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The Following Message Has Been Transcribed For
Clarity, Continuity Of Thought, And Punctuation
By The LEM Transcribing & Editing Team.

 

You better buckle down and start to fight because there is no place to run. There is no geographical location you could go to. There is no lie that you could hide behind. There is no physical help for you at all. The war is spiritual; it is in the mind. Now, the only help for you is to get into another mind. It is the only help for you. You have to get into the city of refuge, you see, because we are all murderers. We are all murderers. We are all the spiritual offspring of... whom? Who is the murderer?

 

COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, that is true, Satan. That is true. What I had in mind, though, was Cain. Yeah, Cain. But of course, it was Satan in Cain. That is correct, what you said. We are all the spiritual offspring of Cain. We are murderers. We are the kids of the devil. We are liars. We are murderers. And we are all, this whole creation, under the judgment of death.

 

And there is only one hope for us. And that is that, if we make it to the city of refuge, according to the Levitical law, we are allowed to live in that city of refuge until such time as the... does anybody know? Until such time as the avenger of blood has died.

 

What does that mean? The person who is looking to kill you because you have committed a murder. Someone has a legitimate right to kill you because you are a murderer. And who has the legitimate right to kill you because you are a murderer? Who?

 

COMMENT: Christ in us?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, he is not the avenger of blood in this world system. Satan is after you, and that is how come everybody dies, because you all deserve to die. Me, too. You know, if we did not deserve to die, Satan could not kill us. See, we are all sinners. That is why we need a savior.

 

And the city of refuge is another mind, and you cannot be safe in my mind. I might be able to lend some strength to you while God is raising you up. But the day comes, brethren, when the Lord says, You are on your own, man. You had better start flying. And until that time, He will send other believers to help you. But that does not mean you will not get knocked around.

 

The only test, the only thing that matters, is that you do not stay down and that you do not get wiped out permanently. This is how I could tell that my God favors me. Anybody? My enemies do not prevail over me. My Bible does not say my enemies cannot touch me. It does not say they cannot hurt me for a season. It does not say they cannot do damage to my life, to my body, to my emotions, to my relationships, to my job. It does not say that. It says the end result of the enemy trying to destroy me is that she shall surely, in the long run, fail.

 

So, you see, do not look at somebody that is down now and say, well, God has abandoned them, because you do not know. You see?

 

COMMENT: That is true.

 

PASTOR VITALE: So you cannot look at someone in the depths of sin, at any given moment, and say, I am not going to bother with them because God has abandoned then. You do not know. God may be sending you to get them out of the pit.

 

And if you have a religious spirit in your mind, you are going to be the Pharisee that passes that poor guy lying on the road, bleeding and dying. And if you pass him by, what is going to happen is that right after you is coming the Christian who is in Christ, who is going to pick him up and put him on his own ass and take him and get him a room in the inn and pay for it out of his own pocket. And the Pharisee that had nothing to do with him is going to be locked out when the poor slob that was lying on the road enters into the glory of Christ. So do not be a Pharisee, but be a Son of God.

 

Well, I got my anointing. I could not preach 15 minutes ago. I said, Lord, I cannot preach. So we will see what God is going to do tonight. He cancelled my studies, so I have no prepared message for you. I did think he was giving me a lead as I looked through the Scripture, but I am not speaking about anything that I thought I would be speaking about.

 

So we are just going to flow with the spirit tonight. Some of our best messages come under these circumstances. How is that? Usually, or frequently, when God cancels my message, it turns out that somebody in the service has a particular need. And the message that comes out is specifically tailor-made, directed towards that need. Or there is something that He is just not telling me. There has to be a reason why I do not know what I am supposed to preach tonight.

 

See, sometimes, God tells me what I am supposed to preach. That is funny. I do not even know what I am saying tonight. It is wonderful to be in the service of God. You know, you do not know, from minute to minute, what you are doing or where you are going. Sometimes, I know what I am going to preach, but I do not know what I am going to preach tonight. So I am just rambling until the spirit really starts to move. Well, He is moving, but without direction at this moment. I do not see any direction.

 

So I would say that we had a tremendous victory here tonight with our spiritual warfare. The anointing is with us. It is present. The Sons of God have prevailed over the works of the enemy. And we thank you, Father. And that there was no division amongst the ranks. You know, when these witches' covens pray, they pray division amongst the ranks. We are of one mind and one accord here. And that is why we came out of this so quickly, you see.

 

That is why Jesus says, You want something from me, leave your gift at the altar and go make it right with your brother. There can be no division amongst the brethren because that is when you are going to get killed. When you are busy defending yourself, or beating up on your brother, or worrying that you were taken advantage of or somebody wronged you, you are going to get a knife in your back. You cannot ever take your eyes off the enemy. You have got to know, behind every problem in your life is some form of device of Satan, if you are truly serving God.

 

Now, do not be a fool. I know a man who suffered severely, claimed it was for righteousness' sake. But the truth is he was absolutely a hurtful, malevolent, obnoxious man, and people just hated him. So do not deceive yourself. If you are persecuted for righteousness' sake, then submit yourself to God, brethren, and He will bring you through. But you have to prevail until this spiritual warfare appears in the physical world.

 

The warfare is done in the spirit. As I said, it could take three days. It could take longer, three days average, to appear, for the results of it to appear in the natural. So you pray in faith. You pray the prayer of faith, believing that your word has power, that Jesus is with you. And then you bite the bullet, and you do not lay in a puddle of tears. You do not go around boo-hooing. But you get up, and you do what you have to do, and you see the victory of Christ come into your life, as fast as it comes.

 

You have to keep on going, brethren. And you keep on doing what is right. And you do not do right because you feel good; you do not do right because you feel bad. You do what you do because Jesus said to do it. It has nothing to do with being happy, with being sad, with feeling good, with liking someone, with hating someone. You get a revelation of what Jesus wants you to do, and you do it. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with your feelings.

 

And this is how you survive, brethren: Do righteousness. What is righteousness? Read your Bible. You still do not know what righteousness is? Get yourself under a teacher of righteousness and learn what righteousness is. You do not know what Jesus expects from you? If you cannot understand the Bible, start sitting under a teacher of righteousness and find out what is expected of you. And if you are too weak to do it, confess that you are too weak to do righteousness, and ask for the strength to do it.

 

And after that, there is nothing more you can do. That is when overdrive kicks in. And the name of the overdrive is Christ. And I want to tell you something, brethren. He does not kick in until you do all you can do. He is not enabling you. Christ is not an enabler. He is not enabling you. I tell you the truth. Neither can you fool Him; He knows how much you can do. And He is not kicking in until you are doing all you can do.

 

He is no sugar daddy to you; He is no Cadillac-giver. He is the God of Hosts, and He is here to get you out of hell. And the way He is getting you out is by arming you and equipping you and training you to wage war so that you can get yourself out, because Christ is a self-help program. Welfare does not work. He will baby you only so long as it takes you to get strong. He gives you the weapons. He gives you the armor. He gives you the know-how. And you cut the head off of Goliath. You do it.

 

There is this wicked doctrine in the Church today. There is nothing for me to do. Let Satan and Jesus belt it out. Oh, really? He who is not with me is against me.

 

Well, I see it is going to be one of those nights. I will certainly try any move of the spirit coming from anybody in the room. I just ask that, before you open your mouth, please just say to the Lord, If it is not your spirit, close my mouth. So we will just see where he is going to take us tonight.

 

COMMENT: I have a question.

 

PASTOR VITALE: OK.

 

COMMENT: Something keeps telling me to ask when I am around you, or call you up and ask, what does the term "overcoming Jacob's ladder" mean? It has been going on for about a week, but I just never asked. And it just popped up in my head.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Overcoming Jacob's ladder. Well, first of all, Jacob's ladder is the overcoming. So probably, you know, when we hear in the spirit, it is not always in perfect English. Probably what was being said to you was "the overcoming of Jacob's ladder." How is Jacob's ladder an overcoming? That is probably what was being said to you.

 

Jacob's ladder is, first of all, referring to an account in the Book of Genesis. Do you know where it is in the Scripture? In the Book of Genesis. That is interesting. I can really see God giving you that Scripture. Yeah, I really can. Let me give you the whole background of it then.

 

COMMENT: I am sure that I remember reading it at some point.

 

PASTOR VITALE: What chapter is that in? Do you know?

 

COMMENT: Jacob's ladder?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Is it not 32? Why do I think it is chapter 32?

 

COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: Jacob prepares to meet Esau, Genesis, chapter 32. How interesting. And I am not a letterman. Chapter 32, verse 24.

 

COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: And we have a whole message on it. I suggest you ask Xxxx or Xxxx for the message before you leave tonight and take it home with you. I do not feel to go word for word. We do have a message on that. I will just give you some background on it.

 

Jacob stole his brother's inheritance. There were two brothers, Jacob and Esau. In Bible days, the older brother inherited everything, inherited all the land, all the money, all the cattle, got the spiritual inheritance. And Esau was the older brother. But we see Jacob, in cahoots with his mother, stole Esau's inheritance and gave it to Jacob. And Jacob ran away, for free of his brother's wrath. He was afraid his brother would kill him. I cannot imagine why. I mean, that was pretty serious. He stole everything the guy had, you know.

 

And when something like that happens to you, I do not know how you feel, but the way I feel is that there is much more involved than the loss of money, than the loss of authority, than the loss of possessions. As far as I am concerned, the worst part of what Jacob did to Esau, as far as Esau was concerned, was the betrayal by his brother. The emotional devastation that must have happened, that Esau must have experienced, knowing that his own brother (and I would imagine, to some degree, he must know that his own mother was involved in his betrayal to an irreversible loss, irreversible loss).

 

We are told that, even though Esau repented with tears, that there was no way that he could get his inheritance back. And why was it necessary for Esau to repent? Because nobody can steal your inheritance unless you agree to let them take it. So the weakness was revealed in Esau that contributed to the weakness in Jacob and the weakness in the mother. And the result of it was that Esau was flattened.

 

This is an interesting point too. The Scripture says Esau, though he repented with tears, he was still the loser. Even though Jacob sinned against him, and the mother sinned against him, Esau, the one who was responsible to hold onto what God gave him, he was the one that God required to repent.

 

And you hear that from me in this ministry all the time. Do not let me hear that woman that you gave me told me to do it. I do not want to hear it. Does anybody not know what I just meant by that? Let me say it another way. If you messed up in something that I perceive or declare to be your responsibility, I do not want to hear you telling me so-and-so told me to do something else, or my shoe was untied, or I forgot my glasses, or whatever other excuse you are going to make up. I really do not want to hear it, and God does not want to hear it.

 

And you are not going to be back on your right path until you repent. If you, in God's way of thinking, had the responsibility, and you do not make yourself look good in God's eyes, or in anybody else's eyes, when you start saying that that guy walking down the street whistled, and he told me not to do it. I do not care who told you not to do it. God told you to do it.

 

So we see that Jacob ran away because he stole his brother's inheritance, his heritage, the whole spiritual authority over Israel. He had a lot of authority. The forefathers of Israel are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It should have been Abraham, Isaac and Esau, technically. Nevertheless, on the other hand, we see that God declares Himself to have the right of election.

 

So this is a great mystery. But we are told, in other places in the Scripture, that it was God's will all along that Jacob would get the inheritance. So did God raise up Jacob to steal Esau's inheritance because it was his will? No, brethren. God just lets the evil in men do their own thing. God does not tempt you to sin, but He will, for His own purposes, let sin, which is already present in you, manifest itself. Is that a great mystery to you? Well, God can do it because God's motives are perfect. And the end of everything He does is good. And the fruit of everything He does, even to the revealing of sin in man, is positive and unto life.

 

So if God lets a sin in you be revealed for His own purpose, because He knows that you are going to sin against your brother, and God lets it happen, He will make good out of it because He is God. But, you see, we as fallen men do not have the power to cause good to come out of evil. Therefore, we are not permitted to do evil. But God is permitted to do evil because, even when He does evil, good comes out of it. God is perfect. It is impossible for anything He does, no matter how evil it looks to the mind of man, to produce evil fruit because, you see, brethren, a good tree cannot produce evil fruit. And an evil tree, no matter how hard it tries, cannot produce good fruit.

 

So this is a great mystery to the carnal mind of man. The carnal mind is an animal mind. It is a beast mind. It cannot understand the ways of God. Do not even try, the Lord says. You are just going to mess up. You are going to stumble. You are going to trip. If you try to understand Me with your carnal mind, you will never understand Me. You will just wind up tripping yourself over and over and over again until I have to rain down judgment on you to correct you. Obedience is better than sacrifice. Just do what God says. Just do it. If you understand it, it is fine. If you do not understand it, do it anyway. Save yourself some aggravation.

 

So we see that this is a great mystery, but God intended the whole time that Jacob should have the inheritance. But in any event, Jacob got his inheritance as a thief.

 

And he ran away, and he ran to the land that his mother had come from, to her family. And he served her brother; was Laban not his uncle? Was Laban not his uncle, Jacob's uncle? His mother's brother, was he not? So Jacob served his mother's brother as a tenderer of his sheep. Most men were shepherds in those days. And Jacob married his cousin, his uncle's daughter. In those days, polygamy was legal. He married two of Laban's daughters, had about 12 kids, and inherited a whole bunch of cattle, and felt it was time to leave his father-in-law's house and go back to the land of his birth.

 

Upon returning to the land of his birth, his brother, Esau, who had also become very great, we are told, in the flesh; you see, Jacob received the spiritual inheritance, even though he was a thief, he was great in the spirit. Esau multiplied and became great in the flesh. He had married. He had become wealthy. He had many children. He had a large household with many armed men. He was militarily powerful. There was no police force like we have today. Every family was militarily self-armed within the family. There was no nuclear family in those days. Everyone traveled in tribes.

 

So Esau came out to meet his brother. And Jacob's heart, we are told, began to fill him with fear. We are told, in another place, it is the wicked that are fearful every day. Brethren, let me tell you something. There is no fear in righteousness. There is no fear in righteousness. But when you know in your heart that you have really done wrong, I want to tell you, fear comes upon you. Fear comes upon you.

 

I have a fear of doing wrong because, where I am in Christ, I have actually experienced, in my spirit and in my emotions, a spiritual weakness. That is the only way I can describe it unto you. When I know that I am in trouble with somebody because I have really done something wrong, I feel a spiritual weakness. And I run to repent so that I can get back into Christ, where I am defensed, where my strength is.

 

And I have a spiritual awareness of it. It is a frightening thing to be confronting another human being in some kind of conflict without your armor on you, which is righteousness. Once you have experienced verbal conflict, which is really spiritual conflict with somebody, with the armor of righteousness being on you, and you find yourself in a conflict, a verbal conflict with somebody, without righteousness behind you, you are naked, you know.

 

And it is a truism, even in the world, that you cannot see the forest for the trees. You have to have something and lose it to be aware that you do not have it. If you have never had it, you are not aware that you do not have it. But when you have been in conflict with the armor of light on you, and you find yourself in a battle and you do not have any armor on, let me tell you, that is a frightening thing. Run to make it right with your adversary, brethren, because you are about to be fed to the birds.

 

I know what I am talking about. When you get this revelation, you fight not to sin. It is a frightening thing to lose your armor. It is a real scary thing. Repent, brethren, quickly, before you are turned over to the judge until you pay everything that you owe. In case you are not familiar, Jesus said that, in case you are not familiar with that Scripture. Quickly, make it right.

 

So Jacob was filled with fear because he had sent his scouts out and his men. You see, Jacob traveled with a whole contingent of people: his wives, his children. He had a couple of concubines. He had two wives and two concubines. A concubine is a woman that you live with as a wife but who is not a legal wife. You are expected to provide for her and care for her, but she has no legal inheritance rights. So he had two wives, two concubines, 12 kids, all kinds of cattle and a house full of servants. And he sent his scouts out. They came back, and they told him, guess what? Your brother, Esau, he has really increased, and he is powerful. He is militarily powerful. He has armed men in his camp.

 

And Jacob was shaking with fear. Why? Because he knew that he messed with his brother really bad. And he knew that, legally, his brother had grounds to kill him. He knew that, if his brother came and tried to kill him and succeeded, they probably would just bury him and go on because it was righteous vengeance. So he was just plain scared.

 

Now, of course, it was too late. He could not go back and take it back. He did it. It was years later. The Scripture says he went off by himself, and he sought his God. And there appeared unto him an angel. And he wrestled with that angel all night. Now, the King James translation really is not accurate over what they were wrestling about. We go into that in our message, "And Jacob Prevailed."

 

Basically, what they were wrestling about was that Christ; the angel was Christ. The spiritual inheritance that Jacob had stolen arose in him and wanted to rule in his mind because fear is never of God. But the natural man Jacob wanted to run his own life. He did not want to submit to the new man which was manifesting in his heart and in his mind. And there was a battle between Jacob the thief, who sinned against his brother, and the new man, Christ, which was his inheritance, which he did not deserve, which he did not do anything to deserve, but actually was even stolen.

 

The Christ in him was stolen. We might say, in the Church world today, that he took the kingdom by violence. We are told the violent are continuously trying to take the kingdom, and they try to take it by force. We see Simon the sorcerer trying to buy the kingdom. Well, Jacob took the kingdom by force. He stole it from his brother.

 

Nevertheless, God let him have it. And now, the kingdom is manifesting itself unto Jacob. And he said, God, I do not want you. I want all the blessings you can give me; I want all the help you can give me; I want all the life you can give me; I want all the money you can give me. But I do not want you to be king of my life. I want to be king of my life, and I want you to be my genie in a bottle. And what do you think Christ said to Jacob? You have got to be kidding.

 

So we see a power play here. This is for a lot of people tonight. Brethren, it is time to lay down your weapons. All of your rebels that have been fighting against Christ for all of these years, I declare unto you tonight that the Angel of God has manifested Himself to you, and He is about to whup you once and for all.

 

COMMENT: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: That got everybody here except Xxxx. She was defeated 20 years ago.

 

COMMENT: Oh, God.

 

PASTOR VITALE: So we are told that Jacob wrestled with that Angel. Can you imagine wrestling with God? Now is that not stupid? But we have all done it, including me. We all do it. Why? Because the carnal mind is insane. It makes no sense at all, right? It makes absolutely no sense at all to fight with God. Yet every one of us does it because, as I lovingly say, we are in our left mind. No one in their right mind would fight with God and get beat up and go through all the things that we go through.

 

COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: And then we go, for the season, saying, Satan is after me. Satan is after me. Satan is not after you. The Angel of God is after you.

 

COMMENT: Yes.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Would you please stand still and let him rule your life? Well, Jacob would not stand still. He fought with that Angel, and he struggled with that Angel. And finally, the Angel, whose name is Christ, said, man, this guy is strong. This is just enough already. Whack. And He broke him.

 

The Scripture says, He touched the inside of his thigh. It is a parable, brethren. He touched the inside of his thigh. And when Jacob got up and tried to walk away, he found himself limping. Brethren, the human legs, the legs of our body, they are a type of our spiritual walk. They are a type of our ability to live our own life.

 

Now, have you ever asked yourself, why would an Angel of God cripple a man in the physical? You need a carnal mind to think that God would really cripple you for the rest of your life and be happy about it. God does not deform your body. It was a parable. It is a parable, brethren. The Angel crippled Jacob's carnal mind.

 

I want to tell you that your carnal mind is usually stronger than Christ Jesus who is being formed in you. Why? The carnal mind which you inherited, which is the sum total of all the carnality that has been in this creation from the time of the fall, that is what your inheritance is. And Christ Jesus has only been around for 2,000 years, and He is not full-grown in you.

 

So the Lord Jesus Christ is coming to give him a handicap. He is going to cripple your carnal mind because the chances of Christ Jesus in you standing up and whupping your carnal mind are about as great as David killing Goliath. And if you think that David killed Goliath without some spiritual help, you do not understand the Scripture.

 

So that is why you need the Lord Jesus Christ. He is coming, and He is going to cripple your spiritual legs because you are too strong, because you are so spiritually insane that you are opposing yourself. You are alienated against God in your mind. You have made yourself the enemy of God. You are a spiritual criminal. You do everything that is wrong for you and probably nothing that is right for you. And you keep messing up, and you keep falling down, and that is why you are dying.

 

Did you ever see a prize fight, and the guy is being beaten to a pulp, and he keeps getting up, and the crowd is yelling, Stay down, man! Your face is bloody enough. Would you please stay down? Would you please? Would you please stay down? Just stay down already, or you are going to get permanently hurt. Stay down.

 

That is what the Angel said to Jacob. This is enough junk already. I am the king of your life, and I am going to do whatever I have to do to bring you into submission to me. You have fought against me long enough. I have ignored you. I thought you were cute. I have said coochie-coo. I have laughed at you. I have forgiven you. I have sent people to help you. But you are too old to be playing these games. Now, start acting like a man. And if you do not, we are getting down to some real serious judgment here.

 

And I am going to stop you from doing the wrong thing. I am going to stop you from being self-destructive. I am going to stop you from hurting others, which is reaping cursing into your own life. I am going to stop you, one way or another.

