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

 

Jesse Owens had almost a Christ-like nature, and he was a peacemaker, and he was persecuted at the Olympics. Hitler refused to shake his hand, and he then became a household word because Hitler refused to shake his hand. And he was persecuted by American whites, and it is a commentary on what was going on in our country in those days, that our Unites States Olympic team would come into New York, and a ho- -- and one of the hotels in New York would rent them a room, but they would have to come in the back entrance. The white members of the track team would go in the front entrance, and the black members of the track team would have to go in the back entrance and ride up the freight elevator, and they were forced to have their meals in their room. They were not allowed in the dining room.

This is horrendous. I just -- every time I hear something like this, I repent and ask for God to have mercy on our nation. But he was a fine man. He had faith in Jesus Christ. I do not think he was a Pentecostal, just had a deep faith in God, does not say whether -- he was probably a Baptist, and the bottom line is that he spent many years sowing good. The man did good. Despite his achievements, he was the greatest track star, you know, for over a long period of time, he had a continuous financial problem because white business was not willing to hire black men. And despite his greatness, he had a chronic financial problem, and as the years went by, he never worried about money. But he ministered to people, and he loved children and young men, and he started youth groups, and he ministered to blacks in the intercities and encouraged them to be righteous and to do the right thing and to work within the framework of the laws of this nation. He loved America.

And as the years went by and the black youth community became more radical, he was looked at as an Uncle Tom, and he was despised by these young people and these young athletes on the Olympic team. And his heart was broken, but he was a fine man. He never -- [?you see?] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] how come this man could never earn a living. He is a fine man, and at the end -- well, the beginning of the movie and the end of the movie is that he is in trouble for not paying his income tax for four years straight, and the judge wanted to know why a man like this would not pay his income tax. The judge was begging him. Show me some cause. Why did you do it? That you just were not a cheat, and I want to let you off. That is what the judge was saying. Why did you do this? And he would not defend himself, and I will not tell you why he did it. I will let you watch the movie.

But the bottom line, that -- is that at the end of the movie, the very words of the narrator was that after all of these years, he reaped the good seeds that he sowed, and he spent his whole lifetime. He was never bitter; he never hated; he never sought vengeance, but he just did good. He went through his whole life doing good, and at the very end, everything -- he was falsely accused for his good works. People thought that his motives were evil. They could not believe anyone could be so selfless. And if you have been doing good, over a period of time, even many years, and you do not see the fruit of your labors in Christ, I want you to know that you do not always reap right away. Do not lose faith in God, and I am trying to encourage you to not become bitter for lack of understanding. But reaping what you sow can take many, many years.

And I want to tell you I had a lot of problems in my life when I came to the Lord, and the Lord said to me, start doing good. Now not just good works, your heart has to change, and my heart changed. I did what God told me. I leaned into the kingdom, and I worked for the Lord, and He changed my heart, and I had many, many hard years, and my hard times are still not over, although things are 500 percent better. As of three years ago, my whole life turned around. Things are 500 percent better, but I still have a lot of problems. And I remember three years ago or four -- two years ago, when I started to realize that things were really turning around, if anyone had told me, when I came into the church, that it would take this long for your life to turn around, I do not know that I would have even believed it because I never heard it preached that you have to put your shoulder to the plow and not turn back and do not give up no matter how tough things look. Because if you sow righteousness, you will reap righteousness in due season, if you faint not. It is in the Bible. I just never heard it preached, but it is in there.

So do not be disillusioned; do not give up on God; do not give up on yourself; do not give up on the promises of God. It takes a long time, or it can take a long time. It does not have to take a long time, but it can take a long time. And the more severe the problems you have in your life, the longer it is going to take to turn your life around. The more severe your f- -- the family line curses on your life, the longer it is going to take to turn your life around. And I have been with the Lord 15 years, and things started getting better. I s- -- excuse me, I said three, but I will change it to about two years ago, and they start to get better slowly. I am still coming out of this mess of the family curses on my life, and I do not expect these blessings that are coming in to stop here. And it is not easy; it is hard overcoming family line curses. The Bible likens it to a warfare or to a labor in Christ.

And shortly after I first came to the Lord, I had a dream, and I knew it was me. And there was this big highway with cars going up and down it, and right by the highway was this big pit, and, all of a sudden, two hands appeared in the pit, and I knew it was me. And I was just d- -- by sheer force, physical force -- in the dream it was physical force, but I hope we all know it was by the sheer spiritual force of the Lord Jesus Christ. I was dragging myself up out of that pit. It was agonizing, and all of that labor resulted only in me coming to the main highway, to the main stream of life, to the normal problems that people have. If you have ears to hear it, hear it.

Do not give up. If you feel bitterness arising in your heart, call someone who has faith and ask -- talk to them, or ask them to pray for you because, if you give up, you are just going to fall off the cliff. If you keep on going, God is faithful. He is faithful, and you must reap in due season, if --

            You faint not.

-- you faint not. So do not faint, but be strong, according to the power of His might, and serve God, and do good works, and hold yourself open before Him, and you shall reap. Glory to God.

On the other hand, you know, just one more comment on this, a lot of Pharisees in the church condemn people who are in God more than a few years and still struggling. They want to know how come God has not blessed you, so do not receive their condemnation, and do not attack back. But just know in your heart that the time involved is directly proportionate to the extent of the problem and how far back it goes on the family line. Just lend yourself to prayer, and submit yourself to God, and ask Him to help you to not be bitter and not to strive, but just turn towards Him. He is the one that can help you, and He is the one that is the savior of your soul, and He is the one in whom all power and authority rests. Do not worry about what some ignorant human being is s- -- thinking about you or saying about you, and that is not a curse to that person. The truth is going to set you free.

The church is filled with ignorant people. There are more ignorant people in the church than outside of it. I have gotten very -- until recently, I have gotten very little, if any, compassion in the church at all, strangers, heathens. The good Samaritan will pick you up off the street and take care of you. The church will condemn you to Hell and back for being in that vile condition that needs help, so do not be bitter. That is just the way it is. Look towards Jesus, the savior of your soul, your husband and your soon coming king. Hallelujah. Everything that is good is in Him. Amen.

OK, I would like to take a few minutes also to talk about an experience. We had church last night. We had the most incredible experience last night, and a revelation came down that I would just like to take a few minutes to share with you. A few of us went to see Lester Sumrall at -- where was it? Faith of God's Word, is that the name of the church? And for those of you who are interested in what is going on in the church these days, Lester Sumrall is now 81 years old, and God definitely witnessed to his faithfulness with a very real anointing. God is with the man. Deliverance anointing came down, which is a sign of God's acceptance of him, in case you did not know that. If you ever want to try the spirit on a preacher, you look for the anointing, and so long as the anointing is on that man, if you feel God sent you there, you stick with him. Do not go pulling him apart because he is not perfect, but as long as God is with him, if you condemn him, you are just cutting off God's gift unto you. That is good advice.

So the man was a blessing. He had a faith testimony, but compared to the kind of meat that we get here, it was, sort of, mild, but we all felt that God sent us, so I was grateful for the experience to see the man. He has great faith. He has -- man, he is a man of great faith, and the testimony that really blessed me was his childhood experience where his father was ill, and there was no food, and they had seven children, no food in the house. And his mother had them set the table and fill the glasses with water and stand around the table praising God. And without exception, someone knocked on the door and brought the meal. It never failed, so that really blessed me. And he went out to be a great man of God. He said he is written 151 books, and he is been all over the world. He is a man of great faith and wisdom. I saw wisdom on him.

Well, anyway, after the meeting, we went out to the diner, and we had church at the diner. We had church at the diner, and God taught us. I am really sorry. Anybody, if we ever go out again, please remind me to take my portable tape recorder. I am really sorry we did not get that teaching on tape. But I started to preach to the -- we were only four of us. I started to preach in the booth in the diner, and, all of a sudden, there is a big commotion. I do not know, but I think the waitress dropped a whole tray, and everything went all over the mirror and the table. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] cups were broken, and it was a big tumult. Is that not the word from the King James? There was a tumult in the diner in Ronkonkoma, and everybo- -- there was an earthquake, and there was a lot of noise, and there was a tumult. That is what happened. It was a total upheaval, and everybody jumped up, and it was a table of about eight people, would you say? Were there eight people at the table, six or seven people? And they all moved to the other side of the diner so they would not have to be near that preaching, you see.

Now they could not hear the preaching. I do not really think they heard what I was saying, OK, but the Spirit -- you see, I am -- this has been happening to me for years, you know. It does not happen every day. It does not even happen [UNINTELLIGIBLE] I never have any warning, but I have experienced this over the years, so I immediately knew that it was a manifestation because I knew -- you see, you have to be a lawyer. Now you do not want to be a Pharisee, but if you want to move on in Christ, you really have to start being like a lawyer. You have got to identify the facts; then you have to evaluate the facts, and then you have to apply them to the spiritual world of Christ. If you do not know how to do that, if you are sitting there saying, how do I do that, just tell the Lord you want to learn. That is one of the things we teach here, but just tell the Lord you want to start to do that. So you have to be like a detective, so I said to myself, well, look at that tumult. That is not something that happens in a diner every day. That is unusual. And I said, what was happening? What could have possibly brought that forth? And I said, well, I was preaching, and the Spirit of Christ was going forth, and there were four witnesses that He was going forth in great power, and based on my past experiences, I drew a conclu- --

You see, you can draw conclusions based on experience, which means it is an educated conclusion. In science it is called a hypothesis, OK. It is acceptable, if you look at your facts and you draw a conclusion based on the facts and experience, but to draw a conclusion out of fantasy is nothing but destruction. Does anyone not know what I am talking about? Because I am constantly rebuking people here for drawing conclusions, but if I rebuke you for drawing a conclusion, it is because you drew a conclusion that you pulled out of the air or that you drew a conclusion that came out of some past destructive experience that had no valid relationship to what is happening in front of you.

Does anybody not know what I am talking about? It has to be an educated guess. If you draw a conclusion, it has to be an educated guess. There has to be some facts, some experience, some reason, some rationale for you to think that way. You cannot just say, well, I do not like it, so I am going to say it is something else. That is called -- does anybody know what that is called? It is called denial. It is called -- and it is total fantasy, OK. That -- there is death in that. So I looked around, and I looked at the facts. There was an earthquake over there and a tumult and a big noise, sounds scriptural. I know that there is preaching going on over here, and based on past experience of similar things, I drew the conclusion that it was a manifestation. And we started talking about it at the table, and a whole teaching came forth, and this is basically how it goes.

Right now, what we see in the church is a move of the Holy Ghost, which is the Father. He is the male seed, seeking to connect with the female seed which is found where? In the human spirits of men. The Holy Ghost goes forth. It comes forth through the spoken word of an anointed preacher. You do not even have to be a preacher. If you have got the Holy Ghost and He is manifesting through you, those words are spirit, and those words are life, and they are seed, and they are falling on the hearts of men, and our human spirit is in our heart. And, Lord willing, there will be a connection, and James calls that connection the what? The engrafting of the word. He calls it the engrafted word, and I suggest to you it is the engrafting of the Word of God, which is the seed, to the human spirit of man.

And once this graft takes place, we now have a more mature manifestation of God in us. More mature than what? More mature than the Holy Ghost. His -- the next stage of the development of God is what? Christ in you, the hope of glory. God is growing in you. He is starting as a mustard seed. We are to mature unto the fullness of the stature of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a growth, a maturing, coming forth in you. If you think that when you get the Holy Ghost that is it and there is no further to go, you are mistaken. Paul clearly said, when he was a child, he acted like a child, but now that he is a man, he acted, and he thought, and he did like a man.

