this tribulation for nothing. I want to experience this thing.
So we are still in verse 4. He is the truth. He always was. He is. He always shall be. He is the only reality. Everything else is a shadow, an illusion, a moving picture, a storybook and a lie. He is without iniquity. Now, iniquity, you may recall, is offspring or the fruit of sin. Iniquity is the -- does anyone know another name for iniquity? Does anybody remember?
[INAUDIBLE] sin?
No, it is not sin. It is the fruit of sin. It is the offspring of sin.
[INAUDIBLE]
No, it is the carnal mind. The sin -- a sin -- sin is the action of not keeping God’s law, and that was what happened with righteous Adam. He did not keep God’s law. He entered into a spiritual adultery with Satan and produced the fruit of his sin, called iniquity or the carnal mind.
[INAUDIBLE]
The carnal mind is the fruit of sin, and it is the result of the sin. Now, for those of us who are down here in hell and already have the carnal mind, which is iniquity, every time we commit spiritual adultery in our mind -- which is continuously; that is why we are fallen -- we produce iniquity, Paul says, unto iniquity. And that is the what? Anybody?
[INAUDIBLE]
The fr- -- what is the fruit of the carnal mind?
[?Demons.?]
The demons, yes. Yes. Yes. Glory to God.
“He is just, and He is right.” The Hebrew word translated just means that He imparts justice. When the Lord hears your case, He gives justice. That lines up right with what I just said. Do not worry about the innocent guy getting caught in the court system. If he has got a right relationship with Jesus, he is not going to get caught in it. He is going to get out, because He is the ultimate justice in the universe. The Lord Jesus Christ, He is righteous. Every time, He does justice. He knows the intents of men’s hearts. He knows who is lying, and He does righteousness; and He gives justice all the time without any exception ever.
“He is just, and He is right.” I guess I just did the two of them. Well, let me comment on righteousness for a minute. This is an old teaching. I -- maybe I will put this on the board for you. We taught this when we first started preaching here. Let me put it on the board for you. Can you get -- oh, there is one up there.
Now, we know that God is in heaven and that man right now is fallen. We are down in the what?
The pit.
The pit.
We are down in the pit, OK.
Yeah, [?the?] black hole.
We are down in the pit, in the abyss. Black hole, what a bunch of intelligent people here. I do not know who taught you all this stuff. So in the pit there are valleys and there are mountains. So if this pit is our mind -- it is our mind -- and there are valleys and there are mountains. There are highs and there are lows in our life. I hope you all know that. There are highs and lows in our life. This is the low down here, and this is the height or the mountain.
And those highs and those lows are emotional. One day we are up, and we are laughing, and we are happy and everything is wonderful -- what do I mean, one day? One minute -- and the next minute, right, wham, --
Yeah.
-- the carnal mind manifests. He steals everything that Jesus gave us. Our joy is gone. Our peace is gone. Our contentment is gone. Everything is gone, and we are down here in the bottom. That is because we are fallen.
The -- a righteous man does not have this unstable emotion. Now, do not anyone go out and say that Sister Sheila said that they are righteous and your brother is not. We are all unrighteous. Everybody is unrighteous. Some people have these high and lows more than others, but when the tribulation comes upon you, you are going to have them like you never had them before.
Why? Because it is your carnal mind warring against your Christ mind. And when your Christ mind gets on top, you are going to be feeling wonderful; and when your carnal mind is getting on top, you are going to be miserable. And they are fighting. Who? Christ and your carnal mind is [sic] in a death struggle to be your mind and to be your emotions, and they keep flipping back and forth. Sometimes the carnal mind is on top, and sometimes Christ is on top. And when Christ is on top, everything is wonderful because you are where? Where you when Christ is on top?
[INAUDIBLE]
You are in heaven. You are in heaven. And when the carnal mind is on top, you are where?
In hell.
In hell.
[INAUDIBLE]
You better believe it, and he has got you doing every evil thing that he can get you to do. He has got you sticking needles in your arms. He has got you leaving your wife. He has got you robbing banks. He has got you doing all kinds of things, whatever is going to destroy you, that is what he has got you doing, and you are in hell.
But when Jesus comes, He is right. And another word -- another translation of that word -- of that Hebrew word that means right is even. God is even. He does not have highs and lows. And when the God of heaven comes into your life, He comes upon you, and He fills up all of these valleys. His Spirit moves into you and fills up all of these valleys, and you too become even. No more highs and low [sic]. No more high and low of your emotion, just the righteous reaction of Christ. No matter what comes your way, just the righteous reaction of Christ. If joy comes your way, you rejoice. If sin comes your way, you repel it. If aggression comes your way, you rebuke it. But you just stand there in the full armor of God, which is righteousness, and you respond to every manifestation of unrighteousness that comes against you.
And it is a warfare. Paul could not have made it any clearer. He said, “Put on the full armor of God.” It is a warfare that is manifested through the minds of people as expressed through their mouth, and no matter what they say to you or how they attack you, you will come to a place in due season where you will have a righteous response. And when your response is truly the righteousness of Christ, it will destroy the ungodly thought being expressed through that person’s mouth, and it will put down the rebellion and the insurrection.
What it -- why is it a rebellion? Because their ungodly thought is trying to knock Christ down out of you and raise up your carnal mind. You think that that person that started that argument with you yesterday just had a -- an itch that they wanted to get out? Not if you are in Christ. Not if you are in Christ. If you are in Christ, you better believe that Satan stirred up whoever he could stir up to come against you with that ungodly word, with that ungodly thought, with that ungodly suggestion, with that ungodly rebuke, with the full intention of tearing you down out of Christ and getting you to manifest and unrighteous spirit in response.
Now, if it happens to you -- if you fall out of Christ and you manifest unrighteousness, well, you just -- what do you do? What do you do?
Repent.
You repent, and then what do you do? Stand up, man, stand up. Stand up. Get up. Get up and keep on going. Do not stay down on that mat. Get up.
So He is the Rock. His work -- that is us -- is perfect. We are just not finished. All of His ways are motivated according to His law. He is a God of truth. That means -- you see, when you are alive, that means you could be destroyed. Shadows flee away. Illusions flee away. The whole concept of truth is that He abides forever. OK, so He is truth. He is without iniquity. He has no carnal mind.
OK, now, I had a young man come up here last summer. He was very upset with me. He said Jesus does not have any carnal mind, because some of you may know that I preach that Jesus of Nazareth had a carnal mind. I preach that He was the Son of God. He was without sin, but He had a carnal mind, which He inherited from His mother, which was in total submission to His Christ mind. It was paralyzed. It could not cause Him to sin, but it was there. He was a man.