 

So we see that Jacob wrestled with the Angel until the break of day. And I suggest to you it was not a natural day. Would you not like to believe that Jacob wrestled with the Angel the whole time that the sky was dark? No, brethren. Jacob wrestled with the Angel until the light went off in his head, and he saw the light of day. Have you not ever heard that expression before?

 

Brethren, depending on how foolish and stiff-necked you are, you might be struggling with this Angel for years until you see the light of day. And the day breaking is the Christ, the light of Christ breaking in your mind. One day, you wake up, and you say, Do you not get it, man? You have to stop doing that. And when you realize it, and you stop doing it, the day has broken. And you have wrestled with the Angel until the break of day.

 

So we see that the Angel prevailed over Jacob. He crippled him. And Jacob rose up a new man. He had had a conversion experience. Jacob had a spiritual experience with Christ. And he rose up, crippled but, behold, a mystery: crippled, on the one hand, but fearless, on the other hand.

 

We see that, when we stop fighting our own battles, when we submit to Christ and do it His way, one of the benefits we reap is that fear goes because there is no fear in Christ. If you are afraid, you are in your carnal mind. You are in your carnal mind if you are afraid. Christ is fearless.

 

We are told, in the Scripture, that it is this fearlessness, which is in Christ, that makes the enemy tremble. When they see your fearlessness, they will run from you. Brethren, it is a whole different ball game, fighting against a fearless man, who either believes you cannot kill him or does not care whether you kill him or not. That is a dangerous man to be fighting against. You could really get hurt. The Scripture says, "By your fearlessness, they will flee from you."

 

So Jacob rose up without fear and went out to meet his brother. He said, Well, I did it. I stole his inheritance. I messed with my only brother (I do not know if it was his only brother). I messed with him; I did him dirty. I did it; I cannot take it back. God would not grant him repentance. So let me go out and face the music, and if God lets him kill me, I am a dead man.

 

So he went out, and lo and behold, there was Esau. His brother came running to him, welcomed him, embraced him, and told him that all these years had gone by, and all was forgiven. He loved him as a brother. And they reconciled.

 

I skipped past the main point of this message. Before we got to that, while Jacob was wrestling with the Angel, once the Angel touched him and broke him, behold, there appeared a vision, a ladder, the bottom of which was in the earth and the top of which was in the heavens. And there they were: Ascending and descending on the ladder were the angels of God.

 

The term "Jacob's ladder" is referring to a spiritual doorway or a spiritual highway or a spiritual mechanism that connects heaven to earth. Now, of course, this ladder that we read about in Genesis 32 is just a symbol. It is not a physical ladder; it is a spiritual ladder. And it does not look like a physical ladder; it does not sound like a physical ladder; it does not operate like a physical ladder. It has the same function as a ladder. In the earth, it gets us from the spiritual earth to the spiritual heaven. That is the only characteristic of a ladder, of a spiritual ladder, that lines up with a physical ladder. And this spiritual ladder that gets us from heaven to earth is?

 

COMMENT: Christ.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Christ. And you have to get this ladder inside of your mind because only He who came down from heaven is going back up to heaven. The carnal mind was never in heaven, never came down from heaven, is not going back up to heaven. So if you want to get into heaven, you have got to get the mind that came down from heaven for the specific purpose of getting you back up to heaven. You have got to get the mind, and it has to be connected to you.

 

And when that ladder is fully completed and matured, you will ascend. That means you will, at the will of the Lord, either be in heaven with the Father or down in earth ministering to some fallen human being. And you will go up and down on the ladder.

 

We saw an outstanding example of this in Jesus of Nazareth when he ministered to the adulterous woman. When we looked up every one of those words in the Greek. And the Scripture says that Jesus bent down. He did not get down on His physical knees. We found out that it meant that His humanity went down very low, got out of Christ's way, so that the Christ in Him could ascend up to the top of the ladder and go into heaven. And from His high position in heaven, from His position of high priest, He erased the sin from the adulterous woman's heart and imparted power to her to no longer commit adultery.

 

And it was an act for Jesus of Nazareth, who was Christ, to do. It was an act that Jesus of Nazareth, who was Christ, did. And in order for Him to do it, He had to be at the top of the ladder. He had to be in His high place in Christ. It is my understanding of the Scripture that, from His low place in Christ, He did not have the authority to do it.

 

Now, all you Pharisees reading this message, do not get all upset. The Scripture clearly says that Jesus was the Son of God and man. When He was a man, he was a perfected man. But He was the Son of God, and he was a man. Jesus said, "I and the Father are one. Nevertheless, the Father is greater than I." And I say unto you, Jesus was the Son of God and man. Even though the man side of Jesus of Nazareth, who was Christ, was human and sinless, the God aspect or the God side of the man Jesus, who was Christ, was greater than the perfected sinless man side of him. Can you hear that?

 

And in order to perform the miracle of removing the sin from the adulterous woman, Jesus needed to be in the high place of his potential. He needed to be at the top of the ladder. Can you hear that?

 

I came in here tonight, and I said I could not preach. I had no anointing to preach. I am the same person that sat down in this chair, same person, same name, wearing the same clothes, look the same, same strong points, same faults. But I walked in; I sat down in this chair. I said, Lord, I cannot preach. Christ came up in me. I got to the top of the ladder, and I started to preach. That is what Jacob's ladder is. That is what we are talking about.

 

There is a high and a low in full stature. I do not believe that there is a high and low in the Spirit of God, in the pure Spirit of God. Jesus is now glorified, and I do not believe there is a high and a low, or a ladder, in the glorified Christ. But God in the flesh, there is a high and a low. And this is what Jacob's ladder is.

 

So we see that, when the Angel broke the will of Jacob, he became fearless. The Angel changed his name. His name was changed from Jacob to Israel, indicating that he had received a change of nature. And Jacob went forth and fulfilled his heritage.

 

Now, all ye rebels, hear this. You have all got a spiritual heritage, and you have all stolen it. What does that mean? None of you deserve it. None of us deserve our spiritual heritage. Christ is appearing in us, not for anything that we have done. We are not great. We are not better than anybody else. There is nothing special about us except that the Son of Man wants to appear in humanity. And for the time being, He has picked you. And the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance. You have not done anything to deserve it. He just needs a body. He needs a body to appear in.

 

So, scripturally speaking, we have stolen. We are thieves. We have stolen our heritage, our inheritance. And it is time for the Angel to take what is His. And what is His? Our bodies, our personalities, our life.

 

And He is manifesting in you right now, and He is wrestling with you, and you shall surely be defeated. And the harder you fight, the harder you are going to fall because He is going to trip you, brethren, and you are going to fall flat on your face. And you are going to stay down until you agree to serve Him when you stand up. And you are going to do it His way. And not only that, but the end of the whole thing is that you are going to actually like doing it His way.

 

It is grievous at the beginning. It is grievous at the beginning. You have been running your whole life, all these years. Your head is all filled with carnal thoughts of what it is like to be a successful person in the world. And Christ is always the exact opposite of what your carnal mind tells you you should be, or what you would like to be, or what you want to do.

 

And I found out, when I was going through this, not that I am completely broken, but I am pretty broken. When I was going through this, when the Lord was first breaking me, I found out that everything that I thought I wanted so badly, I really was not all that happy with it. And everything that God was directing me to do, that I thought that I would hate, when I found myself there anyway, I found that I was actually content and enjoying myself.

 

And I came to the place where I even said to the Lord, I do not even know who I am. I thought I would hate doing this, and here I am loving it. And you keep sending me to do things that I hate, and every time you force me into doing things that I hate, I find out that I am actually happy. So I am so confused, at this point, I do not even know what I want.

 

And the Lord says, Good. Now you will just do what I tell you. I am telling you the truth. He made me do everything I hated, and I found out it was not so bad. Actually, I was enjoying it. I found out I did not know what was good for me. I did not know what was best for me. And I gave up. I just do what He tells me most of the time. Life is much easier.

 

You have been apprehended, brethren. Some people fight harder than others. But we are told that Israel is the goodly horse of the Lord. We are the horse of the Lord. He is going to ride you, brethren. You are a wild, bucking bronco. You have been out in the wilderness all these years, but you have got a rider now.

 

And we are told in the Book of Zechariah, by parable, that at the time of the fall, parabolically speaking, the horse, which is this soul which God made, threw her rider. And we see horses, in the Book of Zechariah, without a rider. Did you ever wonder why there was no rider on those horses? Because we threw our rider, brethren. And we have been riderless horses out in the wilds of this wilderness for generations.

 

But our rider has found us, and He has lassoed us, and he is sitting on our back, and He will stay there until we stop bucking. And not only will He stay there until we stop bucking, but He is a master horse trainer and fully intends to train us in dressage, which is a high form of horse training whereby you never spur the horse; you never whip the horse; you never put a bit in the horse's mouth. The horse is so highly trained that at the slightest nudge of the rider's knees, the horse knows what you want him to do and is able to do it. This is our end. It is not God's desire to hurt us, but it is his intention that we shall come into full submission to his purposes.

 

We are told, in the Book of Romans 11, we do not carry the root. Root is spirit. The root carries us. It looks like we carry the spirit. No, He is invisible, and He is inside of us, but He is directing us. Because we have the legs to walk in this world system, it does not mean that we direct the spirit. The spirit directs us.

 

But, you see, most believers do not have that straight. We have it backwards. We think that we are in charge of the spirit and that He has to meet all of our needs and do for us and be our servant. And for a season, that is even true. When we first come to the Lord, we are infants.

 

Now, look at our natural example. To a carnal mind, does it not appear that the mother is a servant to the infant? He cries, and she picks him up. She changes his mess. She bathes him. She washes his clothes. She feeds him. She meets his every emotional and physical need. So I can see an infant saying, if he could reason, Wow, this is not so bad. I have got myself a maidservant here. She is doing everything for me.

 

And then, one day, when that child reaches close to two years of age, all of a sudden, he goes into complete shock. His mother says to him, I am not washing your diapers anymore. See that thing over there? That is a toilet bowl. You have to get over there, and you have to sit on it, because I am not cleaning your mess anymore. And the party is over, and the child starts to grow up. And it is painful to find out that the love object, one who provided all of your needs, is no longer providing all of your needs.

 

If you follow this parable through, brethren, with our natural example, at the end of the whole thing, when the child is fully grown and a full adult, and the mother gets old, is not the child completely caring for the parent? If it has not happened to you, in principle, anyway, your children are supposed to be caring for you. It is a complete reversal, if you can hear what I am saying.

 

So, spiritually speaking, the young believer in Christ has every attention and every need met by the Lord. And as the child starts to grow up, we find out that the child comes into complete control by the Lord. It is a complete reversal. It is not exactly the same as the natural. But my point is that it is a complete reversal of the situation. He who was the object of affection and had every need met is now completely controlled by the Spirit of God.

 

It is put this way in the Scripture: When you are young, you dress yourself. But when you are older, another will dress you. It is the complete opposite of the natural. Praise the Lord.

 

It is time to come into submission to your spiritual husband, brethren. He wants to walk in you, and He wants to talk in you, and He wants to do in you, and He is tired of the battle. He wants peace. And the way the Lord makes peace with you is to utterly defeat you.

 

See, there is no compromise in Christ. There are no partnerships. He is the boss, and we are the servant. And when we come into submission to Him, after He breaks us and utterly converts us and cleans us up, He joins with us so completely that there is no difference between the Master and the servant. And we therefore inherit everything that He is.

 

So we see that we enter into all the power that we have lusted for through the giving up of all the power that we presently have. When we give up all of the power of our independence, which is, at its very best, inferior to the least power we could hope for in Christ. When we give it up, we begin to enter into unlimited power, which is in Christ.

 

But there is a period of a wilderness experience, where it is uncomfortable. The Scripture likens it unto the labor of childbirth. It is for a season, and it could be more painful or less painful, depending, to some degree, anyway, as to how much you work with the doctor.

 

So, brethren, praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Is someone working that pause button?

 

I just want to glorify the Lord. I am just so blessed at how He defeated the enemy tonight. I tell you, as recently as a few months ago, we would have a problem in this meeting. Once again, there is never any condemnation in anything I say. Brethren, the truth is going to set you free. You have to know that we all have carnal minds.

 

And sometimes, someone comes in here to these meetings with their carnal mind fully manifested. Sometimes, they come in here really mad at me. Sometimes, they come in mad at somebody else. Sometimes, they come in depressed. And we had a situation in these meetings where somebody would come in with a fully manifested carnal mind, trying to not admit it because they do not want to consciously mess up the meeting. So they would be quiet, but their carnal mind would be shutting down the anointing, and I could not preach.

 

And I went before the Lord, and I said, Lord, this just is not right. It is just not right that one carnal mind should come in here (and it is not even their intention to shut down the meeting. They are just coming in, and they are upset for some reason, and they shut me down). This just is not right. It should not be. And I cried out to God for a season, and he gave me an increase. And I know the night that God witnessed to me that He had given me the increase. And no one's carnal mind has shut me down since.

 

And I was wondering if tonight was not going to be the first night in all these months that the carnal mind, wherever it was coming from, was going to be able to shut me down. But it could not shut me down. Christ arose, and He scattered my enemies, and He rose up in great strength, and He overcame that carnal mind, wherever it was coming from, and He has given us a glorious anointing here tonight. And it is really thick and heavy, and people are getting slain in the spirit. They are passing out. The anointing here is so strong, I do not even have to lay hands on you. You get slain in the spirit without me even touching you.

 

Now, I am just giving glory to God because He answers every righteous prayer. And that was a righteous prayer, you see. It was not coming out of my pride. I was saying, Lord, I do not really care whether I preach or not. The point is that all these people are sitting here. You have gathered them together; you have called them. They have come to be fed. The preacher is here. Everything is ready. And I cannot defeat this carnal mind. This is an insult unto Christ. Why would you gather all these people and not give me the strength to show you?

 

How do I know it was a righteous prayer? He answered it. That is how I know it was a righteous prayer. I just am giving Him public glory tonight, and He wants me to clarify that. I want to say another comment on that. You see, when I cried out to Him, and this is very important: it was not pride in me saying I am embarrassed that I am sitting here, and I cannot preach. Because if my motive was pride and embarrassment, He would never have given me the increase. And you need to know that everything in this hour, as far as God is concerned, is motive. God is concerned with your motive.

 

And when He first raised up this ministry, I was tried severely on this point. I came in, on several occasions, and I had no message. And I sat here at the instruction of the Lord and boldly declared that, if the Lord did not give me a message, I would just go home. I was not preaching out of my carnal mind, no matter what men said about me, no matter how embarrassed I felt, or no matter what the negative result may have been of me not being able to preach. And every time I took that stand that I was not saying a word until the anointing hit me, the anointing hit me with great strength. The Lord never left me without a message for people that have come to hear what he has to say.

 

And then, several years later, after I had taken an absolute victory in that area, because I believe it with all my heart. I will just pack up and go home. Of course, this is my home, but I do not always preach in my own home. I will shut down the meeting if it is not the Lord speaking through me. And the Lord must know that that is true because, a couple of years later when this Christ is manifested, and I prayed that prayer, and I said, Lord, it is not for my own pride that I am asking for a spiritual increase but that this is not right. Is it not your ministry? Is it not your people? Is it not your service? Do you not want to be glorified? It is not righteous that an enemy mind should be able to shut me down. And he gave me the increase.

 

And I hope you can hear the difference because there is a world of difference in the two circumstances. Pride is the enemy of the spiritual man. It needs to be dealt with. How do you deal with pride? You must confess it as sin. You must confess her as sin. Pride is sin. Wherever she is manifesting, pride is sin. Pride kills Christ. Pride is your spiritual strong enemy. Pride is subtle. Pride has many hidden manifestations. Pride will kill your spiritual life, the whole time telling you she is God, the whole time telling you that you are justified in every ungodly thought that she is thinking through you.

 

If you are deceived, you are deceived by the pride of your own mind. Pride will blind you. Pride will deafen you. Pride will lie to you. Pride will give you instructions and say that it is God. Pride will justify your sin. Pride will kill your brother. Pride will draw your innocent brother's blood so that you can look righteous in your own eyes.

 

God hates pride. Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. God loves you, but every son that he receives, He will chasten. And He will whup you until you are blue because it is a question of life or death. He will whup you to save your life. And if He is not whupping you, you are not a son, but you are surely a bastard.

 

So therefore, brethren, despise not the chastening of the Lord, for in due season, it shall reap the peaceable fruit of righteousness, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory, your personal savior dwelling inside of your own heart that nothing can separate you from.

 

COMMENT: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] I know it is somewhere. I do not know what verse in the Bible. It is "Zion is calling you to a higher place in God."

 

PASTOR VITALE: Who is calling you?

 

COMMENT: Zion.

 

PASTOR VITALE: "Zion is calling you to a high place in God." And have you been hearing that Scripture in your head?

 

COMMENT: Yes.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes, OK.

 

COMMENT: One day, almost the whole day, I heard. And I was singing it, and it kept going around in my brain.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, Zion is a symbol of Christ in you. So the Lord is saying that Christ is calling you to a high place in God. The high place in God is Christ. Christ is higher than the Holy Spirit. This is something that is not commonly preached in the Church, but you may have read the Scripture that says, Christ must be formed in you, and that we are hoping to eventually find ourselves in the fullness of the stature of the Lord Jesus Christ. So what the Lord is saying to you is that He is calling you to go on with God.

 

We are told in another place, in the Book of Hebrews, If the Lord permits, let us go on to perfection. So there is a growth in God that the Lord never intended for us to receive the Holy Spirit and just stay in that place until we die. Just as there is a natural growth, when you are born as a human baby, and you continue to grow all of your life; even when you are physically mature, you continue to mature emotionally and in your personality. There is a growth in God that we do not hear much about in the Church today.

 

And I believe what the Lord is saying to you is that He is calling you on to perfection. He is calling you up to the next step or the next grade in school, if you will. And that is a spiritual experience which is the Christ being formed in you.

 

When you receive the Holy Spirit, He pretty much stays the same. You could have the Holy Spirit for 20 years, and the Holy Spirit does not increase in you. But when Christ begins to be formed in you, He increases in you. And the Scripture says, We grow in wisdom, and we grow in grace, and we grow in spirituality. And we now have within us the ability to go up where Jesus was because that ability is in Christ.

 

So I believe the Lord is telling you that He is calling you to the next step of maturation in God. And that is very exciting because, in this hour; well, eventually, it will be for everybody. God is not a respecter of persons. But He does not do everybody at once, just like with the Holy Spirit.

 

When the Holy Spirit first started appearing in this country, it was just a handful of people. And people were flying in from all over the world to get the Holy Spirit, to California. And now it has expanded. You can go into almost any city and find a church with the gifts and receive the Holy Ghost.

 

Well, the next stage of the Lord's development has started. But in this hour, there is only a very few that are called to it because it is starting slowly and expanding slowly. So He is calling you right now at the beginning. This is very early for the new move of God. He is calling you to have Christ formed in you, to go on from your experience with the Holy Spirit and grow and mature. And that is a great blessing. Praise the Lord.

 

COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: That is wonderful.

 

And unfortunately, though, when we receive a call like that on our life, it comes with great travail. The Scripture likens the event to childbirth. In the morning, you have a man child in your arms, and you forget everything that you went through, but the labor is very painful.

 

So I see you have some tears in your eyes tonight, and you look like you have been suffering a little bit. It is just the signs of your labor. So I am sorry for your pain, whatever it is, but it is really a good sign. Praise the Lord.

 

Transcribed by VerbalFusion, 9/12/22\

1st Edit, rh, 9/13/22

 

The Following Message Has Been Transcribed For
Clarity, Continuity Of Thought, And Punctuation
By The LEM Transcribing & Editing Team.

 

Prayer is wonderful. I have been telling you, I do not know really what to say except that, sometimes, when the pressure is on, you are not the most pleasant person. That goes for all of us. And I guess there has been a lot of pressure on.

 

I was approached by a Jehovah's Witness in Pathmark Shopping Center, Saturday morning. I had an appointment with the chiropractor. This poor woman, she approached me with the sweetest spirit on her face.

 

See, the bottom line is that I am out of patience for the Church, and I am out of patience for the world. I do not know whether it is God that is out of patience or it is Sheila that is out of patience. But I feel like I do not want to baby anybody anymore.

 

This very nice lady approached me in the parking lot of Pathmark Shopping Center and tried to offer me a copy of a wake. And I do not believe I abused her. I just went after her with a very strong spirit, and I told her the truth. I said, I will take your literature if you take mine. How come you are not open? How come you do not want to hear what anybody else has to say?

 

And you know how I get; like I was shooting her with a machine gun. I do not believe it was ungodly; it was just very powerful. And I told her the truth. And this poor, sweet lady just looked at me. You know, they do not train her for people like me. And I told her right off that I was a Bible teacher, and I will talk to you if you will talk to me.

 

She just looked at me, and all she could say to me was what she had been indoctrinated to say because, to the best of my knowledge, Jehovah's Witnesses are not trained to think. They are not trained to think creatively. They are taught the Scriptures according to Jehovah's Witness doctrine, line upon line, precept upon precept, which means they are incapable of making changes. It means they are incapable of recognizing a thought from somebody else that might indicate there is just a need for a slight change. They do not believe in change. They accept their doctrine religiously. Brethren, this is dangerous. This is the stuff that mass suicide is made out of.