There is a growing up in God, and each stage of development has a different name. God has given the different stages of development a different name. Do we not do that in this world? Do we not have childhood and toddlerhood and infancy and teenage years and young adulthood? It is the same thing in Christ, so when you have the Holy Ghost, you are a natural man who has the Holy Ghost. When that seed joins and engrafts itself to you, you now are pregnant with Christ, and Christ is being formed in you, and He is going to be formed in you over a period of time and through a series of stages of development, each one more mature than the one preceding it.

So we have in the church today a procedure which makes available to men the engrafted word, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory, who has within Him that ability to bring forth the manchild of Revelation, whom when we bare shall save us in childbearing. So we go from the Holy Ghost to the engrafted seed, to the formation of Christ, to the full development of Christ in you, the hope of glory, and the full birth of that manchild in you, the very end of the procedure. The end of your faith is the salvation of your soul, and the salvation of your soul, His name is Christ. In Revelation 12 He is called the manchild, and we are told by Paul that it is that child appearing in our spiritual being who will save us when we bear Him.

So right now, by and large, what is available in the church, what is visibly available in the church to men is a church service whereby you can go, and you can sit, and you can hear the Word of God, and those words which are spirit and those words which are life will go out, Lord willing, and touch your heart and engraft to you, and Christ will begin to be formed in you. And that is the availability of maturity in Christ. But if you have a spiritual problem, if you have an emotional problem and you cannot get to a church, you do not believe it; you cannot stand it; you are offended by it; you manifest wickedness at the thought of going near a church; you want to pick up a rock and throw it, so you stay away from churches because you know you will wind up getting arrested. Any bizarre manifestation that you can imagine that will keep you away from a church, and the general course of the plan of God in this hour is preventing you from being contacted by the seed, the male seed of the Father, which is desiring to engraft itself to your soul.

You have got to get to church. Outside of a sovereign move of God, you have got to get to church. You have got to sit there through all of the business deals, through all of the announcements, through all of the things that are not pleasant to you and through all of the things that are pleasant to you. And you have got to get through the whole message, which may offend you, which may bless you, which you may understand, which you may not understand, which may make you comfortable or which may not make you comfortable. But you have to sit there for the whole two hours for the altar call, and then there is an altar call. And then, if your pride is not overtaking you, you have to get up out of your seat and walk to the front of the church and wait for someone to lay hands on you or pray from you -- but pray for you in a mass conversion, if -- that is not the correct word, a mass prayer for conversion.

Now there are people that can handle this, and they do it, and there are people being reconciled to the Lord every day. But, brethren, I want to suggest to you there are more people out there in this world that cannot hand that than can handle it, and that is why there is more people outside of that churches than inside of the churches. So some of us pick up tracts, and we distribute the tracts, and there are people that get saved, or they, excuse me, get reconciled unto God through these tracts. There are people who get reconciled unto God because you knock on doors, but, brethren, there are trillions of people in this world that cannot receive this gospel that is out there now. They will not go to your church; they will not receive your tract; they will not accept you when you knock on their door, and if you try to talk to them, some of them will abuse you, and others will very kindly tell you to please leave them alone. And yet, others, the really polite ones, will just get up and walk away.

And, therefore, the professing church has drawn the conclusion that God is a gentleman, and He will not engraft unto you without your permission. Well, it sounds good. It is an educated guess. It is based on facts. I just gave you all the facts. If you will not respond to any of these outreaches, God leaves you alone, so it sounds like an intelligent conclusion, except that it is wrong. So even educated guesses, even educated conclusions can be wrong. You have to be ready to change all the time, change your thoughts, change your thinking, change your conclusions, change your opinions. You have got to move when the cloud moves; you have got to move when the pillar of fire moves, or you are going to die on the banks of the Jordan.

So we now see a rising in the church, in a secret way. God does things secretly. Jesus said, to those who are not looking, He is coming as a what or a who?

            [?Thief?].

A thief. He is coming as a thief. What does that mean? Does it mean the Lord is coming to steal from you? No, but He is coming without your seeing Him, not because Jesus is secretive but because the church is blind and ignorant and not what-ing for Him?

            [?Waiting?].

Not looking for Him. Because Jesus said look for Him because if you do not look for Him, He is going to come, and you are not going to see Him. Is that not what Jesus said? He said, if you do not look for Him, you are not going to see Him. So we see a rising in the church today, secretly, but only secretly to those who are not looking for Him, the next stage of maturity in the appearance or the program by which Christ will eventually appear for the second time, this time without sin, unto salvation in this humanity.

And He is coming in a different form, and the name of that form is no longer the Holy Spirit. The name of the form -- does anybody remember? I said it two or three times tonight. After the seeds engrafts to you, it becomes Christ in you, the hope of glory. It is now Christ arising on the horizon, a new sun in the sky of this world, and He is more mature than the Holy Spirit. Christ is more mature than the Holy Spirit, same Spirit, different administration, same God, different expression of Him. Does God have different expressions? God, the Father; God, the Son. Jesus said, I and the Father are one. Nevertheless, the Father is greater than I. Jesus said, the Father is the only one who knows the hour. Jesus said, even the Son of man does not know the hour, same God. They are a different expression of God, the Father, a more mature expression than Jesus Christ.

So we see in the Earth today a more mature expression of God than the Holy Ghost. Do not shut off the message; I am telling you the truth. You owe it to yourself to pray about it. His name is Christ, and He is more mature, and He is stronger, and He is more powerful, and He can do more things than the Holy Ghost can do, just as the Father could do more things than Jesus of Nazareth could do. He has got spiritual muscles, and He is strong enough to draw someone to the Father that will not go to a church, that will not take your tract, that will not talk to you, and, if he could, would walk away and shut the door in your face. He has an ability to send the male seed of the Father into your heart against your will.

So we find out that Jesus Christ is not a gentleman, that He is going to save this whole living soul because we are His wife. And I never read anywhere that God made more than one living soul. He made one living soul. It is a many-membered soul, so how can He save one and not the other? It is like saying I am going to save that plant, but I am just taking half the leaves, and I am not taking the other leaves. It does not really matter. He is saving the root of the plant. He is saving the root of humanity, and He has got a plan. It may be beyond our comprehension right now, but He knows how He is going to do it.

So the next stage of maturity is available; it is a manifestation of Christ, which takes somebody against their will. Because, brethren, if you have a child who is sick and will not go to the doctor, you take him by the hand, and you throw him in the car, and you take him to the doctor. I remember when I had my tonsils taken out. Ce- -- let --

            Celia.

-- Celia go. Thanks, Kathy. I remember when I had my tonsils taken out. I was dragged, screaming, from my parents because they were told that my life depended on it. So I ask you to reexamine your doctrine. If you believe that the living God, the creator of the universe, your savior and my savior to whom all power in heaven and Earth has been given, is going to let people roast in Hell forever because they have rejected Him. And I suggest to you He is going to take them by the hand, and He is going to throw them in the car, and He is going to take them to Dr. Jesus, and He is going to get them fixed up. That is what I suggest to you. Would you put that on pause please? OK, there sh- -- please, you know [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

So we see, as Christ -- who has only been in the Earth for 2,000 years. Brethren, He is only 2,000 years old. Now listen to this. The carnal mind has been in the Earth for thousands and thousands of years. Man has been fallen for thousands and thousands of years. Jesus Christ is only 2,000 years old, and 1,000 years to man is as a?

            [?A day?].

One day to God. He is only 2 years old; that makes the Holy Ghost a baby, and He is moving into His next stage of maturity which gives Him the strength to save people against their own will, people, Paul -- who Paul says oppose themselves, people who Paul says are alienated against God in their mind, sick people, spiritually sick people, emotionally sick people, physically sick people, deranged people, criminals, alcoholics, prostitutes, drug addicts whose will is so broken down that they cannot help themselves, suicide potentials, self-destructive believe, Gadarene Demoniac type people. What about them? What about the person born with no mind? What about the severely retarded who cannot understand a word that I am saying? What about them? If your salvation is based upon a conscious, rational decision for Christ, quote, unquote, what about the idiot? What about the autistic? What about the brain-dead person? What about the people in a coma? What about the mentally ill?

Brethren, I just ask you to reexamine your doctrine. Something is wrong with your doctrine, and it is a doctrine that has been produced by the drawing of a wrong conclusion, a conclusion which has been based upon the visible witness of so few people coming to Christ in this hour. The carnal minds of men have drawn the conclusion that the arm of our God is too short and that He is such a fine gentleman that He will let all of those types that I just named burn in Hell forever because they cannot believe this message. It is not true. But it is true of our God in His immature stage called what? The Holy Ghost. But as He ascends into manhood, it is no longer true.

Now remember the teaching here on that series which I do not know what happened to it, that "Right Identification" series. We just have two parts to it. That whole doctrine that is in the kingdom church which is all messed up because the carnal minds of men have taken true Scriptures, have taken true promises of God, and applied them to Christians at an age that these promises that these promises do not apply to. Does anyone not know what I am talking about? If I say to a 2-year-old child, you can do anything you want to do; I want you to take the SATs and go to college next year, does anybody doubt that that is impossible for a 2-year-old child? But if you wait 15 years, it is true for that s- -- very same child, same name, same parents, same home, same background, same genetic ability. It is true for him at 15 or 16 or 17, but it is not true for him at 2 years old.

Brethren, the promises of God span a multitude of different ages in Christ, and every promise is not for every Christian of any age. There is a category of promises that is available to the baby who drinks what? Milk. And there is a category of promises in the Scripture that is available only to the mature Christian who eats what?

            Meat.

Meat, strong meat. And even within the category of the Christian who is mature enough to eat strong meat, every promise in that Bible is not available to you at -- from the moment you start eating strong meat because when you start eating strong meat, you mature within the category of strong meat. Now if you take a promise that is not proper for you, where you are at that moment, it will not bear fruit, and you have taken a step in the wrong direction. And if God does not see fit to turn you around, you are going to wind up jumping off the cliff. You have got to get this straight. The Bible calls it rightly dividing the word of truth.

So I seem to be preaching a two-sided message here. I go back and forth between preaching to the kingdom church, which is into way deep doctrine and, in many areas, applied to the wrong people at the wrong time. And then He has me preaching to the church that I am preaching to tonight. I am burning up from the heat. Is anybody else hot, or is it just me? I have to open the window. Please, put that on pause.

So we see a rising in the corners, in the far corners, of the church, believers, a group of believers in whom the next stage of maturity in Christ is appearing. And we no longer say they have the Holy Ghost, but we say they have Christ. Why? Because the Holy Ghost has touched their heart and joined to it, and the Holy Ghost, in His condition of being joined to the heart of man, gets a new name, and we begin to call Him Christ. And Christ has the power to touch people against their will, and you have to be very careful because natural man has something called witchcraft power. We read about it a lot in the Book of Daniel and in the Book of Revelation. It is the spiritual power of the carnal mind of man, and a lot of people are going to hear this message, and they are going to go out try to force people to join that church. That is what they did in the Spanish Inquisition. You cannot do it; you cannot force your will on people.

The Bible says Moses was the meekest man ever born. He came forth in the righteousness of God. Any force he used was in the righteousness of God and not out of his own mind. Jesus never forced anyone out of his own mind. They came to kill Him, and He ran away. You cannot force your ideas on people; you cannot force your will on people; you cannot force your religion on people. But Christ has an authority that is higher than the mind of man, and Christ has within Him an authority that is higher than the laws of man, but His authority is spiritual. And we see, within this Christ mind that is beginning to emerge in some people, by His own sovereign will can reach out by His Spirit and shoot across a room and touch somebody's heart, not only in the same way but with more power than someone would be touched in a service that they voluntarily walked into.