So this young man came up here last summer. He was very upset with me, and he said, “Sheila, Jesus does not have a carnal mind.” Well, this Scripture says that Jehovah does not have a carnal mind. Jesus of Nazareth was lesser than Jehovah. Did He not say, “My Father is greater than I”?
There is an evolution of the Godhead. The highest, most invulnerable condition of God -- of the Godhead is what? Pure spirit. Pure spirit. God appearing in a man has a measure of vulnerability. That is why Jesus said, “I do not do anything that My Father does not tell Me to do. I do not say anything that My Father does not tell Me to say, and I do not think anything that He is not thinking through Me.” Why? Because if He -- if Jesus would have done anything of His own will, it would have activated a -- what is His own will? What is His own will? It is the carnal mind that He inherited from His mother, and that is death, right? He had a carnal mind. He was a man. Jehovah is not a man. Jehovah is a spirit. Jesus is a man, and He had a carnal mind.
OK, going on with verse 5. Well, let me just give you verse 4 again. He is a rock. He is impenetrable. He is unbreakable. His work -- that is us -- is perfect, although not finished. His -- He is motivated according to a righteous law. He is the truth. That means He abides forever. He is without iniquity. He has no carnal mind. He is just. That means He is the giver of justice. Any problem that you have, He is the highest court in the land. I do not care who is cheating you; I do not care what is happening to you; I do not care who is imprisoning you; call out on the name of Jesus. He is the giver of justice, the only one that cannot make a mistake.
And He is also right. He is even. His emotions do not fluctuate. His emotions do not go up and down. Every response that you get from Him is out of His righteous, rational, thinking mind. You cannot live by your emotions, brethren. They will kill you. You cannot live by your emotions. That is what animals do. They just follow their instincts. We are sons of God; we are not animals.
OK, now, the first four verses of chapter 32 of the book of Deuteronomy, I call it an exhortation. It is God, we might say, tooting His own horn. Now, if a man did that, we would say, wow, listen to that pride; but this is God. He can do it because it is all true, you see. If somebody tells you something that is true, it -- well, it does not have to be a spirit of pride. It can be. You can be telling the truth in a spirit of pride, but it is possible to tell the truth without it being pride. If someone is great and glorious, as we have just heard about in the first four verses, it is not pride. The Lord exalts Himself because He is righteous, and He is letting everybody know who and what He is so that we can come to Him for help.
Now, we see starting with verse 5 that the nature of the song changes, and it turns into a strong rebuke to the children of Israel, and the -- I believe that this message was to Israel -- natural Israel, and it is for the church today. This is what the Lord has told me.
Verse 5: “They have corrupted themselves. Their spot is not the spot of His children. They are a perverse and crooked generation.”
Brethren, the Lord is saying this to the church today, to all the people with the dove pins and with the $100 leather covered Bibles. Thus saith the Lord to you, “You have corrupted yourselves, and your spot is not the spot of the children of God. You are a perverse and crooked generation. You who praise God in the tabernacle with your mouth and walk out of the church and sin; you who praise God in the tabernacle with your mouth and hate your brother insi- -- in the hidden place of your own home; you who praise God with your mouth; you who raise your hands and open your mouth in song and go out and cheat in business; you are a crooked and a perverse generation, and a hypocrite.”
“You have corrupted yourself.” The Hebrew word translated corrupted means to decay, to ruin or to cast off. And I would like to suggest to you that what Israel has cast off is the mind of Christ. Brethren, if you live out of your carnal mind, that mind of Christ will be cast off. It will decay. It will be ruined. The way we express it here is that it will what? Does anybody know? How can -- what is the word we use for losing it? You can abort. You can abort. That mind of Christ has been conceived in you, and you go out and you -- now, there is a difference between being overcome and deliberately, willfully choosing to sin. You go out and you deliberately, willfully choose to sin because you think that it is OK, and some demon in your mind has convinced you that it is OK to do it, you can abort the Christ in you.
So the Scripture is “they have corrupted themselves.” Well, we know that natural Israel lost Christ. We have a lot of Christians today that have Christ and are very perverse and corrupt, and they still have Christ. Well, a lot of them are going to be losing Him. Now, I do not want anyone using this message to torment anybody. I am going to say it again. There is a difference between being overcome and arrogantly sinning in the face of God. If you are a overcome, if you are fighting with everything that you have and a sin overtakes you, Jesus is very nearby to have mercy on you and raise you up again. But if you are arrogantly saying, “Oh, the Lord would not leave me. I cast out demons,” or, “Oh, the Lord would not leave me because I am too important, a teacher” -- if that kind of attitude, watch out because you are as good as done. I tell you the truth.
“They have corrupted themselves.” They have cast off Christ. “Their spot is not the spot of His children.” Now, that is very interesting because it does not mean that at all in the Interlinear. The Interlinear says, “He ha-” -- first of all, the Interlinear says he. It does not say they. And I remind you that, to God, Israel was one man -- a many-membered man. “He hath not corrupted Himself. The blemish is His son’s,” Interlinear -- Green’s Interlinear. “He,” God, “hath not corrupted Himself. The blemish is in His sons.”
The sin is ours, brethren. It is not God’s sin. God does not owe us an apology or all -- any of this other junk that is floating around the church today. He has no sin in Him. We have sinned. “He hath not corrupted Himself. The blemish is His son’s.” And the translation in the King James is, “Their spot is not the spot of his children.”
“They are a perverse and crooked generation.” The Hebrew word translated perverse means crafty or conniving, and the Hebrew word translated crooked means to have a perverse mind. So we see in this phrase, they are perverse and crooked generation, the Scripture is speaking about sin in the thoughts and sin in the behavior. First you sin in your mind, and then you do it. Sin begins in the mind.
Jesus clearly said, “If you hate your brother, you have killed him.” And I hear Christians justifying hate. There is no justification of hate. Sin is in the mind. If you hate without resisting it, if you give yourself over to it, you are guilty of murder. You must repent of murder. And if you lust for that woman by -- when you look at her, you have already committed the act. Jesus said it; I did not. Sin is in the mind.
It is true that when you do it in the flesh it is harder to get cleansed from it. It is not impossible, but it makes it more difficult to get cleansed, but the sin is in the mind. You have to get the sin rooted out of your mind. It is not enough to wash your hands with soap and water. That is what Jesus rebuked the Pharisees over. They were continuously washing their hands. Jesus said, “You make the outside of the cup and the platter clean, but inside you are” what?
