Part 9 of 10 Parts
The Following Message Has Been Transcribed For
Clarity, Continuity Of Thought, And Punctuation
By The LEM Transcribing & Editing Team.
-- Sadducees, and he speaks another way [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [?who are?] sincerely seeking his help and his ministry and his life and his love, and he responds another way to people who are just looking for miracles. Many believers have a potential to stumble looking at another believer. [AUDIO CUTS OUT] why has Christ treated me differently than this other believer, or why has the pastor treated me differently than this other believer?
And the answer is that you and the other party are not equal, therefore, for Christ or the pastor to have responded in the same manner to both of you would make Christ or the pastor a dull person, and dull is the opposite of creative. A creative person, a spontaneous person, responds to the stimuli. They respond directly and personally and individually not only to each person but to that which is manifesting in each person. That means, with the same person, from day to day, Christ or the minister may be responding to any individual in a different manner, from day to day, from hour to hour, from moment to moment, from situation to situation. Therefore, to say to the Lord or to say to another human being you have not treated me in the same manner as this other person shows a lack of understanding because it is only the dull people that we see being manufactured by today's society that treat everybody [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [?the?] same.
If you go into a s- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [INAUDIBLE] clerk [AUDIO CUTS OUT] no interest in the product being sold but is only there because they want to earn their $3 or $4 or $5 an hour, you will find that they treat every customer the same. It does not matter what your problem is; it does not matter who you are; it does not matter whether you are pleasant or unpleasant. They have a message going on inside of their brain that says the same thing to everybody no matter who, what, where or how they are, and that is a tragedy of our modern-day society. Peop- -- that is a sign of being dehumanized. When you do not respond to the individual or to the individual problem at hand, you are a dehumanized person who is in a condition of spiritual dullness, which is a tragedy.
So every time you pick up this Bible, you need to ask yourself, by reading prior verses, who Jesus is speaking to, and, therefore, you can learn how he deals with his disciples and how he deals with the Pharisees and the Sadducees and how a creative human being whose mind is God is in a continuous, ongoing interaction which is a direct response to the stimuli coming at him. A natural example would be a baseball player standing there with a bat and not responding to the ball that is thrown by the pitcher but just standing there and saying, well, if the ball hits my bat, I will make a homerun. Can you hear this? You have to respond to the ball. You have to respond to the pitcher. You do not just stand there and swing, and that is what Jesus did.
And we all have an opportunity to choose. Will we be a creative, spontaneous, alive person who is actively involved in an interaction in every aspect of our life, or are we dull, spiritually blind auto- -- excuse me, automatons just plotting through this life like a toy -- excuse me, like a toy that you wind up? Well, you will find out that, if you are a creative person, if the negative elements of our mechanized society has not killed you yet, even though you are still walking around, if you are a spontaneous person, you will know that it is not easy being spontaneous and that, in many situations, you do not have an opportunity to sit down and reason out what you will do or how you will react to that particular ball or to that particular person or to that particular thing that that person said. Therefore, we must pray continuously for the righteousness of Christ to be internalized in us because the mind which is internalized in us determines our automatic reaction to a fastball. Does anyone not know what I am talking about?
It is wonderful if someone sends you a letter and says tomorrow, at high noon, I am going to be saying such-and-such to you and you have 24 hours to pray about what your response will be, but that is not the way life is. Life is a fastball. Life is interacting with the pitcher that you never know what he is going to -- what -- which ball he is going to throw, which technique he is going to use. Therefore, when we have no time but must react spontaneous, the most we could is hope for the best, that Christ is operating in us and that our response is him. And we find out, after the smoke clears, who in us reacted because, when the smoke clears, we get a clear look at the fruit.
So if Christ is not your automatic reaction, you need to tell the Lord I need you to be internalized in me and become my automatic reaction because I desire peace in my life. I desire righteousness in my life. I desire reconciliation in my life, and I desire a mind internalized in me, a mind which is sown to my soul that will bring these qualities into my life. And I do not have it now 100 percent, and I want it, and I need it, and I am willing to work for it because nothing you have won, absolutely nothing, if you have lost your peace. Now there is a time when you should be in controversy, and that time is when it is an issue of righteousness. Otherwise, Paul says suffer the loss for the sake of the peace of God. When the root of your issue is pride, suffer the loss. That is the Bible.
So we see here, in chapter 9, that Jesus is speaking to his disciples. Verse 2 tells us that Jesus' disciples asked him, saying, "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?"
We see here that the disciples of Jesus have a working knowledge of the law of Moses, which teaches that any physical, and I will add emotional, affliction of a human being is the result of sin, either the person's sin in this lifetime or the sins of the parents which have been passed down through the birthing process. Therefore, brethren, if you have any affliction or severe affliction in your flesh or in your emotions, you need to know that it is present in your life as a result of sin, not necessarily the sin you committed yesterday. It could be family-line sin; it could be going back generations.
And the way we get set free from painful experiences and potential for painful experiences in our life -- some people call this a curse, where you keep finding yourself engaged in the same painful experience over and over again. Just the face changes; the name changes; the job changes; the geographical location changes. But if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, it is the same script over and over and over again. If it upsets you to call it a curse, you could call it bananas if you want to. I will never argue with you over words or, as some people say, semantics. I will never argue with you over the way you express what you are saying.
[?Script-?] [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [?call it?] apples or oranges exis-- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT] life [INAUDIBLE] [AUDIO CUTS OUT] that [INAUDIBLE] [AUDIO CUTS OUT] must [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [?for your?] life. It does not happen in five minutes. When someone who has authority in Christ lays hands on you and says I break that curse in the name of Jesus, what happens is that the power to overcome the spiritual forces operating in the curse is given unto you. A spiritual weapon is given unto you.
Have you not tried for years to change the script? Let us say you are overweight. You have tried this diet, and you have tried that diet, and you have tried that diet. And you have gone to the spa, and you have exercised, and you have stood on your head, and you are still fat, way over- -- obese, way beyond what you should be. Nothing worked because you are lacking the spiritual power to make that change in your life.
So when I lay hands on you and break a curse, if Jesus honors my prayer, if I am someone whose prayers Jesus honors, you now receive a spiritual weapon which will enable you to hack that script to pieces. And you cannot do it in five minutes. Why? Because first you have to learn how to use the weapon and make sure you do not shoot your foot off because, if you shoot your foot off, you could spend five years fixing your foot before you even get back to working on the problem. Does anyone not know what I am talking about?
I know it is preached differently in the church. Well, it is a lie. I heal you in the name of Jesus. Go out of here, and if you are not healed, there is something wrong with. It is a lie. You have got to work the work. There is a labor in Christ. What did Jesus do? I had someone challenge me with that recently. What was his work on the cross for? His work on the cross was so that you could get the weapon in your hands. Now you have got to pick up your weapon, and you have got to pray that God opened your eyes, and you have got to confess your sins, and you have got to repent, and you have got to go through painful experiences which will rewrite the script.
Jesus does not burn the script; he rewrites the script. What does that mean? It means the painful, destructive experiences continue to come into your life until you, by the power of Jesus Christ, respond differently. You change the script. You no longer respond destructively, but you respond in the righteousness of Christ, in the wisdom of Christ. You respond in a manner that is going to resolve this spiritual conflict in your life once and for all because, when you finally get to the point that Christ enables you to not -- when that person presses your buttons, to not react in an ungodly manner but to respond in Christ, that is an overcoming which rewrites the script. And every time that situation shows its ugly face in your life, you will be more and more victorious over it. I responded in a godly manner once, hallelujah. I responded in a godly manner twice, hallelujah.
And, finally, one day you are going to rise up in Christ, and you are going to know. There will be a spiritual knowledge in Christ that this curse has no more power over you and that this script has truly, in fact, been rewritten over your life. What does that mean? When the temptation comes to you, when the provocation comes to you, when someone comes right up and presses every combination of your buttons they could think of, you are not playing the role that you played all of your life. You are not doing what the original script said you were to do, and that script has just [?died?].
[AUDIO CUTS OUT] [?name?] is righteousness, and his name is holiness, and then the test even stops coming to you, eventually, because the person on the other side of the ungodly, unholy script or the people who have a spiritual writing on their soul that are drawn to you like a magnet to press your buttons because you both have the same script, they will stop being attracted to you, and they will go looking for someone who is going to play the part so that they can rip each other to pieces.
But now you have a new writing, and you are now attracted to people who will have positive relationships with you; people who will communicate with you; people who will honor you; people who will listen to what you have to say; people who are willing to and desirous of resolving issues and conflict in righteousness; people who will say, well, I was wrong up to here, but I am distressed at what you did. Let us compromise. Let us work this out, and let us go on and make this existence as pleasant as possible until we are delivered out of it.
You do not have to stay in Hell forever. You are responsible for yourself. If you waste your energies trying to change the other person, it is the same thing a s- -- blood coming down your cheek and looking at yourself in the mirror and trying to wipe up the blood by touching the mirror. You have got to change the writing on your own soul so that these situations do not cleave unto you, so that these people who come to provoke you are not attracted to you. They cannot even stand what you look like. Let them go and find somebody else. This is called working the curse out of your life, and sometimes, brethren, it takes years.
Now do not be discourage because there is improvement as you go. Every step of the way, you will see your response becoming godlier and godlier and godlier, and you will see yourself becoming stronger and stronger and stronger. And the Lord will encourage you with blessings every step of the way, but you have to work this curse out of your life. If you do not want to call it a curse, you could call it a guitar. I do not care what you call it. But this thing that is giving you trouble, it is not going away because someone goes, boop, in the name of Jesus, and if someone tells you that, they do not know what they are talking about. They might be sincere, and they might believe it, but they are believing a lie.
And you do hear some testimonies about people to whom overcoming power is imparted instantly. Well, it is not a deep character change. Deep character changes are not imparted easily. Yes, we hear about alcoholics and drug addicts and sick people having their problem dealt with instantly, but the underlying character defects are never dealt with instantly in this dispensation. Jesus did it for the Gadarene Demoniac, I believe, but I do not perceive it happening anywhere in the church in this hour.
So what does that mean? If you are an alcoholic, for example, and a minister goes boop on you and you do not drink anymore, you still have an alcoholic personality, and it will still affect your marriage, and it will still affect your friendships, and it will still affect your relationship with your children, and it will still affect your relationship with your coworkers and your boss. So what does that mean? It means you received the mercy of God which made your life transfer over from dysfunction to, at least, marginally functional.
But in this hour, Jesus is giving these temporary miracles [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- not -- maybe not temporary but partial miracles less and less and less. He is only giving them in the area where your life just cannot continue without this act of mercy, where your life is a total failure -- or not failure but disaster, all messed up, because you just cannot stop sticking that needle in your arm. Well, he will give you the miracle, but he is not going to leave you alone because, in this hour, it is the hour for the righteousness and the nature and the holiness of God to be imparted to men, a new writing on our soul.
Right now, we have a writing on our soul. The Scripture calls it [?the mark?] of the beast. What does that mean? Your automatic reaction to conflict is bestial, but Christ has come, that you might be the righteousness of God. Therefore, every bestial inclination in your mind must be worked out of your life so that you might be the holiness and the righteousness of God that, no matter what comes your way, your automatic reaction is righteousness and strength, an ability to deal with problems in holiness and to walk on top of the water and take the victory over every problem in your life without remorse, without the need to make amends because you were righteousness in Christ from the beginning, and that is what God is doing in this hour.
So let us go on with this message. We see that, in chapter 9, Jesus is speaking to his disciples. And if you have been studying here for a while, you know that one major difference in the way Jesus related to his disciples as opposed to the common people -- does anybody know? What is the major difference in the way Jesus related to these two different groups of people, anybody? He spoke to the common people in --
Parables.
Parables.
-- parables, and he spoke to his disciples face to face, which means he gave them the truth of the understanding, the deep, spiritual truth of the understanding. The common people, we see Jesus saying I have mercy on you, be healed. Let the cancer go from you. But to the disciples, he came with true, spiritual understanding, and he said that was pride in you, that was rebellion in you. And now that I am relating to you as a disciple and not a spiritual child any longer, receive the word, repent, and ask me to help you to change the writing on your soul.
Let me tell you that hurts. It hurts having that tattoo remarked -- removed from your soul. That is painful, holding back the bestial reaction and saying you will not be revealed through me, or, at the very least, I will channel you in a godly reaction. And anyone and everyone who is engaged in this pursuit of self-improvement is under the blood of Jesus, and there is therefore now no more condemnation to those who are going through this trial. And we will forgive one another 70 times seven as we all struggle to transfer over from death unto life. We will make every sacrifice necessary for our brother or sister who is engaging in this difficult lifestyle. We will forgive; we will suffer the loss; we will reconcile; we will go the extra mile; we will sacrifice, that Christ should be formed in all of us.
I am sorry. The Lord is talking to you. I have to go with the Spirit.
So we see in verse 2 that this man was born blind and that the disciples knew that, to be born blind clearly indicated some severe sin. To be born blind, that is a severe sin. How -- what would make me say that is a severe sin? Any affliction which hinders what we would call a normal life down here in Hell to be [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [INAUDIBLE] [?old days?], there was no work for you at all. In today's world, well, being blind, even in today's world, you are more restricted in your ability to earn a l- -- an income than if your legs do not work. We are so enlightened in our society today. People -- businesses hire cripples. They hire people in wheelchairs. People in wheelchairs, paraplegics, go to college. They become lawyers. They become writers. If you are blind, you are severely restricted as to how you can earn your living and how you can engage in the pursuits of this world that give gratification.