Now I do not know how to make this any clearer, anybody hearing this message. If you go out in witchcraft power, that Lord is going to correct you; He is going to chasten you. This is a sovereign act of God that comes forth from the heart of a believer in whom Christ is mature enough to do His will through you, not your will. Now, ladies, if you have a husband that is not saved, do not think that you can force him to be saved. I am going to say it again. It is very important. It is Christ's own will as to whom He is calling at the moment. He dwells in you; He lives in you; He walks in you; He talks in you, but His mind is separate from your mind.

And somewhere along the line, we are all supposed to be starting to recognize when He is manifesting through us. As I started to preach last night, somebody said to me, that is the anointing. I said, that is right. The anointing was recognized. Well, it is easy to recognize it here. I have a microphone in my hand. It is a formal meeting, and I am burning up from the heat. But when you are sitting in a booth in a diner, you have to be able to recognize the anointing. You have to recognize that it is not my opinion anymore but that Christ has risen up in me, and He is speaking through my mouth, and He is using my mind, or He is -- not that He is using my mind, but He has suppressed my carnal mind, and He has become my mind, and He is talking through me, and you need to know that because if it is Christ in me, it is not my opinion. If it is Christ in me talking to you, you need to know that it is God talking to you, or if it is Christ in you talking to me, I need to know that it is not you, that another mind has ascended and crushed down your carnal mind and is using your mouth to talk to me. I need to know that. Why? Because everything God says to me is very important. I need to understand what God is saying to me.

So we had an experience last night. There was a violent manifestation, a tumult, a big noise and an earthquake [?and?in?] a worldly situation. What happened? I want to suggest to you that, totally without my consent, without advising me, without asking my permission, Christ arose in me, and we thought He was preaching to edify us. Well, God always has multiplicity of purposes. We were all blessed and edified, but I suggest to you that His primary purpose in preaching in that diner is that there was somebody sitting over at that table of six or seven people that He is calling to the kingdom. And for whatever reason, I do not know whether this person was in any of the categories that I named, whether they refuse to go to a church or not, that may -- now watch your conclusions. That may be true, but it may not be true because there is one other thing that I did not tell you.

You would say, well, if the person is willing to go to a church, why is God doing it this way? Well, there is something else I did not tell you. You see, facts can look good, but an absentee fact can cause you to draw a wrong conclusion. You do the best you can with what you have got, but when a new fact is added, you may have to change your opinion. And here is the other fact: The seed going forth from Christ, penetrating the heart of man, is a more powerful manifestation of the seed of God than the Holy Ghost. He is more mature; He is more powerful. What does that mean? The person -- and, you know, when I preach like this, I could even be wrong, you know. Like, I -- when -- well, when I s- -- I -- in principle, I am right, but I do not have all the details. That is what I am telling you. OK, this is what I think. This is my opinion. Paul said, this is not the Lord talking to you, but, I believe, I have the Spirit. That is what I am saying to you right now. This is not God talking to you, but based on everything He has shown me, I believe, this is the Spirit of God, OK. Maybe the seed coming forth from a mature Christ will raise the person up faster. It has got more power. We know it has got more power. What is more power going to do? Going to raise the person up more quickly.

Maybe this person has a hard heart, and they have been going to church for years, and that Holy Ghost seed could not get through their armor. Do you know that men have armor? We are told in the Book of Genesis, after Adam and Eve fell, that they made themselves aprons of fig leaves. You look up that word aprons in the Hebrew, it means armor, and the reason the word says fig leaves is t- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

And the reason the Scripture says fig leaves is to signify that the armor that was on man after the fall was not made of the substance of God but was made of the earthly substance of this world system. Everybody has armor. Does anybody remember the name of your armor? There is two kinds of armor you could have. Anybody remember?

            [CROSSTALK]

Carnal mind or the mind of Christ. Your armor is your mind. Your mind is the armor that defends your soul and preserves your body, so if there is a natural man that has inherited, from family line curses, strong powers of witchcraft, it is operating as armor against what? Armor against other witchcraft powers or other minds in this world to defend itself from the aggressiveness of this world system, which is a spiritual jungle, but it also defends itself against the seed of God, which is seeking to penetrate the carnal mind. Why is God trying to penetrate your carnal mind? What is in there that He wants?

            [INAUDIBLE]

He wants your spirit, your human spirit which has the potential to s- -- to cause Christ to spring forth. It is behind the armor or within the armor of your carnal mind. So if you have a strong mind, you may sit in services for 20 years, and the seed of God, in the form of the Holy Ghost, may not be powerful enough to penetrate you. So God wanted someone at that table. I do not know why He did it this way, but I am convinced that as He rose up and started preaching through me, that that word of Chri- -- that mature seed in the form of Christ went forth and hit someone's heart at that table who had a strong manifestation of human or carnal armor.

Brethren, what happens when you shoot through armor plate with a machine gun? Is it silent? Is it without a reaction? When two cars crash, is it without a reaction? Brethren, I want to suggest to you that the Word of God pierced through somebody, at least one -- if not all of them, at least one person's armor, and there was an upheaval in this natural realm. If you throw a rock into the ocean, you see ripples. You like that, huh?

            [INAUDIBLE]

I mean, you had to sit there. This table was in front of a mirror. There was, whatever it was, some kind of liquid all over the mirror. They had to clean the mirror. There was broken cups and saucers all over the floor. Everybody was jumping up and wiping themselves off, total disarray. I want to tell you --

            [INAUDIBLE]

-- that there was a warfare in that diner, and I want to tell you also that when Christ goes to war, somebody gets taken captive. [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

If not all of them, at least one person was penetrated by the word. Now how long it is going to take for that seed to sprout, I do not know, but I know that somebody was penetrated. I know, and they were penetrated with -- despite resistance. There was a resistance that appeared in the natural, but if you do not have spiritual eyes to see, if you do not have understanding, you would not understand what happened. And the Word of God says, if the seed falls on your mind and you do not understand it, what happens?

            [?The birds take it away?].

The birds eat it. Wisdom is wonderful, brethren, because wisdom is who?

            Christ.

Wisdom is Christ, but get understanding, brethren, because you have got to have that understanding. Wisdom alone is not enough; you have got to have that understanding, or every -- [UNINTELLIGIBLE] I do not know if every good thing, but a lot of good things that come your way, you are going to lose it because it is going to walk right past you. It is going to go right through your life, and you may know that you lost it, and you may never know that you lost it. You have got to get your spiritual senses functioning. God is a spirit, and He is spiritually discerned, and His works are spiritually discerned. And He has been appearing to men for 2,000 years now in carnal ways. Well, I do not know if carnal way is the correct word. Let me correct that, in visible ways. Not invisible, but He has been appearing in visible ways. How has God been appearing to man in visible ways? How? What does He do that man can see?

            [INAUDIBLE]

Slain in the Spirit through other men. Yes, people get slain in the Spirit. They hear people talking in tongues; they witness prophecy; they see healings. I saw someone once, a man of God laid hands on her, a woman with cerebral palsy. Her husband had to practically carry her into the church. I saw someone lay hands on her, and I thought I was looking at a cartoon that was being fast-forwarded. She started jumping up and down, and she ran around the church, and I know it was real because I prayed for her. Before this happened, the woman could barely walk.

So there have been signs given to the church for 2,000 years now, but Jesus said -- the Pharisees, He said, they want a sign. He said, the only sign I am going to give you is that three days and three -- the sign of Noah, three days and three nights. I will be in the bowels of the Earth. Brethren, you know what He meant? He meant that signs are not going to get you into the kingdom. The signs are designed to build faith in you. The signs are designed to catch the interest of the carnal man so that he is open, so that the seed of God can get in your heart, so that Christ can be formed in you because Christ is the eyes of your understanding. And if all you have is the Holy Ghost and Christ is not being formed in you, you have no eyes, and you have no understanding.

And it is just a season, brethren; a season has a beginning, and a season has an end, and the season of the signs is closing out. And if you do not have spiritual eyes, you are going to miss the whole thing because He is appearing. He has begun to appear. You have got to see Him where He is. He is not doing signs anymore, brethren. Excuse me. The Lord corrected me. The signs are fading away. Prophecy will fail; tongues will fail; outstanding, visible or visibly outstanding miracles will fail, but Christ will not fail. And Christ is spiritual; He is not loud; He is not boisterous; He is not flamboyant. And there is nothing wrong with that if that is what God is doing in that hour, but it is just for a season. The signs are just for a season to get you spiritual eyes because the real thing is happening in the invisible world, and it is happening now.

And you have to be able to recognize a spiritual earthquake, and you have to be able to recognize a spiritual tumult and a big noise, and you have to be able to see Babylon coming down, and you have to be able to see Christ standing up because we no longer know man after the flesh. Because if you look to the flesh to know who you are talking to, you will walk off the r- -- off of the pier. You will walk off of the cliff. You are going to choose the wrong man, as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. If you have got your mind and your eyes on carnal qualities, you will pick the angel of light, I prophesy it to you.

The age is closing out, brethren. The church age with all the signs is fading on the horizon, and if the signs have not done their work in you, if you have not conceived Christ, if He is not engrafted in your heart, not in my heart, in your heart, if He is not being formed in you, the church age is closing out, and it has failed to do its work in you. Either you are going on into the next age group, or you are sliding back to carnality. Do not tell me, where is that in the Scripture? I will tell you. If you received a talent and you did not use it to increase you, you are going to lose that talent, and it is going to be given to the ones that used it to increase. Your measure of faith, if it has not produced Christ in you, is going to be given to those you have Christ.

So we had an exciting time last night. That diner will never be the same. And then as we continue to talk, the Lord brought forth another revelation that I would like to share with you. I have had an experience several times, at least twice, I do not know if more than that, where I would be talking to people. I know it is always when I am having a spiritual experience, and my vision of what they look like would become distorted and weird. And I have been asking the Lord for a long time what that meant, and I did not get an answer until last night in the diner. [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

Brethren, you can have your church buildings; you can have it. They are worthless. If God gives you a church building, please, take it, but if there is any choice at all, the building is worthless. And it is been my experience that a- -- the deeper you get in God, the less likely you are to have a formal building. God is going back to house fellowships. In Nigeria that is all they have, with the mature church. They are completely out of the formal church buildings, and it is happening here. Open your eyes. And I want to tell you, when you go on with God, you cannot even find a meeting like this unless God sends you here. Who would know that you are here? This is just another witness as to what I just told you. The church that needs a sign, the church building is a sign. The steeple is a sign; the cross is a sign; the big sign in front of the church that says XYZ fellowship is a sign.

But the signs are passing away, and the only way you are going to be able to find that church that God wants you in is by spiritual communication, you seeking God and Him telling you where to go. And when you seek Him, do you -- how do you think He is going to tell you where to go? Brethren, He is going to send a man to you that does not look like anything like anyone you would admire. There is going to be nothing about that person that you would desire. You might even dislike them, but you better listen to everything that everybody says to you that walk by your path. Why? Because it could be God talking to you, and the more you dislike the person, the more likely God sent them.

I am telling you the truth. You hate women; God is sending you a woman. You hate men; God is sending you a man. You hate loudmouth women; He is sending a loudmouth woman. You hate women in pants; He is sending a woman in pants. You hate people that do not wear shoes; He is going to find someone somewhere without shoes and send them to you. I am telling you the truth. He is going to send you someone that you are jealous of. He is going to send you someone that you are so jealous of, you cannot stand being in the same room with them, and He is going to say, learn from them. He is going to send you someone that you think is stupid, but they are going to have something to teach you, and He is going to say, learn from them, you arrogant thing, you. Humble yourself, and get what I have for you through that person. So if you want to get to the home fellowship where God wants you, if you want to get into the catacombs, brethren, you better start discerning the word of the Lord and the deliverer that He sends it through, the bus driver, the policemen, your child's teacher, a total stranger on the street that comes over and talks to you.