[INAUDIBLE]
“You are dead men’s bones.” You are spiritually filthy. You cannot clean your spirit or your soul with soap and water. What do you clean your spirit and your soul with?
[INAUDIBLE]
The water of -- the spiritual water of Jesus’ life. You need deliverance. You need cleansing. All of us -- some of a little more, some a little less -- everybody needs it. You need the curses on your family line broken, and you need the sin ripped up and rooted out of you so that you can stop doing it. And then after it is ripped up and it is rooted out of you, then you have a battle.
See, having that sin ripped up out of you, what it does is give you dominion over the sin. When that demon gets ripped up out of you -- see, if you are engaged in a behavior that you do against your will, that you -- one day you say you are not going to do it, and the next day you are out there doing it, the chances are excellent that you have a demon because you cannot do what you want to do. There is something inside of you manipulating your own will, driving you to do something that you, if you really had the choice, would not do. Now, when you get that demon cast out of you, you are still going to have the urge, but you will have the power to say no. You will have the power to say no.
Verse 6: “Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people, and unwise? Is not He thy Father that hath bought thee? Hath He not made thee and established thee?” So the Lord is rebuking Israel and the church today. The word re--- the Hebrew word translated requite means to repay. He said, “Is this how you repay the Lord? For saving you, for taking you out of a life of sin, is this how you repay Him?”
“O you foolish people, and unwise.” The Hebrew word translated foolish, it means earthen pitchers -- earthen pitchers. So what the Lord is saying, “Is this how you repay God, you clay men?” Meaning that you are not -- you have lost the Spirit of God. You carnal people. Why? Because if it was the mind of Christ in you, you would not be repaying God by dishonoring Him. He is calling them carnal people, clay vessels, and the King James translators translated it foolish.
“Ye foolish, and unwise.” The Hebrew word translated unwise means having [sic] the ability to judge correctly. Now, if you are not wise, the Scripture says that you are a fool. Now, in our society today, that is -- would really be an insult, to call someone a fool, but it is a scriptural term. There are people in this world that just walk off into destruction.
I remember there was a time when I was a fool. I was a young girl. I had just gotten my driver’s license, and I was really feeling my oats. I was going 75 miles an hour on some highway, and there were a couple of cars with some young fellows in the car. We were racing on the highway. They saw the cop. They saw the radar thing. I did not see it. I kept on going, and I got a $55 ticket, which at that time was a lot of money. And I just -- really, what a foolish thing to do. I was not even looking for the signs of a cop. I was wondering why they slowed down. I am telling you the truth. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] why did they slow down?
She has still got that racing spirit.
Yeah.
[CROSSTALK]
Well, some people are just -- are not wise, you know. It is nothing to be ashamed of. Who do ask for wisdom? Who do you ask for wisdom? Just ask Him for it. The Bible says if you want wisdom, ask Him. He will give it to you.
So the foolish person does things or engages in behavior that brings destruction upon themselves, that brings rebuke upon themselves, that brings trouble and hardship and pain into their lives. If you engage in behavior that hurts you, you are under a curse of foolishness. Another way to say it is a curse of immaturity. You need to have that curse broken, and you need deliverance.
“So is this how you repay the Lord, O you -- or all of you carnally minded people who are fools? [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- this is how you be -- repay the Lord, the one who bought you?” That word means to found, the one who founded you, the one who created you, the one who is -- who started you or who brought you into this world.
“The one who bought you and the one who made you and the one you established you,” and the Hebrew word translated established means to stand you upright. And you might remember that God formed the man, and He breathed the breath of life into him, and He stood him upright in the what?
[?Garden.?]
In the garden. Three different things: God formed him; he was not alive. God breathed the breath of life into him; he was alive, but he was subject to the pestilence in this world system; and then God stood him upright and put that pestilence under his feet. At the time of the fall, righteous Adam fell, and it -- we can liken it to a man walking through a jungle with a pair of high boots on so that the snakes cannot bite him and completely covered up so that the mosquitoes cannot get him. And you take that man, and he trips and he falls down, and someone steals his boots and his clothes, and he is subject to the snakes and the ants and the -- all of the pestilence that is lying on the ground. That is what happened to us.
So the Lord is rebuking Israel, rebuking the church today, saying, “Is this how you repay Me for del- -- for giving you all the blessings that I have given you? You are foolish. You are carnal, and you are just totally out of order.”
Verse 7: “Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations. Ask your father and he will show you, ask thy elders and they will tell you about the time,” verse 8, “when the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance. When He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.”
So we see here a similar attitude that God took towards Job, if you recall. Job was feeling very sorry for himself, saying that he did not deserve all of the judgments that were upon him. And we -- as I have taught you many times -- although if you would have -- might -- probably, if I had said to Job, “Job, do you know you are accusing God of wickedness,” Job probably would have been very upset in s- -- and totally denied it, but the truth is that when you deny that what is happening to you is a righteous judgment of God, you are accusing God of permitting unrighteous judgment to fall upon you, and it is called -- [?does?] anybody remember what it is called? Reverse inference.
Reverse inference. If I am being stripped of every position that I have, and I am so sick that all I could do is lie in my misery, and I acknowledge that there is a God in heaven that has power over these things, and I maintain that I did not deserve anything that has happened to me, I have called God guilty. And at the end of the book of Job we see the Lord come to Job and start to rebuke him in the same spirit, telling Job how great He is, how He created the world, how He made man. “Who are you to call Me guilty?” And we see the same spirit here.
The Lord is saying, “Remember the days of old.” That means -- the days of old talks about the eternal realm, that which existed before time, outside of the realm of time.
“Consider the years of many generations.” That is the realm of time.
“Ask your father, and he will tell you about it. Ask the elders; they will tell you about it. In the time when the Most High God divided unto the nations their inheritance and” -- well, you might think that the Scripture is speaking about the la- -- natural land of Israel, but we have a spiritual inheritance. Does anybody know what it is? The Lord gave us a soul, you know. Spiritually speaking, our land is this soul and this body that we are living in. We are spirit, and we have been given an inheritance, a piece of land to live in. It is our soul made out of the Earth. So the Lord is saying, “Ask and you will find out about the great works that I have done and the time when I gave you a soul and a body to live in.”
“When He separated the sons of Adam,” and that word separated, it means to break apart, and I suggest to you that is speaking about taking our original ancestor and breaking him into many members. That is a mighty feat that God did.