Brethren, we are a soul people. We are hungry all the time. We are hungry for food. We are hungry for emotional satisfaction. We are hungry all the time in every of appetite that this condition that we live in demands. We are a lacking people, and any interference with our ability to bring satisfaction to our lusting, miserable flesh is a severe judgment. Anybody not know what I am talking about? Even when the pursuits are godly, those of us down here in Hell need to be continuously seeking to satisfy our negative condition. Why is it negative? It is always taking in, taking in, taking in. Christ is always giving out, giving out, giving out. And it is painful to be the needy one; it is painful to be the one waiting to be satisfied. It is much less painful to be in a position where you can rise up and go out and be the aggressor and get what you need with power.
That is why God says to the husbands, have mercy on the weaker vessel, which is your wife, because the wife, traditionally, waits to have her needs met by the happened. She is the needy one; he is the one that has power, and he gives to her, hopefully, as Christ moves upon him. Man is the aggressor; he has got power. He goes out, he takes it. He goes home. He has got a wife, a bunch of kids and a whole home life waiting for him. It is hard being a woman in the natural, and it is hard being a woman in the spiritual.
So to be blind, we see, is a severe affliction, and if your affliction is severe, that means the sin that produced it must have been severe. Why? Because Jesus clearly stated that you will have stripes in direct proportion to the severity of your sin. That is what he said, did he not? I hope so. Everyone is just staring at me this morning. That is what he said. Some people get few stripes, and some people get a lot of stripes depending on the sin and depending on the ignorance of the person committing the sin. It is a much -- to those who much is given, much is required. Brethren, more is required of the mature son; less is required of the young son, and that is the way it is. I am going to try again. Glory to God.
Verse 2, so we see the disciples saying to the Lord, we know because we are students of the law of Moses, that this man is a serious sinner, to be born blind and relegated to begging in the streets of Jerusalem or Galilee, wherever this took place.
He said, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him."
Now some Bible scholars would take this verse and say it is possible to have such a severe affliction and not have sinned. Jesus just said it. Did you not hear it? Now I point out to you that Jesus is not speaking to the masses of people here. He is speaking to his disciples, men who have been experienced in relating to Christ, men who has been under hi- -- who have been under his teaching, men whose minds are being trained to think along spiritual lines. He would have never said this to the masses of people. And by your reaction, without condemnation now, you should know whether you are hearing these words with your carnal mind or with the mind of Christ because the spiritual reality is that, if you are afflicted, you have sinned.
So what is Jesus talking about? He is saying now that Christ is manifested in the flesh, this man, apparently, had a repentant heart. There is now no more condemnation in Christ Jesus. That is what he was saying. It does not matter whether the man himself did it or whether his mother did it or whether his grandfather did it. Who cares?
Now, apparently, according to the Mosaic law, it made a difference, and, to be honest with you, I do not have any knowledge of that aspect of the law, as to how determining whose sin would have affected this man's status or how the rest of the -- rest of Israel related to him. I do not have any understanding of that at all, but Jesus said none of that matters any more. Behold, all things are passed away. All things are made new. And now -- which was a curse unto this man all of his life, has now become an opportunity for the glory of God to be revealed through this man.
And, brethren, I speak to every one of you here this morning, and I say this word unto you. It does not matter what your mother did to you; it does not matter what your father did to you; it does not matter what you did. This affliction in your soul and this affliction in your body has now become an opportunity for the glory of God to be revealed through you. You are now in a position where the Lord can use you to show his miracle-working power through. You have the potential because of the hardship that you have suffered to be a living, breathing, walking testimony unto the glory of God to the poor and to the afflicted of this earth who do not have faith to believe without seeing. If you can receive it, receive it.
But you have got to come up out of your self-pity. I am not talking to any one person here. You have got to come up out of your self-pity and ask God to give you his mind because you have been called to something glorious. You have received the mercy of God, that he should deliver you from destructive cycles in your life, and he has not delivered you so that you could go out and lead a worldly life. He has delivered so that you could be a testimony unto the glory of God. He wants to live through you. He wants you to work with him to set all of humanity free. You have been called to a high calling, but you have got to come out of your self-pity, your [AUDIO CUTS OUT] self-p- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT] you [AUDIO CUTS OUT] and he fully intends to bring you out. Make your peace with the adversary immediately, lest you be locked up and pay every wit that is required of you if you do not come up into Christ.
So Jesus was speaking straight out to the disciples. He said there is now no more condemnation in Christ Jesus, but this man is a vessel who is a potential testimony to the world as to the greatness of God. He who was last shall now be first. The have nots of this world shall have all that there is that matters because Christ is going first to the have nots of this world, to the weak, to the afflicted, to the sick, to the mentally unstable, to the poor, to the persecuted, to the defiled, to everyone who was wronged in this lifetime and to everyone who was wronged in this world. There is much wrong in this world.
Verse 4, "I m-" -- excuse me. "I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work." And in verse 5, we see Jesus saying, "I am the light of the world." So what is he saying in verse 4? First of all, he is saying, "I must work the works of him that sent me." Does anybody know what the works are? Well, first of all, who sent him? Who sent the Lord Jesus?
[INAUDIBLE]
God, the Father. And what are the works of God, the Father, anybody? What are the works of God, the Father?
To develop his Christ in each of us.
Well, that is true, but let me -- that is true. Let me make it a little simpler, OK. The work of the Father is the creation, you see. Someone just said to me the other day, I am in the image of God. No, you are not. You are a hunk of clay in which the mind of Christ existed at one time but died, so you are a dead hunk of clay. The work of the Father is to complete the creation, that this hunk of clay should truly be in the image of Christ and therefore live and not die. So what you said it true; I just made it a little simpler.
The work of the Father is the creation, the completion of the creation. So if you have hear -- ears to hear it, Jesus is saying, brethren, you are not complete. You are not in his image. You are looking for a Scripture that says we are not in his image? There it is, all you Pharisees lifted up in pride. Can you imagine thinking you are in the image of God? God, have mercy on us.
So Jesus says, first of all, the Father sent him, that his purpose in coming is to complete the work of the creation and that he is completing that work while it is day. What signifies the daytime? What overriding characteristic signifies the daytime, anybody? It is light out, brethren. It is light out. You can see. In the light, you can see. Now what is the significance of that? The significance is that, to complete the creation, we- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT] that death must be dealt with, and to be dealt with, it must be seen.
Did you ever see your operating room -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT] on the poor person who they are cutting open, sometimes using drills and all kinds of surgical instruments? Light. You have to have light so you can see what you are doing. Brethren, for the work of the creation to be completed in any individual, the light must be shined upon the darkness of their heart. We are dead because we have a problem in our heart. We need heart surgery, brethren, and that heart surgery can only be performed when there is enough light shining on the malfunctioning heart. Therefore, this surgery shall only be performed in the daytime. How do I know that? Jesus said, in that same verse 4, in the night, there shall be no work. So the work of converting our heart from a condition of death unto a condition of life only takes place in the daytime.
And let me just give you the exact phraseology here. "The night cometh, when no man can work." Now, please note, he does not say no woman can work because spiritual women cannot do that is work. Spiritual women do not have what it takes to look into the heart. Spiritual women do not have the weapons that can operate on the heart. Spiritual women are not qualified to do heart surgery. Jesus is saying that the surgery of the heart, which lends unto life, is only in Christ. It is not in the imputed anointing. It is not -- this ministry of converting the heart from death unto life does not take place by carnal men who are influenced by the Holy Ghost.
Carnal men who are influenced by the Holy Ghost have an ability to do some good. They can pray prayers, if the Lord honors it, which will result in a healed body. They can pray prayers, if God honors it, which will cast demons out. They definitely do good. I am tired of being misquoted and misunderstood. They have a place; they have a function. I thank God for the existing fivefold ministry, but, brethren, the Scripture clearly states that that which we see now is in part, and, when that which is complete comes, that which is in part must pass away. Why would you want that which is incomplete? When the greater is come, the less must decrease. That is the way God set it up.
So that is what he is saying here. If you are a true disciple of Christ and your ears are working, hear it. If you cannot hear it, ask the Lord to circumcise your ears. What does that mean? It means, if you cannot hear it, there is something lying over your ear, that if you do not cut it off, you are never going to hear. That is what it means, and, of course, we are not talking about your natural ear. We are talking about your understanding, and understanding is of the heart. So that which is lying over your ability to understand that needs to be cut away, therefore, is your what? Your carnal mind.
Your carnal mind will cause you to not understand my words. There is a Scripture in this Bible where Jesus rebuked the Pharisees. He said, what is your problem? I am speaking to you plainly. Do you not understand my speech? And the answer is, no, they did not. they heard his words, but they did not understand what those words meant. Why? Because the Christ in them [AUDIO CUTS OUT] their heart was uncircumcised; they could not understand.
Jesus said, my mind is Christ. I, therefore, do work that works towards the completion of God's creation, but "the night cometh, where no man can work." The Lord said there is a time coming when a mature Christ will not be in the earth to do the works. Now we know that there were apostles that lived after Jesus was crucified that did miracles. They did miracles, but, brethren, aside from Paul, the question is how many had the ability to do the works of God. Brethren, this may come as a shock to you, but the work of God is not healing the sick or casting the demons out. The work of God is engraving the image and the nature of Christ in the clay of the man, in mature [AUDIO CUTS OUT]
You have to be of a spiritual age whereby you can procreate. You have to be able to impart the seed of the life of God into the minds of people, and that takes a mature spiritual man. Now there are spiritual women who are influenced by the Holy Ghost who do good, but they do not have what it takes to impregnate because they do not have it, like a 2-year-old boy does not have it or a 4-year-old boy does not have it, OK.
So plea- -- try and hold your questions till the end of the meeting.
[AUDIO CUTS OUT] because everybody is growing up from Christ, and immature people do not have the ability to reproduce. You have to be -- just as in the physical, you must be of a physical maturity to reproduce. You must be of a spiritual maturity to reproduce, and carnal men who are influenced by the Holy Ghost do not have the equipment to reproduce. Only human beings whose mind is a mature Christ have the equipment to reproduce. Why? Because the equipment itself is the mature mind of Christ. If you do not have it, you cannot impregnate the woman. It is a law, a spiritual law and a physical law. That is the way it is. There is no artificial insemination in Christ, that I know of. I do not know about it. I have not heard about it.
[INAUDIBLE]
Does not work that way.
[CROSSTALK]
There is only one way.
-- wake up and [?just, like, change?] [CROSSTALK]
No.
-- [?Christ?]?
Does not work that way. OK.
So Jesus clearly says, in verse 4, he is doing the works of Christ because the mind of Christ is in him, but the night is coming, a time when the mind of Christ is not present in men. And during that time period, no man can work the works of Christ. They cannot work the work of the Father, which is the completion of the creation. And I suggest to you that Jesus was speaking about the time period between the time that the last male apostle -- and we know that Paul said I am your father in the Lord. He said the proof that I have begotten you is that Christ is now functioning in your mind. Christ is in -- rooted in you and growing in your mind, so that is the proof that I put the seed in there. And the truth is, in many cultures today, a man's manhood is not proven until his wife has their first son. First in the natural, then in the spiritual.
So if any one of you thinks that you are an apostle, praise the Lord, put your money where your mouth is. Let us see at least one disciple that you have been working with that is manifesting Christ through their mind. Write it down. Let us see one son that is born because your mind, as an apostle, has penetrated their mind and deposited a seed. So do not tell me you are an apostle. I do not need lip service. Let us see the proof. Let us see it. Glory to God.
So we see that there has been a period of nighttime from the time the last male apostle -- and I do not really know about the others. I just know that Paul says I am your father in the Lord, and I have begotten you and that you are the proof of my apostleship. The fact that Christ is in your mind is the proof of my apostleship. Between the last male apostle and the hour which is now, that Christ is appearing in the minds of men, again, there have been years of the d- -- the whole dark ages. There have been years when Christ was not being born in the minds of the men -- of men, and that is what Jesus is speaking about. But the procedure is going on, certainly, today.
And Jesus said, in verse 5, "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
He is that which makes the world daytime. Jesus is the one that creates the day. You see, we are not talking about a physical day anymore, and neither are we talking about a world where you have cycles, day, night, day, night, day, night. We are not talking about that anymore. The spiritual daytime is continuous. Daytimes exists continuously, and we must enter into the day. There are Scriptures which say it will be as bright as noonday at midnight.
The spiritual nighttime is the existence that we live in this world. For so long as we live in our carnal minds, we are living in the night. There is no end to the night. Spiritually speaking, some people spend their whole lifetime in the night, in the spiritual night. Now when we first start moving into Christ, we will penetrate into Christ and fall out, penetrate into Christ and fall out, penetrate into Christ and fall out, and that is our day and night, spiritually speaking. But, eventually, we shall penetrate into Christ and abide there forever, and there shall be no darkness anywhere in our existence.
Well, let me correct that. The darkness that exists in the daytime is likened to the darkness of the moon. The moon is out there in the sky during the day, but we do not see it because the sun -- the light of the sun is so bright that we cannot see the moon, so there is darkness in the daytime, but the light is so bright that it is completely overshadowed. And what are we speaking about? We are speaking about Christ and Satan. Satan is the night, but when we are in Christ, the light and the brightness of Christ will be shining so brightly that Satan will not even be seen, and he will not even be heard. So for all intents and purposes, we shall be abiding 100 percent of the time in the light. Glory to God.