 

Now, you have to find the line between being a critical thinker; and what does that word mean? Does it mean you go around criticizing everybody? Brethren, there is a positive criticism, and there is a negative criticism. Negative criticism kills. It destroys. It means that your motive (here we are, back at motives again) for criticizing is to hurt that person.

 

Why would you want to hurt that person? Because there is something twisted in your brain that makes you feel good when you hurt that other person. Whether you are aware of it, or whether you are not aware of it, whether it happened to you because you were abused as a baby, or no matter what your sad story is, I will play the violin for you. When you criticize somebody because it gives you a release, when you criticize somebody because it builds your ego, it is criticism which is negative, and it is sin, and it is the sin of...

 

COMMENT: Pride.

 

PASTOR VITALE: ...pride. There is also a positive criticism. Sometimes it is called critique, which is really the French way of saying it. But for people that have a problem understanding there is both positive and negative criticism, some people might call it a critique.

 

A critique is positive. It points out something that you are doing that is either destructive to yourself or destructive to somebody else. The end of it is not the destruction of your soul but the building of your soul, the increase of your soul, the increase towards godliness of your soul. The fruit of it is an improvement in your relationships, an improvement in your self-image.

 

People in the professions know about critique. I am telling you, I worked for lawyers for years. I have worked for large law firms, which means there is the chief honcho lawyer who usually does not do anything except talk. What does that mean? He goes to trial. He goes to negotiation. He has a whole host of other lawyers underneath him, in varying degrees of maturity, that write his documents for him, that do the research.

 

Then all of this is brought to him, and he reads it. And he takes a big black marker, and he cuts up and marks off everything that these young lawyers have been working on for 50 hours, and he chops it up, and he marks it up, and he gives it back to them. And they look at it, and they want to cry. But it is a critique, and it is something that they can learn from. They did it; they practiced; they researched; they wrote. And the master said, you did a good job, but here is a goal. Here is an ideal. This is what you are going to be able to do if you stick it out and learn from me. It is great for the level that you are on, but here is the master saying this is what you should have done with it.

 

Does anybody not know what I am talking about? There is a positive criticism. It builds you. It builds you professionally. It builds your relationships. It builds your self-esteem. It teaches you what you are doing wrong so you can make some changes about your life, about your job, about the way that you look at life.

 

So when somebody criticizes you, it is to your own good to ask the Lord to show you the motive for their criticism. Are they trying to destroy you, or are they trying to help you? But I will tell you a secret, brethren. Even if the person's motive is to destroy you, if there is one shred of truth in what they are telling you, you can turn their spiritual attack upon you around for your good. If their motive is to destroy you, if the spirit that it is given to you in is a spirit of hate, you can refuse to retaliate. But you can say, if you choose to do it, Lord Jesus, is there any truth in what they said? Because, usually, cruel people who criticize you for ungodly motives will pick on something that just may be a legitimate problem in your person.

 

So you can take this attack upon you. You can take that which is negative and make it positive by saying, Lord, if there is anything true at all in what that person said; I do not care how cruel they were in saying it to me. If there is anything I can learn from it, let me learn from it. And when, if in fact, you learn from it, you can bless your enemy because God has truly worked all things for your good.

 

So I just turned on that woman like a hurricane. I believe it was a godly spirit, but I believe it was the whirlwind of God. And all that she could say to me was, oh, but this is just the truth of the Bible. This is just the Bible. And I said, That is not the Bible. The Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew. That is an English translation that some man wrote over 100 years ago. That is not the Bible.

 

I said, I am sorry, I am in a hurry, but I will make a deal with you. If you take my literature, I will take yours. She just looked at me. I said, You do not want it, do you? You do not want my literature, do you? The woman is just standing there, and I am telling you, it was a right spirit. I was just putting it right to her. You do not want it, do you?

 

The answer is no, because they are closed. They are blocked. They are sealed off. And I am not picking on the Jehovah's Witnesses. There are a lot of people that study the Scriptures that are in this condition. My pastor taught me; my mother taught me; my father taught me; Santa Claus taught me. Well, what did Jesus teach you? Have you listened to what you have been taught and prayed about it? Have you told the Lord that you want the truth, no matter what the cost?

 

Now, let me warn you. There is a price to pay for the truth. The devil does not want you to have the truth. He will first try to seduce you away from the truth by what technique?

 

COMMENT: Pleasure.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Pleasure. He will send you to a church where you feel good, where the doctrine makes you feel good, where the music makes you feel good, where all the people are patting you on the back and making you feel like you are one of them. But you are not really one of them, because you only see them once a week on Sunday, but they make you feel really good.

 

PASTOR VITALE: But you come to a church where the truth is coming out, and you are going to feel...

 

COMMENT: Pain.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Pain. Because people are not patting you on the back once a week, they are telling you the truth about yourself. And you have real relationships because you are not seeing them two hours a week on a Sunday. You are living together, in a sense, and you are hurting each other, and you are supposed to be forgiving each other and growing. And in a church like that, you are likely to get the truth.

 

And the truth hurts because you may have to admit that you believed a lie at one point. You may have to admit that you were wrong at one point. You actually may have to be in a relationship with somebody that you do not agree with. You actually may be challenged by the Lord to say, I completely disagree with your doctrine, but I love you enough to fellowship with you anyway.

 

And let me tell you something, brethren. If you have pride, that is not so easy to do. My Bible says do not eat with someone who has false doctrine. Well, how do you know their doctrine is the false doctrine?

 

That Scripture is not speaking about human dinners. That Scripture is saying, do not take into your mind a false doctrine. That Scripture means that, if you fellowship with a human being, another human being, and a scriptural discussion comes up, something that you know is wrong, do not be influenced by them because you want their approval, because you want their love, because you are lonely. But believe what you believe. Eat of the Son of God with your mind, brethren. Eat according to the Spirit of Truth.

 

But you do not hurt people. You do not throw people out on the street. You do not pass people and not talk to them because they are a Jehovah's Witness, or they are a Mormon. You do not treat human beings like that. You respect human beings.

 

And as the Lord makes you strong enough, I listen to everything everybody has to say, with one exception. If after listening to them for a couple of minutes, I realize that they are not just someone who I disagree with on a point here or on a point there, but if I were to make a judgment that this person is preaching an overall satanic doctrine, or if this person is trying to indoctrinate me, trying to force me, to take over my mind, they are not just disagreeing with me or having an exchange of ideas, but that this whole discussion is coming forth with a spirit of witchcraft, with one intent behind it to utterly bring my mind under their power, I will not continue with that discussion.

 

But I will tell them why. I will tell them everything I just said to you. I am not going to continue with this discussion because you are pressuring me. You are trying to possess my mind. You are trying to control me. Now, listen, brother, if you want to have an honest exchange of ideas with me, and you are skilled enough to convince me that you are right and I am wrong, well, that is acceptable to God. But you cannot lay hold of my mind and force me to have a different belief by brute mental force. Or if you do that, you are bypassing my thought process. You are bypassing my creativity. You are bypassing my individuality. You are bypassing. You are short-circuiting my whole functioning as a human being. And that is called witchcraft and mind control.

 

COMMENT: I really appreciate that explanation of "no man ever hates his own flesh" because I really never understood that in the past.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, praise God. I just thank you, Jesus, for blessing your people.

 

COMMENT: About Pentecost, you did not mention anything about the anointing on some of the ministry that might come forth is someone is ministering to a congregation. Why would [AUDIO SKIPS]

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, you cannot do that, brethren, if you do not know what you believe. You cannot do that if you do not know what you believe. If what is coming out of your mouth is doctrine that has been burnt on your brain because someone wrote a book 100 years ago and said this is the way it is, you are now incapable of saying, Yes, I believe that, but maybe what you are saying makes a little sense.

 

And if it does, the Lord will allow me to integrate it into the revelation that is growing in my soul like a plant. And I will take something from you. I will take the truth from you and the truth from you and the truth from you. And by the grace of God, I will have a tree growing in me that will be the tree of truth. The Spirit of Truth will come forth in me. You cannot do this if you are a robot.

 

So the way you start to become a whole person, and not a robot, is that you start by reading this Bible. And you put the letter of the word into your heart. You do not have to be understanding it. Or if you choose to understand it as a parable at the beginning, that is fine. Adam and Eve fell in love and got married and had a baby. If that is what you need to have the word in your heart that there was an Adam, that there was an Eve, and that they had a child or children called Cain and Abel, that is great to start with. There is great truth in the Scripture. There is morality. There is ethics. There is a knowledge of human nature on the surface level that can bless everybody. So that is where you start. You start by learning this word on the surface.

 

But there is a deep, deep, deep depth beneath the surface of this word, that the Lord will open to you as He wills it. There is only one problem. Let me say this first. There is a Scripture that says, "The ages are in the hearts of men." You see, the depth of this word which is outside of you, or the reality of this word; this word that is on a printed page is a reflection, like a mirror image, of what is in the hearts of men. The true word, both true and false is in your mind. And it is buried deep underneath the surface.

 

Now, to get to the depth of the word, which is in the Spirit of Christ, the surface of the earth has to be pierced. If you are planting seeds, brethren, you go after the earth with a plough. And a plough has a big blade attached to it, and it cuts into the earth. And if the earth could feel, it would be screaming its head off the whole time. Well, behold, brethren, I show you a mystery. There is a portion of this earth that has had life imparted to it, or existence, anyway. It is called man. And when that plough goes into his heart, so that the depth of the richness of the earth which is buried within him can be revealed, we are all screaming like a bunch of stuck pigs.

 

So if you want the truth, there is going to be pain because the truth is buried deeply. But in the Spirit of Truth is life. There is no life on the surface of the earth. There is only existence on the surface of the earth. The true life is buried deep in the heart of the earth. And we have to dig it up like gold ore and bring it to the surface so that we can live out of it.

 

Do not be a robot, brethren. Do not go around talking about what your pastor says, or what Joe Blow says, or what Jane Smith says. And I hear that from a lot of you here. Well, so-and-so says, and not necessarily about scriptural things. I want to know what you think.

 

When you have a conversation with me, you have a fellowship with me. If it lasts one second or one minute or one hour, what I want from you is to know what you think. I do not want to know what your husband thinks, and I do not want to know what your son thinks, and I do not want to know what the [UNINTELLIGIBLE] thinks. I want to hear that you have been listening to what other people think, that you have taken this information into your mind, that you have mixed it up with your own ability to reason, and that now you have an opinion. I want to know what your opinion is. Do not come to me in the image of another human being because I am going to tell you I am not interested in what that other human being thinks. When I am talking to you, I want to know what you think.

 

I do not care if you are right. Well, there is no right or wrong. That is what you think. That is what you think. Let me correct that. There is a right and a wrong. You could have a wrong concept in your mind. But you are not wrong for thinking that way. That is what you think.

 

Now, if you have a wrong concept in your mind, and the Lord Jesus Christ influences it to change it and to mold it into something that will conform with His way of thinking, that is to your benefit. But simply the fact that you had a thought that might not be accurate does not make you wrong. Do you know what I am saying? Do you see the difference?

 

What you think is what you think. You should not be afraid to express what you think because, if you do not express what you think, any error in that thinking process will not be corrected. It cannot be corrected if you are not willing to expose yourself by saying, This is what I think. If you keep your thoughts to yourself, if you keep them a secret, and you put a false face up, you will never be corrected. You will never receive a critique. You will never receive a godly criticism that will build you and strengthen you and make you a worthwhile person, both to yourself and to the other people that you are in relationships with.

 

Brethren, you have got to be willing to be exposed, both the truth in you and the error in you. By the grace of God, we have got to begin to think enough of our ourselves, and to love ourselves enough, to expose ourselves to people that God tells us have a godly attitude towards us. You do not go out to Jack the Ripper and expose yourself. But you ask the Lord who He wants you to fellowship with.

 

Hopefully, the people here in your fellowship, you should be able to tell each other what you think without getting into a fight. It is OK if you think something differently than I do. It is not OK if you try to force me to change my mind. And it is not OK if I try to force you to change your mind. But it is OK if you think differently.

 

Even if I am absolutely convinced, and I am right in my thinking that what you think is wrong, you are entitled to your own creative thought. And if I come to you, and I try to convince you; not in a free exchange of ideas. It is OK for me to show it to you in the Scripture. I am not talking about that. If I try to convince you that you are wrong, in a godly spirit that will show you: Well, look at this. Consider this. Consider this. Consider this. That is OK. But if I am coming to you to change your mind in a manner that bypasses your own thought process, and I am trying to change your mind by eliminating the process by which you will listen to what I have to say and pray about it and find the truth arising up as a plant in your own soul; if I am trying to bypass that and just put my brand on your brain, and saying, Well, think this, and I am trying to do that, it is witchcraft, and it is a violation of your will.

 

And I know I was trying to make a point, and I just lost my whole point that I was trying to make. But you should be able to have this discussion. Oh, I know what I was saying. It is acceptable to God for you to not agree, until such time as you become unreasonable. That is what I am trying to say.

 

If God sends somebody to you, and you have a godly exchange of ideas where the two people are respecting one another, and you still disagree, that is all right because, if your heart is open and honest but you just do not agree, then the Lord will deal with you in due season. If it comes to the point that the Lord sends someone to you, and the Lord sends someone to you, and the Lord sends someone to you, and you do not agree because of rebellion or pride or stubbornness, then the Lord will have to deal with you. The Lord will have to deal with you.

 

We do not go to other people and try to imprint our doctrine on their mind in a manner that bypasses their thought life. And included in thought life is prayer life. Thought life, prayer life, communication with the Father. If the person fails to respond, not because they just do not understand, because we have to believe that the Lord will bring us into all truth. But if they fail to respond because of stubbornness, rebellion or pride, that is the Father's job to deal with them. That is not your job to beat them into submission. Our job is to disseminate information. Our job is to disseminate or to sow seed. We are to sow the seed. We are to be dropping ideas in people's minds. And then you have to leave that mind alone and see whether or not the Father causes the seed to sprout.

 

And if your pride cannot deal with your sowing a seed and not seeing that seed sprout or not being willing to wait for however long it is going to take for the Lord to bring it to sprout, you need to confess the sin of pride and repent and ask the Lord for deliverance because you are violating that person if you try to force yourself on them or on their mind in any way. And you cannot be a Son doing that.

 

Jesus said, A man went out to sow some seed. And that is a parable speaking about not only Jesus but about the Sons of God. We are in training to be Sons of God in this fellowship, brethren. The Sons of God sow seed. We do not beat men into submission.

 

What we do when it is Christ in us (if you cannot tell, do not do anything), we will address sin and expose it and rebuke it. And sometimes that can be a confrontation. Sometimes, if it is Christ, it can be forceful, telling the person that this sin is in them. But to the best of my knowledge, I cannot see our assignment to be in any way the forcing of doctrine on anybody. It is not true. The only force that Christ Jesus uses, when He decides to use it, is the exposure of sin.

 

The exposure of sin, the exposure of sin, the exposure of sin. You have got to get your focus in the right place, brethren. The focus of this entire move of God is not the doctrine. Now, most of the Church; I think, if we had a floating microphone, like some of these TV shows do, and we went out in the Church world and asked people what they thought the focus of this move of God was, most people would say doctrine. That is not true. And when I say focus, what do I mean? The most important aspect that we should be directing ourselves to, of this move of God, it is not doctrine. It is the exposure of sin.

 

You can have this doctrine, and you can have your sin too, and the doctrine will not save you. If you have your sins exposed, and you confess and repent and have your heart converted into Christ, then eventually you will have the doctrine too.

 

PASTOR VITALE: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God." The kingdom of God is not doctrine. What is the kingdom of God, brethren? Does anybody remember? What? What is the kingdom of God?

 

COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: It is a mind. Yes, it is the mind of Christ. Yes, it is a mind. It is a mind. And in that mind is the potential to comprehend doctrine. But if you do not have the mind of Christ, and you are trying to comprehend doctrine, and you in fact do comprehend it or think you comprehend it, you are comprehending it with what?

 

COMMENT: The carnal mind.

 

PASTOR VITALE: The carnal mind. So therefore, brethren, seek ye first the kingdom of God. And how do we get the kingdom of God, brethren?

 

COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: And how is Christ formed in us?

 

COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: Your sins must be exposed. So seek ye first the kingdom of God. Have your sins exposed. Let us take care of first things first, and you will understand the doctrine.

 

And I tell everybody who comes here, do not be upset if you do not understand, and do not be upset if you sleep. But put your body here. Now, try to stay awake. Do not come and go to sleep because you had a rough day. But if the anointing puts you to sleep, do not be upset about it. But present yourself; expose yourself to the anointing. And Lord willing, the Spirit of Christ will penetrate your heart. Then you will conceive Christ Jesus. And when He begins to appear in you, you will understand all things. When His righteousness begins to appear in you, you will understand the doctrine.

 

This is supposed to be an exhortation. It sounds like it is turning into a whole message. I would just like to say one more thing. And unless the Lord keeps this going, I am going to end this exhortation.

 

I heard something that really excited me the other day. I do not know whether it will excite you or not, but it excited me. We have a message. It is a recent message. It is called "Bodily Manipulations in Christ Jesus." One of the realities of our existence is that this body is just a slave. If you look up the Greek word that is translated "body," it is soma. That Greek word is soma. It means "slave." This body only does what the spirit tells it to do.

 

This body, if you need an actual example to understand it, it is a robot. It is a robot. Now, I am told that the creative genius of the fallen minds of man in this hour are coming up with all kinds of robots, robots that will be household servants, robots that will cook, robots that will clean. You sit there with your little remote control, or with your microphone, or maybe it is even voice-activated, and you just tell the robot to turn on the TV, and it.. you heard about this, right? Someone is sitting here shaking her head. The robot goes and turns on the TV. The robot gets you a drink of water. The robot scrambles you some eggs. This is what is being developed in our society today. But when you look at the robot, it looks like a robot. He is metal. He is not soft like flesh; he is hard. He has no original thought. He just does what you command him to do.

 

Brethren, this is what our body is. We have trouble recognizing that because our mind and our emotions are completely integrated with this body because of our spiritual condition. But the truth is that we are spirit. We are this mind that is in us. And this body just does or acts out whatever this mind desires.

 

Brethren, if you had a problem this weekend with any kind of sin, in any form whatsoever; if your body was doing something this past week that is sin or that is destructive to you, you had this problem because the mind that dwells in this body commanded your body to do it. And the Christ which is in you was not strong enough to stop your body from doing it. I do not care what it was that you were doing. This body is a slave which is completely controlled by the carnal mind.

 

The degree to which Christ Jesus is appearing in any human being at this hour is lesser than the degree to which the carnal mind controls your body. How do I know that? Because anybody who would have a knife put in their heart right now will die. And if Christ Jesus was controlling your body, all of the blood in you could drain out, and you would not die.

 

So in this hour, we see Christ is the invading force. Christ is the invading force. He is taking this body and this soul away from the present possessor of it. What is the name of the present owner of this creation? The Devil, that woman whose god is the Serpent, who has incarnated in this world system. That spiritual woman, whose god and husband is the Serpent, who has incarnated in this world system as the Devil, the many-membered Devil... Jesus clearly said your daddy was the Devil.

 

This body is a slave. It is a robot. It is an android, if you will, except that that one which is controlling it is not outside of it, as we see in the world today, but that one which is controlling this body is inside of it, hidden underneath the earth. And the illusion is that we are this flesh, but we are not this flesh. There is a spiritual being in the earth whose name is death. Well, the name of the spiritual being is the Devil, but her presence gives death. And because she lives inside of these bodies, these bodies eventually waste away and die. That is why the creation is in a form whereby it procreates. We are continuously producing new bodies because our lord and master kills her own flesh.

 

PASTOR VITALE: But Jesus said, "No man has ever hated his own flesh." What does that mean? When it is the man dwelling inside of you, and the name of the man is...

 

COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: No. The name of the spiritual man is Christ Jesus. When it is the man dwelling inside of you, He does not hate His own flesh. He loves it. He gives it life. Therefore, when you take a look at your flesh and you see whether it is living or dying, you can determine who the lord and master is of your flesh because the Devil hates her flesh. So if you are getting sick, and you are aging and dying, you know that your lord and master is the Devil. And as you see yourself not aging or dying or have any affliction whatsoever, if the evidences of a preserved physical life are present, you know that the Man is the Lord and Master of your flesh because the Man gives you life, and the woman gives you death. And the name of the Man is Christ Jesus, and the name of the woman is the Devil, or the daughter of Babylon.

 

And the reason her name is the daughter of Babylon is because she is the product of a lesbian relationship, a high-level spiritual lesbian relationship. Does anybody know what Babylon means? Confusion. I have been listening to that word in the Scripture for years, and I just found out the full significance of scriptural confusion. The creation cannot tell the difference between a man and a woman. That is the confusion. And she made it with a lesbian, and they had a child on this high spiritual realm. Lesbians can produce children, but they produce an inferior child, which is the daughter of their confusion. And her name is the Devil.

 

But when the spiritual union that produces a creation is in correct order, when it is clear, when it is not confused, it is between a man and a woman, spirit and soul. And the product of the union is a son. And the name of the Son, or the name of the man, when he is the product of that union, is the man Christ Jesus.