“And He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” So the Lord is saying, “You are just -- who do you think you are doing these things?” You must really be a fool to turn on God this way. You have to be demented. There has to be insanity in your mind to turn against God.
Now, starting in verse 9, we see the Lord telling the church and telling Israel -- continuing to tell them the great things that He has done for them.
Verse 9: “Because the Lord’s portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.” You see, we have a portion of land, this soul, but we are the Lord’s portion. He fully intends to live in us. He fully intends to express His mind through us, to express His will through us and to express His behavior through us. We are His inheritance, but we are presently occupied by a criminal army, and the two minds are fighting over us.
The natural example the Lord has given me is World War II, occupied France. When the Allies went into liberate France, they bombed French people; French people died. They bombed French businesses; French holdings were destroyed. They [?build?billed?] -- they bombed French farms; people -- the people of France were hurt. They suffered losses, loss of life and loss of property, but the end of the whole matter was that France was liberated.
We are occupied by a criminal army. His name is the what?
[?Carnal mind.?]
The carnal mind. Christ is bombing him to get us free, but we are here when the bombs fall.
We are the Lord’s portion, verse 9. We are His people. “And Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.” Jacob is the carnal name -- is the name for the carnal church, and Israel is the spiritual name. Jacob would be the name for our body and our soul, and Israel is speaking about our spirit. OK.
Verse 10: “The Lord found him.” Found who? Found Jacob or found the people that make up the church -- when He found -- He found him in a desert land. Desert land implies dryness, lack of water, lack of spiritual life. Brethren, this whole country is dying for lack of spiritual life, and many people are moving into the occult because it is very difficult, if not impossible unless the Lord leads you, to find a spiritual church. People are dying for spiritual experiences, and they are turning to the astrologers and to the card readers and to the palm readers and to the tea leaf readers because they cannot find their spiritual needs met in the church.
And the Lord strictly forbids us from associating with workers of witchcraft. Astrologers, card readers, et cetera, they divine by the spirit of another god. It is the worship of another god. To go to someone who will prophesy to you or tell you about your future by a spirit other than the spirit of God is the worship of other gods, and there are heavy penalties that will fall upon you for indulging in such behavior.
The Lord found the church in a land without spirit, “and in the waste howling wilderness.” So that means there is a group of people in the church that were without spiritual experiences, and there is another group of people that the Lord found in the waste howling wilderness, and that is referring to all of the people that the Lord has taken out of witchcraft. Two groups: one group with no spiritual experience, another pr- -- another group with illegal spiritual experience. God took us out of that life, and He cleaned us up, and He raised us up into a high place. He led us about. He instructed us, and He kept us as the apple of His eye.
Verse 11: “As an eagle stirreth up her nest.” The Lord is the eagle stirring up her nest. We are the young eagles. He is fluttering over us, His young, and He is spreading His wings over us. He is protecting us. He is taking us. He is bearing us on His wings. He is protecting us. He is carrying us. He is teaching us. He is sustaining us in the realm of the spirit, in the realm of the godly spirit. Not in the witchcraft realm, but He is raising us up as young eagles to learn how to fly and function in the spiritual realm of the Lord Jesus Christ where there is no penalty for having spiritual experiences and practicing spiritual works. There is no penalty for that when the Spirit that you are prophesying by or divining by is God.
Verse 12: “So the Lord alone did lead us, and there were no strange gods with us at the beginning.” There were no s- -- who are the strange gods? The strange gods are our carnal minds. The strange god is our carnal mind. The true idolatry is of the heart. You do not need to be bowing down to a statue. When you worship something, when you desire something more than you desire the Lord, it is idolatry. If you want something that He has not given you, and you want that thing more than you want the favor of the Lord, it is idolatry. The -- it is an idol in your heart, and you need to know that. And if you visit someone that is divining by another god, it is the worship of false gods. You need to know that. It is very serious.
Verse 13: “The Lord made us ride on the high places of the Earth.” Anybody remember what the high places of the Earth are? Anybody? The high place of the Earth? It is your human spirit. It is the highest place of your whole being: your human spirit, soul and body. The highest place likened to the mountain is your human spirit. The pagans go worship in a high mountain in the natural. Those of us that worship the Lord in spirit and in truth worship out of our spirit, the high place of our very being, our human spirit.
If you are worshiping God out of your soul, it is an illegal worship. You have to worship Him out of your spirit. Now, if you are worshiping Him out of your spirit and you want to worship Him out of your soul also, there is no harm in it. And if you are worshiping Him out of your soul temporarily while you are being trained and taught to worship out of your spirit, that is OK too; but once God brings you to a place where you have been trained and know how to worship Him out of your spirit and you go back to soulish worship, it is the worship of another god because the God of your soul realm is your who?
[INAUDIBLE] Satan.
Yeah, Satan; your carnal mind, yeah.
“He made him ride on the high places of the Earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and He made him to suck honey out of the rock and oil out of the flinty rock.”
“He made him ride on the high places” -- the human spirit -- “that he might eat the increase of the fields.” The spiritual fields are our own soul, and the increase that comes from serving God -- does anybody know? -- is Christ. So those of us that are moving in Christ are eating of the increase of Christ in ourselves. We worship out of our spirit. Christ is formed in us, and we eat of Him. Another way of saying it is that we marry Him; we join with Him; we have union with Him; and all of the goodness of the world and of life is in Christ.
So God did all [?of?] this for us. He did all [?of?] this for Israel. He did all [?of?] this and is doing all [?of?] this for the church. He enabled us to worship in spirit. He let us eat out of Christ. He let us suck honey out of the rock. Honey is a type of wisdom, and the rock is Christ. That means we got -- we received wisdom from God. What a blessing. What -- you know how me times I do not know how to do something and I say, “Lord, show me how to do it,” and I -- and it comes into my mind how to do it? I go through that with the computer all the time. And sometimes I call up the support lines for the computer service and they cannot help me, and I pray and God tells me how to do it.
[INAUDIBLE]
He lets us suck honey out of the rock, and He lets us take oil out of flinty rock. And I suggest to you that the flinty rock which -- it means the hard rock. A rock that is harder would be the Spirit of the Father. Oil is a type of the Spirit of God in this realm. So the honey out of the rock is wisdom from Christ, and we know that all wisdom is in Christ; and oil out of the hard rock is the Spirit of the Father.