And Jesus said, "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
He is the day. Now I hear someone's mind saying, well, if he is the day, how can you say that carnal men influenced by the Holy Ghost are not the day? And the answer, brethren, is that, for it to be day for you, it must be an internalized day. When the Lord Jesus Christ becomes the engrafted word in your heart, daytime has come unto you. To be a carnal man influenced by the Holy Ghost, speaking in tongues does not put you in the daytime. You enter into the daytime when there is a union or a communion between your spirit and that Holy Ghost. It is not enough to have the Holy Ghost floating around inside of you.
And, I believe, it was in the prior message of John -- of this -- "Jesus and the Book of John," where we talked about the two different Greek words speaking about the life of God. One word says that you can have the life of God. It can be inside of you, and it is a totally different word that speaks about the word of God which is attached to you. Now if you have the Holy Ghost and he has not attached to you yet, you are in the nighttime with some flick- -- with a candle lit. [AUDIO CUTS OUT] and starts growing in you, the sun has begun to rise over your earth. And as the Christ increase [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [INAUDIBLE] you will be, 100 percent of the time, in the daylight. Jesus.
Verse 6, "And when Jesus had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay."
I will be reading some verses that are not the words spoken of Jesus, as the Lord leads me. And -- OK. This word clay, it is an -- it -- this is an interesting -- I have an interesting understanding for you of this miracle, and the understanding that the Lord has given me goes along the lines of the understanding with regard to what happened with the adulterous woman.
When Jesus said to her, "Go, and sin no more," we found out that there was a deep, spiritual meaning to the words used in the Greek and that what Jesus really did was write a new writing on the woman's heart. We spoke about that at the very beginning of this message, that for Jesus or anyone to say, "Go, and sin no more," without giving them the power to stop sinning makes no sense at all because fallen man can do nothing but sin. So for Jesus to say, "Go, and sin no more," he has to fix you, brethren, so that you can obey him. And we see here a similar situation.
And what is that fixing? I am suggesting to you to you that that fixing is an alteration of the person's soul. If your soul is in a condition where you are an habitual adulterer or if your soul is in a condition where you are permanently blind, for Jesus to say, go, and do be bl- -- go, and see, is not enough. The word must have the power to produce a change in either the emotions or the spirit or the flesh of that person.
So we see the Lord sharing with us how the Lord did this. In the case of the adulterous woman, he erased or put a new writing or ripped out that spiritual curse that -- you might liken it to a genetic code. Does anyone not know what a genetic code is? Genetic codes operate in our physical body. They determine whether we will be short or tall, black or white, male -- well, n- -- well, male or female, a big nose, a little nose, brown eyes, blue eyes. There is a genetic code in the chromosomes which are imparted to us from our parents. They come through the male and the female seed that join together to produce a new human being.
There is also an emotional genetic code. You do not hear about it from the scientists, but I say unto you there is an emotional genetic code. Did you ever heard [sic] it said? Did you ever hear it said he is just like his father, she is just like her mother? I watched a TV show the other night, and the wife we being a little difficult, and her husband said to her, "My God, it has happened." And she said, "What happened?" He said, "You became your mother." Did you see that? No.
We have an emotional genetic code, and we also have a spiritual genetic code. Everything we are we inherit from our ancestors. So for Jesus to make it a reality in our life to either cease from a particular sin, such as adultery or -- which is a spiritual problem -- or to cease from blindness, which is a physical problem, he must alter our genetic code. There must be a new writing on our body, g- -- on our physical genetic code, excuse me, on our emotional genetic code, on our spiritual genetic code.
And when the Scripture says that Jesus either reached down and ran his finger through the earth or, in this case, in John 9, the Scripture says he spat on the earth. I think the word is earth. He spat on the ground, excuse me. This is a double entendre. I am sure Jesus spo- -- spat on the natural earth, but he also spat on the man's spiritual earth. I suggest to you what Jesus did affected the ground of the man's soul. Why do I say that? Because it is the condition of the man's soul, the sinful condition of the man's soul, which produced the physical judgment.
And I have told you here many times that when we receive a healing in Christ, in particular of a curse, we do not just receive it unto ourselves, but our children receive the benefits of it. The curse is broken on the family line. Future generations receive the benefits of it. Living generations, brothers, sisters, parents who are still alive receive the benefits of curses broken in our lives. Therefore -- although, in some instances, doctors can really heal people for that lifetime, but there is no benefit to the rest of the family, and, of course, we still die.
So when the Scripture says Jesus spat on the ground, yes, he spat on the physical ground, and he gave the man eyes that he was born without, but he also spat on the ground of his soul, I suggest to you, and changed the genetic code and cancelled out that curse. How do I know? Because he said in a prior verse that this man -- that there is no responsibility for this sin. Jesus spoke the words in verse 2, I believe, and in verse 6, we see Jesus making that word a physical and spiritual reality in the person's life. So when Jesus says to you, "You are forgiven. Go, and sin no more," that is very nice, but you better hang on to the horns of the altar until such time as he makes that forgiveness a reality in your life because, when you are truly forgiven, you will sin no more.
And we see all of these anonymous programs in the world today, and they are doing a fine work, and they are helping many people. But these people stand up and repeat, for the next 20 and 40 years, I am an addict; I am an alcoholic; I am in recovery. But when Jesus does the work, brethren, he alters the genetic code of your soul, and you can stand up and say I was an addict, when he completes the work in you. When he has truly forgiven your sins, you can stand up and say I used to be an addict. But until that time, you have to say I am an addict or an alcoholic who has that problem under control.
Now Alcoholics Anonymous knows that. Addicts Anonymous knows that, but the people in the church world, they do not know that. They come into the church. Someone prays a prayer with them, and they go out announcing they are in the image of God. No, you are not. You are as much of a sinner as you were when you walked through the door. The only difference is that Jesus has given you some control over that which was killing you, but you will be a spiritual addict or a spiritual criminal for the rest of your life, until Jesus writes a new writing on your soul. So do not give me that junk, you sinner, that you are in the image of God. You are in denial.
And, again, I say it again and again, it is the fault of the ministry, the existing ministry. They are teaching the people wrong, and I believe that the average person who comes to Christ, if they would get the truth in every church that they went to, it would break their pride much more quickly than if they can go into nine churches that are going to tell them not only are they in the image of God but they are incapable of sin. And then they hear one preacher telling them that they are not in the image of God and they not only are capable of sin but that they sin every day. When the situation is thus, well, they just do not want to listen to the preacher that tells them they are sinners; they go someplace else.
But when the day comes that every preacher preaching is telling the truth, people who are having trouble confessing their condition will have their pride severely wounded as the knife comes down on their pride from every preacher that they hear. So, therefore, brethren, every preacher in the world must either get his message changed or be brought down because this cannot continue, but that is the work of Christ. It is not my job. My job is to preach the truth as he shows it to me, and if you walk and he lets you go, I will kiss you goodbye. I have enough problems without trying to force you to stay here. OK.
So when Jesus had spoken, "he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle."
Now this word clay, it is an interesting word. It is Strong's 4429, and Thayer Greek Dictionary says that this word roots from 4428, which means "to fold up." But Thayer says that 4429 -- that is the word in the original Greek that is translated clay. It means to come to an end not by folding up but by the idea of flattening. And, brethren, I want to tell you that when you want to erase a tattoo, you take off the top layers of skin. When you want to take the engraving off something, a piece of metal, you shave the piece of metal. You flatten it out. I want to suggest to you that this word, clay, has a spiritual significance with indi- -- which indicates that Jesus flattened out or shaved off or spread out this man's soul, and he erased, through flattening, the curse that had made this man blind. If you can hear it, hear it.
And this concept of him spitting on the ground and making it clay, if we want to look at it spiritually, we can say that this flesh that we live in, the physical flesh as well as the flesh of our soul, is hardened clay. Just as when you form a vessel, if you put a vessel on the potter's wheel and you form in, you spin it around until the cup or the bowl is shaped. Then you bake it in the oven, and it becomes hard. Well, our soul and our body has become hard. What does that mean? It means it is in a permanent form. Do you have the ability to change your hand, to make it larger, to make yourself taller or shorter? No, we are in a permanent form once we are born.
But when Jesus spat on the spiritual ground of the man's soul, what it means is that, spiritually speaking, he softened his soul, and he molded it, and he erased that curse from it. And in the same manner in the natural, he made clay. The significance of picking the clay up from the ground and putting it on the man's eye was that Jesus had the ability to alter the hardened condition of this physical body; that is the spiritual significance of it. Everything Jesus did had a reason.
Does anyone here not know that Jesus could have given that man who was born without eyes -- that he could have given him eyes without putting some earth from the ground on his eyes? I hope you all know that. Jesus did not need the dirt that he was standing on to make eyes for that man. He did it as a m- -- as a statement, as a message to carnally-minded people, and that statement was I have the power to change the unchangeable. That is what he said, and if you do not believe it, you pick up some dirt and spit on it, and let us see what you could do with it. And for those who had ears to hear and eyes to see, it was also a statement that, as I have the power to change this physical earth which is hardened into a permanent form, I also have the power to change a soul which is hardened into a permanent form. And the name of that form is death. I have the power to make that which is death life.
And, of course, I suggest to you that this man, to be physically blind, was also mentally blind because that which we see manifested in the natural is a sign of that which is manifested in the physical. If we see a man who is crippled, it is a sign that there is a spiritual lameness on the fa- -- if not in that man himself, definitely on the family line. Physical blindness is a sign of spiritual or mental blindness. If we see a family line, if we see a man who is very emotionally blind and you watch that family line grow, if you could do it, it is very likely to see blindness appear in the natural, several generations down.
Just like there is such a thing as pre-incest. If there is a problem in a family, you watch it travel down the line four, five generations later. There is such a thing as spiritual and emotional incest. A mother is too close to her son; a father is too close to his daughter. If it is not corrected, if it does not come under the authority of Christ, if it is given its head, it is very possible, several generations down the line, it will manifest into a physical expression of incest. If you see ungodly relationships in the family that are lending towards homosexuality and it is not restricted and it is not restrained; the mother is too overbearing, the father is absent and not teaching his son how to be a man and under a conditions of many variables. If they are not checked several generations down the line, you will see a homosexual manifest in the family.
And how is it checked? It needs to be checked by the power of God. There is a spiritual root operating there that is trying to express itself, and seduction, brethren, the danger of seduction is that it expresses itself slowly, frequently, over a series of generations. Seduction is notorious. Spiritual wickedness is not restricted to one generation. Any ground it could take in one generation is a success because, if it takes the same amount of ground in the next generation and embarks upon a pattern of taking 1 inch with every generation, in five generations, it has that family line fully involved in a particular sin.
And as far as the Lord is concerned, this family line is the same person. From the great-great-great-grandfather to the son that is existing in this generation, it is the same person doing the sin, except that our memory is cut off at the end of a human lifetime, and that is how Satan gets us. Therefore, brethren, submit to God, and obey his word because he is the only truth, and he has the knowledge that will keep us safe from such a seduction. Obey God, brethren, not the teachers of this world or the lies and seduction in your mind.
So Jesus dealt with the man's physical body, and he dealt with his soul, and then he said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He th- -- went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing."
Please, please, please note, the submission to Christ, the obedience to Christ, the man had to do something. There had to be a walking out, a demonstration of his faith. And remember the Syrian general, Naaman, who almost did not take the prophets counsel and go dip in the Jordan because it seemed too simple. Now can you imagine a man claiming to be Messiah telling you stand still, I am going to spit on some dirt, I am going to put it on your eyes, and go and dunk yourself in the east river, and you are going to have your sight back? Brethren, it takes faith to believe that, and it takes faith to just walk to the river and dunk.
So it is not enough to have Christ to minister to us. We must have faith that the one who is ministering to us has the power in Christ. And we must have faith that God is powerful enough to alter our circumstances, our life and our physical flesh. So if you do not have faith, recognize it, and ask God for faith because, without faith, man cannot please God.
I am going to comment on a few of the following verses which are not the words of Jesus.
We see, in verse 11, the man acknowledging that he went and washed. He said, "I was" -- and he said to me, Jesus said to him, "Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I did what he told me, and I received my sight."
So we see obedience, and we see submission, and, brethren, this is the true worship. You can raise your hands all you want; you can jump up and down all you want; you can wear all the pins all you want; you can read the Bible all you want; you can talk in tongues all you want. But if you are not submitting to Christ, he is going to say I never knew you because a knowledge of God is in the relationship that you have with him, and there is only one relationship that is acceptable to God. He man, you woman; you bend your knee. He is right; you are wrong. The true worship is in listening to him and doing what he says whether you believe it or not, whether you think it is possible or not. That is what faith is, the substance of things hoped for. Just do it.
Verse 16, "Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day."
Look at this wickedness. Jesus made a man blind see, and the Pharisees condemned him for it, and the root of their condemnation is, anybody? Envy. The Scripture says they offered him up because of envy.
[?Not pride?]?
Well, the Scripture says envy, you know. I believe that they were guilty of pride, but the driving motivation for their doing of evil towards this righteous man was envy. Brethren, that is evil, to deny someone a miraculous healing because it was someone else who had the power to do it and not you. If you are in that condition, may God have mercy on your soul. If you recognize it in your own heart, you must attack it continuously. It could cost you your ministry. It is not acceptable in a son to have such a sin uncovered. If you have it, there is no condemnation in it. You must cover it; you must chain it up; you must bind it up; you must forbid it and re- -- prevent it, at all costs, from affecting your thoughts and your behavior. If you have it, you have it. Pray for that person immediately. Bless their ministry. Do everything you can to help them, and speak the right words. Encourage people to go to them if it is God. Do not yield to the envy. Then it is not sin unto you.