 

So we see that the Lord formed a creation that can incarnate either as a man or as a woman, depending on who is in the male role. This creation got all messed up, could not tell the difference between the Father and the Serpent, and engaged in or found herself in a lesbian relationship with the serpent, who is female, and has produced a daughter, which is the product of that confusion. That is pretty sad. You cannot tell the difference between a man and a woman. And this is how we got here.

 

The Lord brought me right into my message, and I missed my whole point. What was I talking about when I started on that? I said that I wanted to make one more point. Yes, we were talking about body manipulations.

 

Brethren, this is exciting. That spirit that dwells in you manipulates your body. You know, when you first hear that word, manipulation, you might not like the sound of it. But it is the truth. It is the truth, you see. Now, think of a little baby. A little baby, newly born, is spirit. And that spirit, which has just come into the world in the form of a newborn child, must learn to manipulate that body that it was born into.

 

Now, the spirit is whole in a newborn child. Well, all spirits are Christ. The spirit is Christ. But He has appeared in this world in a blob of flesh, and He has to learn how to manipulate that flesh. He has to learn how to make the legs walk, how to make the hands hold a fork, how to get the fork with the food on it into His mouth. All these procedures that you think are adorable in your newborn child are very serious spiritual exercises by Christ, who has entered into the world in a form of flesh which He has not yet been able to manipulate. He has to learn how to form words with His mouth. It is His spirit. Christ is a spirit that has been joined to a soul and a body that He must manipulate in order to survive in this world.

 

Now, in most instances, the word "manipulation" has a very negative connotation to it. And I have not looked it up in the dictionary. I would imagine, in the dictionary, it does have positive definitions because it is a positive word.

 

If I were to read that book, I technically can say to you it is necessary for me to manipulate that book. I have to pick it up; I have to open the pages; I have to open it and find a page that I want for me to open that book. It is called manipulation. If I want to use these glasses, I have to manipulate them. I have to pick them up; I have to open the two legs of it, and I have to put it on my head. I have to manipulate these glasses before I can use them. I have to manipulate utensils at my dinner table.

 

There is a godly manipulation. It is a physical manipulation. Emotional manipulation has a very bad connotation to it. But I do not think that we hear this word "manipulation" used too much in our society here in the United States. Whether or not it is used in other circles, I do not know. Physical manipulation is not necessarily a bad word. Anything you do with your hands...

 

COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, "maneuver" is just another way of saying manipulation. I do not know. We would have to look in the dictionary, which I do not want to stop to do now, to see the difference between "maneuver" and "manipulation." We could do it later, if you like. I would like to know the difference myself. I do not think it is the same thing. I just do not want to stop right now to go on with that.

 

So we see a society, or a group of people, called humanity, in whom most people succeed in manipulating their body. Now, some people cannot manipulate their bodies. [AUDIO CUTS OUT] legs, for example, where the spirit in that man is not strong enough to manipulate that man's legs. Well, you say there is something physically wrong with the body. Well, I say to you, the condition of the body is directed by the mind. If there is something wrong with that body, it would take raw mind power to manipulate those legs. And that man does not have it.

 

Have you ever heard of holistic healing? Have you heard of men healing themselves by their own carnal mind? Their mind has commanded those legs to work. Even though there was physically something wrong with them, that man had a mind which was strong enough to manipulate legs that were not functioning. His mind was stronger than his body, and the legs began to function.

 

This is our condition. The mind, and the spirits of the mind, manipulates this body. This body does whatever the mind tells it to do. Now, you may have a conscience in your mind because the mind that manipulates the body is criminal. It is the carnal mind. So hopefully, most people have a conscience in that mind, an element of Christ in them that is exercising some control over the criminal mind in us. So if we have an urge to do something ungodly, which comes out of our carnal mind, that element of spirit, that element of Christ in us, will be strong enough to control the carnal mind.

 

In the event that Christ in us fails to exercise control or fails to manipulate this body, and the criminal mind prevails, we then engage in some destructive activity. The carnal mind is telling this body, Do it! Go jump in the pool when you cannot swim. And Christ in you is saying, Do not jump in the pool. You cannot swim. And if this body winds up jumping in the pool, it means the carnal mind was stronger than Christ at this moment. We are talking about manipulation of the body. Can you hear this?

 

Now, listen, the secular world has done studies on people with multiple personalities. I have witnessed this myself on TV, people with multiple personalities. The body changes in direct response to the mind which is appearing in that body. Now, this is not in the Church. This is secular psychiatrists. I saw a video of it.

 

The man had one personality which had diabetes. They had a doctor on the screen. He tested him and found all the signs of diabetes. In another instance, the man had a deep wound on his skin.

 

The psychiatrist called up another personality, and what happened was the existing personality closed the eyes, manipulated the eyes of the body. The psychiatrist said, "Your name is John. I want to speak to Marty." So John closed his eyes. And the psychiatrist said, "Marty, I want to speak to Marty." And the eyes opened. Marty manipulated the eyes of that body and took over the robot or the android.

 

Now, this was seconds apart. The doctor looked at the man. The big gash in his arm was gone. And the doctor tested for diabetes, and there was no sign of diabetes at all.

 

These are secular experiments. They have nothing whatsoever to do with the Church. Is anybody not following me? Your body reflects the spirit which is controlling it or manipulating it at the moment.

 

Now, I told you all that to tell you this. Brethren, I do not know anybody today whose body is not being manipulated by the carnal mind. Sometimes Christ comes in. Sometimes I do things that I do not want to do. I have given you testimonies.

 

In particular, when I wrote our book, "Mind, Hell and Death," I worked on it two weeks without ceasing, from 7 in the morning until about 2 o'clock in the next morning. The whole time, my carnal mind was screaming that it wanted to be doing something else. And the Lord wanted to use my body. Christ Jesus used my body and my mind to write that book. And I could not do the other things that I would have desired to do. What? For example, bake a cake, go for a walk, go for a ride. I literally did not have the power within my mind to get up from behind that computer and do something else. The Lord Jesus Christ had hold of me. I have several testimonies like that, but it is not common.

 

And if I really wanted to, I probably could have stopped working at the computer and gone and done something else. It was just that I had an awareness in my mind that the Lord Jesus Christ was exerting an influence on me. And because my desire was to serve God, I stayed with it. But if I was in outright rebellion (I do not want you to think I was totally chained); if I decided to rebel, I could have gotten up from that computer and done something else.

 

But because my heart was toward serving God, when I perceived that pressure to stay at the computer, when I perceived that pressure which was opposing what I wanted to do in my emotions and in my mind, I prayed. And I said, Lord, if it is not you, release me from this project. And when I was not released, I agreed with what the Lord Jesus Christ was doing in my life. I do not want you to think that I was so controlled that I could not have done anything else. My own will was involved, and I perceived the will of the Lord as an opposing pressure to what I had desired to do.

 

But I do believe that the day is coming where we will be so possessed of the Lord that we will not be able to do anything else, because the Lord is taking all the kingdoms of this world. And we are the kingdoms of this world. He is going to possess us completely, and there will be no separation between what He wants us to do and what we desire to do.

 

You see, when we do something now, when we get up to go get a drink of water or we go out to talk a walk, we think that it is us deciding to do it because we are in complete agreement with our carnal mind. Unless Christ Jesus is putting a pressure on you to do something else, we are in complete agreement with our carnal mind. We just go and we do it, and we do not realize how our bodies are being manipulated by the carnal mind.

 

But the day is coming that our will will be so completely one with Christ Jesus' that we will do what he wants us to do automatically. It will be automatic, and we will not perceive any pressure whatsoever. There will not be any conflict because the carnal mind will be completely paralyzed.

 

Well, let me tell you what excited me. With all of this background in body manipulation, somebody told me just the other day that they know somebody who has multiple personalities, in the world (this has nothing to do with Christ) that this person goes to sleep at night, and when they go to sleep, another personality wakes up and uses their body. And they go out, and they play like a child. Then when the major host of the body, the person that we know, that I know, wakes up in the morning, he is as tired as can be because he has not slept, because another personality has awakened his body and was using it to play with.

 

So why would that excite me? I am going to tell you why it excites me. Because this is just a type of Christ awakening in our body. Now, when you go to sleep in a service like this (and I have told you this before, but I feel to tell it to you again) it is Christ in me that is putting you to sleep. It is Christ in me that is treading your carnal mind down. He is shutting your eyes. He is shutting the eyes of your body, which is ruled by your carnal mind. The next step is for Christ to arise in you and open your eyes as a whole new man, as a whole new personality.

 

So Christ in me is treading your carnal mind underfoot. The only reason you are sleeping, the only reason your eyes are closed, is that Christ Jesus in you is not yet mature enough to open your eyes and come out and play. Can you hear this?

 

Brethren, when Christ Jesus plays, He dabbles in the Word of God. So to me, that is just very exciting that many of you come to these meetings, and it is not infrequent that you cannot keep your eyes open. It says to me, Christ in me is treading your carnal mind underfoot.

 

Sometimes you completely pass out. You get as white as a ghost. You get white like chalk. Those are you who are white, you get white like chalk, and you completely passed out. I have never seen one of the black people white as chalk, but I see the white people white as chalk, completely passed out, sleeping with their mouths open, snoring sometimes. We have several people that snore here, completely passed out. I am waiting for the day that I see you in that condition, and then your eyes open, and you are a whole new man.

 

I have experienced it once. Very, very exciting. I experienced it once, for just a couple of minutes, that the Lord completely took over my body, closed my eyes, and when they opened up, a whole new man was in full control and fully manipulating my behavior. And that is what He wants to do.

 

And I want to tell you, brethren, when a whole new man has taken over your flesh and is manipulating your behavior, you are not going to be engaged in sinful activity. What will you be doing? You will be doing the will of God. You may be preaching. You may be teaching. You may be exposing sin. Or you may be outright confronting someone who is actively practicing witchcraft, which was what happened to me when God did it to me. He closed my eyes, and when He opened my eyes, I was eyeball to eyeball with, He told me, a practicing witch.

 

And I knew I was standing there challenging this man, and my mind was still active, although not in control. On a computer, the word they give you is "disabled" (I think that is the word they use in a computer). The program, which is Sheila Vitale, who has the ability to manipulate this body, was disabled. Someone else came in and took over the use of me. My mind was still there, but I had no power to change what was happening. What was happening? I was eyeball to eyeball with another man, obviously challenging him. And my mind was in the background, saying, If this is not Christ, I am out of my mind.

 

So the two of us were in there together. Now, the two of us are in here together now. And those of you who have a relationship with Christ Jesus, who hear His thoughts or who hear His words or who feel His feelings, you are saying, Well, the two of us are in here together now. Yes, the two of you are in there together now, but you are the one that is in charge. You can obey Him or disobey Him because you are the one that has the full control and manipulation over your body. But when He fully takes over your body, you are in there with Him. But you will be very aware that He has got full control.

 

It is the weirdest feeling. It was a weird feeling. It was weird, yet I felt very safe. I felt like I was being hidden behind this tremendously powerful giant. And as I said, all I could think of saying was, I sure hope this is the Lord, or I am out of my mind. But I did not seem to have anything to say about it.

 

Now, I have had several occasions where the Lord has taken me over, but this was the first time He closed my eyes. I am not sure what the significance of that is, that this one time, He closed my eyes. I did not even realize why everything went black until the next day. So He has not told me yet the significance of that. I have had several experiences where He has completely taken over. But only one time, He closed my eyes.

 

So we are talking about body manipulation here. The Lord wants to be your Lord and Master. He wants to have everything to say about everything you do. And when He has everything to say about everything you do, you will not be sinning anymore because He does not sin. When He is in full control of you, you will not sin anymore. You will be incapable of sin.

 

And this is the significance of the Scripture that says, "The love of God covers the multitude of sins." The multitude of your sins are in your carnal mind. And when the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, covers you over, you are incapable of sin. So everybody wants their sins covered, but nobody wants to give up control of their own life.

 

Well, brethren, the control of your own life is sin. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. So when you are willing to die to yourself, or even when you are not willing to do it, as Christ grows in you and as he matures in you, you will find yourself in a condition where you are incapable of sin.

 

Now, we see the external body as an expression of the spirit which rules in us. But do not be deceived if you see a sick body because most of us are in transition at this time. Christ Jesus may be appearing in us, but He has not yet. And maybe we are being healed slowly. But the fact that you have a sick body, or a body that is damaged in any way, does not mean that Christ is not appearing in you. It merely means that your carnal mind still has so much control over you that, based on family lines curses and sins of your fathers and your own sins, your body still is dying. Your body still gets sick and is dying.

 

Your body will not cease from getting sick or dying until Christ Jesus becomes the true Lord and Master of this body. And what does that mean? It means He possesses it 24 hours a day. He will then give life to your soul and preserve your body. The fact that Christ is present with you in a body which is possessed of the carnal mind is not enough of Christ to stop you from dying.

 

Oh, I hear the Pharisees screaming blasphemy. It is the truth. You give me a better explanation why you are the holiest person around: you prophesy; you speak in tongues; you read the Bible 20 hours a day; you pray for the sick; you cast out demons. How come you are still in trouble? How come your body is still sick? How come your mind is still sick? How come you are doing self-destructive behavior? How come? Huh, huh, huh? How come? Grow up.

 

Christ is not your Lord and Master. No man (not woman, now) has ever hated his own flesh. Only the woman hates her own flesh. When the Man is the Lord and Master of your house, He preserves your flesh. He keeps it, and that includes, your mind, your soul and your body.

 

So we see that the spiritual woman, when she is the ruler, she hates her flesh. And the result of her relationship with your flesh, which is her flesh, is that your get sick and you die. So if you are still sick or having problems with your flesh, that is because the true lord and master of your person is not the man but the woman.

 

So you may think you are pretty spiritual. I think I am pretty spiritual. Sometimes this doctrine that is coming forth here blows me away. Whatever it says to you, it certainly says to me that I do not care what I am in comparison to the other members of the body of Christ. In comparison to Jesus of Nazareth, I have not arrived yet because I do not like the condition of this body and, lots of times, I do not like the condition of my mind, and I do not have the power to change it at that moment. So I wait. I wait, and I lust for the moment when the man will take this house away from the woman, which woman is possessing this house illegally.

 

And I am locked in here with her, and I am paying the price of her sin, just like a wife and the children pay the price of a natural man's sin. Brother, you cannot be an alcoholic or a drug addict or an adulterer or any other form of sinner without it affecting your wife and your children. And if you think you can do your thing, and your wife and children will be fine, you are mistaken. I do not care how much of a woman of God your wife is. Your sin will affect her and will affect your children.

 

And that is just a fact of life. The sins of our leaders in Washington affect our lives. The sins of the leaders affect those people under them. It is just a natural law of our existence.

 

So I lust for the man to take over this house. In that hour, all my sins will be washed away, and all my troubles will dissolve, and all my tears will go away, and forever I will be with the Lord. And I will no longer be dependent on any form of external support, but all the support that I need in every area of my life will be internalized. That means nothing will be able to hurt me, and by no means shall anything hurt you, not a bear coming out of the woods, not a meteorite coming out of the sky, not a famine in this world, not a nuclear attack. Nothing outside of me will be able to hurt me when the man possesses my house.

 

I fully believe, if I were to lose a hand, another one would grow out, just like Jesus put the ear back on. If I could get hold of the hand, He would reseal it. Or just like He built the eye in the man who was born without an eye, I would not be lacking anything when the Man is Lord and Master of my house.

 

So we are talking here about body manipulation, brethren. Do not be all stressed out when you go to sleep, but please check it out. Do not sleep because you were running around all day. If the spirit puts you out, you are halfway there. And start praying that the Lord arise in these meetings and open your eyes and live through you. And on the other hand, if you are one of the people who do not sleep here, do not think that you are doing better than the people who sleep. If it is not Christ Jesus keeping your eyes open, but it is your carnal mind: if it is the woman, the Devil, who is keeping your eyes open, all that it means is that Christ Jesus in me has not put her out yet.

 

Now, is that not interesting? You thought you were doing well because you did not sleep, but it turns out that it is the other way around. Ha, ha, ha. How do you like that one? Is that not interesting? Never thought of that myself until this morning. I guess the Lord just brought that forth.

 

Now, if you are not sleeping, do not be upset because Christ Jesus has not put you out. And I do not know the answer to this. You go before the Lord. If there is any pride in you whatsoever that you are not sleeping, you had better take it before the Lord because it is not necessarily a good thing. Do you understand? If the Lord has not put you out yet, that is OK. If the Lord is putting you out, that is OK. But if you are taking any pride in either condition, it is sin. It is sin.

 

So let the Lord have His way with you, brethren. Let the Lord have his way with you. If you feel yourself getting sleepy, ask Him. Does He want you to keep your eyes open? Does He want you to get slain in the spirit? Ask what He is doing with you.

 

I am not in any way encouraging you to go to sleep in these meetings. Actually, it is difficult for me to preach when I am looking at a bunch of closed eyes. So I am not in any way suggesting that you go to sleep. And you should try to stay awake. I am just talking about your reactions to what is happening to you. If you cannot stay awake, if you cannot keep your eyes open, do not be condemned. If you can keep your eyes open, do not be lifted up with pride. So please hear what the spirit is saying today. Do not come in here planning on going to sleep. It makes my life difficult. And although you are still getting the message in your spirit, you need to hear the message coming forth.

 

So the Lord just brought forth some spiritual principles. I am not encouraging anyone to go to sleep. I am encouraging you to receive what the Lord has for you. Try to stay awake. Try to hear the message. Try to understand. But if you are overtaken, do not be condemned. That is what I am telling you. And you are where you are. Let the Lord control your experience in church. You should be doing your best to keep your eyes open. But he will have the ultimate decision, whether your eyes are open or whether your eyes are closed.

 

And as you all know, this anointing that has been in here (it has been going on for months now) has been putting me out, has been slaying me in the spirit. I have not figured that out yet how I am supposed to preach when I am going out in the spirit, like now. So I have not heard from the Lord about that yet. But I thank God for this anointing that He has been pouring out.

 

And just in closing, I will remind you that, in Pentecost, you usually have to go up to the front of the church and have the pastor lay hands on you to go out in the spirit. What we are experiencing here is that there is such a powerful outpouring of the spirit that some of us are getting slain without the laying on of hands. It is the spirit that is vibrating forth during the preaching (or, actually, the spirit that is doing the preaching), which is slaying you in the spirit without the laying on of hands.

 

And I remind you that, in Pentecost, the doctrine which is preached is not the Doctrine of Christ. This kind of power to slay in the spirit, this kind of power to cast out demons as the word comes forth, is in Christ. And in Pentecost, we find natural men preaching under the influence of the Holy Ghost. In Pentecost, we find natural men preaching under the influence of the Holy Ghost. And I cannot say it never does, because I do not know, but this anointing is not likely to slay you in your seat, nor is it likely to cast demons out of you. If you want that experience, usually, you have to draw near to the man who is preaching under the influence and have him lay hands on you. You have to get that close to the anointing to have a spiritual experience.

 

But when it is Christ preaching, when it is the man Christ Jesus who is being formed in that preacher, not the natural man under the influence of the Holy Ghost but the actual man Christ Jesus, in some measure of maturity, preaching through the preacher, in him is the ability to slay you in your seat from across the room. And in him...who? In Christ Jesus is the ability to cast demons out of you from across the room, by the power of the anointing that is coming forth from the man Christ Jesus.

 

The Scripture said Jesus healed everyone that came to hear Him preach without laying hands on them. When I was in a deliverance church for five years, we could not figure out how He did it. Well, the reason that He did it was that He was a different man than the man who was preaching in deliverance, who was a carnal man under the influence of the Holy Ghost. It is the spiritual man Christ Jesus, the very Son of God, who Has the power, when He preaches, to vibrate forth and touch anybody that He wants to, either with healing, with deliverance, being slain in the spirit, with any form of ministry that He wants to.

 

So we see that a carnal man ministering under the influence of the Holy Ghost is a good thing, but the spiritual man Christ Jesus ministering through a healed vessel is a better thing. So we will not criticize or condemn any ministry which comes from the Father. But the truth is there are some ministries, some spiritual ministries (I am not talking about churches out there). There is some form of spiritual ministry which is superior to other forms of spiritual ministry which are inferior. Now, in this sense, the word "inferior" is not a bad thing. It is saying that one is good, but the other is better.

 

COMMENT: I was asking you, to make it short, why did you not mention; in Pentecost, some of the ministry that comes forth, you did not say anything about the anointing, in some of those...

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes. You mean the anointing...

 

COMMENT: Because I thought, you know, you need that. It is like a main ingredient. Was that just an obvious thing?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, you need what? I think I...

 

COMMENT: The anointing, to be able to minister. True ministry, not...

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right. OK. I am going to answer you, I think, according to what I think you are saying. If I do not answer you, you are going to have to ask me again. I think what you are saying to me is that there are some ministers out there that... for example, Baptists, who...No? That is not what you are saying?

 

COMMENT: Strictly in Pentecost.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Strictly in Pentecost, ministering without the anointing. Is that what you are saying?

 

COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes. Well, I do not know what you mean. The term "Pentecost" means the presence of the Holy Ghost. Pentecost means ministry under the influence of the Holy Ghost. So I do not know what you mean.