Verse 14: He gave him butter of kine and milk of sheep. The kine is cattle. He gave him, like, j- -- cheese and butter from the cattle. Sheep’s milk, the fat of lambs -- He gave him plenty to eat. “And rams of the bred [sic] of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys, of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.” He gave them good f- -- He gave us good food, both natural food and spiritual food, wine also, typifying the Spirit of the Father. See, He gave us all of these things. Now, He starts to rebuke again.
Verse 15, the Lord starts to rebuke again. “But Jeshurun waxed fat,” and Jeshurun is another name -- it is, like, a pet name for Israel. So, again, He is talking about the church. “I gave you all these things. I met your every need. I gave you food. I gave you a home. I gave you a wife. I gave you everything your heart lusted for, and what happened to you? You got fat. You grew thick. You are covered with fatness, and after all [?of?] that you forsook your God which made you, and you lightly esteemed the rock of your salvation.”
Brethren, I want to tell you something. If I had a choice of having everything that my soul desired, knowing that it would turn me away from God, if I had that choice and the other choice was to not have everything that my soul desired, I would choose the discomfort of not having what my soul desired. If it is going to turn me away from God, who wants it?
So we see people in the church today. They seem to have everything, but they are usually as carnal as could be. I do not know everybody in the church, but my personal experience is that I do not know one person that has everything this life has to offer who are spiritual. I do not know an- -- does anyone know anybody that is wealthy and has all the things of this world? A good marriage, wonderful children, everything perfect in this life and is also moving in the high realms of the spirit? I do not know anybody.
We must turn away from the soul realm to move in the high realms of the spirit. You cannot have both. The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit lusteth against the flesh, and the two will never be in agreement. You cannot have both. You cannot. So if God is forcing your soul life to die, I know it is painful, but you are blessed. You are blessed. You are blessed. You are blessed because you cannot have both.
So Israel and the church, the -- that me- -- that portion of the church that got everything their soul desired, “they became fat, and they kicked.” And I want to suggest to you that that Hebrew word translated kicked means they kicked backwards. They kicked backwards. They s- -- they kicked away from God.
“They became fat,” and that Hebrew word translated fat means to harden one’s heart. It indicates putting a layer of fat around the heart thus separating us, putting a barrier between us and the mind of God.
“And they became thick.” And I remind you of past studies in this ministry where becoming thick typifies lack of spirituality. Remember, water when it is vapor typifies spirit. It then becomes water, and then it becomes an ice cube. It becomes hard and thick, and that is typifying total carnality. So this is what happened to Israel. It is what is happening to many in the church today. They got all of their prayers answered. They kicked God instead of blessing Him. They kicked backward. Their hearts become hardened, and they are as carnal as could be.
Verse 16: “They provoked the Lord to jealousy with strange gods; with abominations provoked they Him to anger.” So we see that it is just our human fallen condition, when God gives us everything, that we tend to turn to towards strange gods.
Some people in the church know that anything could be your God. You know, they teach that at all of the AA program and the NA programs. They will tell you that right to your face; anything can be your God. I love my car, man. That is my God. Well, there is a truth in it. Anything that you idolize is your God. Anything that you are not willing to give up when it is the Lord who tells you to give it up, is an idol. It is a God unto you. It is a strange God unto you. Now, do not go getting religious on me, but if the Lord tells you to give it up and you cannot let it go, you need to repent of idolatry and the worship of strange gods. You need to know this.
You know, I used to have some nice jewelry, and, one piece at a time, I was losing all my jewelry. Gold jewelry that I had had for 20 years, I loved it. And at first I cried, and then I realized what was happening. And I said, “Lord, I am not going to worship this stuff. Take it.” And I packed up everything that I had left, and I gave it away. I just have one pair of earrings left that are good -- that are gold. I had a lot of jewelry. I saw what was happening. God was testing me. I said, “Well, before” -- I was losing one of a pair of earrings, beautiful, expensive earrings. I just packed up everything and just gave it away because it was worthless once I lost the one earring.
There is nothing that is more important to me than the Lord, and when you come to this place in your heart, that is when He starts giving you -- He -- where He starts giving you the things that you like. I am not promising anybody that when you come to that place, He is going to give you what you want. I am not -- I do not have that authority to promise you, but once you come to that place in your heart that all you want is Him and what He has for you, then He will start blessing you. However He will decide to blessed you, He will bless you, but you are going to be on a fast until you come to that. You are going to be on a fast of soulish things until you -- He just kills the desire in you for anything that you want more than Him and His purposes in your life.
And one of the recent messages that we had, it was part 5 of “The Temptation.” We found out -- it was clearly in the Scriptures -- that Jesus fasted from the soul realm, and the result of that fast was that His carnal mind, it came to an and. And when His carnal mind came to an end, He -- does anybody remember what He felt? He desired the things of God. When God killed His carnal mind, He then desired the things of God.
Brethren, every one of you have a desire for the things of God in your heart. If you are not aware of it, it is because your carnal mind is too strong. Every one of you here tonight has a strong desire for the things of God. Your problem is your carnal mind. He is too strong. He is filling your mind with an illusion. He is confusing you. He is telling you that you want something that Jesus in you does not want. He is a squatter. He has no business being your mind. He has no business being your emotions. He has no business being there. He has to go down under the feet of Christ; and when he does, you will only think what Jesus is thinking, and you will only feel what Jesus is feeling, and you will be content with whatever God gives you.
We are in verse 16. So the church provoked Him and is provoking Him to jealousy with the strange gods in the church today. “With abominations provoked they Him to anger,” and the Hebrew word translated abominations refers to idolatry, idolatry and the worship of false gods, verse 17. They made God angry. God got mad. God gets mad. God gets mad, and He gets mad, and that anger is manifested through His servants. Anger in a man that you know to have Christ can be Christ. God gets mad.
“They provoked him” -- oh, OK. “They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods.” We did that already.
Verse 17: “They sacrificed unto devils, not to God, to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came up newly [sic] whom your fathers feared [sic].”
“They sacrificed unto devils.” Now, that is an interesting Scripture. Those of us that have been following along in “The Temptation” series and in a couple of other series’ that we did, we found out that the true sacrifice is a spiritual sacrifice. There are two minds, both trying to sacrifice the other mind to their god. The carnal mind is trying to sacrifice who? Who?
[INAUDIBLE] [CROSSTALK]
Christ? To who?
To Satan.
To Satan.
To Satan. And the carnal mind -- and Christ is trying to sacrifice who?
The carnal mind.
The carnal mind --
[INAUDIBLE]
-- to the Father. To the Father. Amen. So we are seeing here that the -- natural Israel and the church today sacrificed unto devils. Who did they sacrifice? Who did they sacrifice unto devils?