So now here we see something very interesting, those of us who have an ability to see sin in people. It is not enough to see sin in people; we must now determine whether or not that sin is covered or uncovered. And if the sin is covered, you better leave that person alone because, if the sin is covered and you are using the presence of that sin to hurt them, you are misusing the gift of God.
And there are only two times or two occasions upon which any individual has a right to mention someone else's sin. One is if you are a son and you are sent to that person to reveal it and it is in righteousness. What does that mean? Your motive for revealing it is to help them. There is nothing in it for you. There is no job in it for you. There is no glory in it for you. It does not make you feel like a big shot, but you are concerned with their spiritual growth. If God sends you and says now is the time, you can expose their sin. And the other time is if that sin is used as a weapon against you. And if you expose that sin on any other occasion, you are judging before the time, and judgment is falling on you. You are misusing a gift that you have. OK.
So we see that there are people who have a pharisitical mind, who will interfere with the miracle-working power and the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we must learn how to deal with these people without sinning against them.
Now the others said, "How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division amongst them."
Let me point out to you that the reason the Pharisees called Jesus a sinner was that he, in fact, was born of a woman, and they had a revelation that everyone born of a woman is a sinner. Everyone -- this flesh, this body that we live in is sin; it is the expression of Satan. And this body does not come alone; it comes with something called a carnal mind, which is Satan's mind. So they -- these Pharisees, they were not just blind to Jesus saying they did not know he was Messiah. It was much more than that. Their carnal minds recognized that Jesus was a natural man, and they knew that every natural man was a sinner.
So it was not the outright blasphemy that you may have heard preached in the past. It was a carnal comment. It was a carnal judgment. They said this man is a sinner. He looks like a sinner; he walks like a sinner, talks in a fallen language, eats food, does every natural thing a sinner does. I am sure he went to the bathroom. If he ate food, he went to the bathroom. So, you see, it was not an outright blasphemy, but they were just looking upon the surface. Their sin, the sin of the Pharisees, was that they did not see the spiritual life that was manifesting in this fallen flesh.
And Jesus [?in?] -- excuse me. Jesus indicted them by saying you are in the Scriptures day and night, and the Scriptures speak of me. How come the Scriptures have not built spirituality in you? How come the Spirit that is in the word is not connecting with you and in your mind? Because if it was, you would know that, even though I am in fallen flesh, that my mind is God. You would recognize me. You would understand these things, that it is legal to heal on the Sabbath day, that it is legal to circumcise male children on the Sabbath day, that the law of Moses should not be broken, that it is legal to have mercy on the Sabbath day. How come you do not know that?
And he was saying because you are carnal and because your righteousness is all involved in your ritualistic keeping of the law, and, because of that, you have completely missed the point of the Scripture which was given to you by God to make you spiritual men. You have taken that which was given to cover over the multitude of your sins, the sacrificial law, the law of ordinances. It was given so that God would say, when you keep these carnal commandments, there is now no more condemnation in Israel. You took that law, and you have forgotten about the spiritual law of God. What did Jesus say? You strain at a gnat or you strain at a camel and something.
You strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.
You strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. You are looking at the wrong thing. So my whole point in that verse is that Jesu- -- that the Pharisees had every right to look at the man Jesus and call him a sinner. It was not even an insult; it was an observation that was accurate. They were lacking the understanding that that sin nature, which Jesus was born in, was being completely controlled by the Christ. That is what they could not see. What they saw was true. They saw a sinner. Can you understand that? The sinner was there, but there was another there also which was controlling and ruling over the sinner so that the sinner was, therefore, not sinning. There was a preventative there. There was a prophylaxis there that was containing the sin and preventing it from being deadly.
And we see in verse 18, "But the Jews did not believe concerning the man, that he had been blind, and received his sight, until they spoke to his parents," OK. I do not know why I checked that off.
Verse 27, "And the man who was blind said, "I have told you already, and you did not hear: why would you hear it again? Will you also be his disciples?"
The man who was healed said, why are you asking me all these questions? I explained it to you. You did not understand my answer. What is your motive for asking me a second time how this man healed me? And the Pharisees -- now I want to suggest to you that there was a spirit of righteousness on this man. He knew that what they were saying was ungodly, and as Jesus, he responded with a question. Jesus frequently responded with a question. Why are you asking that question? Do you want to be his disciple? Oh, no. Well, then how come? Do you want to use it to destroy him? That, I suggest to you, is the kind of response that would come out of Christ.
-- the gist here that there is a good chance that when this man had his eyes healed and his soul flattened out that he just may have gotten the mind of Christ in there along with the package deal.
Verse 28 says, "Then the Pharisees reviled him." They criticized him, and they said, "Thou art his disciple; but we are Moses' disciple. We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not whence he is."
Now that is an interesting statement to make, especially in view of the fact that the Scripture clearly states, when God first revealed Moses to the Hebrews in Egypt, their reaction to him was -- anybody?
They were against him because of the things that he did with the Egyptian [CROSSTALK] [?how he killed?] the Egyptian [CROSSTALK]
Right, but --
-- were against him for doing that, so they could not oppose him as a leader.
Right. But even more than that, what motivated that man who saw him kill the Egyptian was pride because, the day before, Moses had rebuked that man for killing another Hebrew or hitting another Hebrew. So when Je- -- when Moses moved in and corrected the one Hebrew for attacking another Hebrew, pride arose and said, who do you think you are? What do you make yourself? And then, when the next day, Moses killed a man, the one that he tried to help said, there, I knew it. The whole time you were just a sinner, and what do you make yourself putting yourself over me?
So we see that the Hebrews in Egypt reacted the same way to Moses that the Hebrews reacted -- that the Jews reacted to Jesus, thus the Scripture or the words of Jesus saying I know that you are those who killed Christ because you are doing the same thing that your ancestors did. And you cannot give me the excuse that you do not know from where I come because your ancestors did the same thing to this Moses that you are exalting. Therefore, it is proven that you are not Christ and that you are not spiritual and that you are carnal men and that you are going to need judgment to come into submission to the one through whom Christ is manifesting.
And even more than that, Jesus said, Moses was an imperfect man; I am perfect. God required the Hebrews to recognize God in Moses, even though he was not perfect, but I am perfect. What is your excuse with me? Now listen to this, brethren. Jesus is saying, if you cannot recognize Christ in an imperfect man and you think that you will recognize him in a perfect man, you are deceived because Christ looks the same when he is manifesting in an imperfect man as well as in a perfect man. The only difference is the extent of the time. He is manifesting continuously in a perfect man and intermittently in an imperfect man, but he is still Christ. And if you cannot recognize him in the imperfect man, neither will you recognize him in the perfect man. That is what Jesus was saying.
Now what does that mean? Your heart is hard. Your heart is hard because of pride. You refuse to see him. Why? Because, for some motive of your own, you would prefer if it was not this man that Christ was appearing in, because of your rebellion, because you do not want to submit to another man, because you do not like that man, whatever. It is sin. If you cannot recognize Christ appearing anywhere, in a perfect or an imperfect man, it is sin in you because the manifestation of Christ in that man is hindering something that you want to do. The manifestation of Christ in that man is convicting you or instructing you or counseling you not to do something that you want to do or requiring you to do something that you do not want to do because of pride or because of rebellion and in some instances because of envy. That is what he is saying.
If your mind was Christ, you would know me. If you knew the Father through your studies of the Scripture, if they did their work in you, if they gave you -- if they brought to pass in you a spiritual relationship with the Father that caused a manifestation of Christ to be formed in you, if you knew the God of this Bible intimately, your Spirit -- his Spirit would be in you. And if his Spirit was in you, you would recognize that the Spirit in me is the same Spirit that is in you. Therefore, it is proven you are just a carnal man or you are carnal men who are, on occasion, influenced by the Spirit of Christ, but he is not in your heart because if he was in your heart, you would know that I had the same Spirit.
We are talking about intimacy, brethren. We are talking about a relationship with Christ that is likened to the marital union. When you know him intimately, you know him wherever he is manifesting, and that is the truth of the Scripture. Now it is possible that you could know him intimately but have a carnal mind that is still very strong and layering over that part of you which has a knowledge of him. And if that is the case, he is inside of you, and he is trying to hack his way out from under the blinder that is upon his eye.
Christ is an eye. You have heard of the third eye. Christ is an eye. He is a spiritual eye. Now if he is truly in you and you cannot recognize Christ, that means the carnal mind has sealed him off, and you have a cataract, brethren. You need surgery because you are blind. And you may know that the established sur- -- treatment for cataracts is laser treatment, and laser is a directed -- a highly concentrated, directed light which burns the cataract away. Christ is that light, and he wants to burn away that spiritual cataract which is destroying your spiritual sight. If you have Christ, brethren, he is actively at war with your carnal mind in every area that it is manifesting, and it is traumatic to you.
And you need to know that he fully intends to prevail over your carnal mind because you are his; you are his property. He wants the use of your flesh. He wants to talk through you. He wants to walk in you. He wants to ride you. He wants you to be a vessel of honor that goes where he sends you and speaks what he says and thinks with a righteous mind. And if you do that, you will be doing the works that are his works. And what are his works? His works are to complete the creation. His works are ministry to other people. And I tell you again, there is a place for carnal works. God only knows, we need people helping people with carnal works, but the works of Christ are spiritual works.
Christ does spirit- -- a spiritual work which reproduces the nature of Christ in other men because the true deliverance is not from the outside of you because somebody with faith lays hands on you and prays for you. You can start off that way. Babies start off with being fed. Someone sticks a bottle in their mouth. It is OK to start off that way, but if you are 30 years old and you are not feeding yourself, you are -- should be pretty embarrassed. If your mother is sitting there sticking p- -- spoons of baby food in your mouth at 30 years old, you have got a real problem. So that -- the one who is able to feed you is Christ Jesus. He must begin to be internalized in your own soul.
Verse 34, "They answered and said unto Jesus" -- oh --
Verse 33, "If this man were not of God, he could do nothing. They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us?"
Now that is -- now, listen. Verse 33, that is the man who was blind speaking. The man who was healed from his blindness is saying, if this man were not of God, he could do nothing. Again, one more time, see the wisdom of Christ, Christ speaking through this man. He received a much deeper healing than his physical sight; he received wisdom from God. And the Pharisees answered this man whom the Pharisees considered cursed. They said unto him, you were altogether born in or of sin with a severe affliction, and you are teaching us? "And they cast him out."
And we see this happening in the church today. You were a drug addict. You just got picked up off the street. You have never been to Bible school. Who do you think you are having revelation? It is happening today, and they are throwing them out of the church.
Verse 35, "And when Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he found him, he said unto him, Do you believe on the Son of God?" And the man answered without pride, "Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?"
I want to tell you pride is a big thing in people today. Do you know there are some people who will never admit to you that they do not know something or that they cannot do something? They will make any kind of an excuse. They will wiggle or wriggle around in any way, but they cannot say I do not know. So if you can hear yourself in this, you need to know that this is pride, and it needs to be repented of, and you need to ask Jesus to teach you a godly way to deal with things that you do not know.
And it is all a part of honest communication. Pride will destroy honest communication, and you also need to know that, whether you mean it or whether you do not mean it -- and I believe that you do not mean it -- a failure to honestly communicate is a wound to the other person. And I know that in most instances, if not all instances, where someone fails to honestly communicate, it is for purposes of self-preservation. They do not want to expose themselves; they do not want to admit their feelings; they do not want to admit that they do not know; they do not want to admit that they cannot do.
But even when your motive is strictly to cover yourself and you have no desire or intention of hurting the other person, you need to know that when you are not honest, you hurt the other person. There is a wound to the other person, and that person has been wounded because you have made a choice to do that which protects yourself at the cost of the other person. The way we express it here, some of us that have been studying these deep, spiritual truths, is that we have sacrificed the other person. We have done something that wounded them so that we could be protected, and that is a sacrifice of the other person when they have not done any harm to us.
Self-preservation is a manifestation of pride. The Scripture says let your yea be yea, and let your nay be nay. Say what you mean, and mean what you say, and speak plainly. Do not speak in parables to someone who does not know what you are talking about because you are hurting them so that you could feel and/or look good, and it is not the way Jesus handles things.
So, brethren, be holy as your Father in heaven is holy, and be the righteousness of God. Start to practice and walk in and talk in and think with the righteousness of Christ. You are not going to wake up one morning and be the righteousness of God; you must grow into the righteousness of God. And the way you grow into it is to hear the word; to see the example of what true holiness is, of what true righteousness is. And what is our example or who is our example? Christ is our example, so we have to get a vision of what we need to do, and then we have to start praying for the strength to do it, and then we have to start walking it out, trying to do it until we succeed in doing it.
And the whole time we are going through this process, the mark of the beast is being erased from us, and the mark of Christ is being imparted to us. But I will not lie to you; it is painful. It is painful to spend 10, 20, 30, 40 years of your life dealing with a problem in a particular way and wake up one morning and say, I will t- -- not do that anymore. I am not going to do that anymore. I am going to ask Jesus to help me, and I am not going to do that anymore. And then when your carnal mind rises up and wants to deal with that problem that way and you say no, your carnal mind will punish you. He will punish you. She will punish you, and sometimes she will punish you severely, but you cry out to Jesus, and you bite the bullet. You submit yourself to God, and you resist that devil, and he shall flee from you. Glory to God.
I have prepared verses 1 through 10 [?for you?]. I just realized that I did not finish chapter 9, OK.