 

Let me put this on the message, as long as I think this is what you mean. What I thought you were referring to were the ministry of people, such as Baptists, who have not received the Holy Ghost but... I believe that Baptists definitely minister the word of God, and they minister faith and a lot of good things.

 

But they do not usually, or at least the classic Baptist does not speak in tongues. Some of them do. But from the moment that a Baptist speaks in tongues, he enters into Pentecost. So I am speaking about people who are not in Pentecost but minister faith, the faith of God's word. They do not speak in tongues, and you do not have the outpouring that you usually see in Pentecost, the highly emotional outpouring.

 

And the answer is that these preachers minister under the influence of the Holy Ghost too. There are different measures of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is present if someone is ministering in faith, but His manifestation... whose manifestation? The manifestation of the Holy Ghost, which produces tongues and prophecy and interpretation of tongues, is a different administration of the Spirit of God, which is the name that is given to it is Pentecost.

 

The name of the administration that is given to preachers such as Baptists is faith. I believe that they have a measure of the Spirit of God, which has produced faith in God in them, and they can be a great blessing to people, like Charles Stanley, for example. He is a Baptist. He has faith in God, and I believe he ministers under some wisdom of God.

 

But there is another experience from the same spirit which ministers with signs and wonders, tongues, prophecy, casting out of demons, healing. Those are the signs and wonders that you are not likely to see in the Baptist church, which is ministering faith. Those signs and wonders are present in Pentecost. What is the difference? Two different expressions, or two different functions, of the same Spirit.

 

I am a woman. I have different functions. I function as a preacher, and then I function, when I used to do it, as someone who goes to the supermarket. I have two different functions of the same person.

 

We see the Spirit of God has different functions. And one function is to appear in men who preach faith. And then, in another place we see the Spirit of God functioning in something called Pentecost, whereby He is seen healing the sick and casting out demons and slaying people in the spirit and speaking in tongues. But both expressions of Him are genuine expressions of the Spirit of God, just different.

 

COMMENT: So then it is two measures of faith. For instance, Charles Stanley's faith and your faith would be of two different...

 

PASTOR VITALE: Two different functions of the same Spirit.

 

COMMENT: But you have the anointing, and et cetera. You said he did not have -- whatever.

 

PASTOR VITALE: The Scripture says, "one spirit, different administrations thereof." That is what the Bible says.

 

COMMENT: OK.

 

PASTOR VITALE: All valid expressions of the Spirit of God. Now, what is to say any one is better than the other? There are trillions of people in this world, most of which could not receive what I have to give. So we certainly need ministers under that other anointing. Everybody is important.

 

There is only one question I ask when I evaluate someone who claims to be preaching Christ. And that is, Is the spirit on them genuine? Is it truly the Lord? If it is truly the Lord, who am I to judge another man's servant? If the Spirit of God is with that man, who am I to say that what he is doing is wrong? How do I know what God told him to do? So I go away, and I mind my own business. And I minister the way God has shown me to minister, because there are trillions of people in the world. How do I know what that other guy needs?

 

COMMENT: I was going to ask you, how do you know, when people are of the world that have the Spirit of Christ in them to (that is how they control things morally). What is the difference between that and a person that has Christ formed in him?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, the term "to have Christ formed in you" is referring to the fact that the Holy Ghost, which is the glorified Spirit, the resurrected, glorified Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Father in this present world. Are you following me? OK, let me back up.

 

The Lord Jesus Christ was crucified. He was raised from the dead. He was glorified, and He returned unto the Father. He returned unto pure spirit. And He entered into this world on the day of Pentecost. You see, He poured out of his spirit and pierced into this world system on the day of Pentecost.

 

And we find it a scriptural principle that, when a spirit transfers from one place to another, the Lord gives Him another name. So now that this glorified spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ has returned into this world, His name is the Holy Ghost. For the purposes of the work that He is doing in the Church today, He is the Holy Ghost.

 

And the term "Christ formed in you" refers to a man whom the Holy Ghost has penetrated, whose heart the Holy Ghost has penetrated and made contact with his human spirit. And that union between the Holy Ghost and the human spirit of a man results in an increase, just as a woman conceiving, the male seed joins with the female seed, and the first cell of a new child begins to be formed. That is what we are talking about when we say Christ is being formed in you.

 

And that is the beginning of the first cell of the man Christ Jesus, which is to come. But a person who does not know the Lord but who has some appearance of conscience in them, that is an appearance of the human spirit arising to a high place.

 

Let me say it another way. The man without Christ is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And the evil in the human being in whom Christ is not being formed is the Serpent. Everybody has some good in them, and that good is in the form of the human spirit, which we are born with.

 

Now, in some people in this world, the good is operating at a higher level than others. Paul says those people are a law unto themselves. If they are not Christians, if they do not know Christ, but you see the law, a moral law; you see a knowledge of right and wrong in them, developed to a high degree. Paul said they are a law unto themselves. And what that means is that the good in that person is just functioning on a very high level.

 

COMMENT: So that would be like someone that has one portion of Christ. But when you get Christ Jesus inside of you, it is like a double portion? Is that true?

 

PASTOR VITALE: That is the double portion. Yes.

 

COMMENT: OK.

 

PASTOR VITALE: That is the double portion that the Scripture talks about. Yes.

 

COMMENT: If there is a portion that is of Christ in a person that is not converted or has Christ formed in him, is there also a portion of evil, a double portion of evil, in a person who has that evil that comes from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Is there, like, a double portion of evil with the carnal mind?

 

PASTOR VITALE: That is a good question. That is what the carnal mind is. It is the double portion of evil because the double portion is the... that is a good question because it goes right along with the message that we are preaching here. Just let me see how I can answer it simply.

 

In order to exist, we must have a completed mind. A mind is made from a male seed and a female seed and then the increase that comes from it. In the mind of Christ, that increase is Christ Jesus. In the carnal mind, that increase is the Devil. The increase is the Devil. It is the personality that arises from the union of the male and female seed.

 

And that has already happened to humanity. The creation incarnated on the negative side of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Devil was born. The creation incarnated as the Devil. The mind, the immature mind which God was building at the beginning of time, was completed when Adam joined with the Serpent instead of the Father. And we incarnated as the Devil, and we died. That is what happened to us.

 

I want to say something else to answer your question. So we do already have the double portion of the devil. But what you may have been getting at is, if this is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, how come there is still some good present? And the answer to that is that we incarnated as the Devil, but we incarnated as a spiritual infant.

 

And natural spiritual infants are sexually neuter. An infant, if you do not look at the body, there is no way you could tell whether the infant is a male or a female. And even small children do not start showing secondary sexual characteristics for, I think, three or four years. You know, where you see boys rolling on the floor and choosing, most of the time, you know, more rougher games than the girls, usually, I think that is about 3 or 4 years old. So children up to that point are neuter. They are sexually neuter. The creation incarnated as the Devil but incarnated in a neuter condition, and we have been growing ever since.

 

So the spiritual sexuality of the creation is just beginning to be evident. And most people have both male and female in them. If you look at real small children, they are both male and female. A little boy could want to play with a doll. A little girl could want to play with a truck. They have sexual characteristics, but they are not really functioning as a man or a woman yet.

 

Well, this is the condition of the creation right now. We are both good and evil. And the best of us do a lot of wrong things and make a lot of mistakes. We are usually predominantly good or predominantly evil. Just as a little boy, for example, may be predominantly male, but every once in a while, he might like to play with his sister's doll.

 

But we are at the point in time where the spiritual creation is going into full adulthood. And, you know, you do not see a 35-year-old man playing with a doll anymore. You just do not do it, right? Sometimes you see 35-year-old women having a doll collection. But any man that would have a doll collection at 35 would be very suspect.

 

So we see the creation going into spiritual maturity. And each individual is at a point right now where they are either going to become fully good or fully evil. And that is where we are in the maturation of the creation. That is what is going on in the heavenlies right now. This is the big push of the Devil to get people in his corner because, when he gets them, he is going to mature them fully on the negative side, and there will be no turning back. And on the other hand will be the Sons of God, matured fully in righteousness, with no turning back.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Did that answer your question?

 

COMMENT: Yes.

 

PASTOR VITALE: OK. Praise the Lord.

 

Transcribed by VerbalFusion, 09/20/22

1st Edit, 09/22/22, rh

 

The Following Message Has Been Transcribed For
Clarity, Continuity Of Thought, And Punctuation
By The LEM Transcribing & Editing Team.

 

COMMENT: I was listening to a message recently, it may have been "Love or Lust" (LEM Message #82). Maybe it was "All Ye Adulterers and Adulteresses" (LEM Message #76), it was message about relationships and in particular about fornication.

 

You were talking about divorce. And you were saying that,  a lot of people have thought that that Scripture in Matthew that says you do not divorce except for fornication, a lot of people have thought that that means adultery because they felt fornication meant sex before marriage.

 

Matt 19:9

9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.   KJV

 

Well, if you are married to someone, and Jesus says you do not get divorced except for fornication. That does not make sense. You cannot fornicate; you are in a marriage. It would be adultery. But He does not say adultery.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Amen. Good point.

 

COMMENT: And so, in the message, you were saying, this does not mean that you can divorce someone because one of the party commits adultery, but you are to restore them. What are you to do?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, I really do not remember what I said in that message. But I will give you what is in my heart, which should be in line with the message.

 

If you are married, and your husband (or if you are a man, your wife) commits one act of adultery, although Jesus says you can divorce for adultery, He really means for compulsive, unrepentant, repetitive adultery. If somebody has one act of adultery, that does not even make them an adulterer. They had a weak moment; they slipped. You are to forgive them and to restore them with your love.

 

However, if they refuse to repent, if they look you right in the eye, as in a situation that I recently heard of last week, where the man has been having an affair (both people, the man and woman, are born again), and the man has been having an affair with another born-again woman for 12 years, and he was just discovered, and told his wife, I will come home, but I will not give her up. I will not give my girlfriend up. That is grounds for divorce. That is unrepentant, repetitious adultery that is still going on. That is grounds for divorce.

 

COMMENT: Oh, you did not say that in the message.

 

PASTOR VITALE: What did I say in the message?

 

COMMENT: But if that is what you are saying now, and you feel that is of the Lord…

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes.

 

COMMENT: In the message, maybe it was "All Ye Adulterers and Adulteresses" (LEM Message # 76), I am not sure which one it was. But what you were saying really blessed me, because a lot of people have been pretty legalistic about this, that if one falls, you can just leave them. If one of the partner falls, you leave them; divorce them. But you blessed me by saying this. It seemed like, to me, it was compassion from the Lord that you restore that person, and you pray for them, and you forgive them, and you try to restore them, stand behind them and pray for them.

 

But then you said that that was not grounds for divorce, but that the divorce was grounds; you had grounds for divorce because of fornication. And it says, "except for fornication". It sounds like, to me, in the case of fornication, you can divorce.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Oh, I see what you are saying.

 

COMMENT: This is what you said. That fornication (I always wondered what this meant. And I thought it meant adultery, I grew up under that teaching. But now I believe it means what you said). It is in fornication. And you said, in the Greek, it means "ungodly sex acts."

 

Well, I think you said, on the message, ungodly sex acts. You were real strong on, if they are forcing you into ungodly sex acts.  You said, this is very ungodly that the man beats the woman and has a fight with her and then goes to bed with her. You said, this is a very ungodly, unnatural lust. And then you said that, if the man is ungodly towards the children, ungodly sex acts, incest, towards the children, then you said, you go then and get your divorce.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Amen.

 

COMMENT: And that is what you said this fornication is.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, if you look up the Greek word that is translated "fornication," it does not mean what the English word "fornication" means. In English, the word "fornication" means sexual intercourse, normal sexual intercourse, male to female, outside of marriage. But the Greek word that is translated "fornication" means "unnatural sex acts," which include sex outside of marriage, incest, sadomasochistic sex, oral sex.

 

COMMENT: Now, what is sadomasochistic?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Sadomasochistic sex. Sadism is a condition of one's soul whereby he gets a thrill or excited from hitting or from hurting somebody, from causing pain in somebody. And masochism is a deformity of the soul whereby one gets excitement or enjoyment out of being hurt.

 

And usually, in a sick couple, one of them is sadistic; he or she likes to do the hurting. And the other party, the other member of the couple, likes to be hurt. And you find that, in some cases, two people with deformities or sicknesses in their soul will get together, and they will be the opposite sides of one coin. One will like to hurt, and the other will like to be hurt.

 

And sometimes, these conditions are very extreme. And you have people that will cut somebody or really beat somebody severely. But sometimes, we have sadomasochism, and it is very mild. And it is so mild that the people do not recognize it.

 

People who are involved in this, if you stop to think about the conditions that result in you having sexual intercourse with your husband or wife; if you have this problem, and you are honest with yourself, you will say, Well, gee, every time we want to have sex, we have a fight first. This is a very mild manifestation of sadomasochism. And it is. You need to repent and ask God for deliverance.

 

But getting back to divorce. If a man or a woman has one adulterous encounter, I say that is not grounds for divorce. If the person repents and is willing to go to God for deliverance, I maintain that you have no grounds for divorce. However, if the person committing adultery is involved in an ongoing, continuous adultery and they will not repent; they will not give up their partner, then this becomes fornication, an ungodly sex act. And at that point, it becomes grounds for divorce.

 

Did I answer your question?

 

COMMENT: Yes.

 

PASTOR VITALE: OK.

 

COMMENT: Would you explain “all ungodly sex acts”? How can we know how to stay away from them, how to be cleansed from them, recognize all of them? So we have got this sadistic thing, we can recognize it. This does happen all the time.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes.

 

COMMENT: So that is a common thing in marriages.

 

PASTOR VITALE: That people fight in order to get into sexual encounters with one another. A lot of married couples need that.

 

COMMENT: And in the back of their mind is, really, that they want to go to bed with them.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right.

 

COMMENT: But the other one might not be stimulated or something, so they start a fight?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right.

 

COMMENT: OK.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Either one or both members of the couple need the argument to get stimulated.

 

COMMENT: I think it is really important, at this time, in this hour, that we become wise about these things because I think it is one of the biggest problems in the Church world today, fornication.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes.

 

COMMENT: But they did not know what it was. I had this little thought that was fed to me from the pulpit. It is sex before marriage.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right.

 

COMMENT: Now, it is beginning to broaden. I am beginning to see this sin, and it is in my life. I am asking God to cleanse me and correct me and to show me any areas. These sins can be on the family line. I believe it is on my family line.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Amen.

 

COMMENT: And it has desired to manifest in my life. I have resisted it. But would you explain every fornication act that is ungodly, how to recognize it and be cleansed of it?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, I do not know that I am aware of every act, but I will share with you what I know. And basically, what I am going to say is going to be booed at and hissed by the world. But I believe that it is the truth of God.

 

Now, going back 100 years ago, maybe even 60 years ago, when it came to sexual activity, there was something known as the missionary position. And it got this name, and it is referring to the position of the husband and wife during sexual intercourse, with the wife being in a passive position underneath and the male being in the aggressive position on top and aggressively pursuing the sexual act.

 

It received the name, the missionary position, because the missionaries, or religious Christians of that hour. And the missionaries were serving God to the best of their ability, hopefully. That was the implication, that was the only position that they would use when engaging in sexual intercourse.

 

And in this hour, we find the whole world, the marriage counselors, the psychologists, everybody that has the wisdom of the world, telling you, well, you get bored with your husband and wife after being married for five years or 10 years, so change the position. Let the woman get on top. And there are all different kinds of positions that you could engage in.

 

And I am suggesting to you that these different positions are ungodly. If you have a marriage, and one member of the marriage is pressing the other member to change positions, I am suggesting to you that you have a right to resist them, that it is ungodly.

 

And why is it ungodly? Because God has sanctified sexual intercourse in marriage, and He has elevated it to the higher realm of God. When we start engaging in different positions because we need to be stimulated sexually, that means that we are no longer being stimulated by love for one another. What is our stimulation? Position? Pornographic movies? Lust? We are not supposed to be engaging in sexual relations as the animals engage in it. We are higher than the animals.

 

And sexual intercourse is supposed to be an expression of love, of a godly love, which raises up the act to a position where it is acceptable by God. But if a love for that person is no longer stimulating us, but if it is a pornographic movie, if it is a different position, what we are saying is, what is causing us to engage in this activity is an animal lust within us. And it really does not matter whether it is with your wife or with your girlfriend or with a prostitute on the street. Now, if that is the case, you are yielding to the lower animal nature of your body, which is supposed to be resisted.

 

It is another way of saying sex is “The marriage bed”. Paul said the marriage bed is not defiled. To have sexual intercourse outside of marriage, you are defiled. What does that mean? You are reaping curses and judgments unto yourself. Well, within marriage, there is a legal way to have sexual intercourse and an illegal way to have it. So it is the same act if it is outside of marriage or if it is inside of marriage. Why is it defiled in one case and not in the other? Because God said, in marriage, it is not defiled.

 

Heb 13:4

4 Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.   KJV

 

God is dealing with motives. And if your motive for having sexual intercourse, if it is an expression of your love for your wife, then it is acceptable to God. But if you are feeding lust, you cannot feed lust just because you are married. It is not OK to come home after a bad day in the office and just go to bed with your wife because it releases the tension. Brethren, your tension is to be released by turning to God. Can you hear this?

 

COMMENT: Yes.

 

PASTOR VITALE: I know you are not a married woman, but that is the truth.

 

COMMENT: I have heard that a lot.

 

PASTOR VITALE: That men do that.

 

COMMENT: By professionals.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes.

 

COMMENT: They will say that it is a good thing to do. It is healthy to release that tension in sex. Sex is good to release tension. That is what they say.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, that is what the animals do, brethren. They release tension by having sex. Sons of God release tension by turning to Jesus. Hallelujah. Glory to God.

 

COMMENT: I wanted to mention about the divorce thing and the fornication in Matthew that is mentioned. I heard one person say that they felt that, except for fornication; when they searched it back in the Greek, and even further back in some books that explained it, in the Greek and even if it means "fornication," they are saying it does not mean "except for fornication." That word actually means, in the Greek, "even if it means fornication, you are not to divorce." In other words, there are no grounds for divorce at all. Even in the case of fornication, there is no grounds for divorce.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, I think that person thought it meant adultery. And in the case of adultery, now I feel different about it, that if you can restore that person and help them to repent and come back into the marriage, do that. Do not divorce.

 

COMMENT: But about the other, you are saying that it does mean "in the case of fornication." What do you think of that? You know, that they felt they looked back in the Greek, and that it meant that Jesus was saying, Even if means fornication, you do not.

 

PASTOR VITALE: There are no grounds for divorce, ever. Is that what your question is? What do I have to say about that?

 

COMMENT: Yes. But that does not mean that. That word, "except."

 

PASTOR VITALE: In other words, let me just understand your question. You are saying that there are some believers that say that there are never any grounds for divorce, ever, and that if you should feel things are severe enough to leave your husband, you should be alone for the rest of your life. And what are my comments on that way of thinking?

 

COMMENT: Yes.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Is that your question?

 

That is a very legalistic attitude that can cause great pain and torment to God's people who are trying to live a godly life before him. Sometimes, we have Christians who are perverted. And sometimes, you have a married couple, and one is born again, and the other is not. But there are a lot of born-again people that have a lot of perversion within them that they have not been delivered of.

 

And, brethren, if your husband is committing incest with your children, and he will not repent and cease from that activity, you pack up your kids, and you get out.

 

COMMENT: Maybe the ones believing that knew that you were not talking about adultery. You were talking about ungodly sex acts. If they knew the Greek meaning of the "fornication," maybe they would have a better understanding. To me, this lifted me up to a higher understanding of it.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Amen.

 

COMMENT: But to just say "except for fornication"; that word "except" means, even if it means fornication, you do not divorce.

 

PASTOR VITALE: No. I have to disagree with that.

 

COMMENT: It does not really mean that.

 

PASTOR VITALE: You see, the Lord knows the condition of the human race. He knows that even the people that are now part of His Church, that are born again; He knows the sin that dwelleth in our soul, and He is a loving God. He is a loving God. I think that every effort should be made to bring the person that is offending to repentance.

 

Sister, if your husband is insisting that you have oral sex with him, if he is insisting and pressuring you and fighting with you over it, and you have prayed about it and prayed about it; if he is forcing it on you, sister, you have a right to go before the Lord and ask him to release you for divorce. Say, Lord, are you going to deal with this man? Look at what he is forcing me into. Are you going to deal with him? Or do you want me to leave him? We should always ask the Lord before we go. But that is legal grounds for divorce.

 

COMMENT: The other thing is, you said that, whether in marriage or out of marriage, masturbation could be fornication. Is this so?

 

PASTOR VITALE: I believe so. I believe, again, that fornication refers to any unclean act. And I believe that masturbation is an act of idolatry, sort of in the same way that homosexuality is. Paul says that they turned away from the Creator, and they worshipped the things of man. And they fell into ungodly practices, one man lusting after another. Well, it is just as bad to lust after yourself because... what is masturbation? It is a lust of the flesh...

 

COMMENT: Yes, it is.

 

PASTOR VITALE: ...that we are yielding to. It is not rooted in any form of affection or love, which is the sexual activity that is acceptable to God, when it is joined to love and affection. Otherwise, we are living as brute beasts.