Did you ever hear Win Worley's testimony? I think, he was in New York. He is from --

            Indiana.

-- Indiana. He was on a subway. It was not his testimony. I heard him give it, but someone had given him the testimony. They were on a subway somewhere, and this desperate man that had been spending years trying to get help -- he had a spiritual problem; no one could help him. He had been in and out of the church world. His whole family was praying for him. In case you do not know it, it is not at all uncommon, when you have a serious problem, that you have to wait for years for God to deliver you. Does anybody not know that? OK. Well, this man was in a subway, and a man walked over to him and put a piece of paper in his hand and said, here, call this man; he can help you. Total stranger, and walked away and disappeared in the crowd. And the man looked out, and it was Win Worley, his name and number. He had never heard of Win Worley.

Win Worley is -- I do not know if he is alive or dead. The last time I heard, he was dying, should really call up and find out. He is a man that dedicated his whole life to casting demons out of people, and not every Christian is willing to do that. And for those that are willing to do it, everybody does not have the anointing to do it. You may want to do it, but if God is not doing it through you, there is nothing you could do about it. In the middle of a subway, not in a church, not through his family, not through his beloved friends, not through his colleagues, not through college, a total stranger on the subway approached him, and in a split second, told him where to go to get help, and he went because he heard the word of the Lord, and he got helped.

If you are a Pharisee, you are not going to survive. You see, every co- -- every category of person has an environment in which they operate. The environment of the Pharisee is the church age, the visible age. They have to be able to hear it in their native language, and they have to be able to see it spelled out in front of their eyes, or they cannot believe it, or they will not do it, or they will not pursue it, or they will not recognize that it is even an instruction. Pharisees, the church age is passing away, and you are going to find yourself high and dry on the banks of the Jordan. You are going to find yourself a carnal man if you cannot discern the church. Man are sick and die because they cannot discern the --

            [INAUDIBLE]

-- body of Christ, and that comes on two levels. You have to be able to discern the Christ in you, but you also have to be able to discern Him in me. Why would I need to discern the body of Christ in me? Because I need to tell the difference between the body of Christ and the body of the flesh because the body of the flesh has ano- -- his name is what?

            The carnal mind.

The carnal mind. He hates me. He wants to kill me, and if I follow his instructions, I will surely die. So even more than the body of Christ out there, you have got to discern the body of Christ in here. I just read a whole book by a very well-meaning preacher on the body of Christ, and all he talked about was the body of Christ out there. Brethren, you have got to discern the body of Christ in here because if you cannot discern what Christ is telling you in here, you will never discern the body of Christ out there. Only Christ can recognize Christ. The carnal mind cannot recognize Christ. On the contrary, he calls Christ evil.

I saw that in the movie I recommended to you tonight. The man did good, and they accused him of corruption, and nobody would believe that his only motive was to get more of his own nationality jobs. They accused him of taking [?graft?], and it was not true. They could not believe anybody could be that selfless, and according to the movie, he was offered the bribe. He would not take it. He just said, give the men the jobs; that is all I want. And he lost his job over it because he was accused of corruption. That had to be a manifestation of Christ in him because he was persecuted for righteousness' sake, lost his job in disgrace.

So Christ is thought evil of, wherever He goes, except by another manifestation of Christ in someone else's mind. Why? Because the carnal mind cannot comprehend the way Christ thinks. They cannot even relate to it. You know, some people are students of other cultures, where they are called anthropologists, and they say, well, if you go into this culture, I know that that is how they think. This culture does not sit on a chair. Now the British and the Americans and the Europeans, they sit on chairs, but you go to this other culture; they do not sit on chairs; they sit on the floor. So I know when I walk into their house and there is no chair there and they ask me to sit on the floor, I know that they are not insulting me because that is what they do. So you could see that with your eye. I know that they eat chocolate-covered ants in this culture, so when they invite me for dinner and dinner is chocolate-covered ants, I am not insulted; it is a delicacy.

But the carnal mind cannot recognize Christ. It cannot believe or cannot comprehend the way their thought processes work. Someone said to me not too long ago, I surprised them with something that I said or did. They said, I will never understand the way you think. Yes, you will; when Christ in you is mature as Christ is in me, you will understand how I think. I do not think like you do.

So I would just like to briefly tell you -- this has not been very brief. I do not know. God has been cancelling messages for the last three weeks.

            We are getting used to it.

Yeah. He keeps cancelling my messages. You know what I was going to preach on tonight? I found a message in the loose-leaf that I never preached. I was giving it to you to record, and I said, oh, I never preached that. It must have been one of the nights God cancelled my message; let me preach it, still in my Bible. It is a good message too.

So this is what the Lord told me about my vision. It is really hard for me to describe to you what I saw, but one of the sisters d- -- gave me the correct word. It was -- the only thing I could say is my vision was distorted. I am looking at you, and I see couches with people sitting on it, and I see an image of what you look like. And that which I was looking at, first of all, it started moving, and the form of the people changed. I could still see that there were people there, but they, sort of, became, like, stick people, and they were moving strangely, and everything was moving. And this is what the Lord brought forth last night, OK.

Before I can tell you, I have to give you a review on some basic principles that the Lord has revealed here, and that is that this world that we see is an image, OK. This picture that I am looking at, it is a reflection of spiritual life that exists in the mind of man, in the same way that an image on a movie screen is coming from a projector. You try to grab the image on the movie screen; you cannot; it is just light. Excuse me. This world that we see, it is an image which is projected from a mind which is so superior to our mind that is has the ability to form an image that, to us, is real. We are spirit. Our true reality is spirit. So this is a great mystery that this world is an image which is projected by a superior mind. The Garden of Eden and the original creation was an image which was projected by the mind of, anybody? Christ, at the beginning of time. God breathed the breath of life into the living soul, into the soul, into the man that He made, and he became a living soul. And that breath that God breathed into the man became the man's mind because the breath of God is spirit. And when it was breathed into the man, it became the mind of man, and that mind was a superior mind, far superior to what we have, which had the ability to form the image of a garden and an external image of the man. Could you put that on pause?

So, behold, I show you a mystery. We are not this flesh. We are spirit. The whole purpose of the creation was that the invisible God decided to become visible, and He said He would be visible by wrapping a dark cloud around Him, and man is that dark cloud through which the Spirit of Christ is expressing Himself. Now we know that Jesus is the image of the Father; He is the very shape of the Father. But Jesus does not have -- this is no longer the days of His flesh. Now do not get me, you Pharisees, I know what you are all saying, OK. We are His flesh today, but that -- I am no- -- I am making another point. The man, Jesus --

You know, I call you Pharisees lovingly. I hope you know that, OK. You are going to get me. You think it is easy teaching you teenagers? Those preachers in the local churches, they have it easy. Everybody goes in; they believe everything he tells them. They believe the truth he tells them; they believe the lies he tells them; they believe the junk he tells them, and they believe the good stuff that he tells them. It is not easy teaching you teenagers, catch me on all my mistakes. So what was I saying?

            [INAUDIBLE]

OK. T- -- in this hour, if you are looking for the Lord Jesus Christ, where is He? Where is His flesh? Who is His flesh? We are His flesh. If you are looking for God, He is in the church, not in the brick building. He is in the church. What? Do you not know ye are the temple of the Holy Ghost? And when that Holy Ghost becomes Christ, you become the church, you and me. It is not in a building; it is in flesh. But when Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth, we are told in the Book of Hebrews, in the days of His flesh, He said, I am the very shape of the Father. Now is He talking about His human body? He was a man. He looked like everybody else. What was He talking about, I am the shape of the Father? What was He talking about?

            [INAUDIBLE]

His mind. Yes, His mind and His soul were in the shape -- what does that mean? They expressed the image of the Father, just as if you have -- had a signet ring and you put it down in some soft clay or some wax, the shape of the Father is the what of the Father?

            The character.

The character, the nature of the Father. And what is the nature of the Father?

            [?Love?].

Well, that is true, but I am looking for another word? Is it sin?

            Righteousness.

Righteousness. The nature of the Father is righteousness. Jesus said, I am the shape of the Father. He said, I am righteousness, not in this human body, but in My mind, in the way I think and in My emotions. He said, My emotions, My human emotions are under the control of righteousness. Any lust that is in Me that I inherited from My mother, Mary, is under the control of righteousness. I am righteousness, He said. He said, I am a holy God. So if you are looking for the Father today, He is in imperfect vessels, but because He is in you, it is His intention to make you perfect. Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.

So we see that the Spirit of the Father expressed itself in the mind and the soul of the man, Jesus of Nazareth. Please note, not in His body, which is another message, but just tuck it away in your mind. The body of Jesus of Nazareth was not in the image of the Father. How do I know that? Because it looked just like everybody else who is not in the image of the Father. He was a man, two arms, two legs, two eyes, a nose, a mouth, a head, hair on his head. So there is an image of the invisible spirit that is appearing in a visible world, and the visible world is an image which is created by a mind which is so superior that, to us, it appears to be reality, but it is not reality. Reality is the world of God's Spirit. That is the reality, and the Scripture says we are separated from that world by what? What do we have to pierce through to get to reality? What?

            The veil.

The veil, which is what?

            Flesh.

His flesh. The veil is his flesh. So if you can receive it, receive it. If you cannot receive it, that is OK. You do not have to believe everything I preach, but this world that we live in is an image of a high spiritual order that is so h- -- so much beyond our capabilities that, to us, it appears real, and it is real. If you burn my hand, I am going to scream. It is real to me. But the truth is that our reality is in the realm of the spirit. Our reality is spirit and that we are abiding down here, and we are completely involved and enmeshed with and immersed in this world system, which is an illusion, because -- does anybody know how we got in this condition? We what?

            [?Fell?].

We died, and this is the realm of death, and our spirit died, and we are stuck down here, and we cannot get out in the condition that we are in now. But God has a plan to get us out. How is He getting us out, by what, by doing what to us? By raising us --

            [INAUDIBLE]

-- from the dead. And how is He raising us from the dead? Is He raising our body from the dead?

            [INAUDIBLE]

He is raising our spirit from the dead, and when our spirit is raised from the dead, it will take dominion over and give life to our what?

            Soul.

Our soul, and it will preserve this body. Well, you are close. You are doing great. And it will preserve this body until such time that we no longer need it. So if you can receive that, even if you can just receive it for the purposes of this message, this is what God told me happened to my vision. He said that the mind of Christ in me -- and, of course, this happened when I was speaking out the things of God. He told me that the mind of Christ in me manifested in such a measure of power -- well, let me tell you one more thing before I go back to that.

It is the corporate, carnal mind of fallen man that is creating this image. Is everybody OK? We are all seeing and thinking with the carnal mind, everybody except Jesus, and He is not -- that glorif- -- that full stature Jesus is not in the Earth anymore. Every man is fallen; every man is thinking and seeing with a fallen carnal mind, and this is what is appearing. It is an image; it is a reflection of what is in the minds of men. Now when everybody is thinking with the mind of Christ, this whole external world is going to appeared differently. I do not know what it is going to look like, to tell you the truth, but it is not going to look like this. It is going to look different because the mind of Christ does not perceive corruption. The mind of life -- the mind of Christ perceives life. There is not going to be a world that corrupts, a world with pestilence in it, a world with death in it, a world with aging in it, a world with sickness in it. It is not going to be. It is going to be a world of life. Now what it is going to look like, I do not know. Some men say it is going to have flowers that, when you step on them, they spring back up. Personally, I do not think so. That sounds like a kindergarten fantasy to me, but if you want to believe that, that is fine because I do not have anything else to offer you. I do not know what it is going to look like. God has not even given me the slightest hint, so you believe whatever you want to believe. That is fine.