We are on verse 37 of chapter 9. Jesus said unto the man who was healed, "Thou hast both seen him," and the Greek word translated seen means with the eyes. You have seen him with your eyes, "and it is he that talketh with you."
And Jesus -- excuse me, Jesus is saying you have seen the righteousness of God manifested in the flesh. Brethren, the whole point is carnal man cannot recognize the Spirit of God, therefore he came in the flesh of a man. And he said to this man, you have seen and talked with the Son of God. Can you imagine someone saying that to you? Looking at a fallen man, he looks just like you, and this person says to you, you have both seen and talked with the Son of God. Can you imagine? I do not know that I could deal with it either. If there is not a spiritual operation within your own heart witnessing to you that this is the very Christ, no one would be able to recognize him.
So the bottom line is those who recognize Christ are those in whom Christ is dwelling, those who have Christ. Christ recognizes Christ; you recognize your own. You are drawn to your own. You are comfortable with your own. So we see the Lord clearly saying that there are people in the earth who have partaken of the existing fivefold ministry and they have bego- -- I am sorry. They have gone beyond the surface of that ministry. They have gone beyond reading the letter of the word. They have gone beyond having their body healed. They have gone beyond being healed from drug addiction. Something has happened to their heart. While they were getting healed, while they were getting delivered, while they were dancing in the Spirit, while they were learning the word of God, somehow that Spirit penetrated their heart and joined with their human spirit.
And it is happening today, and there are people out there in the church world to whom this has happened. They have -- truly have a personal relationship with the Lord, not a relationship of a friendship but an intimacy, an experiential knowledge of him who has saved them or who is in the process of saving them. And his life is internalized in them, and they therefore recognize his life in every other human being in whom it is internalized -- he has internalized.
And we are told in another place that, if you do what the Lord tells you to do, you will recognize his doctrine. If you obey him, you will know his doctrine. You will know his servants; you will know his prophets. And, conversely or by reverse inference, we might say, in every place that the true prophet of God is rejected, in every place that the true word of God is rejected, that person does not have an intimate knowledge of Christ. He might have an acquaintanceship with him, but he does not know him. How do I know? He just had an encounter with him and failed to recognize him, and that is the truth. So we have many that have an acquaintanceship with the Lord, but they do not have an intimate knowledge of him.
And the end of the ultimate goal of the existing ministry in the church world today, the glory that is poured out in the meetings, the joy that is poured out in the meetings, the healing, the deliverance, the dancing, everything that is fun and good and satisfying to your soul has a particular goal associated with it, and that goal is to impregnate you with Christ. If that does not happen to you, all the fun was for naught, and not only that, but the fun is coming to an end. Brethren, it is coming to an end, and those who have been impregnated are going into a pregnancy and a labor that is difficult, and those who have not been impregnated are losing the fun.
It is like a young woman falling in love with a man that is going off to war, and, God forbid, he does not come back. She has nothing of him left, but if she has his child, she has something of him. Brethren, the only way to go on with God is to bear his child because the fun that you have been having in the Pentecostal church movement is drawing to a close. And this may come as a shock to you, but the Lord Jesus Christ calls the shots, and he is ending the season by which he plays with you. So you will either relate to him as a young adult or you will not relate to him. Either you will go on, or you will lose what you have.
And the tragedy of this aspect of the message -- even though it is not the message that is a tragedy. Although God knows what he is doing, the tragedy in the church today is that this message -- the people do not hear the message, so they are not even making an educated choice. But the bottom line is that those whose hearts have truly responded to the present outpouring, God knows. I do not know. Those whose hearts have truly responded have joined in an intimacy with him, and he is bringing them with him, and those who have been playing games will be left behind with nothing. The party is over. It is a very serious business to be a Christian. It is OK when you are a baby. God plays with you in your playpen, but he is moving on. And if you have never known him, he has cast you out, and the door is closing in your face.
And just be careful that you do not indict God. He does things that I do not understand. He brings judgments on people that have made me cry, but I cannot see clearly. My sight is hindered. I do not have full sight. I do not have full understanding, so I keep my eyes on myself, and I do as I am told. And I strongly recommend you do not criticize God or his ways or his purposes and that you believe that, if someone is under judgment from God, that they deserve it and that what they need to do is cry out for mercy, and it is a relationship between God and that person. If you interfere, you are out of order, if you interfere by criticizing God. You can always ask for mercy for the person. We are always free to do that.
Verse obthur- -- verse 38, and the man who was healed said, "Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him."
And I suggest to you that that worship was with his heart. It is not clear in the English or in the Greek how the man worshipped him. Did he get down on his knees? Did he kiss Jesus' feet? Did he kiss his ring? Did he kiss his hands? We have a manifestation in the lady with the green pants. How did he worship him? I suggest to you his carnal mind, the carnal mind of the man who was healed, went down very low, and he acknowledged that Jesus was the Son of God.
Listen to this, "Jesus said to him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with you." And the man said, "Lord, I believe you."
And that belief, that submission to the truth that was in the flesh in front of him, is worship. The man worshipped God, the Father, by believing that his Son was in fact who he said he was.
And then Jesus said, in verse 39, "For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind."
Well, that is a strange thing to say. It, sort of, sounds like Jesus is saying now you see me, but soon you will not see me, and then soon you will see me again. He said that in another place. What kind of doubletalk is this? Some of you might have heard me say to you, after getting annoyed at me or upset with me, I have told you I am not giving you hard time; you just do not understand what I am saying. I do not believe Jesus was giving this man a hard time; the man just did not understand what he was saying.
Jesus said, I have come into the world for judgment. I have come -- excuse me, to show the world their sins so that they might be reformed into the righteousness of God. He said, I have come into the world, that they which see not might see, those who are spiritually blind. And I suggest to you Jesus is much more concerned with your spiritual sight than your natural sight. How do I know that? There are many who are naturally blind, and they stand blind for long periods of time. God does not heal them because he is using that trauma. He is using that difficulty in their life to bring them to a place where they reach out for him.
So Jesus said that he came into the world, that those which were spiritually blind might see because Jesus is our sight. And I suggest to you that this man received his spiritual sight when Jesus formed an intimate, spiritual union with him and Christ began to be formed in the man's heart. That is how the man had all this wisdom to the Pharisees. When Jesus healed his eyes, they had an intimate -- or a spiritual intimacy that gave this man wisdom, not only physical sight but the wisdom of spiritual sight.
So Jesus said he came in to judge the world. He came in to give sight to those who could not see, "and that they which see might be made blind." Who is Jesus blinding?
The Pharisees.
Well, more spec- -- spiritually speaking, who or what is he blinding?
[INAUDIBLE]
Well, you -- that is all true, but the way I think the Lord wants me to express it right now is that he is blinding the eye of the carnal mind. Now, remember, fallen man has two eyes side-by-side, and we think that is normal, but it is not normal. Our eye is supposed to be single, we are told in another place. And, spiritually speaking, one eye is supposed to exist on top of the other eye. The reason we have two eyes spread apart is that it is a spiritual statement of our double-mindedness. But there is a carnal eye, and there is a spiritual eye, and the spiritual eye, which is Christ, is supposed to be lying on top of the carnal eye. So the ones who are -- who can see that Jesus came to blind are the ones who are seeing with their carnal eye. He came to blind their carnal eye. And I want to suggest to you that our God is not about to blind your carnal eye without first giving you or making sure you have an operational spiritual eye. Why? Because you need sight.
So those that could not see, those that did not have a spiritual eye, Jesus came to give them a spiritual eye. And those which see with the spiritual eye of the carnal mind, he blinded. Jesus came to blind the third eye. Do we not do that in deliverance, blind the third eye? I do not know. I am up against a stone wall. Let me try it again. Listen, some fallen people have spiritual sight, and other do not. Some people are just completely blind; they have no spiritual sight. Other people have spiritual sight that comes out of Satan's spirit, the third eye. Jesus came to give spiritual sight to those who are completely blind; they have no spiritual sight at all. And to those who have spiritual sight out of Satan's spirit, those who have a third eye, Jesus came to blind it. And before he says that, he says, I came to judge the world to show the people their sins. He has come into the world for judgment, and the judgment of God blinds the third eye and exalts the eye of Christ. That is what he is talking about.
"And some of the Pharisees which were with Jesus heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also? And Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, you should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth."
In other words, Jesus says, for those who are saying, boy, I just do not understand this stuff. I do not understand this spiritual stuff; I do not understand this message; I do not understand anything you just said, and I confess that I do not understand because I do not have Christ. There is no sin imputed unto you. The Lord has come to give you sight. But to the ones who say we have sight; we have this book; we know all that there is to know; we know this word. Anything that God would have told us is already given. There is no new thing. There is nothing to learn. We see all that there is to see. Jesus said, "Your sin therefore remaineth."
And the sin that is saying all those things is pride. Pride is the blinder. Brethren, for any man who is not in perfection, to say that he knows everything is a manifestation of pride. You cannot possibly know everything. If you knew e- -- for you to know everything, Christ must be in full stature in you. It is impossible for your carnal mind or an [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- or Christ, which has not yet been born into full maturity, to impart all knowledge to you. So, so long as you are not in full stature, you do not know everything, and for you to think that you know everything is the sin of pride, and that sin is not covered. That sin remaineth with you. There is -- what does that mean? It means you are subject to judgment. It means you are subject to satanic judgment.
Now we know that when we have sin which is confessed, we are subject to the judgment throne of Christ. Sometimes, brethren, it is just not enough to confess that sin and work it out through overcoming experiences. Sometimes that sin is so entrenched in our soul that the only thing that will get it out is judgment, and that is the love of God unto you. You are trying. You are confessing your sin. You are repenting. You are doing everything you know how to do, but there is just something wrong. You just cannot get over it. You need an operation, and that is the loving judgment of God, as painful as it might be. It is a surgery that you need. But to say that you do not need help, to say that you have arrived, to say that you have got everything you need and that you are all that there is, that is the malignant sin of pride, an unconfessed sin of pride, and then you are turned over to the judgment of Satan.
And there is a difference between the two judgments. What is the judgment of Satan? It is an abusive boss or an abusive relationship in your life. I am just giving you examples. I am -- please, do not write this in stone. It does not have to happen to you this way. An abusive authority over you is a judgment of Satan. A female authority over you is a judgment of Satan [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- someone with a female mind, someone that does not know how to treat people under them. Someone who is abusive or insensitive to or unloving towards or unkind towards the people under their authority is a female mind. It is a judgment to be subject to a female mind. It is a judgment for family line sin to be married to an abusive man. Abusive authority is one possible, satanic judgment.
Another satanic judgment is physical infirmity. God does not make you sick. God does not cripple you. God does not break your legs. But if there is un-dealt-with sin in your life, Satan may claim his wages, and then God may use it, use your pain to bring you to repentance and closer to him. But God does not break your legs or put you in a car accident or give you an abusive husband. God does not do that. God teaches you; God talks to you; he sends you a loving teacher; he sends you a dream; he sends you a gentle word.
The whole problem, brethren, is that we are fallen and filled up to the top of our heads with pride and stiff necks and arrogance and haughtiness. And every kind person God has ever sent to you to teach you, you have killed. Remember the parable? They killed all his prophets, and the Lord said, well, they have killed my prophets, but I will send my Son now. Surely, they will not kill my Son. They will recognize that he is the Son of God and learn from him and submit themselves to correction. But those to whom he was sent killed the Son of God, brethren, and I declare to you that, in this hour, those to whom the Son of God, who is manifesting in imperfect men -- those to whom he is sent, those people are killing him, except in a few instances where Christ is appearing in that person. And, even then, as hard as you all try to submit to the Christ, the carnal mind is arising in you and killing the Son of God whenever he can. Why? Because you are fallen.
That is why judgment is necessary, because your mind is reprobate, because you are spiritually sick, the whole creation, brethren, some a little more, some a little less. But you killed the one sent to help you. You are beating on the lifeguard, brethren. He is trying to haul you into shore, and you are punching his face out. So it may be necessary for him to knock you out so that he can get you into shore, and that is the truth of the Scripture.
God does not break your legs; God does not give you cancer; God does not give you a heart attack; God does not make you lose your job; God does not give you financial problems. All of those things are the results of sin in your life, and sometimes we are just not strong enough to change with the gentle correction of the Lord. We need to be beaten; we need to have hard experiences because of our fallen condition.
And, therefore, on occasion, if the Lord makes a judgment to turn you over to Satan for a season, what does that mean? If you are open to a curse in your life and you do get a broken leg or you do get in a car accident, it is because you had an open door. You had sin, and the Lord did not cover it over. Why? Because you were not victorious. He is not going to cover your sin if you are not victorious in that area, so he lets you be exposed, and then he uses it to teach you and to train you and to help you to change. But the judgment of the broken leg or the lost job is not sent by God; it is Satan's judgment on you. If you can hear it, hear it.
Maybe for something you did and maybe for something your ancestor did, but I remind you, all you Pharisees, that you are your ancestors. And although God does not send a mugging to you -- God does not write out, well, today, Sister Jean will be mugged. God does not do that, but if you have a spiritual mark on your soul that opens you up to a mugging, if that sin is not properly dealt with, you will be mugged. I hope you can hear it. It is very subtle. You cannot be victimized in any area of your life without an open door, and that open door is called sin. No one is innocent; all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
And it is a very fine line between the message, the false message that is being preached in this church today which says God has arranged for every terrible thing that has ever happened to you so that you can learn to experience it, so that you can learn to overcome it. That is a lie. It is also a lie that God does these terrible things to you. That is a lie. But the truth is, brethren, that you have sinned and that in that sin you have been subjected to Satan who is an abusive authority over you and that that authority is abusing you to the fullest extent that he has legal ground to do so and that when Christ is in your life, he will move in and use that judgment to help you to work out of it.