 

COMMENT: Yes, I believe it is not acceptable to God.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Is that not what Romans 1 says?

 

COMMENT: I believe that now.

 

PASTOR VITALE: That is what Romans 1 says.

 

COMMENT: Yes.

 

PASTOR VITALE: "And they started acting like brute beasts." Let me see if I can find it. It is Romans 1, is it not? Are you familiar with the Scripture?

 

COMMENT: I will tell you, I have compassion on those that fall into that trap, because God is showing me. He is giving me compassion.

 

PASTOR VITALE: OK.

 

COMMENT: I used to have a mentality about it. How could anybody fall into it? It is gross. And now God is saying that it is a common thing, and that He has compassion on these people that fall into that trap. But it really is a trap. It is a trap.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes. Here it is. Let me read this Scripture to you.

 

It is in Romans 1, and it says -- Verse 21: "Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened."

 

"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." We have all these marriage counselors in the world saying, Oh, it is wonderful. Fornicate, masturbate, try ungodly positions, use pornography, use surrogate sexual partners. They became wise. But God says they became fools.

 

Verse 23: "And they changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image." They took this body that God said could be revealing the glory of God, and they turned it into an image made like to corruptible man. They made a natural man out of it. "And to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things." All of these teachings and thinking processes are bringing us down to the level of animal, not a creation that is higher than the animals.

 

Verse 24: "Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness." Now, these are people who no longer think that their body, that their life, is revealing the glory of God, but they are on the level of animals. And I have even heard people who are supporting this kind of ungodly behavior, saying, well, animals have homosexual activity, and animals have oral sex, and we are just mammals like they are. So why should we not do it too? Because we are not animals, brethren. We are higher than animals.

 

COMMENT: Animals do have oral sex?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Certain animals do. But we are not animals, brethren. We are the creation that reveals the glory, that is made to reveal the glory of God. We are above the animals, And, therefore, we are subject to the law of God. The animals are not subject to the law of God, neither can they be subject to it. They have no understanding.

 

So in verse 24: "Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts." Brethren, if you yield to the lust of your flesh, you shall be given over to uncleanness. It may not be uncleanness for animals, but it is uncleanness for you.  And the result of it is that you shall be as the animals. Choose ye. "To dishonor their own bodies between themselves."

 

"Who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator." Brethren, when you masturbate or when you engage in sexual activity that satisfies the lusts of your flesh, not a love for another human being but a lust for your flesh, the Lord says that you are worshipping the creature. You are worshipping the body that your spiritual life dwells in.

 

Verse 26: "For this cause, God gave them up unto vile affections, for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature."

 

Now, brethren, everybody I have ever heard preach this preaches it as lesbianism, but it does not say that. It says that the women gave up the natural use into that which is against nature. And I suggest to you that God did not make your body to masturbate any more than He made your body to be engaged in lesbian activity. Any unnatural sexual activity is against nature.

 

Verse 27: "And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet."

 

COMMENT: And that is talking about homosexuality.

 

PASTOR VITALE: That is homosexuality. But to be honest with you, I would really like to look up those words because,  we did some studies in Genesis where it talks about daughters and sons of God. And when you look those words up in the Hebrew, it is the same word. And it really just means offspring of God.

 

So I would have to do a further study on that. When it says "men working"..."men with men," I would like to check that word out myself.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Did you have a question?

 

COMMENT: But what you are saying, though, is still that masturbation is another form of lesbianism.

 

PASTOR VITALE: It is. It is another form of homosexuality.

 

COMMENT: It is self-lesbianism.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right.

 

COMMENT: I mean, it is...

 

PASTOR VITALE: It is even worse.

 

COMMENT: It is masturbation. It is fornication.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right. It is even worse because what Satan would do, if he had his way; and Satan is what? The spirit that rules in the natural man. He would have you be utterly corrupted and perverse. Now, what has God ordained? That man should lie with woman in a high form of love and affection, produce a family that should be a stable support for every member of that family, that should nourish, that should provide, that should be godly and that should produce the fruit of God's Spirit. That is what God says.

 

Satan says, Oh, no. Oh, no. Do not have children. Do not have sexual intercourse as a result of love or affection. Yield to the lusts of your flesh. Just use one another. Pick up someone in a bar.

 

Brethren, all of this is one step away. If you are having sex with your wife because you have tension, you are just one step away of picking up a woman in a bar or masturbating. What do you need her for? What you are doing is getting satisfaction for your own lust.

 

And eventually, what happens to them is that they wind up isolated. You see, you are no longer looking at that woman because you care for you. You are looking at her for a selfish reason. Then you decide that you do not need her anymore. It is okay to masturbate because all you want is the feeling. And the ultimate end of a person that falls into this pit is that they find themselves utterly isolated and totally alone without loving, godly relationships in their life, and they frequently become destroyed in their minds.

 

COMMENT: Reprobate?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Utterly reprobate, incapable of having godly relationships, totally selfish, turned inward, only concerned with themselves.

 

Now, brethren, I am going to put this on the message. It is a little gross. But since this is the way the message is going, I am going to put it on. Brethren, do you know that, in New York City, in Manhattan, in the areas that are known for sexual reprobateness, and more so in homosexual areas, although it does exist in heterosexual areas. Do you know that there are clubs that these men can go to (now, this is strictly for the men) where they walk into a room where there is a wall, and there are holes in the wall? And there are men on one side of the wall, and men on the other side of the wall. And they have sexual intercourse with a wall between them. Did you know this?

 

They want no love. They want no affection. They want no communication. They want to do something with their body that will gratify them, without the necessity of a relationship. Why? A relationship can be painful. A relationship requires compromise. Sometimes you have arguments in relationships. All that they want is the release of their tension.

 

When it comes to the heterosexual life, there are clubs in Manhattan, and, I guess, across the world, where you come in, and you wear a mask, and you pair off with somebody. And nobody knows who they are with because everybody is wearing a mask. And you have sexual relationships, and you leave that gathering, and you never see the person again. It is total selfishness. It is animalistic. This is what animals do.

 

And then again, some animals are even higher than that. There are a lot of animals that live in families, that have offspring and stay with their mate for the rest of their life. But there are many animals that will just have sexual intercourse and move on. This is pure animal behavior. We are not animals. We are souls. God has raised us higher than the animals. We are souls, and we are not to have sexual activity without our soul being involved, which is our emotions. And these people are having sexual activity without involving their soul.

 

And the human race is falling. Although it used to be at this condition, it was raised up when Christianity came upon the earth. But in this country, which was established as a Christian nation, we are spiraling down as men and woman no longer seek to engage in sexual activity on the soul realm, but we seek to engage in it on the pure animal realm. And as we continue to descend, the result of it is total reprobateness.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Did I make that clear?

 

COMMENT: Yes.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Glory to God.

 

COMMENT: One question, you said sex should be motivated when you feel love for one another. Anything other than that to stimulate one another for sex; like a fight, positions, or something to enter in through the eye gate, like pornography; this becomes fornication?

 

PASTOR VITALE: I believe so. It is an unclean sexual activity. Yes.

 

COMMENT: OK.

 

PASTOR VITALE: I believe that. I would just like to read this last verse in Romans, verse 1:28.

 

Romans 1:28: "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge." And what is the retention of God? God is saying you are higher than an animal. Sex should be on the soul realm. And because they would not retain that in their knowledge, "God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient."

 

And this is what happened to them. They became "filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection."

 

Brethren, if you start on this spiral downward; you could have a loving relationship with your wife. And if you start into pornography and oral sex and anal sex, because you think it is OK and it is the thing to do, it is activity that will drag you down to the level of animal. It will unseat you from your godly position in the soul realm in this area. And you shall become without natural affection, the implication being that, when you find yourself without natural affection, you shall not be able to find within you anymore natural affection.

 

You cannot go back and forth. You cannot have sex with your wife one day because you love her, and the next day because you have got an itch. If you yield to that itch, it is going to drag you down to a place where you will no longer want her because of love, but you will be responding to your animal instincts. Did I make that clear?

 

COMMENT: Yes. It says, in the Scripture, in verse 32, "Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but have pleasure in them that do them."

 

All this, verses 29 through 32, it is saying, verse 29: "Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication..." So this, all of these things are worthy of death. If someone is in fornication, whether they are married or whether they are not, it does not matter. It is fornication. They are ungodly sex acts. If they are in ungodly sex acts, they are worthy of death.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right. Well, when we break God's law, the judgment is death. That is what that means, that you are worthy of death.

 

COMMENT: So is that the same thing as when God said, "If you partake of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, in dying, you shall die"? Eventually, that person is going to die.

 

PASTOR VITALE: They are going to die spiritually. You see, if you are in Christ, and you start getting involved in all these things, you shall die spiritually. And eventually; it may not come for several generations, but on your family line, you shall die. And what does that mean? It means that, as the judgment is fulfilled, if there is no repentance coming forth, and forgiveness of sins, if you do not have this understanding, somewhere along the line, your offspring will cease from reproducing. There will be no more offspring, and you shall die.

 

COMMENT: I feel that this sin that is carried down through the family line; I believe this is what the sin is that causes us to die. Is this true?

 

PASTOR VITALE: All sin causes us to die, not just sexual sin.

 

COMMENT: Say, well, did they have sex in the very beginning, before they ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?

 

PASTOR VITALE: I do not think they had bodies like we have in that hour. That was spiritual fornication. But, first it happened in the spiritual, and then it happened in the natural. It played itself out in this realm of appearance.

 

But sin is much more than sexual sin. It is anything that is not of God. Sin is anything that is not of God. It is idolatry. It is loving ourselves more than we love God.

 

Now, we know one of the Ten Commandments says, "Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart and thy mind and thy soul." And because people do not have understanding, we hear them saying, Well, I do. And then they go out and do something that is totally selfish. Brethren, all selfishness is the direct opposite of the love of God.

 

COMMENT: Is it true that those that get married and have sex have a better understanding of their true self than those that are single? Or is that not the truth?

 

PASTOR VITALE: I have never heard of anything like that. I do not see what one thing has to do with the other.

 

I want to tell you, brethren, the Scripture clearly states, and I can hear them screaming in the realm of the spirit. What I am preaching is not popular, brethren. But Paul clearly states that it is a good thing not to marry. Now, you have your choice. I am not against marriage. But Paul says, if you should choose not to marry, or if the Lord should choose you not to marry, it is a good thing.

 

COMMENT: Do you feel that, if the person abstains from marriage or, in a sexual relationship that comes with marriage, that they can obtain a higher spirituality?

 

PASTOR VITALE: I do not really know. I just know that we are supposed to serve God. And if he calls us to marry and have children, maybe we could be bringing forth one of the Sons that he is going to appear in. Well, that is the glory that He has called us to. And we have to be very careful not to get into all of this carnality and idolatry. What we are striving for is total obedience to God and whatever He calls us to do. And if we do something of our own heart, then everything is for naught.

 

If He calls you to marry and produce a son, and you do not because you think it is fine to not marry, you are utterly defeating God's purpose in your life. But if He calls you to a high spiritual calling which does not include marriage, and you insist on getting married, you have the same sin. It is the same sin as not getting married when He tells you to get married. We just have to do what He tells us. Can you hear that?

 

COMMENT: Yes. How can you tell when God has called you to marry or when He has called you to be single?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, the way I would tell is that I would pray continuously every time the thought came to my mind. Father, your perfect will in my life. In particular, with this issue, if you want me to get married, produce the man. If you do not want me to get married, then give me a peace about it, and give me dominion over any sexual feelings that are causing me distress.

 

Because, I declare to you, if God has called you to be a eunuch for Christ, He has not called you to discomfort. I do not believe that. If Jesus has said there is such a thing as a eunuch for Christ, he does not mean that you shall be single and be in torment. He has called us to peace.

 

And I suggest to you that the ultimate that the Scripture suggests is that the only sexual activity that is legal is that which comes forth from genuine affection. And if you are not married, brother and sister, who are you having that kind of affection for?

 

Therefore, if you lust for sexual activity within marriage or without marriage, aside from genuine affection for the person that you are engaging in it with, you are manifesting lust. And that is sin, within marriage or without marriage.

 

COMMENT: Where is the border? If one of the parties is manifesting lust, are they... first of all, are they likely to manifest these fights to get you stimulated or manifest some provocative thing? Are they likely to do that because of lust?

 

PASTOR VITALE: It depends on the person. Some people watch pornography. Others get into fights. Others are loving about it, but it is still lust because it is a contrived situation.

 

Someone, a husband or a wife, might have it in their mind that they want sexual activity that night, and they will deliberately, go out to seduce their partner without a genuine affection. They are making the dinner; they are lighting the candles; they are lowering the lights, not because they want an encounter with the one that they love but because their body is screaming for sexual activity. And they know that, if they do these things, they will get it. That is a wrong motive, brethren. It is a wrong motive.

 

COMMENT: But it is not worthy of divorce.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Definitely not, because most people do not even understand this. I mean, this whole message is for people that are called to a very high realm in the spirit. Because the average person would just not comprehend what we are talking about here.

 

COMMENT: You are saying that fighting is borderline fornication.

 

PASTOR VITALE: If it happens all the time. If you cannot have sexual intercourse without fighting, something is wrong.

 

COMMENT: Where is the line, then, for divorce? That you know that it is time for divorce, and that the fornication has gone over the line?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, I would think that you would have had to have spent quite a while, several years, praying about it, speaking to your partner about it, trying to make him aware of it. And the bottom line is that you do not get divorced until Jesus tells you to do it. You go before him, and you could say, Lord, I have been praying for six years. And the only time this man wants intercourse with me is when we have a fight, and I have a revelation that it is ungodly. And I have prayed, and I have prayed.

 

And more than praying, you would have to communicate with him. You would have to say, Husband, I believe I have prayed about this. And I believe that there is something ungodly stimulating your sexual desire for me. You have to start a fight with me every time in order to have intercourse with me. You have to make him aware of it. You have to talk to him about it. You have to pray for him, ask him if he will join you in prayer.

 

And then, finally, you can say to him, Look, I am not going to enforce this in you. If you want to have sex with me after you start a fight with me, I am not going to agree to it anymore because I am convinced it is ungodly. And if you want to have sex with me, I want you to be nice to me first.

 

You have to take your stand. You have to resist what you believe to be ungodly. And go to God continuously. I would not give up except for after years. And even then, God has to say, Give up on him.

 

COMMENT: If one of the partners is in pornography, is that grounds for divorce?

 

PASTOR VITALE: It is grounds for divorce. But again, you should talk to them. Try to make them aware that it is not godly. Pray for them.

 

COMMENT: What if they will not talk to you about it, or they resist you, or they even deny it?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, then, you go in prayer. And at some point, the bottom line is you have to hear it from God, whether He wants you to stick it out or whether He wants you to divorce them. But what you can do is refuse to have sex with your husband after you know that he has been in the bathroom reading his girly magazines.

 

COMMENT: Now, if they are not forceful with you;  say they want you to have oral sex, one of the parties. But they are not forceful about it. They drop it. If you say no, they drop it. How do you restore yourself to a godly thinking towards them?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, you have to forgive them. You have to forgive them and understand that they (especially in today's Church) probably do not even know that it is wrong. The basic rules of living in God's kingdom are always the same. We must forgive.

 

COMMENT: Yes.

 

PASTOR VITALE: And if we cannot forgive, we have to ask the Lord to give us His ability to forgive.

 

COMMENT: Yes.

 

PASTOR VITALE: We must communicate with the party. We must tell them what we know that they do not know. Or if they fall because we have not told them, their blood is on our hands. And we must tell them in a godly spirit, not in a fight. We must say, Dear, I believe it is wrong, and this is why, and I will not engage with you in this activity. I believe it is ungodly. And then you start praying for the person and see where God leads you.

 

COMMENT: Now, if the person has had these sins in their bodies for years, and they have been brought up in a Christian atmosphere and been taught that they are wrong, and they resist them, but yet it is still in their flesh, is it possible that... I mean, is this true that the sin... I mean, it could be there, and the religious spirits are just covering it and keeping them in torment all the while. And they are not free.

 

If they begin to manifest these spirits, they are condemned. If it goes into fornication or masturbation or whatever, then they find out that it was really there. And all their pharisaical-ness just drops. Like, well, I am just as bad as the world. Right?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right.

 

COMMENT: But still, it seems like, in my case, with the sin being revealed, I am freer than I was under that religiousness. I feel that it is exposed. As it is exposed, I am getting freer to be who I really am, who I was never able to be because it was pressed down with the religious spirit, telling me this and that and preaching whatever.

 

COMMENT: It is very legalistic, whatever it has been. I am not sure what it was. But,  it is like a shame, and an ungodly type of shame. It is like a condemnation that, but yet, I felt it was right to resist. But yet, when I fall into it, if God is right there, saying, I am here to deliver you, I feel more filled up with Christ now, and bolder than I ever have been. And yet it is at the same hour that this wickedness is being revealed to me.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, that is the blessing of confession of sins and repentance. Confession of sins and repentance is not something to be dreaded. If anyone dreads that, it is just pride in them, because confession of our sin and repentance brings Christ into our life, and power. He says, Where you are weak, when I fill you, you are stronger than you could ever be in your own strength. So confess your weakness and receive my strength. Hallelujah.

 

COMMENT: Yes.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Confession of sins and repentance is a blessing of God. There is a Scripture that says, "We pray that the Lord grant you repentance." Man cannot even repent unless God gives him power over his own pride, which would keep him from repentance or even confessing the sin.

 

COMMENT: So a person that falls into fornication or pornography or masturbation or whatever; if they fall into that, and they have been a Christian for years, and all of a sudden, it just manifests, and some night, it happens, they can come back stronger than ever if they come back to God, and they repent.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Amen.

 

COMMENT: They could come back stronger than ever in Christ.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Amen. Yes.

 

COMMENT: Like, these men that the people in the world laugh at and say, Oh, he fell into it. And they are laughing at him because, Yes, he is supposed to be a Christian. He is supposed to be an evangelist, whatever. And he falls, and he gets back up. Christ knows what is going to happen in the end and the outcome of it.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Amen. The whole key is confession and repentance.

 

COMMENT: But if that person would have gone for deliverance... say, in my case, if I would go for deliverance, and I am looking for deliverance from that thing first, I am hoping it is never going to manifest. And I want deliverance.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Praise the Lord.

 

COMMENT: But if it is not happening, I do not know why. I do not know why the deliverance is not coming forth. And then the manifestation happens, and then it is exposed, but after the sin has already happened.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, I think sometimes the Lord will let it happen because some people do not realize that it is a sin. They do not realize it is a sin. They have been pressing it down under a religious spirit all these years, and they do not realize that it is something that has to be confessed and repented of. So the Lord might let it manifest to say to you, Hey, look, it is there. Are you going to confess and repent?

 

COMMENT: I believe that is what happened with me.

 

PASTOR VITALE: I believe so.

 

COMMENT: That the sin was there, but I did not realize it was there.

 

PASTOR VITALE: That it was sin. You did not know it was sin.

 

COMMENT: And I did not know the spirits that were involved.

 

PASTOR VITALE: OK.

 

COMMENT: I did not know that they were there. But through a religious spirit, I pressed it down for years. And those religious spirits are tricky because they come as Christ. They will use the Scriptures and everything. And they will have you confessing your sin to God. But it is not the real thing.

 

PASTOR VITALE: No. And what does it do? It keeps you from your true deliverance.

 

COMMENT: Even "Jesus, I repent of my sins." But,  I mean, I have done that all my life. I have asked Jesus to cleanse me. I have sung songs to Jesus all my life. And yet this sin is in my flesh. And so I cry out to God. God. That is where I come to the end, like there is no hope. Until, finally, He is... I mean, I am breaking through now...

 

PASTOR VITALE: Praise God.

 

COMMENT: ...a little bit. But, it is just a little bit.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right.

 

COMMENT: Some of it has been really religious, the thing of even repentance that I have been taught.

 

PASTOR VITALE: It has not been a true repentance. It has been just words. Right?

 

COMMENT: Right. It is this patterned prayer that they taught us. "I am a sinner. Forgive me of my sin and cleanse my heart." But, see, I feel that I have been under a whole system that allows it to continue and go on, but they want to control it. They want the sin in you, but they want to control it.

 

That is some kind of a wicked system, I believe, that does that. Any church that does that, that does not want you free, and I believe that I was under that church most of my life. And I am not talking about the Catholic church. I am talking about a spirit-filled church...

 

PASTOR VITALE: Praise the Lord.

 

COMMENT: ...that believes in the baptism of the Holy Ghost, but they do not believe in the casting out of demons and the exposure of demons and sin.

 

PASTOR VITALE: They hide it. They will not even talk about it. Yes.

 

COMMENT: They allow the demon. They allow it. And they will not...

 

PASTOR VITALE: By refusing to talk about it. You see, Jesus Christ exposes sin. That is His ministry. He exposes sin. And after He exposes it, if you confess it and repent, He will deliver you. He will, I promise you, because my God is not a man that He should lie. Sometimes, you have to wait. He does not do it as quickly as you would like Him to do it.