So this world is an image that is continuously, from second to second, being maintained by the carnal minds of men, just like if you were to see a film on a screen, you would know that back there in the projection room, there is film of many, many frames of the same picture, each one just a hair different, running, running, running to maintain that image on the screen. The film runs; the light shines through the different frames on the film, and it looks like a still image, but it is not. Does anyone not know what I am talking about? There is a picture on the screen, but the film reel is turning, turning, turning. Everybody's mind is turning, turning, turning, turning, and it looks like one image, but it is not. This world, as we see it, is being maintained and sustained from second to second by the fallen minds of men.

And this is what the Lord said to me. I got in a spiritual battle, and Christ arose with such a measure of power that He shook my carnal mind, and the image distorted. If there was any more power coming forth, that Christ had put my carnal mind underfoot, I do not know what the world would have looked like to me. H- -- the mind of Christ manifested with such power that it interfered with the functioning of my carnal mind that was caught in this whole corporate world of seeing this world as everybody sees it. Anybody that walks into this room right now is going to see what I see because we all have carnal minds, but I know what Jesus would see if He walked in here. Now I do not know. All I know is I got caught up in a spiritual battle that weakened my carnal mind to such a degree that the image that I was looking at distorted in a manner that it did not even look, you know, like anything in this world. And everyone started moving quickly and choppily, just as if you were looking at that screen and something went wrong with the projector. That is what happened. I am really excited. It shook, yeah. It was weird.

I wish I could explain it to you any better than this, but it would -- did not look normal. What I saw did not look normal. It was not that your face -- the person's face changed or that their clothes changed. They did not like anything that you would expect to find anywhere in this world, and their movements speeded up. It was weird. So I said to the Lord today, I said, Lord, explain this to me because, when this happened, I was not preaching deep doctrine. When this happened, I was giving a testimony on my healing, nothing -- there was no deep doctrine at all, and this is what the Lord said to me. He said, it does not have to be deep doctrine.

The fact was that God had sent me to an Al-Anon meeting. I did not know what I was doing there, but He told me to go, and I sat down at the table, and I saw that everybody was being invited to say something, so I said, oh my goodness, I do not even know what I am doing here. And I started to pray. I said, Lord, what do you want me to say? And He said, give your testimony about your healing, and, in case you do not know it, it is not acceptable to name Jesus Christ in Al-Anon meetings, so I knew that. And as I went around the table, I said, well, Lord, this is the Unites States in the 1900s. All they could do is throw me out. They are not going to burn me or stone me, so I will say whatever you tell me to say.

And I started giving my testimony, and I named the name of Jesus. And I started giving Him glory, and there were two people down at the end of this table that were really being touched by this testimony. For all I know, today, they have a relationship with the Lord, would not surprise me at all, and the table started to move, and everything started to distort. And the Lord said to me that there were people at that table that were -- whose carnal minds were m- -- j- -- severely opposing what I was doing, what I was saying. And amongst these people was a man who was the leader of the meeting, and he knew that it was his job to stop me, and he must have been distressed. He must have had some anxiety as to how he was going to do it, and he must have been getting up his self-confidence. His carnal mind must have been spewing out spiritual power, and at the same time, Christ in me cranked up and spewed more spiritual power because whatever it was that I had to say, the Lord was not going to let me sit down until I -- it was all out.

So the power of God in me was opposing the head of the meeting who wanted to shut me up and could not get the worlds out of his mouth, and this man had behind him the full at of Al-Anon, and, you know, that is powerful. It is powerful to have the full authority of an organization behind you. There is such a thing as a natural authority. If you go into somebody's house, they have authority over you. There is no argument you could have with them that would be valid. It is their house. If you go into a place of business, that is your boss. You do not like it; quit, they are the boss. In God's -- as far as God is concerned, they have authority. You are on somebody's boat; it is their boat. You do not like it; leave.

So I was at a meeting of an organization, and I was the guest in their house, and it is a big organization. And their rules are written in the heaven of the carnal mind, and I was doing something wrong by their standards. I was out of order, and under most circumstances, God would have left me to my own devices, except that He sent me in. And there is a higher law than the law of man, and He revved up, and He opposed the full power and authority of that extensive organization of thousands of people across the world, if not millions, agreeing that you do not name the name of Jesus at these meetings. Do you hear this? Millions of people across the world covenant that you do not name the name of Jesus at Al-Anon meetings. And without their conscious agreement, every one of those millions of minds was against me.

There is no time or space in the realm of the spirit, brethren. If you do not understand me, ask God to show it to you. It is there; it is written in heaven; it is written in the heaven of the carnal mind. You do not do that. And there was so much spiritual authority [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

-- accomplished in those two people, and I would expect He penetrated their hearts. That is -- if you asked me my opinion, that is what I would tell you. There was so much spiritual power coming against me that it required so much spiritual power of Christ in me to keep it back until the work was done that it damaged my carnal mind t- -- and maybe the carnal minds of everybody at the table to such a measure that the image actually distorted. Can you hear this? This excites me. It really excites me.

That poor man, he was all upset. He came over after the meeting. You know, I do not have any reason to be in Al-Anon, but he did not know that, asked me to come back to the meetings, you know. He was very upset. He told me -- in case you did not gather that, he just told me -- he stopped me. He stopped my testimony. He would not let me continue. He would not let me give glory to God. So, brethren, if -- can you imagine what is going to be when the sons of God stand up and we have people thinking with the mind of Christ 24 hours a day, 100 percent of the time? There is going to be big cracks in this image. I do not know how it is going to happen. I just have the spiritual principle. Those of us that have been studying here for a while have the spiritual principle that this world, this visible world which is physical, which is erected with the carnal minds of men, is lying where? Anybody remember? It is lying where? What is it covering up? What is it lying over? This world is lying over --

            [?The Garden of Eden?].

-- the Garden of Eden. What did you say? [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

OK, spiritually speaking -- now, remember, the world is not flat. The world is round. The spiritual world is round, and it is three -- it is -- actually, it is four-dimensional. It has depth to it; it is not flat. Spiritually speaking, this visible world, which is physical, solid, is lying over Eden, which is visible, not physical. It is visible. Does anybody know the word that describes Eden? It is visible and spiritual.

            [INAUDIBLE]

This world is visible and physical. Eden is visible and spiritual, and this world is lying over it. It is encompassing Eden on all sides, and the Scripture says that what is going to happen to this world? It is going to be what?

            [?Rolled back?].

Rolled back like a scroll. It is going to be rolled back, brethren, and that which is underneath is going to be revealed. This world is extraneous. It is extra. When we do our studies which show this creation as an atom, A-T-O-M, we see that this world is expressed as an extra orbit on the atom. The atom of this creation will be losing this orbit, and the spiritual orbit, which is underneath, will be the most exterior part of the creation. Hallelujah.

So this started out as an exhortation. Are there any questions on any of this? I do not know what God is going to -- where He is going to go from here. I am just getting started. You have a question? OK, please take the microphone.

            Unless I wrote this wrong, I got this world is a reflection of the image of God, a projection from God's superior mind to form the image of man and the world.

Well, no. It is close. I am glad you asked, and if it came out that way, I am glad you asked that question. [?No?].

            And I also got every man is fallen; this is a reflection of the carnal mind.

Everybody that is fallen is a re- --

            Every man is fallen, and this whole world is a reflection of the carnal mind.

Yes. Every man in the Earth today, as far as I know, is still fallen.

            Well, I got both, so I do not know which one is which.

Yeah, OK. The first one was not correct, OK. The Garden of Eden was the reflec- -- or is. It still exists; it is just underneath. The Garden of Eden is the image or the reflection of the mind of Christ. This world is the reflection or the image of the carnal mind. Did I answer your question? OK.

What happened at the beginning of time was this: There was an image created by the mind of Christ in the man; it was called the Garden of Eden. And there was a tragedy -- you see, in the creation was an element that we call a moral impurity, a moral impurity in the creation. God said the creation was good; He never said it was perfect. The potential for sin was present in the creation from the beginning, and God put him under -- or put her, excuse me, under the dominion of the man, and the man is Christ, OK. The living soul is female, and that living soul had a mind in it which was male. I do not want to lose anybody. Male and female existed in the creation. At the beginning of time, the creation was both male and female. The soulish element of the creation was female, and the mind that ruled that creation, whose name was --

            [?Satan?].

No, the mind that -- no, at the beginning of time.

            [CROSSTALK]

Christ was male, and there was a moral impurity in this creation, and that moral impurity was present in the soul, had no name at the time. Today we know her name is Satan, and when she was under the dominion of the man, Christ, she was harmless, and we see that principle in this world all of the time. We see man taming wild beasts and using the wild beasts for the benefit of man. We see, in chemistry -- excuse me, we see toxic elements bound together with other elements, forming a third element that is beneficial to mankind, and we see that all the time. The moral impurity was in the creation, capable of polluting the creation if she got free, but a benefit to the whole when she was bound to the authority of Christ.

 I remember once there was a scare about apple pits. Everybody was saying -- telling you not to eat apple pits because there is cyanide in apple pits, and cyanide can kill a man. But in the apple pit, the form of the cyanide is in a form where that cyanide is bound to other elements that render that cyanide harmless. And this was the condition of Satan; she was not toxic or poisonous to the creation. While she was under the authority and dominion and control of Christ, she was beneficial, and her function was -- does anybody remember? Her function was --

            [?To give form?].

-- to give form to the creation. I do not want to go off on any tangent right now, but we did not -- we started a series on creation, and we found that the earth that is mentioned in the Scripture is Satan. The creation is spirit and earth, is it not? The spirit is from God, and the earth is Satan. She is in the earth, and all of this talk that you hear about Mother Earth and this worship of earth and nature, watch out, brethren. This Wicca wit- -- this Wicca, white witchcraft where they revere nature and Mother Earth, watch out; it is Satan. She takes many names, Diana, Isis, Mary. Hmm?

            Everything female.

She is female. Satan was female. She is Mother Earth. The earth is Satan, so Satan is the earth and the moral impurity in the earth. She is the -- that which is -- I do not want to say alive but that which has existence in the earth. I lost my train of thought. OK, I know what I am saying. So at the beginning of the time -- of time, God said to the man, now the man was the living soul with the mind of Christ. What made the creation male was that His mind was Christ. And God said to the man -- what is the word in the King James? Guard the garden. If you look that word up in the Hebrew, it means [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- I think, He said, keep the garden, in the King James. If you look it up in the Hebrew --

            [CROSSTALK]

In the King James, it is keep the garden, but if you look that word up in the Hebrew, it means to militarily guard the garden. And God was saying to Adam, do not let Satan out from under your authority because if she succeeds in separating from you, you are going to -- well, you shall surely die. Actually, see, God said it in parable form. He said, if you eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, if you let Satan out from underneath you and meet her as an equal and join with her, you shall surely die. That is what He said.

And despite God's warning, Satan got out; Adam let go. He did not keep the garden. He did not guard it accurately or adequately enough. Satan got out, and she killed that Christ mind. She killed Him, and that event is known as -- the event of the death of Christ is known as the --

            Fall.

-- fall, and Satan birthed her own carnal mind in the creation. What? You never heard that before? That which is born of the flesh is --

            Flesh.

-- flesh. And what is born of the flesh? The carnal mind.

            [INAUDIBLE]

Amen. You heard of the new man and the old man; you heard of the inner man and the outer man. Satan brought forth her own mind, a mind in her own image in the flesh of the living soul, and the creation fell, and this is our condition today. I must be getting tired. I do- -- did I have a point? Was I making a point, or was I just going on? Was I making a point about that?