But do not be Job; do not say that you do not deserve this trial because that is the sin of pride. We deserve everything we get in this world. Every sin will have its just recompense, and if you are afflicted, if it was not something you did in this life, it was something your ancestor did, and you are your ancestor. And for so long as you declare your innocence, you are going to be sitting just like Job on that mound. And you need to know that when you declare your innocence, when you, publicly or hiddenly in your own heart, declare that you do not deserve what is happening to you, I am not protecting you from this affliction, and there is no deliverance in that because it is the sin of pride that says I do not deserve this.
We all deserve everything we get, and the grace and the mercy of God is Christ who is our ability to overcome the curse, to rewrite the writing, to erase the mark and give us a new name. You are not innocent; you are guilty. Now let us get out of here.
OK, it is the end of chapter 9. I will take questions. You have a question?
I would just like to know to what extent, you know, I mean, that [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- you said this before, you know, that you have to reap what you sow, that you kn- -- so that you know and you do not do it again. It is like the -- you said that on one message. Like, if you wanted somebody fired and you got them fired, then may ex- -- you probably will experience being fired if you are under the judgment of God. But if it was on your family line and you were a victim and -- you know, say that, you know, I mean -- I do not -- I did not quite get that about the mugging, but if you -- say, in -- using that example, if you say -- if you have that coming to you and you are going to reap that but you are saying, OK, Lord, I repent of stealing, I guess, that is a m- -- you know, a stealing sin -- and you are repenting from stealing the best that you know how and you say, yes, it is in me, and I am that way, but you are repenting of it, then does it s- -- do you still have to be mugged? I mean, ha- -- to what extent does this go? If your ancestor murdered somebody and you are saying, OK, Lord, that sin of murder is in me, or they raped somebody and that sin of rape is in me and -- or whatever, to what degree, say it is severe, do you have to be killed to experience -- I do not -- you know, ho- -- to what extent?
I do not know. It depends on the individual case. Some cases are severe. Some people, in fact, are murdered whose ancestors have murdered. I do not know. You have to get before God and find out what he is requiring of you. Everyone has a personal program --
Yeah, but --
-- with God.
Yeah. But that is what I am asking. Like, if -- like, do you have to have -- does that mean that as your judgment that God is going to have you be raped and you experience what was done o- -- in the family line?
No. I just went over that. God does not have you raped. God does not write an order for you to be raped.
No. But I am saying, if you are that, you know, you do not deserve any of this trial, but how far dose the trial go? Does it mean that you are going to experience something severe like being raped or something if that was on your family line?
I do not know. Some people do. I do not know. Every case is an individual case. I remember they had someone on "The 700 Club" one night, a couple who lost their son. The man was raised in the church, a Christian man walking the walk, and he was mugged and homosexually gang raped, and he contracted AIDS, and he died. He did not even get healed from the AIDS. Now, in that case, God let it happen. So -- but to walk around in fear of saying that there was a -- some- -- my ancestor raped, and I am waiting to be raped -- no, that is a lack of faith. We go before the Lord and put it before him and ask that he remove this sin from you.
Yeah. But that is what I am saying. If you are doing all that you know to do and you are praying about a particular thing, whatever it is, and you are praying and you are a- -- if you are doing all that you know to do, then is he going to save you from it? I mean, if you are walking around in pride and saying, no, I do not deserve this, but if you are admitting and you are praying, should that not make a difference?
I would think so, but the problem with a lot of people is that they are denying that this potential is righteous. If your ancestor has raped, then the potential for you to be raped is righteous, and it requires a specific intervention of God to erase that -- a specific pardon from God. You are entitled to the jail term; you deserve the jail term; you deserve the judgment. Your ancestor did it, therefore you must humble yourself and say, dear Father, please, remove this sin from me that I should not have to suffer this just recompense. But for an attitude of the heart that says, well, I do not deserve it. It was my ancestor, not me, and I have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore it cannot happen to me. That is a dangerous attitude.
I understand that.
OK.
I am just asking if you are -- if -- does it make it so that it is changed when you are praying and you are saying forgive the sins of my ancestors?
No. That does not fix it. You have got to petition the Lord until you are free from it. I came to the Lord half dead, OK. I gave my whole life to God. I said, please, heal me, Lord, but, nevertheless, whatever you do, your will not mine. And I just let it go, and it looked many ti- -- it looked like I was going to die. As a matter of fact, there was an occasion that I got a prophecy from my pastor that had me going through the valley of the shadow of death, scared me half to death. And I had several occasions, after I had been with the Lord, several times that I almost died, but I gave it to him. I said, if you want to kill me, kill me. If you want -- let me die; then I will die. And he decided not to kill me, and you have to put it in his hands, hoping for the best. Petition him for mercy --
Yeah. Well, he is --
-- and hope for the best.
-- not giving any prophecy, you know. I mean, he is not giving any word. I am just saying, you know, if you are doing the best that you know how, what else can you do?
There is no guarantees. I guess, that is the an- -- it just came on me. That was the Spirit. I guess, what you need to hear is there are no guarantees, and the Scripture says he will have mercy on who he has mercy. And if he does not have mercy on you, he will not have mercy on you. But we know, or at least if you believe the Scripture --
Because I [CROSSTALK]
I am talking. At least, if you know the Scripture, to bottom line is that even if he does not have mercy on you, he is still righteous, but there is [sic] no guarantees.
I mentioned something about this before, and you were saying, no, God -- that is not me- -- what it means, that God does not mean it that something is going to happen to you that is severe like that. I mentioned it to you before, and yo- -- so it seems like -- I mean, you know, you said one thing when I talked to you before about it, and you are saying something else now.
Well, I do not remember what I said, and I do not --
Because I mentioned --
-- remember what your question was, and I do not remember the circumstances. And in the event that I made a mistake when I told you that -- I do not know; I do not remember.
I said [CROSSTALK]
But this is the word of the Lord to you now: You cannot secure yourself in this area. And what the Lord -- and what you -- there is no insurance. There is no work that you could do that would ensure that this will not happen to you, and the Lord requires that you give over your life to him, telling him he could do whatever he wants with you. And the bottom line is that when you do that, when you give your whole life over to him and say, Lord, I am yours, if you are going to let it happen, so be it. When you do that, you have just given yourself to God, and you have become his property. And I would like to believe he would not let it happen to you, but it is all an attitude of the heart.
You cannot put your finger on him; you cannot force him; you cannot put him under an obligation; you cannot coerce him; you cannot make him feel guilty; you cannot tell him you have done such-and-such-and-such and therefore he must. The only thing you can do is say, Lord, take me. I am yours, and I will love you no matter what you let happen to me, and anything other than that is pride. I cannot make you any promises, and he will not under these circumstances. Hard word.
Well, I said something about, you know, I do not think it is right to walk around in fear of judgment like a judgment -- something like that, like a judgment like God would judge somebody and that he is not in control and that h- -- somebody would get raped or, you know, severely hurt or something. And you said, no, God does not do that.
No. God does not have you raped. God --
[CROSSTALK] and you said it was not --
-- does not [CROSSTALK]
-- good to walk around in fear, in constant fear that something like that might happen.
No. It is not good. I did say that to you, and I still say that to you. So what does that say? Listen, it says that if your reaction to what I just said to you -- what I just said to you is that there is no guarantee. And if your reaction to that is to walk around in fear, that is the sin of pride, which is a lack of faith in God.
OK.
OK. Anybody else before we go on? The reason I stopped and I was thinking is that when we spoke last night, to be honest with you, I could not underst- -- could not follow your train of thought as to how you drew that conclusion. I could not understand as t- -- why you would say such a thing in response to what I was saying. I could not make the connection. I could not follow your reasoning. But someone -- I did get a word of knowledge to- -- yesterday, I guess it was, that my eyes would be opened. And I just thank God for understanding because it is my desire to be able to help anyone who comes to me. But sometimes I just cannot -- I -- to be honest with you -- and not just you, you know. I just cannot figure out how you think that as a result of what I said. I just cannot follow you.
And if -- some of you may have noticed that I will always ask you -- after you ask a question and I answer it, I will always say to you, did I answer your question, because there have been times, when I first started preaching -- and I have it on a message. It bothers me every time I listen to the message. The person asked me a question, and I did not realize it at the time, but I did not answer their question. So I will always say to you, did I answer your question? And if the answer is no, I will try to pursue it further with you because it is my desire to answer your questions. On occasion, if I cannot, I will have to tell you that I cannot, but it is my desire to answer your question. Sometimes I just cannot figure out where you are coming from, but I would like to figure out where you are coming from. I am here to teach you. I am here to minister to you. So I am just very grateful that God gave me that understanding of how you were saying that in response to what I said.
So let me take this opportunity to exhort you all to [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- listen to what just happened here and to bear in mind that it is common for disciples to misunderstand what I say, OK, because I never ever meant to say, ever have said, and I would like to believe never will say, that God gives you a broken leg or any such thing or that you should walk around in fear. So, therefore, if you think that I said something to you that is distressing, I just want to continue to encourage you to speak out. That is -- I am glad that you did that, and please talk to me.
Do not [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- do not come fighting at me because I do not like it when you come [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- at me with a fighting spirit, you know, and it will not be a communication. But you can ask me any honest question that you want because it is not a blessing to God if you misunderstand me and then you go around thinking that I said that or that I meant that when it is the farthest thing, when it is the exact opposite of what I believe. So, please, continue to communicate with me, and I just rebuke that fear in you, Rita. You know, put your faith in God, and everything will be OK, but he does not give you a signed, sealed document promising it. OK?
Mm-hmm.
OK. It is 3:30. You want to go on? Everybody is ready here. To -- everybody is ready, OK. Everybody OK? OK.
Chapter 10, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." Jesus speaking, "Truly, truly, I say unto you, He that entereth" -- into where? Where are we trying to get into?
[INAUDIBLE]
The kingdom. Some people might say heaven. It is OK to say heaven, but it is more accurate to say the kingdom. Why? Because when you use the word heaven, the tendency is to hook in to all of the traditions that we were exposed to when we were growing up, heaven being some faraway place, OK, some idyllic, physical place where you step on the flowers, and they spring back up again. Maybe that is going to happen. I do not know, but I do not see it in the Scripture. Well, maybe it will. I do not know what it is going to be like out there when the whole world changes.
But that which we are trying to get into is the kingdom. Why? Because in the kingdom is full provision for all of our needs, and that kingdom, brethren, is not a physical place where you have all of the trees that will provide food for you. That kingdom is a spiritual place that, when your spirit abi- -- and that place is within you. "Behold, the kingdom of God is within you." And when you get into that spiritual place, when your human spirit enters into the kingdom, you are spiritually provided; your soul and your body is spiritually provided for from within.
Now that is hard for carnal people to understand, and I am carnal too. I am spiritual in the areas that God has made me spiritual, but if God has not dealt with me in a particular area, I am just as carnal as the most carnal person could be, and that is the truth. So it is very hard, even for me, to comprehend that when my spirit that I -- which I cannot even see, enters into the kingdom, that my soul and this body will be totally provided for.
What does that mean? Well, it comes in two stages. First of all, it comes in the immature stage which operates by that internalized spirit attracting into your life relationships and circumstances that will meet your existing needs. If you need a job, that spirit which is within you will attract someone who will arrive in your home one day for a reason that has nothing whatsoever to do with your employment. Most likely, they will wind up in your home because you had a willing heart towards helping them, and, lo and behold, this person, you will find out, is sin a position to help you with your employment.
The world says one hand washes the other; the Lord says you sow what you reap. Do not worry about your needs. Minister every time you have an opportunity to minister. Comfort every time you have an opportunity to comfort. Answer questions every time you have an opportunity to answer questions. Do good, brethren, and good will be done unto you, maybe not immediately, but do not cease from doing good works because, in due season, you shall surely reap if you do not faint. Now that says to me that, if you expect to reap in five minutes or the next day, you are being very foolish. There will be a waiting time of sacrifice, of doing good and getting nothing back until you begin to reap.
So the immature manifestation of having the kingdom in your life means that the spirit inside of you -- now, listen, we talked about this earlier. There used to be a spirit inside of you that attracted men to you who would use you and abuse you. There used to be a spirit inside of you that attracted women to you that would not stay with you more than two months, and the relationship would break up. There used to be a spirit inside of you that attracted you to alcoholics. Do you know there was a woman on TV once? She had had three husbands, and all of them cheated on her, and she had no reason to believe, each time that she married, that this man was an adulterer, but there was a mark on her soul that attracted her to men who had the potential to cheat.
But now, brethren, you see, you were unrighteous, but now, as you are converted into the righteousness of God, there is a mark on you that attracts people to you who will do good unto you, who will offer you jobs, who will offer you relationships that will be a blessing to you. There is now a mark on you that attracts faithful people to you. There is now a mark on you that attracts decent people, honorable, truthful people unto you, so there is an entering into the kingdom that provides your needs down here in Hell through other people.
And if you do not know that the relationships that you have has been ordained by the ruling spirit in your life, you do not know what is going on in your spiritual being. It is no accident that you meet the same kind of people that get you into the same kind of trouble, that mess you up over and over and over. We are right back to the beginning of this message. There is a writing on your soul that keeps on messing you up. You are attracted to the wrong people. You like the wrong people. You get a satisfaction from being around people who will hurt you, who will lead you into trouble, who will mislead you, who will cheat you, misuse you, abuse you, dishonor you, disrespect you and leave you bleeding on the Jericho Road.