Christ.
Christ. It is happening in the church today. Every time you have an opportunity to make a righteous judgment of anything that is happening in your life or around your life and you choose to make a judgment that will protect your carnal mind, that will protect yourself, you have sacrificed Christ. You need to know it. I am not condemning anybody. You have got to hear this, man. You have got to know it. You have got to know what you are doing.
They sacrificed Christ unto devils, not to -- and they did not sacrifice the carnal mind unto God. The Scripture says they sacrificed unto devils, not to God. They sacrificed Christ unto devils. They did not sacrifice their carnal mind unto God.
“But they sacrificed to gods whom they knew not,” and that phrase, whom they knew not, in the Hebrew means whom they did not have a relationship with. They did not even have a relationship with these devils or whatever it -- this self-preservation -- whatever you are sacrificing to, there is nothing in it for you. There is no relationship in it for you, just your pride. That is all it is.
“To new gods that came newly up.” And this phrase, came newly up, I found a translation in [?Gesenius?] that says it means to be wicked. So what the Scripture is saying is that they sacrificed Christ unto devils, not -- and they did not sacrifice the carnal mind unto Jehovah. But they sacrificed to demons that they did not even have a relationship with. There is nothing in it for them. And who were wicked -- who were wicked.
“Whom your fathers feared not.” In other words, your fathers had no respect for these gods. This word feared means to have respect. You are respecting gods that your father never respected.
Verse 18: “Of the Rock that begat thee, thou art unmindful and hast forgotten God that formed thee.”
“The Rock that begat thee,” well, what that says to me is that Christ was in Israel, and I believe there is an imputed Christ in the church. Remember the word to beget is referring to the male role in conception. A woman gives birth; a man begets. A man causes the conception. So if the Scripture says that -- “of the Rock that begat thee,” that means Christ brought forth Christ. The spirit of Christ brought forth Christ in you.
“And of him you are unmindful.” You are not listening to Him. “And you have forgotten God, the Father that formed thee.”
Verse 19: “And when the Lord saw it,” He hated them. “He abhorred them.” He hated them. Brethren, this is the right out of the Bible. God hated them for their behavior. Now, it is not hatred of men. It is not hatred of men, but God hated them. He hated them enough to rain down fiery judgment on them, and it is about to fall on the church.
Now, there is a difference between being persecuted because you are living in a nation where Christians are being persecuted and God is with you. No matter how ter- -- I am sure that could be very terrible, but that is persecution for righteousness’s sake. The tribulation that is about to fall on the church is going to be terrible, and it is not for righteousness’s sake as we have been talking here for the last hour. It is for sin’s sake.
And when the Lord saw all that was going on in their heart, He saw the Christ mind was cast down and there was this wicked carnal mind, He hated them. And the reason He hated them was “because of the provoking of His sons and His daughters.” He is saying His own children provoked Him.
Verse 20: “And He said” -- the Lord said -- “I will hide My face from them.” That means you will not hear from the Lord. You will cry, and He will not answer. You will fast, and He will not answer. Does anybody remember who that happen to? What Bible character did that happen to? The Lord stopped speaking to him in dreams.
Saul?
Saul.
Saul.
Saul?
Saul.
Yeah.
Yeah?
Yeah.
That is OK. That is OK. That happened to Saul, and it distressed him so that it drove him to a witch. Why, he was used to a life in the spirit, and the Father cut him off; and he was so distressed and so lacking for spiritual things and a spiritual word that he went to a witch, and after that he died. God killed him for it.
I am telling you, brethren, there are people in the church today that have a relationship with the Lord. They do not have the engrafted Word, but they do hear from God. They do have the Holy Ghost. Some of them do not even have the Holy Ghost and they hear from God. And I am telling you, there is going to be a whole bunch of them cut off, and there is going to be a whole bunch of people with the engrafted Word cut off. They are going to stop hearing His voice. They are going to lose His counsel. They are going to lose His wisdom. How terrible!
I cannot think of anything worse. I honestly do not know if I would be brave enough to -- you know, to tolerate any kind of torture, but in my mind I know my flesh is weak. In my spirit, I would choose -- oh, I better not -- I would choose anything rather than to have God cut off from me. I do not know that I would have the strength to choose it if I was ever faced with it. God would -- I would ask Him to have mercy on me. I just do not like to be hurt, and that is the truth. I just do not like it. But ins- -- in my spirit, if I had the strength to do it, I would take anything rather than lose my relationship with the Lord. What am I without Him? I am nothing without Him. Where would I be without Him?
Verse 20: “And the Lord said, “I will hide My face from them. I will see what their end shall be, for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith.”
And who is our faith? Christ. Children in whom there is no Christ. Now, over here He is talking about children. He is not -- and I realize in verse 19 He is saying sons and daughters. He is talking about people with the engrafted Word. They had the engrafted Word. He calls them children, but He looked a second time, and His Son was aborted out of them.
“For they are a very froward generation.” And that word froward means perverse. And if you do not have the mind of Christ, if your mind is carnal, you are perverse because the carnal mind is a perversion of the mind that we are supposed to be having. The carnal mind is a perversion of Christ.
Verse 21: “They have moved Me to jealousy with that which is not God. They have provoked Me to anger with their vanities, and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people. I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.”
The Lord says Israel and the church have moved Him to jealousy because they are serving -- well, He says they are not even serving other gods. He says that which is not God. They are just out there doing their thing, brethren, pursuing their life, living their life, doing all the things of this world. They have rejected Him, and it is not even for another god. It is for the things of this world. That is what He is saying. “They have moved Me to jealousy for their desires for things that are not even God or a god.”
“They have provoked Me to anger.” God is jealous, and He is angry because of their vanities. And that Hebrew word translated vanities means all of the things of this world that have no spiritual substance. Anything that is without spiritual substance to God is vanity. It is emptiness. It is worthless for His eternal purposes. And the Lord says, “I have called Me a people. I have taken them out of the world. I have cleaned them up. I have taught them. I have helped them. I have delivered them. I have blessed them, and now they desire the things of the world more than they desire the things of My kingdom.” And God’s reaction to this is anger -- is anger.
And now the Lord says, “Because you have made Me angry with this behavior, this is what I am going to do: I will move you to jealousy with those which are not a people. I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.” What that means is that the Lord is going to pick somebody else. Now, in the case of natural Israel, He chose the church. And I want to tell you I -- when I first read this Scripture, that the Lord would make Israel jealous, I could not really relate to it, but I have seen it.