OK, so just -- I would just like to put this on the message. If you are looking for a symbolic or a parabolic expression of what I just said, you can find it in Daniel 8. There was a ram that appeared, a ram typifying the creation of God. A ram is a male -- mature, male sheep, typifying Israel. And then, all of a sudden, there was a goat on the scene. Satan had separated out from under the authority of Christ and appeared in the form of a goat. Does anybody here not know that satanic cults worship Satan in the form of a goat, that the goat, as the symbol for Satan, is classic in this world? If you investigate in occult sources, you will find out that the goat is the symbol of Satan. And we are told in Daniel 8 that that goat attacked that ram with a superhuman vengeance and killed it, killed the mind of Christ. And the man fell, and the creation fell, and we have been in this condition ever since. It is the goat that is the mind in this creation, the mind brought forth by Satan herself. Anyone else have a question? Anybody else? OK, would you just put that on pause, and we will see if the Lord is going to [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

OK, the question asked was what is an angel of light, so, first, let us define angel. Would anybody like to define angel for us?

            [CROSSTALK]

A messenger, spirit. Anybody else?

            Man.

            Man.

Man, OK. An angel can -- is a messenger. God can send the whole man. We were just talking about this the other day. God can send the whole man. He can speak to [?any?] -- Mary had to go out today to rescue one of our members [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- God sent an angel to you. You called, and He sent an angel. He sent the whole person of Mary, so, therefore, if an angel of light is Satan, what -- it means -- that is the implication, angel of light; it means a false angel or an evil angel. We are told in Revelation 12 that there are evil angels. That means that a whole human being could be sent to somebody, and they could look like they are sent of God. They can sound like they are sent of God. They could talk like they are sent of God. They can act like they are sent of God, but the truth is that they are not sent of God. And if they are not sent of God, their mission or their intention is to what.

            [?To deceive?].

To deceive and to destroy the Christ in you. So an angel of light can be a whole person. It can be a spiritual visitation, but it is somebody who says to you that they are a messenger from God, and the truth is that they are a messenger from Satan.

            When the exterior world is rolled back like a scroll, where is it going to go? Is it going -- is it -- the hard exterior that we see now going to just dissolve, break down?

Again, this is an area in which I am giving you my opinion. It is an educated opinion, but it is not -- certainly not the last word. I would expect it to transmutate, just as these physical bodies at the time of the glorification. Now, remember, the resurrection is in three stages. This information is not to be applied to full stature. At the time of the glorification, which is the third stage of the resurrection, when these physical bodies will transmute. I believe, this whole world will transmute, and for the message let us put down what transmutation is. Let us put it on the message. Anybody want to do that? Would anybody like to define transmutation?

            I was just going to ask --

OK.

            -- what actually happens [?in transmutation?].

OK. Transmutation is the event of an intense energy source being applied to matter. Anything that is solid is matter. The earth is spirit or energy and matter, OK. We have an intense energy source. His name is what?

            Christ.

Christ, and He is going to set Himself against the physical matter of these bodies and of this physical world and going to break it down to its basic, component parts, which are called, anybody? Atoms. He is going to break it down into its atoms, its invisible -- atoms are invisible. He is going to break it down to its basic building blocks, and then that same power source is going to reform those atoms into a spiritual -- into a visible but a spiritual body and a visible but a spiritual world that I have no idea what it will look like.

But, you see, it is a basic rule of the universe that nothing is ever destroyed; it just changes form. This whole world just keeps t- -- or the atoms keep breaking apart and reforming. It just never changes form, and the source that causes this breaking apart of formed objects, as far as I know, I am no scientist, is always fire. If you talk to scientists, they are always heating something. If they are trying to alter an element or experiment, they are always -- are heating some substances because if you take two substances and you want to change them into a third substance, it requires fire. That is what they do.

And you can liken that to making a cake. If you take butter and salt and flour and you put it in a mixer and you blend it up so completely that you now have a cake batter, that you cannot recognize the flour, and you cannot recognize the sugar, and you cannot recognize the butter, you have completely mingled those elements. You have broken down what they were, and you have completely mingled them to such a degree that you are producing a brand-new object, especially after you bake the cake. After you bake the batter and you look at the cake, you would never think that it was a stick of butter or a cup of milk or a cup of sugar, and that is a parable which describes this event of transmutation.

We are going to be melted. Peter says the elements will melt. Of course, I believe, that is speaking about our spiritual being, but these physical bodies are going to be melted by the Christ within us. The Christ within us is going to melt these bodies, and the corporate manifestation of Christ in all of humanity will melt this whole world system, this physical, visible world system, and an- -- something else will form. I know that, physically, we will have -- or I should not say physically. Personally, there is going to be a light body. We see Jesus; He was a ball of light. What the world is going to look like, I do not know. Just, please, use the microphone.

            [INAUDIBLE]

            I just wanted to comment that the greatest recyclable system is in the Lord's hands, you know? You cannot beat it.

[CROSSTALK]

            Restoration.

This is a big garbage dump, you know. Some of us that have studied the word, Gehenna. Well, that is what it is. That is what Gehenna is, if anyone has done a study on Hell. There is three Greek words translated Hell, and one of them is Gehenna, and if you study the usage of the word, it is the word that Jesus applied to this world system. And Gehenna is the name of a garbage dump that was outside of -- was it Jerusalem that it was outside of? And it burned continuously, and Gehenna burned so long as there was garbage thrown into it to burn. So the Hell of this world system will continue to burn so long as there is something that is burnable.

            [INAUDIBLE]

Garbage, spiritual garbage. But when Jesus comes and breaks down the last of the garbage and makes something valuable out of it, there will be nothing to burn in the fire, and the fires of the Hell of this world system will cease to be. Because when there is no fuel, the fire goes out. Hallelujah.

            Years ago, I was impressed by watching the people who believed in the -- what do they call that? The rapture.

You could not remember the name.

Yes. And they were so busy, you know, buying whatever they wanted and feeling they would never have the responsibility of paying off these debts, and they felt they could do whatever they wanted to because, in a very short period, the Lord was just going to sweep them off the face of the earth, and they would be free and easy. So they never had to worry about being equipped for a battle because they did not believe there was going to be any war; they were going to get off, scot-free. And that same thought came to me last night when I was going through one of your messages because I did not understand the battle in the mind, that it was really weap- -- a weapon, and I did not understand. I thought you would just wait for the L- -- just surrender and submit to the Lord, moment-by-moment, and He will bring you to the mind of Christ, if He has so foreordained.

Yeah.

            I did not understand what a battle it was with the mind, and I am just starting now to comprehend --

The viciousness of it.

            -- that it is truly a war because I really did not perceive it in that way. And I actually used to laugh. I would say, you know, tribulation, I mean, everybody goes through hard times; what is the big deal? But now I am just beginning to see the depth of it. I am just beginning.

Well, you are very blessed because there is thousands of believers out there in the kingdom church that believe as you believed, and, unfortunately, there are some false prophets out there preaching that and publishing international newsletters and telling the people you will ascend automatically, and it is a lie. If you are not in the law, you are still in Hell. You better believe it. You better start fi- -- ask God for a fight because, if you do not have any battle, it means -- if there is no battle in your life, if you are not battling with powers and principalities, it means you are either a what, anybody?

            Dead.

No. You are a --

            [INAUDIBLE]

Well, no. You are either a woman --

            [CROSSTALK]

-- or a child. You’re either because the men fight, OK.

            Right.

Now, remember, maturity in Christ goes from infancy to childhood, to womanhood, to manhood, so -- and the man are the warriors. It has nothing to do with your body. So if you are not in the battle, that means you are either a spiritual woman, or you are a spiritual child. Now if you are a spiritual woman or a spiritual child, you are supposed to be, anybody? Silent in the church. You are not supposed to be teaching; you are not supposed to be counseling; you are not supposed to be giving advice. You are supposed to be asking your husband to explain the things of God to you. And who is your husband?

            [?Christ?].

Christ in any human being He is manifesting in, whether their body is male or whether their body is female, or if it ever comes to it, I have not seen it yet, even if their body is a child. You better discern the spirit, brethren.

            In that message last night, I was particularly blessed by what you said. Like, I have gone through several experiences and trials and tribulations, and I figured I could just about, pretty much, handle whatever life is going to throw my way.

Ha, watch out.

            Then, when you started to say that the trials and tribulations were really just   preparing you for the battle -- I forget the exact way you phrased, but maybe you can remember and say it again because it made such an impression upon me, in my spirit, even though I could not recall it in my mind, that that was just the beginning. Oh, I know what it was. It was just the preparation. It was -- the Lord was smashing us with all these trials and tribulations so that we could be strong enough to handle --

Right.

            -- the battle which is truly coming against the carnal mind.

Right.

            The battle [CROSSTALK]

Let me make it clearer for the message, OK. That the trials and tribulations that we have, which are typical. I mean, life is not a party; life is hard, you know. Life is filled with trials and tribulations for everybody, some a little more, some a little less, but life is not without its troubles. All those troubles are merely breaking our own willpower and teaching us -- once God lays a hold of the -- once God lays a hold of the troubles in our life and starts using them for His advantage, those troubles will teach us our true powerlessness so that the mind of Christ can come in and become our power source. And all of these tribulations are training to know that we cannot do anything without Christ a- -- so that Christ can come and defeat our carnal mind. Because if you try to defeat your carnal mind with your own willpower, which is your carnal mind, you are going to fail. Christ is the only one who can defeat your carnal mind. You need a spiritual weapon to overcome death. We are all de- --

You see, the only reason our bodies die is because our spirit died thousands of years ago when -- at the fall. If our spirit was alive, these bodies would never die, and Christ has come to raise our spirits from the dead because if that Spirit which raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, it is going to quicken your mortal body, you see. So the true battle is between the -- is between Christ and our carnal mind. And the prize is what? Do you remember what the prize is?

            [INAUDIBLE]

No.

            [INAUDIBLE]

Well, the prize is our soul. The prize is the living soul. You see, there is -- the prize is the living soul. There are two spiritual men who want this living soul. One is named Christ, and one is named Satan, through his carnal mind, and they want the use of the l- -- many-membered living soul, which is humanity. They want the use of our bodies. They want the senses. They want to feel; they want to touch; they want to taste; they want to experience; they want to speak. And there are two spiritual men fighting for the use of this human race, and right now Satan has got us, and Christ is the invading force coming to rescue us. The problem is life is not that bad for all -- for many of us, and we do not even want Him, but that is only because we do not know what life is really like. We are content with what we have, but the prize is us; the prize is the living soul. Which man will have us?

Your message last night brought home something else to me. I had always thought that as Christ began to move in your life, you would overcome and be stronger and succeed, and [UNINTELLIGIBLE] Gehenna [UNINTELLIGIBLE] within the boundaries that He set, and without -- unconsciously, I attributed that to the natural. Now I realize, in the natural, the weaker we are, the more Christ is there. He is sufficient to be our mind --

Amen.

            -- to bring us through, and I loved the way you said God is out to cripple us like He did Jacob because then I -- my knee was bothering me, and I said, wow, I am on the right track, you know. I am being crippled. But now I understand that we are supposed to grow spiritually. It is not the physically. The weaker we are in the physical and the more we lean upon and trust upon the Lord and just obey Him and ask His thought and His reaction to anything and everything, that was something to me. Anything? Because I figured, you know, the little things, I can handle easy. You know, it is just the tough things, or I had a little problem [?about?] [?that?then?] I bring to the Lord.

Then you will call for the Lord.

            Yeah, but now I am understanding, every little thing to bring to Him.

Praise God. That is [CROSSTALK]

            That is a --

-- Mary.

            -- big revelation to me. Of course --

I am happy for you.

            -- I actually thought that was idiotic. I really did.

I remember that, yeah.

            You know, it -- I did not see where God wanted anybody to namby-pamby, to lean upon every little thought, but now I realize that is what He truly wants, and that is how we commune with Him and get attached to Him, by having these problems where we lean and --

Right, and then event- --

            -- [?trust and ask?].