There is now a new spirit in you, and it is attracting people to you who will be decent to you, who will honor you, who will love you, who will have goodness in their hearts to you, who will look to help you without asking for anything back, and your life will begin to change. And, of course, the mature manifestation of having the kingdom operate in your life can be revealed through some events that we saw in Jesus' life. For example, he needed money to pay his taxes, and he caught the fish, and there was a coin in the fish's mouth. That is a manifestation of the kingdom that comes with full stature or in the event that God has decided to provide supernatural provision for you, and we do see it sometimes in the lives of people who do the works of God.
Brethren, I am telling you right now, the Bible says, you do not work, you do not eat. So if you are one of these people that got a prophecy that you have a ministry and you are ready to get up and go before God establishes you and there is no income coming in for you, you had better go out and get a job. If God has called you and God has sent you and God has ordained that this is the time for you to be in full-time ministry without a second job, that money could manifest supernaturally, but even in this hour it is very rare that money just appears. God usually sends people to give you the money, although sometimes it supernaturally appears, but it is just here or there, OK.
When I was in the hospital, my s- -- either somebody paid my hospital bill or it got wiped out of the computer. My personal feeling is it got wiped out of the computer, but even then I did not see any dollar bills manifesting supernaturally on my kitchen table. The bill God knocked out of the computer, unless somebody paid it. If they did, I never found out who it was. So we see a mature manifestation of Christ actually bringing things that do not exist into being. A coin appeared in a fish's mouth. Food that was not there appeared.
I heard a very moving testimony from a very well-known preacher not too long ago, how poor he was when he was a child. And during one s- -- period, his father was ill, so there was no income in the house. There were, like, eight kids. His mother was a woman of great faith, and there were days that there was no food in the house whatsoever, and the mother would instruct the children to set up the table. And this little boy who is now a preacher would say, what is the matter with mom? You know [?what I mean?]. There is no food. There is not a thing to eat in that refrigerator, but they obeyed their mother, and they set the table for a feast with the best china and with cloth napkins and the best that they had in the house.
And then the mother said, "Fill all the drinking glasses with water," and they did that, and then they all stood there and praised the Lord, no money and no food. And this man who has been ministering for Christ for I think he said 50 years now, he is a powerful minister of God. He said, without fail, every time they ever did it, the doorbell rang. He said sometimes the food was cooked, and sometimes the food was not cooked, but they never ever did that, that God did not provide a meal. But we see, in Jesus' ministry, he spoke, and the food appeared supernaturally. Both of these instances are manifestations of the kingdom in your life. One, when other people bring the food, it means there is less power available, so God sends men. When there is enough power, he may do it without men, OK.
So the one who is entering in is trying to get into the kingdom. He is trying to lay hold of this spiritual power, but he is not entering in by the door. And we see down, and Jesus says he is the door. Somewhere farther down here, Jesus says he is the door. Yeah, verse 7. We find out that Jesus is the door into the kingdom of God. He is the only way in. Now the kingdom of God is within you. The kingdom of God is Christ Jesus in you, and the only way to get Christ Jesus in you is to have an intimate experience with the Lord Jesus Christ and have his life graft unto your human spirit so that Christ Jesus begins to form in you, and then the door is within you. The kingdom of God is within you.
Now is your body entering into the door? Is your soul entering into the door? No. What part of you is entering into the door? Your spirit is entering into the door. The spirit is the controller of the soul and the body. It is an internalized control. Our spirit must enter into the kingdom, but before our spirit can enter into the kingdom, the kingdom must enter into us. And if you are trying to enter into a spiritual world which is within you that is not placed there by the Lord Jesus Christ, you are a thief and a robber.
And we have a whole series of messages of teachings coming right out of the church about -- which is teaching that we should go in and find the God within us and enter in. But I am telling you, if the Lord Jesus Christ has not placed the kingdom in you, the god that you are connecting with is the god that you were born with, and my Bible says that your daddy is the -- who is your daddy? He is the devil, and h- -- your daddy is the god that is within you, so you have not entered into the true kingdom. You have entered into the kingdom all right, the kingdom of darkness, and you are deceived because the pride of your own mind has blinded you.
So, "He that entereth in not by the door bu- -- into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber."
The sheepfold is Christ, and thief -- the Greek word translated thief means embezzler, and the Greek word translated robber means plunderer, or one who steals with violence. And I suggest to you that the carnal mind is the violent one and that the embezzler is Satan.
"But he that entereth in by the door" -- oh, I am sorry, "But he that climbeth up some other way" -- that is what we have that whole series of teachings on. The climbing up of another way is the use of your own human spirit to use spiritual power to meet your needs, and Jesus says you are a thief and a liar. What are you stealing? A thief and a robber. What are you embezzling, and what are you stealing? You are embezzling, and you are stealing the life of God which is in you, your human spirit. You are laying hold of her, and you are using her spiritual power to obtain your needs in an illegal way, a spiritually illegal way. You are breaking the law.
And we could, sort of, apply that to a conversation that we had here earlier today. It -- we are not only talking about money here. We are also talking about spiritual needs. To try to get your spiritual needs, to try to get yourself healed or delivered or to get a blessing from God by forcing it is climbing in the wrong way. You have to go in through Jesus, and you cannot control him. You have to wait on him, and if you try to get your healing or deliverance any other way, you fall into this category. What does that mean? It means that it is your carnal mind doing it; that is what it means. I am not condemning you. It means you are using the wrong weapon. You are using the wrong technique. The only way to get something from God is to prostrate yourself at his feet. You cannot pressure him.
Verse 2, "But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep." "But he who entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep."
So the one who goes in by the door is Christ. The shepherd of the sheep is Christ. If you enter into the kingdom through Jesus Christ, that means Christ Jesus in you is being formed, and you are the true shepherd or -- of the sheep or the true king of this vessel or the true owner of this vessel. If you obtain spiritual power or you meet the needs of your own person by any means other than the Lord Jesus Christ, you are a thief and a robber.
Now, before Christ comes to live in you, you have no choice, but we are all thieves and robbers and liars and everythi- -- murderers and everything else that our father, the devil, is, before Christ -- before the opportunity for Christ comes to us. But once the Lord Jesus Christ is revealed to us, to obtain spiritual benefits or spiritual power any other way is a serious thing, and the Lord wants that dealt with. That is a very strong point. When you do not have Christ, you have no choice, but once you have Christ, he wants you to switch over and start getting your needs met through his life. And if you have Christ and you are still using your carnal ways, you are a thie- -- he is telling you. He is not condemning you. He is saying, hey, look, you are still using your carnal mind, and you are up against me. You are wasting your time; you are spinning your wheels. And if you cannot stop, I am going to have to stop you. I am breaking you through hard experiences.
Verse 3, "To him the porter openeth." To him the porter or the doorkeeper openeth. To who? To Christ, the doorkeeper opener, "and the sheep hear his voice."
Who is the doorkeeper? I suggest to you that the doorkeeper are the cherubim that have flaming swords that are guarding the way into Eden. You cannot get into the kingdom unless you pass through the fire, and the cherubim that are guarding Eden, they have fire at their disposal, and fire is judgment. What that is saying is that you cannot enter into the kingdom with sin. You cannot bring your sin in. As you move towards the Lord and petition him to meet your needs, as you draw closer to him, because he is a consuming fire, your sin must burn away. As you get closer to him and become more and more eligible for his healing and deliverance, your sin must burn away. It is a simultaneous process of confessing your sins, repenting, being changed.
And as a result of your changing nature, your problems and afflictions begin to fall away from you. Why? Because they lose their legal hold on you as you become the righteousness of God. They cannot cleave unto you. That spiritual disease can no longer cleave unto you. Why? Because you have a new writing on your soul that says do not touch this one because, if you try to touch this one, you shall be the one who dies, not this one. Just as in the crucifixion of Christ, it is not Christ who dies, but it is the carnal mind who dies.
So, "To Christ the doorkeeper openeth up; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out."
Well, to hear the voice of the Lord, we ta- -- I am not going to take too much time on that because we talked about it already. Hearing the voice of the Lord is not speaking about a carnal voice. To hear the voice of the Lord, that word voice, the Greek word translated voice, does not have to be translated human language. It can be translated a sound, could be translated a musical sound. And I suggest to you that a musical sound typifies spirit. We need to recognize the voice of the spirit, the prompting of his life saying it is I. It is everything I have been talking about today. We need to recognize Christ when we see him, and that is what this expression means, "to hear his voice." You have to recognize him when he reveals himself to you.
"The door opens to Christ; and the sheep hear the voice of Christ when he is inside of you." You will hear his voice when he is growing inside of you, "and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out."
Now we know, those of us that have been studying here for a while, that names in the Scripture are spirit. So to say he calleth his own sheep by name does not mean he is saying yoo-hoo; it means he is naming his sheep. And how do you name sheep? In the same way that a man n- -- gives his name to his wife. What it means is that when you have an intimate relationship with Christ, he gives you his name, and his name is Spirit. So through that intimate union with Christ, his Spirit engraves a mark on your soul. So when the Scripture says he calls his sheep by name, it is not that he hears and you answer and you trot after him like the Pied Piper. It means he is giving you his name, and when you have his name, when his mark is on you, then you will hear his voice. When his Spirit is in you and he speaks to you through another manifestation of Christ, you will recognize that spirit because his Spirit is in you.
And the only way you can get his Spirit in you is when he gives you his name, and the way he gives you his name is by you -- by the foolishness of preaching. He said, my spirit -- my words are spirit, and my words are life. You sit under this anointing. You sit under this preaching. Hopefully, you are penetrated by the spirit of the word, gets in, joins with your spirit. There is a joining. He has given you his name, and now you can hear him wherever he is speaking because his name is on you. Everybody OK?
"And they follow him: because they know his voice."
And when -- OK, and they fo- -- "and he leadeth them out." "And he calls the sheep by his own name, and he leadeth them out," OK.
Verse 4, "And when he putteth forth his own sheep" --
Now that Greek word that is translated "putteth forth," it is the same word that is translated "to cast out" in the casting out of spirits. It is a word that is associated with some violence or, if not violence, force. And I am suggesting to you that what it is talking about is the drawing out of the human spirit from the influence of the carnal mind and Satan. "And when he draweth out his own sheep" -- because he -- once he becomes internalized in you and starts growing in you, the next thing that he is going to do is draw your human spirit out from under the influence of Satan and the carnal mind.
And then he is going to -- "and he goes before them, and the sheep follow him."
This Greek word translated "follow him" means "to accompany him" or "to join themself [sic] to him." Listen, brethren, first you have to have an intimacy with him. Then he joins himself to you. Then you get his name on you so that you can hear his voice because his name is inside of you, and then he is going to draw you out forcibly. It is a warfare to get your human spirit free from your carnal mind, and then you are going to join with him. That is what he says. That is the whole message right here. It is translated "follow him," but the Greek word means "joined to him." So your human spirit is being disjoined from the carnal mind and joined to Christ, your new husband.
"And the sheep follow him: for they know his voice," because he is inside of them.
Verse 5, "And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of the strangers."
Now a stranger is someone who is not from your own family. Brethren, when Christ is growing inside of you, when his name is written on you, you are going to recognize every member of your spiritual family. You are going to meet a to- -- a human being that you never saw before in your life, and your internalized Christ is going to know that that person has Christ because they are a member of your family. What the Scripture is saying is you are not going to go after the carnal mind, and you are not going to follow after the doctrine of the carnal mind. You are not going to go after carnally minded people because something inside of you is going to say to you not that one, not that way, not that doctrine. It is not of this family. And if you do not have that voice inside of you, if you do not have that internalized Christ inside of you, you are a widow, and you are an orphan, and you are without protection in the his dangerous world. OK [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
[INAUDIBLE] I know you do not mean [INAUDIBLE]
Well, you are -- spiritually speaking, you do not have a husband if that n- -- if that voice is not inside of you guiding you and directing you, you are a spiritual woman who can be easily seduced by wicked spirits in this world, and that is scriptural. That is --
An orphan?
An orphan means you do not have a father, OK, because Christ is our husband, and Jesus is our Father, so that means you are without protection, OK.
So [INAUDIBLE] [?if you could use it?] like that, what is another way [?you used it to explain it?] [CROSSTALK]
You are undefended in this -- you are spiritually undefended.
[CROSSTALK] that is all. Come on, I am just [CROSSTALK]
That is OK.
So [INAUDIBLE]
OK. Let us not turn this into a debate, OK, no debate. This is --
At least you understand where I was coming from.
Yeah. It is very difficult for men to hear this.
[CROSSTALK]
It is very difficult for men.
[INAUDIBLE] I do not understand what happened.
It is very difficult for men to be told that they are a widow and an orphan, and it is very difficult for men to be told that they are the bride of Christ. It is very difficult to tell a human man that he is female in any aspect of his life at all. They get upset; men get upset.
Instead, [?I laughed?].
You know --
[CROSSTALK]
-- so it was a nervous laugh that came out, you know, because men have all kinds of concerns about their masculinity. Everybody knows that. So this is very hard, but it comes easier when they hear the more common Scriptures that the church is the bride of Christ. The whole church is the bride of Christ. The men and women in the church are spiritually the bride of Christ, so that is OK. If you laugh, that is all right. Let it go into your spirit, OK.
So what am I, a widow [INAUDIBLE]
No. You hear from Christ all the time.
[CROSSTALK]
You -- Joseph, please, you know, OK. You could not be sitting here if you were a widow or an orphan. Christ has brought you here.