 

COMMENT: And I am wondering if, in that same denomination, all their teachings about hell and; I mean, they have got a whole pattern. All the teachings that they have about hell and damnation and, the rapture and all these things, if they are not the actual spirits... this is why I am saying I believe it is much stronger than just a religious spirit. I believe it is whole doctrines, maybe. The way that the Lord is showing me this right now, I believe it could be whole doctrines that could keep these sexual evil spirits in the person, manifesting, tormenting them, night and day. But here they are, believing this stuff they are teaching. Could it be connected?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Sure, it could.

 

COMMENT: It could be the very doctrines that are keeping the demons in there.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right, because they are afraid of being damned to hell forever. So they may not yield. Either they are yielding to these spirits, and then...

 

COMMENT: They will not yield it because of their fear of going to hell.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right. Either they will not yield it because they are afraid of going to hell, and they are in torment in their body, or they do yield to it, and they are still afraid of going to hell, but the denomination holds control over them through fear.

 

And I declare, to anyone reading this message, our God is a God of love. And when the Bible talks about fearing God, that word, "fear," you have to look it up in the Hebrew. It is talking about respecting and honoring God. It is not the fear that man has. And the whole idea behind God's plan of salvation for us is to give us the power to keep His law, so that we do not have to fall into fornication, nor do we have to resist in our body from doing it and have our mind tormenting us

 

Because Jesus clearly said, If you lust after the woman, even if you never talk to her, if you have lusted after her, you have committed adultery with her. So what are we holding it in for? We are still in sin.

 

According to these denominations, you are going to hell whether you do it or whether you do not do it. According to their teachings, I do not believe that.

 

COMMENT: But we were taught to resist these sins, that they are wrong, and that we just do not do them.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right.

 

COMMENT: So that is what we were doing, resisting them in ourselves.

 

PASTOR VITALE: In your own strength.

 

COMMENT: Is that what we are to do?

 

PASTOR VITALE: No, because that is resisting them in your own strength, you see. And we will never get set free doing anything in our own strength.

 

COMMENT: What is the line with that, then? What is the line? What is actually resisting them in Christ's strength? Because we said, Father, forgive me of my sin, in Jesus' name.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, the line is the person's heart.

 

COMMENT: We read the Word of God. It was all the Word.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right. It has to be a specific repentance. You have to go before God and say, Father, I know that I have deep-seated desire to do (whatever you are desiring to do: to have sex outside of marriage, to masturbate, to have oral sex, whatever it is). You have to say, Father, this is not just a general sin that I could say, 'Well, all young people have this, and I have it too, and keep me from falling into fornication. No, no. You have to go before the Lord and say, Father, this thing is in me. It wants to act its lusts out through my members, and it is there, and it is my sin, and I want to be set free from it. That kind of honest, open confession and repentance is the first step towards deliverance.

 

And this is, of course, assuming that you have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Because the Scripture says, "Submit the God, resist the devil, and he shall flee from you."

 

COMMENT: Yes.

 

PASTOR VITALE: So we must be close with Jesus. We must confess it and repent of it. And then we wait for our deliverance, hanging onto the horns of the altar, trying not to do it. And if we slip once, well, we just pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off, repent and go right back into our program of resisting, crying out to God the whole time that we acknowledge that it is wrong, that we hate it, but that we were overtaken, and to please deliver us. And He will.

 

COMMENT: So with our will, we are to resist.

 

PASTOR VITALE: With our will, with the power of God. We have to lay hold of the power of God and use it. You see, the man that does not truly repent, he is not using the power of God because the power of God is not available to him without repentance. The man that says, Well, everyone has lust. What are you trying to make out of me? Every man has lust, and I am not committing adultery, so what do you want? Then he is doing it in his own strength.

 

The only way we are going to be delivered from the torment is to join our strength to the strength of God, to lay hold of the power of God. And that is only available to us after we confess that it is our personal sin, that it is ungodly, that it something unclean that is within us, and that we want to live holy for Christ. We are not making excuses for ourselves, but we are turning to God for the deliverance from an ungodly lust.

 

I had a woman say to me once, "My husband works nights, and he comes home frequently when I am sleeping. And he has sexual intercourse with me while I am sleeping." This is what this woman told me. This woman was unsatisfied in her marriage in that she was not having lovemaking with her husband frequently enough.

 

It is like going to bed with a dead body. She was just lying there. She was asleep. And he would have sexual intercourse with her, and he was relieved, and there was no warmth and affection and loving that would be involved if it was a soulish lovemaking based on mutual affection and compassion for one another.

 

So she could have told anybody, Well, my husband and I, we have sex six nights a week, but I am not satisfied. Why are you not satisfied? Because he has used you to masturbate. Can you hear what I am saying? This is not godly, to go home and have sex with your wife when she is asleep, that she should lay there like a dead person.

 

Do you know that there is another perversion that some people have sex with dead bodies? And I have read of accounts. I have read an account of a woman that got an annulment. She married a man, a virgin. And on their wedding night, he told her to soak in a bathtub. She could not understand why. And she came out of the bathtub all cold and wrinkly, and he commanded her to just lie still on the bed and not move while he had sex with her. This is simulating a dead body.

 

Brethren, when a man and a woman have sexual intercourse, it is to be based on mutual love, affection and respect, and mutual willingness to come together and comfort one another. You cannot masturbate on your mate.

 

COMMENT: That is fornication, too. Masturbating on your mate...

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes, it is. Yes, it is.

 

COMMENT: ...is another form of fornication.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right. If your husband is forcing that on you, if he is insisting on having sexual intercourse with you while you sleep, you have a right to resist him because that is fornication.

 

COMMENT: If he wakes you up?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, no. If he wakes you up, and if you join with him, if you do not mind being woken up in the night.

 

COMMENT: You mean, if he starts just making sexual moves on you as you are sleeping.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right, as you lay there, as a half-dead person. Right, as you are asleep, with no response from you whatsoever. And he says, Just lay there; I will be through in a minute. That is fornication. What does he need you for? Is he giving himself a good time? Well, I do not masturbate; I have sex with my wife. You are a liar, brother, because there is no difference, one from the other.

 

You see, to some men, it is insulting or against their masculinity to masturbate. But they will have sex with their wife while she does not participate. What is the difference? Get yourself a doll. I hear there is a big market for human-sized dolls these days.

 

COMMENT: Where? Really?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes. Now, these are sick people.

 

COMMENT: Really perverted.

 

PASTOR VITALE: These are sick people. They want the animal stimulation without the demands of a relationship with another human being, who might say to you, Darling, tonight, I have a headache. And you have to say, Yes, dear, I love you enough to wait until you want to share this activity with me. There is pain in a relationship. You have to forgive; you have to love; you have to give and take; you have to compromise.

 

And people today, many of them are so selfish that, when they want the stimulation, they want it. And they will either say to their mate, Just lay still; you do not have to do anything; that is, or they will masturbate. Or some really sick people buy these dolls. It is all fornication.

 

God has said man shall have sexual intercourse in the marriage bed, two people, agreed in their mind, based on love and affection and respect.

 

COMMENT: And that is holy and undefiled.

 

PASTOR VITALE: And that is holy and undefiled.

 

COMMENT: If the person gets cleansed of these things, and they are in a marriage, can they come to a place where there is no more sin reigning in their body? Would this lead them into eternal life?

 

PASTOR VITALE: I believe the deliverance from any sin is one step closer to eternal life. I do not think we are ever delivered from all sin because sin comes from two sources. Its original root is in our Adamic soul. When we have yielded to that sin, either us or members of our ancestors who have yielded to that sin, our Adamic soul produces fruit. And that ungodly fruit is demons and curses.

 

Now, we can get demons and curses from engaging in ungodly sexual behavior ourselves, or it can be passed down on the family line. The only thing we can get delivered from is the ungodly fruit. The root of our problem, which is Adam, shall remain until Christ swallows him up. However, when we have demons of lust or ungodly or perverse sex, sometimes, they are so strong that they torment us.

 

So if the Lord delivers us from the fruit, we should no longer be in torment. And we should be strong enough that, when our Adamic soul rises up and makes us think about pornography, we should be strong enough in Christ because it is the Adamic soul alone without his offspring, you see, without the demons.

 

We should be strong enough in Christ to stand up and say, Now, you are wickedness, and you are not going to stimulate me. I am not going to tolerate it. I am not going to do it. And I command this thought to go from my mind. And we will be strong enough to do that if we are in Christ and it is Adam alone speaking to us. Adam together with his offspring, the demons, can overtake us, even if we are in Christ.

 

And we all know that this is what happened to that international preacher a few years ago, I believe, a great man of God. And he was found on the back streets looking for prostitutes. He needed deliverance. He could not take dominion over his own Adamic soul. Why? Because, wherever they came from, on the family line or before he was saved, whatever, he had demons that were leading him to these prostitutes, that, together with Adam, were stronger than the Christ in him.

 

COMMENT: Now, do you believe that.... say we get the demons out, of lust. Because of Adam being there, you are saying we do not ever get delivered from all sin until Christ appears. Right?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Amen.

 

COMMENT: When Christ appears, that is it.

 

PASTOR VITALE: That is it. It is all over.

 

COMMENT: Well, while we are still in Adam, is that still going to bring a problem in the sexual relationship because Adam is there?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, it should not because, if we have Christ and we have been delivered of the evil fruit, then the battle is between Christ and Adam, and there should not be any problem overtaking Adam.

 

COMMENT: But you say Adam is pride.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Adam is pride.

 

COMMENT: Well, even if there is pride in a sexual act; say the lust is out, but there is pride there. That cannot be beautiful, can it?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, it depends on how it manifests. But the point is that, when the Lord delivers us from demons, we then have the choice of whether we will live out of Christ or live out of Adam. We have to choose to reject Adam. We have to choose the mind of Christ.

 

I pray frequently, Father, let mind that was in Jesus Christ be in me. If a situation arrives in my life, and I even suspect in the slightest way that my thoughts are not godly towards it, I will say, Lord, how would you deal with this? Give me Your thoughts.

 

COMMENT: So, in the case of a marriage, when two people are married, they are supposed to be rejecting the Adamic mind.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Amen.

 

COMMENT: And even in the sexual areas, they are supposed to be manifesting the mind of Christ.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Amen. Yes, I would say amen to that.

 

COMMENT: And if the mind of Christ is on their sexual relationship, it will be beautiful.

 

PASTOR VITALE: It will be beautiful.

 

COMMENT: What is the mind of Christ?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, the mind of Christ is the soul of Christ. We are two souls. We have an Adamic soul and a soul of Christ. We are double-minded, and we are unstable in all our ways. That is what James says.

 

COMMENT: Yes.

 

PASTOR VITALE: But the end of the matter will be that the life of the Christ soul will swallow up the death of the Adamic soul, and we shall be all Christ. And He shall be glorified in us totally. But right now, we are two men. And all that we can do, in each instance, is to ask God for his mind in each situation.

 

I had a woman say to me, just in the last couple of weeks, that one night, she was making love with her husband, and she said, Lord, be glorified in our lovemaking. And she became pregnant.

 

COMMENT: That is beautiful.

 

PASTOR VITALE: That is beautiful. She has a beautiful little boy today.

 

COMMENT: That reminds me. What do you believe about birth control?

 

PASTOR VITALE: I believe in birth control because I believe that the human body is programmed to procreate. Women are programmed to get pregnant when they make love with their husbands.

 

COMMENT: What form of birth control do you believe?

 

PASTOR VITALE: I really think the safest thing is a condom, because most of the other forms of birth control they destroy the life. Either they are spermicides, and they destroy the sperm, which to me is the least negative. For example, the birth control pill, or some devices that the women will take in, they literally let the women conceive, and they destroy the fetus.

 

COMMENT: Now, I heard some people say that, in Christian marriages, that they just abstain.

 

PASTOR VITALE: No, I do not believe that is scriptural.

 

COMMENT: I do not think so either because it says that [UNINTELLIGIBLE] What is the Scripture that...

 

PASTOR VITALE: It is talking about fasting. Right.

 

COMMENT: "Withhold not the sex, except for the time of fasting." Right?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Except for the time of fasting.

 

COMMENT: Not just because I do not want to get her pregnant, so I am abstaining.

 

PASTOR VITALE: No, that is not godly.

 

COMMENT: That is not godly.

 

PASTOR VITALE: No.

 

COMMENT: But the whole idea of sex in real love, the person does get pregnant. And when I think of... like, if the man or the woman wants oral sex, they cannot get pregnant that way.

 

PASTOR VITALE: No.

 

COMMENT: And I thought maybe that is why this perversion comes into their mind, because it could be satanic to keep the pregnancy from happening, and it is an ungodly way. Well, it is a way to get off, get stimulated, without getting the person pregnant...

 

PASTOR VITALE: It is a homosexual act.

 

COMMENT: ...which is an ungodly form.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes.

 

COMMENT: It is definitely fornication.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Oral sex is a homosexual act. This whole message is not being preached. A man and a woman may think it is acceptable, like you said. Even if they were married, and they do not want to get pregnant, they may think it is acceptable to engage in oral sex.

 

But oral sex is a homosexual act. Whether you are doing it with your wife or not, it is a homosexual act, and you are building curses within yourself, if not for you, for your children or your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren. You are opening the door for homosexuality by performing homosexual acts.

 

And that is true. It is really big in this society today to have anal sex. Amongst married people, it is really in, to have anal sex. That is a homosexual act. It is ungodly and animalistic.

 

The Lord just spoke to me a minute ago. And I would just like to make it clear because the Lord reminded me of what this woman said to me. And sexual intercourse between a man and a woman should be lovemaking. It should not be sex. It should not be sexual activity. It should be lovemaking. And if one party is not involved, if they are laying there like a lump, how could it be lovemaking? It takes two people to engage in lovemaking.

 

COMMENT: That is a common term, "making love." What does that really mean?

 

PASTOR VITALE: It means that, when sexual activity is joined to the love and affection and respect and willing participation of both parties it becomes lovemaking. It is the ultimate expression of the love of a man and woman in this realm. And God has said the marriage bed is undefiled. But it has to be two people participating.

 

It is not lovemaking when you pick up someone at a bar and is not lovemaking if your wife is asleep and just lying there like a dead body or a doll. That is not lovemaking. And if you have a tension that you want to get rid of, and your wife agrees to having sex, that is not lovemaking.

 

COMMENT: So the more that the two are communicating in the soul, the more beautiful the sex is going to be.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Correct. This is supposed to be an act of the soul. We are not animals. We are not to engage in acts of our bodies.

 

COMMENT: Is it possible to express the Spirit of God within the times of the sexual interactions?

 

PASTOR VITALE: I believe so. If your hearts are right towards one another, God will be glorified in your lovemaking, if you are married.

 

COMMENT: Now, if all the sex acts are right, and the man is on top all the time, and every time they do it, the man is on top, and the woman is in submission, and the woman is responding, and they are responding to one another, is it possible to get to that place where they walk in perfection together?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Perfection is only in Christ.

 

COMMENT: Yes.

 

PASTOR VITALE: It depends on your definition of perfection. We are told that Job was perfect, and we find out what that means is that he was perfect in that he complied with God's law to the best of human ability. So I would have to say yes if our definition of perfection is that the man and the woman are walking in God's law, in their marriage, to the best of their ability. They can expect to experience the very best that God has to offer in their relationship.

 

COMMENT: Now, if a person is single, and they get delivered from the lust demons, and they are free from those things, and they are still dealing with the Adamic mind, is the Adamic mind going to lead them into marriage?

 

PASTOR VITALE: I am sorry. Would you repeat that, please?

 

COMMENT: The question I had, that, if the person is single, and they finally get delivered of these lust demons that would have led them into marriage, but it could have been out of lust instead of love. Say they get delivered of these perverted sexual things, these family-line fornications and lust and all. And they are having a good life with Jesus. Can their Adamic mind, after the lust is gone, still want to lead them into marriage?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes, but they should have all dominion over it.

 

COMMENT: Now, can this be their Adamic mind saying yes, when Christ is not the Adamic mind, and Christ may be saying something else?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Definitely. This is the whole battle of the believer. We have two voices in our head, and we have to be diligent to know that we are hearing the voice of Christ.

 

And the way that we protect ourselves, while we are in this in-between stage, is to pray continuously. Lord, I dedicate my whole life and soul to you, and please keep me from walking after my own lusts. Because it is my desire to follow You, but I cannot follow You unless you put the understanding in my heart of who is talking to me. May Your will prevail in my life. A prayer like that, that continues throughout your entire life, will keep you from destruction. Obedience to God will keep you from destruction.

 

COMMENT: Can two people that are married come into immortality? Or is it going to hinder them coming into the fullness?

 

PASTOR VITALE: The Lord will not let me off the, hold on, I am going to say it. This is a revelation that He has just recently spoken to me about. Oh, dear. Well, I am going to put it on the message. I believe that, within the last month; and when I first heard this, I did not believe it. Oh, my goodness. I do not believe this. OK, Lord. Just give me a second to get my act together here.

 

COMMENT: That was a big question.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes, Well, to answer it briefly, and then I will expound on it, I believe the Lord has told me, to enter into true perfection, where Christ swallows up Adam, it will involve the leaving off of sexual activity. And if you are married at the time that Christ calls you to this high place in Christ, I believe that, to enter into perfection, you will have to give up sexual activity with your husband. You do not have to stop living with him.

 

When I first heard it, I did not believe it. And the Lord gave me two Scriptures. Paul said, and I cannot quote it to you exactly. I was going to look it up after church this morning. Paul said, At this hour, things are progressing along into the kingdom of God. So if you are single, stay single. If you have a wife or a husband, act as if you had none. Live as if you had none.

 

And when I first came into the Church, that always meant to me, well, Paul says in another place, if you are married, the first thing in your mind is ministering to your wife. Or if you are a woman, the first thing is making your husband happy. So when Paul said, If you do have a wife, act as if you have none, I thought that meant that you have to serve God. And if He calls you to Africa for six months, your wife just has to survive. That was what I thought it meant.

 

COMMENT: That is what we all believed. That is what we believed, that it meant that, well, Peter was gone from his wife all the time. And you just have to act like you are called to do missionary things. You have got to go here and there, and you cannot be thinking about your home life.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right. Well, when I asked the Lord for two witnesses to this revelation that He surprised me with, this was one of them. He said, If you are married, when you are called into the age of the kingdom; and I just want to remind everybody reading this message that that last generation, in which we shall be glorified, exists within our hearts. The ages are within our hearts.

 

And existing on this earth at the same time are human beings that know nothing of Christ, human beings that have the thirtyfold, human beings that have the sixtyfold. And there are human beings that are getting very close to entering into perfection. And that condition of your heart is what determines where you are.

 

So if Jesus brings your heart to a place where he is ready to bring you into perfection, you are required to give up sexual activity. Why? Because sexual activity is an activity of animal life. The Lord has said the marriage bed is undefiled while you are down here. But when I draw you back up to the high realms of the heavenlies, you cannot live like an animal anymore. You cannot have both.

 

So the two witnesses he gave me is Paul saying, "If you have a wife, live as if you have none." And we have no reason to believe, from that short statement, that all he meant was go on your missionary work. He said, "Live as if you have no wife." Well, what do you do when you have a wife? You put her welfare first, and you have sexual intercourse. Grow-up time, even for me, because I did not want to believe it. That was the first witness.

 

And the second witness was that Jesus said, "Some men make themselves eunuchs for my sake." And if there is another witness to married people giving up sexual intercourse, either the Lord has not given it to me yet, or I am so shocked that you asked me this question that I cannot remember what the answer is because I have just been praying about it for a month now. And nobody is more surprised than me.

 

But this is what he is telling me. As we ascend, as we move into perfection, we are being called back up to the high realms of the spirit, where the male and female, where the husband and wife, is within one body. And if you are a human person, in relationship to Christ, you are female. And when Christ comes to dwell in you and starts to rule in you and becomes your mind, He is your husband, and you shall have ascended from this low realm that man has fallen into.

 

And I know that this is very shocking and very upsetting to a lot of people. And I just want to say this. I want to put this on the message that it may seem horrible to you now, but it is not horrible. And 11 or 12 or maybe 13 years ago, when the Lord first called me, someone said something to me, to the effect of, What would you say if God was never going to let you get married again? And I was horrified at the thought of it. And I said, Oh, He would not do that to me.

 

And now it is all these years later, and I just want to put on the message that I am eunuch for Christ, that it is not terrible, that it really has its rewards. And if we are just strong enough spiritually; just recently, I have not been suffering for lack of sex. The Lord has taken that lust from me. I believe, if I were to be married again, I would be a normal woman. But I am not married, and I do not suffer from lack of sex.

 

If I suffer from anything, it is from loneliness and the intimacy that we have in a marriage, of being with someone, waking up in the morning with them. But as I have been praying through this for years, and I have paid the price for this deliverance, it has been painful. But I have overcome in Christ, and I am just starting to enter into a place where He has strengthened me spiritually to the point that He is my husband. I talk to Him continuously when I am alone in the house. He is my company. I no longer feel lonely. And as I ascend in Him, I am getting a vision of the fact that it is really preferable to a human marriage.

 

Now, this is a radical thing that I am saying. And I understand that it is very frightening and shocking to the Christian who is still a natural person. But all that I can say is this: Do not try to do anything in your own strength. It will be a religious work. But if God does call you to be a eunuch for Him, there is great glory in it. And if He has called you to be a eunuch for Him, and you are running away from Him, you are Jonah, and He will bring you back.