Yeah. Eventually, it comes automatic. Eventually -- we lean upon Him for a season. Again, it is a maturing in Christ, so we lean upon Him for a season, ask Him for every little thing, and then -- and His life -- as His life builds in us, it becomes automatic. There is a transference from the mind of -- from the carnal mind to the mind of Christ, and you have experiences, and you grow, and you mature. And there are certain things, of course. I have an open fleece with the Lord. I t- -- all the -- every -- you know, frequently, I will just go before Him, and I will say, Father, please, correct me. Whatever I am doing wrong, just talk to me. I want to hear it. So I have an open fleece with Him, and -- but, eventually, when you have enough experiences, you will not be asking Him every little thing. You will have an open fleece with Him, but you will get the feel of it, and you will start moving in the Spirit. So it is like you have to go -- the way up is down. You have to die to become a man in Christ.

            Another thing the impressed me, how the Lord always speaks about a marriage, how in a regular marriage how, if a man and a woman do not talk, communicate and ask each other what they want, they really start using their own imagination, what somebody wants, and they are forever giving --

That is dangerous.

            Yeah. And they are forever giving to somebody else what maybe they do not want.

What they do not want, you know, what they do not want. My father did that to me, and I had temper tantrums as a child. He would give me what he wanted me to have, and lots of the times, I did not want it. I did not like it. Even to this day today, I am laughing at it. My father will say to me, oh, I have something you have been wanting for a long time. And I will say, really, dad? What is it that you are giving me now? And I just take it because he is an old man, and I do not want to hurt his feelings, but it is really funny. You know, he does not even know what I like. He does not know what my preferences are, what pleases me or what displeases me. If it pleases him, he assumes I am going to like it, so I have learned to accept that I cannot change that. But if you are a young person, if you are still young enough to make changes in your life and you are hearing this message, do not do that to people, you know. Find out what they like; find out what they want; find out what it takes to make them happy and to please them.

            And, usually, it is not what you like.

Yeah.

            It is just the opposite.

Well, you heard about the husband getting his wife something for Christmas that he really wants, you know. That is not true love. You have got to get the person what they want. You have to give them what they want, unless, of course, they are killing themselves, you know. And that is for you, you know. True love gives somebody what they truly want. That is what love is. The other thing is not love; it is not love, you know. Love is making the person happy, unless they are a sick person and they are going after some really destructive thing. Love wants to see the love object happy.

            And love sacrifices to do it.

Yes, exactly.

            [CROSSTALK]

Even though I would like your company tonight, if that arts and crafts class is going to make you happy, go. That is love. I will miss you, but if you need to do it, go. That is love.

            I am amazed how these teachings have opened up so many avenues in normal living and relationships around me. You are not aware of it, but you are -- little, just little subtle differences, how you react and how you see, how I am listening to people and what they say.

Oh, praise God.

            That is a new experience for me. Maybe that is what the Lord meant to me. Now He is g- -- He is opening my ears because I can actually feel, like, the electricity --

Praise God.

            -- on the eardrums. Maybe that is what it is.

Praise God.    

            Amen.

That is wonderful. It has been -- I am very blessed, you know. As the teacher here, there has been a lot of fruit in this ministry. Just about everybody, you know, that is come for any length of time is producing fruit. We are a fruitful vine. I am just very blessed. There is been a lot of persecution; there is been a lot of warfare; there is been a lot of trouble, but God is just doing something wonderful here. He is doing something wonderful. It is a real work of the Lord in this place. I thank God for it.

And not only is there fruit, I -- there have been prophecies here that there are going to be some glorious experiences in 1994, and I just see the way the Lord is dealing with me. He is do- -- you know, He is dealing with me in a much more intense way than I have any -- ever recalled Him doing, and I really believe that I am being prepared for some very exciting experiences, and, I think, everybody else here is going to have their special experience. I -- you know, we are all hoping for full stature, but I will just take any kind of an increase at this point. Personally, I cannot deal with being told you will be in full stature in five years. I cannot deal with it, you know. I cannot get past a month. I have a short frustration tolerance when it comes to things like that, so I just try to get through the next day. Any kind of an increase, I will be grateful for.

And I had a -- I consider this a miracle. I would like to share this testimony with you. Most of you know that I have a faith walk with the Lord, and, pretty much, He just -- He meets my financial needs as they come in, and a couple of weeks ago, about two weeks ago, there was some extra money in the account, which is very rare, so I asked the Lord what He wanted me to do with it, and He told me to put tires on the car. And I know I have needed tires for a while, so I looked in the papers. I figured, you know, about $50 a tire. I have [?a little?] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- should cover it, and I said, well, there is $200 there. I am going to go put tires on the car, and I went.

I started to g- -- I have not bought tires in so long, I could not remember where I bought the tires, and there was a sale in Firestone. I am not plugging any manufacturer. I just know that I had a bad experience with Firestone, but I could not remember. I said, oh, there is that sale for Firestone, and the price looks right; I am going to go. And I prayed, and as I went in my car to go to the store, the Lord reminded me that I had had a bad experience with Firestone, and He sent me on to Goodyear. Now He had told me -- this is my personal experience -- that Goodyear is a good tire but that the salesmen in my local Goodyear are not necessarily very scrupulous men, that they will try to sell you things that you do not need, and I knew that when I went in there.

And I picked out four tires, and I thought it was going to be $200, and then, all of a sudden, I needed balancing, and I need an alignment. And I needed this, and he was selling me a contract, and the bill came to $305, and I had figured $200. And the whole time that I was signing the contract, I was hearing in the back of my mind, it is an old car. You just do not need all this with an old car, but I do not know; I just kept on going. Because my old carnal ways, the way I was before God called me into this faith walk, was that I would always take that. I would take the insurance. I would go for the extra dollar, you know. It is -- that is the way I was raised, and that is the way I am. So I signed it up, signed the contract, and for some reason I did not want to wait that day for the alignment. Now this must have been God, and I was going out of town to New Jersey, so I made an appointment to have it done when I came back.

And I -- Mary had prayed for me, and Mary gets a lot of words of knowledge when she prays for me, and one day she prayed for me right after this happened, and one of the words of knowledge was a bag with holes in it. Well, the bottom just fell out of my finances. I could not believe it. I went from having some extra money to not being -- I put this on a charge card, to not being able to pay the bill when it came in. Now I knew something was wrong. I know. Because when you have a faith walk with God, that is not supposed to be, so I started praying about it. And I asked the Lord what I did wrong, and I asked Him what He wanted me to do. And I really -- I said, gee, I am s- -- Lord, I am really sure you told me to get those tires. You know, we took a four-hour trip to New Jersey. The tires had dry rot on them. I really needed tires for a long time. I said, Lord, I am really sure you told me to get the tires. I do not understand what was wrong, but if you will just tell me what you want me to do, I will do it. I do not -- I cannot see it. I do not know what I did wrong.

And I went in this morning to get the alignment, and I am sitting there, and the guy comes out. And he says to me, well, we just put your car in for the alignment, and there is -- the ball joints need to be turned. I did not even want to hear how much more money it was going to be. I do not go into debt. If God has not given me the money, I do not get it. It was like an automatic reaction. Christ just rose up in me. I said, I want my money back from this contract, OK, because the bill -- the charge bill came in, and I did not have the $305 to pay. And I had -- I was sitting there in the Goodyear place, talking to the Lord and saying, Father, if I have to pay interest, if I do not have the money a week from now to pay this bill and I have to pay interest, I will know that I made a mistake. I said, I am not going to get nervous about it. I am not going to get upset. I will pay whatever money I have, and then I will pay it off the next month, and I will have to pay interest, and I will just repent. Whatever I did wrong, I will just repent.

And as I prayed the prayer, the man came out, and he said your ball joints have to be turned. I did not want to hear how much money it costs. I did not want to hear. I just rose up, and I said, I want my money back. I do not want the contract. You can keep your road insurance; you can keep your tire hazard insurance. And the guy -- he is a very low-key guy, and he just said to me -- he w- -- the manager was standing there, and the assistant was standing behind him, and he just said -- in a very subtle way, he says, you are going to leave it like that? And I said to him, it is a very old car, and you know it, and that is all I have to say about it, and the assistant manager, he just turned around because I should have never gotten -- on an old car like that, I should have never gotten it, and they were definitely snowing me, and he made out the credit, and I got the credit, and I had enough money to pay the bill. After I was credited for that, that I should not have gotten, I had enough money to pay the pill. So I -- apparently, that was what I did wrong.

And I just thank God that I have this open fleece with Him, that He corrects me when I do something that is wrong. I thank God for it. I just thank God for it, in these silly little things. I was going to Firestone; He sent me to Goodyear. He warned me that the tire is good, but watch out for the salesmen, and I walked right into it. And He showed me -- you see, not having the money to pay the bill was nothing to panic over, but it was a sign from Him that I had done something wrong. And then as soon -- I have been through this before. As soon as I correct it, everything starts flowing again. So that is how it is. When you live in the Spirit and God is really -- He is really your husband, and He is really watching everything you do and correcting everything you do. If you do not have enough money to pay your bills, anybody hearing this -- I do not know why I am giving this testimony. Anybody hearing this message, if you do not have enough money to pay your bills, there is something wrong with your life. There is something wrong with your life, and it is not enough to say that there is some curse operating in my life.

Now if you just came to the Lord, and you are -- I know this is for somebody here, OK, maybe for more than one. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] if you just came to the Lord and you are saying, well, I am brand-new in Christ, well, it could be a curse operating in your life. But if you have been in the Lord for any season whatsoever and this is -- and especially if you are tithing -- I should not even use that word. We know there is no tithing in the New Covenant. If you are giving your alms deeds and you know your heart is right in that area and you still do not have money to pay your bills, something that you are doing is wrong. So if you want to break this curse, you have got to find out what you are doing wrong and stop doing it. You see, it is very easy to say I break that curse in the name of Jesus, but curses operate in the mind. Curses operate in the way you think, so the way that curse is going to be broken is that God is going to tell you what you are thinking that is wrong, and then you have to not do it. And when you not do it -- when you do not do it, that is when the curse breaks, when you obey God. You see, did you hear what I said?

            [?Yes?].

I said, I took all that insurance because that is the way I was raised. That was the way I was raised. Well, that is what the curse was. You have got to do what God tells you and not the way you were raised, which, in this area, might not have been godly. You are supposed to have enough money to pay your bills. If you have been in God for any length of time at all and you have bills that you cannot pay, you need to get -- if you cannot do it yourself, you need to get someone to pray with you or talk to you to find out what you are doing wrong. You have got to be managing your money incorrectly. Something has got to be wrong. You are supposed to have enough money to pay your bills.

Now you are not supposed to have enough money to buy designer jeans and designer sneakers. You are supposed to have enough money to pay your rent, to buy food. You are supposed to have clothing, not necessarily designer clothing, but you should have clothing. You should have a warm coat in the winter, and if you are living in a suburban area like this, you should have transportation if you need it, and you should have peace of mind. That is what you are supposed to have. You do not need riches. You are supposed to have your needs met, and you are not supposed to worry about anything. And then if God sees fit and He wants to increase your finances, at sometime in the future, He will do it. But you have to accept what He gives you when He gives it to you. If you go through a period in your life where y- -- all you have is your basic needs, if you pray and you seek counsel and you believe that God has you there for a season because He is building some quality of His nature in you, well, then you submit to it and be content with it because as long as you lust for something, He will never give it to you. You only get it after it does not matter anymore. When it does not matter whether you have it or not, that is when He gives it to you, so be content with what you have, and be at peace. Did you have a question?

            Mm-hmm.

OK.

            I do not understand about the tithes and stuff. What are you talking about?