I told -- I tell you, I minister to this rabbi. They are -- if he is representative of his people, which I believe he is, they are jealous of the church. The first time I heard it, I really could not believe my ears. He would say something such as, “Well, now, we had the Word first. Admit it! Admit it! We had the word first.” And I would say, well, that is true. You had the Word first. And similar statements such as that.
That -- I have the discerning of spirits. I could not call it anything other than jealousy. I could not call it anything else. That is what it was. We had it first. How dare you think that you have insight into this Word. We are the -- we have the ultimate word on the revelation. We have been studying it for 5,000 years. How dare you think that you could even be on an equal par with us. Jealousy. I went home after that meeting, and I said, dear God, Your Word is true. I could not conceive it, but Your Word is true.”
Now, as far as the church is concerned, God is going to take His gifts and His person away from many believers, and He is going to give them to whom? Does anybody know? Who is going to get --
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah, the pe- -- He is going out on the highways and byways. He is bringing in the dropouts from society. He is bringing in people that never heard the Word of God, that know nothing about Him, and He is going to raise them up -- and you watch how fast He is going to raise them up. You watch this. He is going to raise them up in a year or a couple of years, may- -- if not sooner than that. I do not know. The way it looks right now, it is going to take a couple of years, but anything can happen, you know, once He starts pouring out more power. He is going to do it, and they are going to be jealous.
I want to tell you, I personally have experienced something similar to that. People in the church for years, jealous when they see what God has given me. And I have the same answer to whoever is jealous. Before you yield to this jealousy, look at my life. Are you willing to pay the price? Would you be willing to go through what I have been through for this anointing, for this ministry? The answer is always no. Oh, it is never yes. They are just jealous without willingness to pay the price. It is irrational. You cannot get what I have without paying the price. You cannot steal it. You cannot buy it. Only God could give it to you, and He will not give it to you without you paying the price. And what is the price? What has to die?
[CROSSTALK]
Your carnal mind. Your soul -- your carnal soul.
And, again, this word foolish. “I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.” This Hebrew word translated foolish means earthen. “I will provoke them to anger by giving My life and My gifts to a carnal people.” This is what Jesus was talking about when He said, “If you do not praise Me, I will raise up these stones to praise Me.”
Brethren, He will take anyone He wants, but once He gives Himself to you, once you have known Him, once you have been intimate with Him, you have partaken of His glory and His mercy and His wisdom, and then you turn your back on Him. Brethren, there is no revival coming to this nation. There is a rod coming to this nation. Revival goes to those who never knew Him. Revival is the spreading of His life to pagan nations that did not know better. There is no revival coming here, brethren. There is severe judgment fallen upon this nation.
And I declare to you that there is safety in Christ. I encourage you to rebuke any fear that is in your heart and just ask the Lord to tell you what He requires of you and to help you and to teach you and to show you how to move into a position in Christ where you will be in safety. And I believe -- I cannot promise you anything, but I believe you will be in a position to help your family who may not be there. That is my belief at this time. Jesus. This thing is already on us. Nothing is going to stop this from coming down.
This is the last verse we will do tonight, verse 22. “For a fire is kindled in Mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the Earth with her increase and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.”
“For a fire is kindled in My anger.” Brethren, this is the fire that is in hell, and it is -- the fire has a name. Does anybody know what its name is? It is Christ. The fire is Christ. The Lord has kindled or struck up a fire in His anger. He has raised up the Two Witness Company -- Christ and the Two Witness Company, and Christ and the Sons of God. Two different manifestations of the engrafted Christ, one not yet in full stature, the Two Witness Company. An engrafted Christ with some maturity, but not in full stature, Two Witness Company; and the Sons of God in full stature. They are the fire and they are judgment. They are not revival; they are judgment, and it is not coming from Satan; it is coming from God because He hates sin.
And this is a very hard word, but I just read in my Bible that the Lord said that if you had Christ and you permitted Christ to be tread [sic] underfoot and now you are completely living out of your carnal mind, then He hates you. That is a hard word, brethren. I looked it up in the Hebrew. That is what it says.
Now, just to balance out this message, what does God do when He hates you? He does not torture you in hell forever.
[?Chastise.?]
He will chastise you, but there will be some people that are not going to come up out of this. I am sorry for you ultimate reconciliationists. There are some that will receive the chastisement and repent and be restored; and there are some who will not, and they are just going to die. They are not going to be tortured forever. This existence will cease for them. Unprofitable fruit. They will be an unprofitable plant, an unprofitable servant. They are not bearing fruit, and He is going to pluck them up, gather them in bundles and burn them. That is what my Bible says. What do these ultimate reconciliationists do with all these Scriptures?
“For a fire is kindled in Mine anger, and it shall burn unto the lowest hell.” The Hebrew word translated lowest appears also in the book of Isaiah, where it is translated womb -- womb. And [?Gesenius?] says that this word in the prophets means the womb, typifying the mystical body of Christ. That is what [?Gesenius?] says. That is our Hebrew lexicon.
Now, I would like to suggest to you that this phrase that says, for a fire is kindled in Mine anger and it shall burn unto the lowest hell, it means it is going to burn unto the womb of hell, and Christ is coming forth in the womb of the what?
[INAUDIBLE]
Of the carnal mind. The carnal mind is the womb of hell. So if this fire is burning down to the lowest hell, it is going to burn right down to the carnal mind and burn it up. Now, right here, this is typifying those who will repent and who will be restored. But -- and I declare to you that the body of Christ, that the root of Israel, that the root of the church shall be restored; but I am still telling you there will be individuals who will just die. We have got to get this thing straight. We do not want it unbalanced, but people need to hear the truth. You cannot do anything that you want. God’s law still stands. You cannot do just anything that you want. There is a spirit of lawlessness through the church today. So in His anger, He is going to burn down to the lowest hell. He is going to get that carnal mind.
And He shall consume the Earth with her increase. And what is the increase of the Earth? The carnal mind again. The increase of the Earth or the fruit of the Earth is the carnal mind. It says He is going to burn down to the lowest hell. He is going to burn down to that womb, and then He is going to consume the carnal mind, and then He is going to set on fire the foundations of the mountains. Now, the mountains is typifying the nations, typifying of our -- a spiritual life inside of man, and the foundation is either Christ or the what?