 

So as the age of the kingdom dawns upon the Church world, the Lord is requiring me to put this on a message. In the kingdom of heaven, there is no marriage or giving in marriage. But we are as the angels, and there is no sexual intercourse. And if you enter into that condition at a time in your natural life that you are married, I believe that sexual intercourse will have to cease.

 

Well, I do not want to say that. Just trust God and believe Him. And remember, as you stamp and have your temper tantrum because of what I am saying, that to seek anything with all your heart, mind and soul, other than Christ, is idolatry.

 

And now after that I rebuke you, I will encourage you, and I will say that all things are possible in Christ. And if you are one who is desiring to enter into the kingdom in the fullness, prepare your mind, saith the Lord. The animal life shall not enter in with you. Choose ye this day, saith God, who you will serve. And those of you that prepare yourself to enter in, know this, saith God, I will not receive you with the animal life.

 

COMMENT: I think I was thinking of that when I said, in their life together, in a marriage life, could they enter into perfection?

 

PASTOR VITALE: While having sexual intercourse? Is that what you mean?

 

COMMENT: I was asking you, if the lust was out and the Adam was dealt with, and the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ was manifesting in their sexual relations also, would it be possible that they come into perfection?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes.

 

COMMENT: You are saying that it is a lower realm.

 

PASTOR VITALE: It is a lower realm.

 

COMMENT: It is animalistic.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right. I do not mean to put condemnation on anybody. The marriage bed is not defiled.

 

COMMENT: It is not sin.

 

PASTOR VITALE: It is not sin.

 

COMMENT: It is not sin.

 

PASTOR VITALE: The marriage is undefiled.

 

COMMENT: He said, "Let them marry. It is not sin."

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right. But you have to know where you are. If you want to enter into the higher realms, there is no sexual intercourse in the higher realms. The marriage bed is undefiled. The marriage bed is undefiled.

 

COMMENT: And it is beautiful, and it is holy, the Bible says.

 

PASTOR VITALE: And it is beautiful, and it is holy, and it is nice. I was married. I like sex. It is nice. But it is a particular realm. And you cannot be in two places at one time. That is the size of it.

 

COMMENT: But it does not necessarily have to bring you into the carnal realm, right?

 

PASTOR VITALE: What do you mean?

 

COMMENT: Sex.

 

PASTOR VITALE: What do you mean?

 

COMMENT: What was your definition of perfection again?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Perfection within a human marriage as ordained by God. If you are delivered of the lust, and you are loving and honoring and respecting one another and communicating, you can have a very blessed marriage, to the uttermost that God would agree to bless you in this realm. But there is only so far that you could go in this realm. And if you want to enter into the higher realms of the spirit, you cannot bring the animal life with you. You have to give it up.

 

And the Lord said, Choose. The Lord said, Choose. But you cannot have both. You see, you cannot have both. Hallelujah.

 

COMMENT: So when you enter into immortality, you are dwelling totally in Christ.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right, and He will be your husband. And you will be complete in one vessel.

 

COMMENT: And the same with the man. He is everything to the man.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right. He will be the husband to the man, who was a spiritual female.

 

COMMENT: Well, when it comes to that time, when we are as the angels, does that mean that we do not think about sex, ever?

 

PASTOR VITALE: No, we will not want it. We will not want it because this is,  although it is shocking...

 

COMMENT: It will not even be in our memory?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Maybe. It may very well be in our memories, as we remember kindergarten.  But we will know that what we have is so much better.

 

COMMENT: That could be now. But if it is in our memory, will it not be fused into Christ?

 

PASTOR VITALE: It will be fused into Christ as a past activity, as an activity of childhood, as an activity of spiritual childhood.

 

COMMENT: I see. Well, a single person, rather than a married person, it does not mean that that single person will sooner enter into immortality, will it?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, it does not have to mean that.

 

COMMENT: Or that they are more spiritual than the married person.

 

PASTOR VITALE: No, no. It does not mean that you are more spiritual. But I would say this, that, if God calls you to remain single, you are much more likely to have a more rapid spiritual growth than if you are married.

 

Why? Because, if you are married, you would have children. There are things that you must do that will keep you bound to the carnal realm. You must bathe them. You must shop. You must clean. You must help them with their schoolwork. And when your mind is occupied on this carnal realm, which is glorious in its place, you cannot be partaking of the things of God. You cannot be in two places at once.

 

So the amount of time that you have to devote to the things of God, when you have a husband and children, will be limited. If you forgo having a husband and children, just about,  well, I would not say "just about" because you will have a secular job if you are not in the ministry.

 

But when you are a wife and mother, it is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So at least you will have your weekends and your evenings to study and to share the things of God. And most women even that go to church on Sunday morning, they cannot enjoy the service because they have to watch the children. That is just the truth. I am not against marriage, but this is the truth.

 

Now, everybody has to be where God calls them. If you are a woman, and God has called you to raise a family, then let him be glorified in it. But if you are a woman, and He has not called you to raise a family, if you do not see him giving you a husband, do not weep and moan and groan.

 

COMMENT: Well, you say some have made themselves eunuchs. They chose it. Is that what you are saying, they made a choice? Or that Christ just moved them into it against their will?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes. I do not know because I have not looked it up in the Greek, but I will tell you this: that my prayer, when I came to the Lord was, Lord, I would like to get married again. But if you cannot give me a man who is going to be mature enough and spiritual enough that, if I am willing to fight with everything I have, that this marriage is at least going to stand a chance, then I do not want to get married. I do not want to be in an ungodly marriage. I want at least a fighting chance. That was my prayer, and He never gave me a husband. And He has just given me glorious things in the realm of the spirit.

 

And it is my observation (you can disagree with me if you want) that women that have been married, that are either widowed or divorced, more divorced women than widowed women, He does not seem to give them another husband. It is a very rare case that He gives them another husband. However, Paul says, Let the single women marry and have children. And it is my opinion that young women are called to marriage and bearing children.

 

But for whatever reason, well, I know what the reason is. I might as well be honest. If you wind up in a divorce, the chances are really good that you have some kind of a spiritual problem with your soul. Even if you say, It was not me; the woman or the man was an alcoholic or a drug addict; I just happened to marry that person. Why can I not marry again? I declare to you, brother or sister, that even outside of God, we do not marry people by mistake. We are attracted to certain kinds of people because of the condition of our soul.

 

And if Jesus Christ looks upon your heart, and there is a condition of your soul that will cause trouble in a second marriage, I declare to you that, if you are obedient to Him, He will not give you a husband until that condition of your soul is corrected.

 

Now, there are many who go and get married anyway, and they are unhappy. I know a recent case. The woman got married to this man. I never believed it was of God. And they are now divorced, and I understand he is back in homosexuality. I do not believe God put that marriage together. And that women was a widow. She was not divorced; she was a widow.

 

So when it comes to young women, I agree with Paul. Let the young women marry and bear children and be in submission to their husband. Let your parents help you to choose a mature man and be in submission to him. But if you have had a marriage, especially if you have had children, you have had your chance, and it has not worked. God is not likely to give you another husband until your soul has been corrected.

 

And now, in this hour that we are so close to the catching up, to the spiritual catching up, I look around me. I see many women that He is not giving them husbands. And they are moaning, and they are groaning, and they do not understand that they are better off this way, because the catching up is so close, that they now have more time to devote to the things of God so that they will be prepared to enter in.

 

I know married women that have this revelation that the time is near. And they are in all forms of frustration, trying to minister to their family and study the things of God. And they are being ripped in two different directions. And that is just the condition that God put them in, in this hour. But what I am saying is that, if you are single, it is a blessing. You can devote everything to moving into the things of God. But our carnal minds are so strong that we want that husband, and we want those children, and we want that life.

 

And all that I can say to you is, do not get religious. Ask Jesus what he has for you. Do not hear this message and say, I am not going to get married. Maybe you are not called to the firstfruits company. Maybe you are not going to get caught up for 40 years. Get married and have your children. Do you hear what I am saying?

 

COMMENT: Yes. With what you are saying, I think it would encourage us to want to give up marriage and seek out the firstfruits company because we are missing this beautiful firstfruits company calling.

 

PASTOR VITALE: If you are called to it.  If you are called to it. Now, this would be very disappointing for a young woman, or even a young man, to give up marriage and children and find out that they are not called to the firstfruits company. So we have to get our personal word from God.

 

If He gives us a husband or a wife, and you pray it through, and it is God, well, take it and enjoy. But if you find yourself praying and praying and praying, and there does not seem to be any husband or wife for you, do not moan and groan, brethren. Do not moan and groan. Use your opportunity to get into the deep things of God.

 

COMMENT: What I am hearing from you is that a person that is getting married is not going to be able to enter into the firstfruits company.

 

PASTOR VITALE: I did not say that.

 

COMMENT: Oh.

 

PASTOR VITALE: No, I did not say that. I did not say that.

 

COMMENT: Well, going back to what you said earlier, as far as when you said that sex is not in that higher realm, are we letting ourselves out for a disappointment in thinking that we could come into a higher realm in the spirit with a sex...

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes, I agree. Yes. I think that, if you are married at the time that Jesus calls you up, even though you stay married, and you live with your husband or your wife, you will have to give up sexual activity when you are called up to that place. Now, do not go doing it in the flesh.

 

COMMENT: You are saying they can be married, but they are going to be giving up the married life and seeking out these things in the spirit.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right. That is what Paul said. "Live as if you have no wife." Amen.

 

COMMENT: So sex is not in the spirit.

 

PASTOR VITALE: No.

 

COMMENT: It is only in the soul?

 

PASTOR VITALE: There is spiritual sex between us and God, continuous sexual intercourse of the mind.

 

COMMENT: Well, and with the Spirit of God in a man, and then the Spirit of God in the woman, if they are dwelling in heaven within them, and they are having sex, they cannot do that, too?

 

PASTOR VITALE: No, you cannot have both. What will happen is that you will lose that intimacy with Christ and fall back down to the soul realm.

 

COMMENT: So sex is only in the soul.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes.

 

COMMENT: You are saying that, in a marriage, though, you can be expressing the Spirit of God during the sexual relations.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes, to a certain point. But to enter into the life of Christ beyond that point, and whatever that point is, only Jesus knows. You see, we cannot go up higher until He calls us up. When He calls us up, we have to give up sex because you cannot be in the soul realm and in the spiritual realm at the same time.

 

Well, actually, you can. I know someone is going to get me on this one. Our bodies are going to be here on the earth. But our spiritual condition, the condition of our soul, it cannot be engaging in the life of the soul realm and the life of the spirit at the same time. The life of the Adamic soul, that is what I am trying to say. It is Adam that has sexual intercourse. Christ has intercourse of the mind.

 

So either you are having a sexual human intercourse through your Adamic soul, or you are having spiritual intercourse of your mind through the soul of Christ. We are only permitted to be half in the soul of Adam and half in the soul of Christ for a season. When the soul of Christ...

 

COMMENT: Now, that is not thinking about sex in your mind.

 

PASTOR VITALE: No.

 

COMMENT: That is perverted, right?

 

PASTOR VITALE: What is that, thinking about sex in your mind?

 

COMMENT: Thinking about having sex in your mind.

 

PASTOR VITALE: That is lust. It is lust.

 

COMMENT: That is lust and perversion and torment, right?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes, it is torment. If it has no outlet, it is torment. Yes.

 

COMMENT: But you are talking about an intercourse via the life of Christ and the thoughts of Christ coming through the mind.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Exactly, and a joining of the mind of God to our mind.

 

COMMENT: And it is not really sex.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Sex is the type of it. There is a natural type of everything that is spiritual. And sex is the imperfect type of the spiritual perfection that we shall have in union with Christ. See, sexual intercourse is imperfect. No matter how much the man and woman love one another, eventually, you have to get out of bed. You come apart.

 

COMMENT: So that is what I was asking earlier, about the perfection. They cannot find that perfection then. They cannot walk in that perfection together.

 

PASTOR VITALE: No, because you are going to walk in it with Christ. That is adultery to have a natural husband when you are that close with Christ.

 

COMMENT: But when they, say when they both become Christ.

 

PASTOR VITALE: It does not work that way.

 

COMMENT: It does not?

 

PASTOR VITALE: No, no. Your intimacy...

 

COMMENT: I think that is the biggest thing with... the reason why they lust so much is because they think, eventually, they are going to come into that. Why would they think there was such a beauty and such a wonderful, heavenly, beautiful feeling, and all of that, if they did not think they were going to come into something beautiful of Christ? They may not call it Christ, but that is the big letdown then, if there is no perfection in it.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Oh, I guess I misunderstood your question before. No, there is no perfection in it. And the marriage counselors' officers are filled with married couples that are having a problem adjusting to one another sexually. But there is no problem in adjusting to Christ, you see.

 

COMMENT: What about eunuchs that were born eunuchs? Do you have anything to say about that? How did they get born eunuchs? Now, I heard one woman say that she does not believe that there are very many eunuchs that God has called to be eunuchs. They have to be a special person.

 

PASTOR VITALE: I agree.

 

COMMENT: She said that the Lord told this girl, when she was very young, that her life was totally devoted to prayer. And she put others together, even. She even told certain ones that they were meant for one another. She knew it. But she knew that she was called to be a eunuch.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right. It is very rare.

 

COMMENT: She knew it from a very young little girl. And she was born, I guess what you would call born a eunuch.

 

PASTOR VITALE: But I see it happening more and more. As the Lord prepares His firstfruits company to ascend, I see more and more eunuchs for Christ, especially among women, especially among the women. A lot of unmarried women in the ministry today, a lot of married women just serving God.

 

COMMENT: So if the marrieds leave off their sex times, they are going to ascend?

 

PASTOR VITALE: When the Lord says, Come up hither, they will have to cease from sexual activity.

 

COMMENT: Yes, because the Bible says do not do that. To give it to one another, except for fasting.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, when you read something in the Scripture, you really have to read the whole surrounding chapter to understand what they are talking about. In the Scripture you just quoted, Paul is talking about fasting. And he is answering the question ... I remember, when I was a new Christian, I heard a lot of people ask, When you fast from food, do you give up sex too? And the answer was, When you fast from food, you do not engage in sexual activity. It must be too strenuous on the body. But, now, do not fast so much that your partner is going to be tempted. Now, that is talking about fasting. But Paul said, The hour is short. And if you are called to this high realm, and you have a wife, live as if you have none.

 

So they are two different contexts, two different counsels for two different contexts. It is the same thing as saying, Is lovemaking legal? Outside of marriage, it is not, no matter how much you love each other. And inside of marriage, it is. So when you find an elder in the Scripture answering a question, you have to understand who he is talking to and what he is talking about when he is saying it.

 

So I believe that it is possible that one person out of a couple can get called up higher when the other one is not.

 

COMMENT: Oh, that brings another question then. If you are married, and one is called higher and to leave the sexual, and the other one is not, and he is still wanting it, what do you do in that case?

 

PASTOR VITALE: You have to serve God. I have not experienced that, so I do not know. But you would have to really pray. But the understanding that I have right now is, if God calls you, you go.

 

COMMENT: Well, it says in the Scriptures, though, that except you be tempted; does that not mean the temptation would be that, if you are not giving one another sex, if one is tempted, they might be tempted to go outside of marriage to get it?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes.

 

COMMENT: That is what that means.

 

PASTOR VITALE: That is what it says. But it is talking about the conditions surrounding fasting. Now, maybe if one person is caught up, the Lord will deal with the mate. I do not know because this is such a brand-new area. I have never heard anyone preach on this. It is such a brand-new area. So I do not know the answer to all the questions. And I am not even married myself, so I do not know.

 

COMMENT: Through legal means, sexual sin can be held to a minimal, minimized.

 

PASTOR VITALE: You mean through making adultery illegal and things like that?

 

COMMENT: Yes.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Is that what you mean? I believe so. In this very country, many states still have laws against adultery on the books. In the hour that the law was being enforced, people really thought twice about committing adultery.

 

As a matter of fact, I heard something the other day that made me chuckle. The law is still on the books in California. It is illegal to commit adultery. And this is the state that has just legalized homosexual marriages. Obviously, they do not enforce the adultery law. They just never removed it.

 

But there was a time, in this very country, I heard that there was a case on the books where a man was arrested for having oral sex with his wife. They put him in jail. I guess somebody had a complaint. I think she contracted some kind of a disease, and the doctor reported it, something that could only result from oral sex. And they put him in jail.

 

COMMENT: Yes, but why does it have to be that they would have a disease for this thing to be arrested?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, how else is anybody going to know? How are you going to know if two people have oral sex? If they are married, how could you know?

 

COMMENT: If one partner will not stop, does the other go to the lawyer?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, in this day and hour, no court would do it. No court would put you in jail, even if the law is on the books. But years ago, all of these things were enforced.

 

COMMENT: Like they are saying, if you want to stop the rape down the street, start at 42nd Street.  That is what they were saying last night. And if this was legalized that they could not do that, they have the peep shows. They have nudes. They have actual, live nudes down on 42nd Street. They have all these different shows, movies and stuff. If they made that illegal, because, if it is a law of the land, is that going to help the humanity?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, I think, as long as man is under the law and capable of all these wicked things, stopping all these peep shows and enforcing the law would help people to have more self-control. But we know that, as far as God is concerned, our souls have to be cleaned up. For the human race to be saved to the uttermost, we have to have our souls cleansed. Making all of these things illegal keeps law and order in an uncleansed society.

 

COMMENT: Would it be of the Lord that the Sons of God would be going about to do all they can to make this illegal on 42nd Street?

 

PASTOR VITALE: No. The job of the Sons of God is to bring the whole creation up to the high realms of Christ, where the Lord God is fulfilled in them, and nobody will sin anymore.

 

COMMENT: So when we change things in the world, it is not going to be getting rid of the bars and getting rid of these peep shows and movies and nudes and erotic dancers and all of this. And we are not going to be doing that? We are not going to just change it over, and go into the computers and change everything?

 

PASTOR VITALE: No. That is the job of the carnal Church. And that is a good job because it could be a long time before every human being on the face of the earth is converted in their heart. So we still need laws of the land. And it is the carnal Church that is out there writing letters and going into the courts to reverse abortion laws. And I think that it is a very valid ministry because it is going to be a long time before the whole human race is converted. And I believe that, if they are doing it, God has told them to do it, and it is a valid ministry.

 

But the firstfruits company that is coming into perfection, our ministry is to bring those around us to perfection. And then eventually, the whole human race will be perfected, and there will not be any more courts or abortion cases or anything like that. But the two ministries will exist side by side, the spiritual ministry of God and the carnal ministry of God. They are both important, so long as God anoints them.

 

COMMENT: Will the Sons of God be involved in helping the ones that are desolate and have no place to stay, and no food, and all that?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, they will help them; you see, amongst the desolate, some of them are called to be Sons of God. Now, the ministry of the Sons of God, when he sees a desolate person, is to say, Rise up and be healed. And I am convinced that, when Peter said that to (well, there were a couple of cases in the Scripture where he said, Arise and be healed) that a lot more happened than that the man's legs were healed.

 

There is one Scripture that says Peter perceived the man had faith to be healed. And I said, Lord, what does that mean? And the Lord said to me, That man had the root of Christ in him. And when Peter spoke to him, his words were spirit, and his words were life, and the root of Christ in him was quickened and immediately stood up. And the physical expression of that spiritual quickening was that his legs were healed.

 

So the ministry of the Sons of God is to bring forth the life of Christ in men. And for those people on the face of the earth who are not spiritually prepared, if this is not the hour of their quickening, then, well, the Sons of God may have the ability to have mercy on them. I do not really know the details. But basically, they will be the ministry for the bride Church. But the bridegroom company, the Sons of God company, they are sent to those who are to be raised up into the heavenlies with them.

 

And this process will continue until every human being on the face of earth has been raised up into the heavenlies. But it is going to take more than 1,000 years. So the Lord is going to have a ministry in the earth, during that time, that will minister to the people whose hour it is not yet to be caught up into the high realms of the spirit.

 

The second scriptural witness to God's admonition to married people, to give up sexual intercourse in marriage when they are spiritually caught up to the high realm of God's Spirit, also known as the kingdom of God, is Deuteronomy 19:15, Moses speaking: "And he said unto the people, 'Be ready against the third day. Come not at your wives,'" which means do not have sexual intercourse with your wives.

 

And the third day is a scriptural reference to the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. I cannot go onto the whole teaching on this message, but I will tell you that it is 1,000 years to man what is one day to the Lord. So therefore, it is only two days since Jesus Christ was crucified. And His spiritual resurrection, also known as the second coming, is happening on the third day, which we are entering into now, the third 1,000-year period.

 

And for those believers who are entering into this age of the kingdom, the admonition of the Lord is, "Come not at your wives." However, you cannot enter into this place by your own will. You can only enter in because Jesus Christ has called you. So if you give up sexual intercourse in your marriage without Jesus calling you, and without your mate's permission, you shall be guilty before the Lord of doing harm to your mate. But if Jesus calls you, you come. So lend yourself to prayer, and make sure it is God.

 

Transcribed by VerbalFusion, 08/29/22

1st Edit 9/12/22, rh