[INAUDIBLE] dysfunctional [CROSSTALK]
Well, all that it means is he has not cleaned you up yet. You have received your weapon, and your husband is in there protecting you, but he has not cleaned you up yet. You are still dysfunctional, spiritually speaking. It is hard, you know, but it is the truth.
So I am spiritually gay in Christ.
Gay -- no, female. Not gay, female, spiritually female. You are a part of -- you are going to be the bride of Christ. He is going to marry your mind. Christ is -- he is in you, but he is going to -- he has not married you. He is going to marry your mind, but he is in y- -- he is in there. You could not be here if he was not in there. He is growing inside of you, and as soon as he is mature, he is going to marry your soul, and forever you will be with the Lord. I am talking about your mind.
So he is [?riding us?].
Joseph, please.
Verse 5, "And a stranger" -- who is the stranger? The carnal mind is the stranger "they will not follow," or they will not join themselves to. That word, follow, in Greek means "to join themselves to."
So those -- what this is saying is that those men who truly have an intimate relationship with Christ, those people to whom the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ has genuinely connected, they will not join themselves to their carnal mind because they will be intimate enough with Christ to know that this mind in themselves and that this mind in another person is not Christ, and I am not going to get involved. I am not going to believe that doctrine, and I am not going to believe that counseling, and I am not going to believe that spiritual truth because I recognize that it is not of the same spirit that is inside of me.
Now some people are doing this on a conscious level, and other people are doing it on an unconscious level. You may be doing it on a very unconscious level, but your life is being very controlled by Christ.
[INAUDIBLE] go into a church.
And I have even heard you say, many times, "Something told me." Your life is being very controlled by Christ, OK.
Now we are told in verse 6, clearly, that Jesus is speaking a parable. "This parable spake Jesus unto them" -- he is speaking to the Pharisees now. Who is he speaking -- he is speaking to the Pharisees now. "But they understood not what things they were which he spake unto them."
Verse 7, "Then Jesus said unto them," a second time," Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep." I am the only way that you can get into the kingdom of God and the only way you can inherit legal, spiritual power.
Verse 8, "All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them."
So we talked about the thieves and the robbers before. That is the carnal mind and Satan. "But the sheep did not hear them." The sheep did not understand them. The sheep did not cleave unto them. I had a note on that. What did I do with it? Oh, here it is. Those who came before Jesus were all fallen men in the image of Satan, and the sheep did not understand the true spiritual meaning of this word because the men were preaching the word without spiritual understanding. Jesus said that everyone who came prior to him teaching the Scriptures, OK, did not impart deep spiritual truth to the men because they did not have it themselves. And if they tried to lead the believers into spiritual authority, it was their carnal mind doing it.
And this is going to come as a shock to a lot of people, but I am telling you, brethren, that even the old order deliverance preachers, all of that teaching that did a lot of good, it came out of the carnal minds of men. It was spiritual power and spiritual teaching that was being taught by carnal men under the influence of the Holy Ghost, and we dabbled in spirituality, receiving the Holy Ghost, speaking in tongues. We were dabbling in spirituality, and we were being taught about it by carnal men. But true entering into the kingdom, not speaking in tongues but actually expressing spiritual -- life-changing spiritual authority that can change people's souls, was not even in the old order deliverance. It is in Christ. It is in the mature mind of Christ that we see an example of in the Lord Jesus.
What is he saying? That the existing ministry can give you healing, can give you deliverance, can teach about the Holy Ghost, can teach about faith, can heal and can deliver, but they cannot bring you into everlasting life. How do I know that? Well, if you follow their teaching, you will never get in. They tell you, you have to die before you can go to heaven. Can you hear this? The sheep did not hear them. The sheep di- -- how come the sheep did not hear them? They preached the same word that I am preaching here. How come they are still dying? Because the sheep did not get the deep, spiritual truth out of the teaching that is necessary to enter into life.
And every man that has ever stood up with this word and told people that I have the secret of eternal life, take communion, eat your grape juice and your ca- -- and your cracker, put your money in my ministry, eternal life is in the Holy Ghost, eternal life is in the casting out of demons; they were all thieves and liars. That is their carnal mind talking. It is not true. Eternal life is in union with the Son. When his Spirit joins with your spirit and then marries your soul, you shall live forever, OK. Yes?
So when I was growing up and I used to go for communion, [?they did not give me?] a little [?cracker?]. I do not even know, a little white thing.
A wafer.
A wafer and a little cup of juice. So what was I doing every time I went up there? It was, like, every month, I would go up and get juice and a free little white [?cracker?].
OK. I would like to -- I just have another few verses here. I would like to finish the messages, and I will answer that as a question at the end of the message, OK.
We are on verse 8. All who ever came before me, everyone that ever taught that was not the mind of Christ, that the teaching was not coming out of the mind of Christ, they are thieves and they are robbers, and the sheep did not understand them, and that is why they are still sick and they are still dying, and they have to wa- -- come up with false doctrines that say you enter into heaven after you die because they are still dying.
Verse 9, "I am the door; by me if any man enter into the kingdom of God," or into the spiritual realm that is available to man, "he shall be saved."
If any man enter into the spiritual realm of God through me, if any man enter into the kingdom of God, "he shall be saved." Brethren, you are not saved because you said the sin is prayer. You are not saved because you speak in tongues. You are not saved because you prophesy. You have to enter into the door to be saved. You have to join with the kingdom of God.
And when he saved, you "shall go in and come out, and find pasture." He shall go into the kingdom of God and come back out to the outer realm. You shall have the ability to go in and out. The [?promisy?] -- the promise of Jacob's Ladder. It is the promise that is made to the sons of Zadok. They shall go in and out from the spiritual realm to the outer realms. They shall go into -- inward, into the spiritual realm, and minister to Christ or receive or Christ, and they shall come out into this realm and minister to human people.
"And they shall find pasture," and the word pasture indicates food. Sheep graze, OK, and they live off of the grass. So what he is saying is, when you enter into the kingdom, OK, when you become one with me, OK, you shall have the power to go in and out between the two realms, and you shall have your every need met.
Verse 10, "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy."
Steal means to take away sneakily, and I suggest to you that it is the human spirit that has been stolen. To slay or to kill means to sacrifice, and the -- that which is being sacrificed is Christ. And to destroy means to abolish; it means to put out of the way entirely. And I suggest to you that Satan is trying to get rid of the Lord Jesus completely. He is sacrificing Christ; he is stealing the human spirit, and he is trying to destroy the s- -- the Lord Jesus Christ and his work in your life.
"I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."
Those two phrases, to have life and to have more abundantly, are speaking about a recent message in the Book of John where we said -- please, you are making all that noise. It is really distracting. Thanks, OK. And that is speaking about, in the Book of John, where we had -- in recent messages, where it is one thing to have life within you. To have the Holy Ghost is to have life within you, and then there is another word, both words translated the same in the English. One word means to have that life within you, and another word means to be joined to that life, and we are speaking about the imputed anointing versus the imparted anointing. The Holy Ghost, if you have him or possess him, is to have life within you. And then there is a greater measure of God that is available to us, and that is to become one with him.
So Jesus says that -- let me just give you the exact words here. Jesus says, "But I have come that they might have life. That is the Holy Ghost, "and that they might have it more abundantly," that they might also have Christ growing in them and marrying their soul so that they can enter into eternal life. So Jesus is saying, if you enter into spiritual things through other methods, through other teaching, through carnal men, you do not have life. But the end of it is death. Glory to God.
OK. Are there any questions on this message before I answer the question on the communion? Any -- do you have a question on the message?
With what you just explained about joining with Christ and so forth, is that for, like, everyone [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- like, you say that the Father has to draw people. Just, when you go to speak with someone, is that for them? You know what I mean, like, as str- -- total strangers? Like -- I do not know how to phrase the question. Like, in a -- previously, you would ask people to confess to the Lord Jesus Christ and bring them into your heart and bring him into their heart, you know, was the old way of trying to ha- -- show someone salvation. But now what -- like, if you were to approach someone and you wanted to give them this message, would that be possible for them to --
Yes, it is possible. I have the same answer to every question you ask along these lines. It has to be Christ in you opening the conversation, opening the doors of their mind. If you are doing it in your carnal mind, you are spinning your wheels. So what you do is you just love people, and you just enter into conversations with people, and you just talk to them. And when it is Christ moving, you will all -- they will ask you a question, and someday the Lord will illuminate you and make you -- enable you to understand or to recognize when it is the move of the spirit. Usually, everything gets very quiet, and the person will ask you a question, and you answer them. And if you feel it is an opportunity to minister, you might want to pray and -- silently, Father, if this is of you, bring it to pass. Open the doors of their mind. Will you let me minister? You know, but to have an attitude of, well, I am here, and I am going to teach this person something whether they like it or not, that is not Christ.
But I meant, like, if the person -- like, what happened to me recently was I was sitting in the [?hip?] office, you know, and this real old woman came and sat down next to me. And she had a beautiful -- a smile on her face, and she was really radiant, you know. This -- it was almost like a joy in her spirit that I could feel, and we got talking, and I asked the Lord. I said, Lord, if you want me to minister, you know, whatever you want me to say, I will say to her. And then I do not -- I cannot even remember all the words I said to her. But now, in this incident, would the things that I said to her, she could accept the Lord, you know, through what I said to her?
Oh, no. We cannot accept to Lord. That is a fallacy. The Lord accepts us. The greater always receives the lesser, so that is a false teaching in the church. No one has the power to accept the Lord. The one with the authority does the choosing. See, man is female in relationship to God, but he wants to be the big cheese, you know, wants to receive God. You cannot receive God. You have to humble yourself and ask God to receive you.
Then what would you minister to someone like that? How would you -- well [INAUDIBLE]
June, you just talk to them, and you answer their questions.
I see.
Now if they should say to you, what must I do, if they should say that to you, then you might want to ask them if you can lead them in prayer, asking the Lord Jesus to receive them. But it is not really necessary because it is all by the Spirit of God. When you have this communication, the Spirit of Christ in you is going into their heart, and he is going to do the whole work. So you talk; you be friendly; you be loving. Restrain your witchcraft. Do not force yourself on people, and if Christ is in it, they will ask you the questions, and you answer their questions. You are a teacher.
[INAUDIBLE] I was writing music. You know, I was [INAUDIBLE], and I had -- I do not really remember what I was talking to her about. But she said to me, what are you doing? And I said, I am writing some music [INAUDIBLE] music. [INAUDIBLE] conversation about, oh, what is going on with religions, and we -- you know, [?that kind of stuff?]. And then I [?stopped talking to her?]. [INAUDIBLE] feel like I am -- you know, [?I do not want to get into?] -- too much into this, so I stopped. And they went -- they were beside me, and they were talking for a few minutes, and I was not saying anything more. And she [INAUDIBLE] why do not give me your little song? Why do not you sing to me right now? And I said, God, I did not know what to say, you know. So I just started to sing to them, you know, and then I stopped and got into a conversation. But I was really shocked that she would [INAUDIBLE] ask that question, you know, for me to sing to her. I was really shocked.
Well, that may very well have been the move of the spirit. And the more we die to our own will, the more experiences like that we will have. If you can -- I know that God has really done a work in me. I give you all the glory. I -- the most I will do is pray silently, Father, if there is something you want this person to hear, then please bring it forth, or I might wound their carnal mind, and that is it. Just enjoy the person, and God will move. So the hardest part for everybody is to just let go of this desire to control that exists in the carnal man. It is very hard to let it go. But if you want to minister in Christ -- and it is very exciting to minister in Christ. The thing -- you know, as soon as you let go, he has got more work than you can handle, but you have got to let go. He will not be controlled. He will not be. And that is -- but -- so pray for it. I do not know what else to tell you, OK. Any questions on the message? OK.
I will answer your question about communication. That little cracker and that little cup of grape juice -- hello, the cracker and the little cup of grape juice does nothing for you at all. It is man's concept, man's understanding of what this book teaches about communion, and you do not have to have a Ph.D. to know that eating a little piece of cracker and a little cup of grape juice is not going to make you holy, and it is not going to make you closer to Christ, and it is not going to give you knowledge. It is not going to give you s- -- it is going to give you a cup of grape juice and a cracker, OK.
Now we have the Catholic Church which says, when you eat that, that you are required, as a rule of your religion, to believe that that is the physical body and blood of Christ. But who would en- -- who would want to eat his physical body and blood anyway? He was talking about his spiritual blood, which is his Spirit. The spiritual life of Christ is his Spirit, so the true communion is between his Spirit and our spirit. So that is an ideal example of the carnality of the church and not only that the church is carnal -- because a- -- no one really should care that the church is carnal, but the reality is that the carnality steals the true spiritual reality from us, and it stops us from seeking the true communion. If we really believe that eating this little cracker and drinking this little cup of grape juice is -- that through that we have obtained communion with the Lord Jesus Christ, we will not look any further.
So that is the only bad thing that I could say about it. It certainly cannot hurt you to eat a cup -- drink a cup of grape juice. But we need to know that that is not what Jesus was speaking about and that n- -- he said, if you do not eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. So if we really believe that that little cup and cracker is his flesh and blood, we are in a sad case. And Paul says you do not discern -- many do not discern the body of Christ, the true spiritual communion, and therefore they are sick, and they are dying because communion or communion with his Spirit gives health and life. Did I answer your question?
[?Mm-hmm?].
OK. Anybody else?
10/02/15 Transcribed by VerbalFusion
10/15/15 1st Edit BP