[INAUDIBLE]
Or the carnal mind. So He is going to really get this carnal mind. He is going to burn down until He reaches her. He is going to consume her -- the Earth with her increase. That is the carnal mind. And He is going to set on fire the foundations. The verse seems to be out of sequence, which you may recall happens frequently. He is going to burn His way down until He touches the carnal mind. He is going to set her on fire, because the carnal mind is the foundation of the mountains, and then He is going to consume the whole carnal soul with her increase, which is the carnal mind.
Now, the way He is going to do this is going to bring deep torment on the individuals involved. Some of them will die. And if you just want to take a quick look -- we will finish this the next time the Lord lets me, hopefully at the next meeting. Starting with verse 23, the Lord spells out what is going to happen to these people, and, Lord willing, we will do that at the next meeting. The judgment is going to be severe. The church will be purified, but not necessarily every individual member of the church.
So this was a very somber message tonight. I think we are out of time, people. I think we are out of time, but it is a glorious message. It is a glorious message to me because it tells me that the Bible is true. Not that I wish any harm on anybody. I do not. But I want this word to be true. I want every aspect of it to be true. I need it to be true, and I need to understand what the Lord is saying.
Any questions on tonight’s message? What is happening to our question ministry? Could you please hand June the microphone? But the mic up to you [INAUDIBLE].
Try to [INAUDIBLE] question. [?You?] said something about things of the spirit and the things of the soul. I cannot remember how you put it. How do you do the things of the spirit, but not the things of the soul?
OK, I remember what you are talking about. Well, you really have to be led up there by Christ. If I remember that Scripture, it said that the Lord enabled us to do the things of the spirit because we really cannot do the things of the spirit until Christ is -- J- -- is -- be -- activates our spirit because our human spirit is dead. Why is she dead? She is dead because she is married to whom?
[?Satan.?]
She is married to Satan. She is completely captured by him and in bondage to him, so, for all intents and purposes, she is dead, and she is operating on a soulish realm. So for us to do the things of the spirit, Christ must come into our life and start stimulating our human spirit to do the things of His spirit. He has got to do it. This is a -- I had a lot of trouble with this. I would just keep saying it over and over and over again. There are certain things that we can and are required to do: read the Bible, attend spiritual meetings -- to the best of your ability, everybody has a different about capacity -- listen to messages, be around spiritual people. You do all you could do, and then Christ comes in and He does it for you.
So I had a real problem with this. I had a lot of trouble with it, but now that I understand it, it is real simple. We do it, but with the power of Christ. He has got to be moving in our life. We have to do it by praying without ceasing. Saying, “Lord, I am doing everything I know how. Increase in me. Engraft in me. Help me.” However you -- do not anyone be repeating my words. Ask Him to teach you how to pray. Ask Him to do it in you. So you do it by calling upon His name. You do it by invoking His name. That is how you do it.
I was -- just by way of an example. Well, this is warfare. I was under a severe attack today. It was really s- -- just severe to the point that I did not even think I was going to be able to preach tonight. And I was praying the whole time I was studying, for at least three hours, and, all of a sudden, I got a word of knowledge that there was a severe hate coming towards me. It was very clear. It was hatred, and it was severe. And I rebuked it, and I broke the curses, and within five minutes, the whole thing just broke. My heart filled with peace. I had been torment all day. My heart filled with peace. So do you understand what I am saying to you? Have no power to do anything, but I cried out for three hours, and the Lord mo- -- came down out of heaven and told me what the problem was. And when He told me what the problem was, I did what I had to do, and it broke.
You have to be in continuous communication with the Lord if you want to be spiritual, but being human and being fallen, our tendency is to try to do it ourselves. And when we try to do it ourselves, we lock the Lord out, and we are doing it in the flesh. So it is a constant dying to the flesh, saying, “Lord, be in my life.” I pray it all day long. “Lord, be my mind. Lord, this thought that just came into my mind. I am not too sure that it is right, you know. Give me Your thought. What is Your thought? If this is a wrong thought, change it. Help me to love, Lord. Put the love of God in my mind. Help me to love that person. Help me to do the right thing. Put Your heart in me. Put Your mind in me. Put Your motives in me. Put Your words in my mouth.” I pray all the time, and that is how it happens. It is a dying to self. Anybody else?
[INAUDIBLE] I do not know if I can say this because this is not a question. It is a -- I can confirm something.
OK.
OK? This confirms a prophecy that you spoke through the Lord on me [CROSSTALK] --
Uh-huh.
-- [?be sorely tested?] --
Yes, I remember that.
-- and I could see all through this. That is all what is going to happen. I do not know if the whole church is going to [UNINTELLIGIBLE], but when the [UNINTELLIGIBLE] sorely tested, [?it said?] it more than once, so that you --
Oh, yes.
-- knew that the Lord said I am going to go through something really severe. And then the Scripture that comes to me that the Lord gave me at a previous time is, Do not kick against the pricks.
Yes.
He is going to do it.
Yeah. I spoke to someone on the phone recently who told me that she is going through something very similar to what I see happening here and to what I am experiencing, which is giving me some peace. She said that it is just amazing how -- that -- well, she called it the satanic realm in the minds of her household would just rise up against her. And she said one night she prayed the prayer, “Lord, make me a peacemaker,” because the peacemakers, I think, will inherit the kingdom of God. She prayed that prayer. She said the next morning all hell broke loose in her life. The whole household rose up against her, and she was challenged to make peace.
What does that mean? How do you make peace? It means that you manifest Christ. When everybody is manifesting, you manifest Christ. Now, sometimes cre- -- Christ is kind and sometimes He gen- -- He is gentle. When the whole household is manifesting, most likely it is going to take a strong rebuke; and then after the rebuke, after everybody’s carnal mind shuts down, then you love them. If you cannot understand this, ask Him to teach you. Ask Him to teach you.
I want to tell you something. We are entering into dangerous times. If you do not have control over your tongue, if you do not know what the right thing to say is and what the wrong thing to say is, it is a blessing if you are getting rebuked in this hour. You know, if you lived in a different kind of society, you could be shot dead in the street. You can wind up in jail if you have got a problem mouthing off at people. You can get hit with the butt of a gun. You can get -- anything can happen to you. You cannot go around doing that. You got to get control over your mouth and your emotions. Who knows what is going to be walking up and down these streets in the next 10 years?
Politically, we have a very easy life here. You are looking at stories about people that grew up behind the Iron Curtain. They did not open their mouths. They did not open their mouth on the streets, even in their own house. They were careful what they said. It is a blessing of God if you are being rebuked when you are out of control and you are mouthing off. It is a mercy of God in your life.
12/11/14 Transcribed by VerbalFusion
12/17/14 1st Edit CAS/BP