Oh, that we do not have tithes; we have alms deeds? Yeah. There is no tithing in the New Covenant. [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

-- only time that Jesus mentions tithing in the New Covenant. It is to rebuke the Pharisees and to tell them, well, you tithe on -- your observance of the law is perfect, but inside of you is dead men's bones. So the bottom line is this. And -- but Jesus says, g- -- b- -- give your alms deeds, OK. So this is the scoop. Under the law, the tithe is 10 percent. You can be a wicked person; you can be hateful; you can be giving your tithe with an evil, resentful heart, but if you put that money in the offering, your righteous before God with regard to your finances. That is the law, and it is under the Old Covenant. It has nothing to do with the condition of your heart. It is the -- you give that 10 percent, and you are OK with God. But in the New Covenant, God is building the nature of Christ in us, and although it is important to make your contributions, it is no longer acceptable to God to put the money in and then have a wicked heart. We are -- in the New Covenant, our heart is supposed to be expressing the image of Christ, which is righteousness, mercy, bowels of mercy, righteousness and bowels of mercy, OK. So you could give 90 percent of your income to God and not be doi- -- you see, [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- I am stumbling.

            [INAUDIBLE]

Your motive is important. You have to be -- God wants to build in you a quality that is putting money in the offering because you believe it is the right thing to do, that you believe the Scripture says do not muzzle the ox that feeds you, that you believe that, if you go to a ministry, that it is the right thing to do to support that ministry and that you want to give that money because it is the right thing to do, not that you are grudgingly putting that 10 percent in. Whereas, under the Old Covenant, no matter how much you grudged, if you put it in, you were OK. But with God, if you put that 10 percent in and your heart is evil towards the ministry, it is not going to do you any good.

So the Book of Haggai says you have a bag with holes in it. No matter how much money you donate you, you are not going to reap financial blessings in your life if you do not give willingly and with bowels of mercy and with gratitude for everything that you are getting from the ministry that you are supporting. And if you are not getting anything, you should not be going there, and you should not be putting your money there. But if you are going there and you are being blessed and God is there and God has sent you there, you should support it, and you should do it willingly because it is the right thing to do. Did I explain it? So Jesus does not call it tithing; He calls it alms deeds coming forth from bowels of mercy.

And, basically, there is another element to it also. You should be open to the move of the Spirit to give whatever He tells you to give. It is not that it is a set 10 percent; it is what is right. Now I went through this. There was a lot of trouble in the church. I really have to clarify this. There was a lot of trouble in the church. A lot of preachers started preaching this, and there were a lot of people in the church who were not giving out of bowels of mercy, but they were under the law, and they were giving their 10 percent. And when they heard this teaching, they stopped giving anything at all because, in their hearts, they were really greedy, and their finances went plummeting down into disaster because they heard it. The preachers that preached it, including me, preached, well, you are not under the law anymore, and you do not have to get -- you know, you are not -- you do not have to tithe anymore, and -- but I -- but they never -- we never preached the other side, the bowels of mercy, and I know a lot of people that got into severe financial trouble because they horded all their money and kept it to themselves. So now I preach both sides of it. Be careful, you will reap what you sow. If you keep all your money to yourself, you are going to reap poverty unto yourself. If you sow nothing, you are going to reap poverty unto yourself. You have got to give. It is a question of giving with a right heart. Ask God to build a right heart in you, and ask Him what He wants you to do.

So when I first went through this, I went through a very bad time. Every week, I brought home my paycheck, and I said, Lord, what do you want me to give? And I was, like, going crazy. And one day, the Lord said to me -- and He said, well, 10 percent is a nice figure, but do it with a right heart; do not do it under the law. And that was how I got his revelation. This was how He broke me through. He says, there is nothing wrong with 10 percent. It is just that your heart has to be a giving heart, knowing that it is the right thing to do. So I hope I made that clear to everybody, and you should hear from God as to what He wants you to do.

You know, I worked in Manhattan for a season, and when I first went into Manhattan, there was a lot of beggars on the streets, and I started getting really upset over it because you cannot give your whole salary away. You have to pay your bills. I did not know what to do, and I gave money to a few beggars, and the Lord sharply rebuked me. And He said, you do not give money to anybody unless I tell you to give it to them. You see all these beggars on the streets, you give to the ones that I tell you to give to because a lot of them are charlatans, and they are going to be stealing your money. And there is no blessing for it in you if you just give to anybody on the street. Lean on Me; I will tell you what to do with your money.

So I shut them all out, and I stopped giving. And one day I was walking down 42nd Street, and there was a man standing on the corner; he had his hand out. And as I passed by, he yelled, I -- something like -- it was so long ago. I am hungry. Can anybody not hear me? And Christ rose up in me, and sto- -- I had just passed him by. He rose up in me, and He heard that man's plea, and He stopped me dead in my tracks and turned me around. And I reached in my wallet, and I took a bill out, and the Lord said, no, not enough. And I gave him what God told me to give him. Now you have to be able to hear God. It is very easy to say 10 percent is good, and my heart is right, and I want to give it, and it is a blessing to give it. I am not being forced to give it, but you also have to hear from God as to what He wants you to do. It is essential in the New Covenant that we move by the Spirit and that we are willing to let go if God wants it. Prove it; try the spirit. It has got to be God, but if it is God, we have to be willing to let go.

I know just before I went into the hospital three years ago, when -- I knew I was ill already. I knew something was radically wrong with me, but I did not expect to be going into the hospital because I had had all these spiritual healings to that date, but I was very sick. As a matter of fact, it was the last day that I worked before I collapsed, and I headed for the commuter bus, and I met this man on 3rd Avenue and 42nd Street, hundreds of people passing by. And I do not even remember how it happened; it was three and a half years ago. But he told me he was sick. I mean, here I was; I was -- I could barely walk to the bus. I did not know it, but that was the last day I worked. I collapsed when I got home. And I -- he gave me this whole story, and I believed him. He had just come from the Catholic Church. He was desperate. He did not have money for whatever [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. I just believed him. I took my wallet out. I did not know what ca- -- what I was going to need to help myself. I did not know what I was going to need, but I felt it was Christ, took my wallet out, gave him everything that I had, emptied open the change purse and dumped it on him. I went home without a copper penny. I felt it was what God wanted me to do, and all I could tell you is I am sure that it was not this event, but it was this whole attitude.

God saved my life. I was a goner. I was going to die, man. I was going to die. I am not kidding you. I was going to die, and God saved my life. And I spent the next couple of weeks say, Lord, what are you going to do with me? I am getting worse; I am getting worse. I said, if you are going to let me die, let it be fast. And He saved my life, not because of one event of giving money; you have to understand this. It is not because of one event of giving money. It has to be your overall attitude that you will do whatever God tells you to do with your money whenever He tells you to do it. It is not yours; you do not own anything. It is His. You are His; the money you earn is His; the substance you have in your house is His; your car is His; your very life is His. And when you get that attitude and it lives itself through you, there is nothing -- no good thing that He will withhold from you.

Now do not be a fool. Do not go giving someone all your money so that you do not have food to eat, or even if you have food to eat. If you are a millionaire, do not give a dime that God does not tell you to give or that you do not feel in your conscience is a righteous thing. You know, God -- you do not have to get a verbal instruction from God to know that something is righteous, to know that if you go into a meeting -- like, for example, these big evangelists come into town, and they advertise on TV, and they say the meetings are free.

            [INAUDIBLE]

Well, I do not want to put any name on the message, you know. And I am not talking about anyone in particular, but a lot of them, they advertise the meetings are free, and I had someone sitting here one day. He wanted to go into the city, and he said, well, the meetings are free. I said, well, yeah, the meetings are free, but you have got to give an offering. Unless you are really so poor that you cannot afford it, for you, it is free. But how do you think that man runs the meeting? Where does he get the money to advertise? Where does he rent the hall? Where does he get his equipment? How does he buy food? If you have a job and you work and you go to a meeting like that, God is not going to tell you what to put in that offering. You should know that you have to put something in that offering. You should know that if you went to a concert, you know what the ticket would cost you. You should know that if you went to Madison Square Garden, you know what the ticket is going to cost you, not that you should put in the same amount. But if it is a $20 ticket to Madison Square Garden and you go to a big deal like that, if you have it, you should put in $10 or at least 5, and God knows whether you have it or not. If you do not have it, you go for free. That is a matter of conscience. God is not going to tell you what to do there.

But walking along the street or someone who lives -- who is a neighbor, God might speak to you and tell you to give somebody money. You have got to give it. And this is how you go from tithing to alms deeds, and this is the transition that opens you up to the spiritual provision of God whereby nothing is impossible unto you. When your whole life is given over to God, anything; He could give you anything; anything can happen to you. But you have got to stop this hoarding, and you have got to stop providing for yourself. You have got to say, Lord, it is on the altar. What do you want me to do with it? It is yours.

And I want to tell you, when He first brought me into this, I cried because I was a hoarder. I want to tell you, I gave money away with tears in my eyes, but I knew that I heard the message, and I knew that it was true. And I knew that if I wanted to go on with God, I had to do it. And I want to tell you, I gave money with my heart turning over in my chest, and then I finally got the message. It is real. It really works, that if you give where God tells you to give, your every need is going to be met and much more than that, in due season, as He works it into your life. He owns you and everything you have.

            I used to watch some Christians with their attitude of giving money, almost like they were bribing God or actually playing -- paying blackmail money, as if I did not give this, something terrible, some plague is going to come upon my family [?and all?].

Yeah.

            They gave out of fear. [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

Yeah. Well, there is been a lot of teaching on d- -- there is been a lot of teaching of the law. Look, there is been a lot of mistakes, you know. We are all growing. It is very hard being in the ministry. I believe, you know, most ministers are sincere, and they are doing the best they can, so some false teaching comes through. Maybe someday, I will look back on this year, and I will see that some things that I taught you were not exactly accurate. We are all growing, but that -- you know, I remember someone preaching, if you do not tithe, you would not want to be in your car when God takes --

            [?Yeah?].

-- the four tires off of your car, you know, all of that stuff, all of that fear. But that point is that you have to have -- you have to be open to God, and you cannot possibly -- if your heart is right, you cannot possibly over-give, if you are giving because of love and righteousness. If you are giving because you think you are going to get 10 times the amount back, forget it. You will not get it, you know.

            I do think you get it back in spiritual blessings, over and over.

Yes.

            Love, you know [CROSSTALK]

Yes, I was just going to say that.

            That I agree with.

You do not always get money back. You see, you give -- God requires you -- now this is the difference between tithing and alms deeds. God requires you to give what He knows that you have, and you get back what you need. Now if you do not have any money, if you are poor but you have a lot of love, He will send people to you to love, and then He will send people with money to give you money. That is the whole bottom line of the kingdom of God. God will ca- --

            [CROSSTALK]

Right. God will call upon you to give, not only of your finances but of your spiritual substance, of your emotional substance, of your time. He will take everything from you, and then He will give you what He thinks you need. Now you might think what you need -- that it is not what God thinks you need, so you might think that God failed you, but He is going to give you everything that He thinks you need. To do what? To build Christ in you and to make you the kind of person that He wants you to be, and money is just a part of it, but money is a big issue because, as a carnal person, money is a big issue.

            [INAUDIBLE]

Yeah, definitely. You have to live, but it is -- so it is not easy getting to a place where you can hear from God and not being snared by giving when He did not tell you to give or not being seduced by some charlatan, either in a church or on the street. It is -- you have to practice. He will give you -- if your heart is right, if you really want to enter into this, He will give you experiences that will enable you to recognize when it is God. So no one wants to be a fool or deceived or in -- you know, you work hard. There is no reason why you should not have a good life, but just hear from God.

So we do not have any formal dismissal in these meetings, but if anyone would like to go, you are free to go, you know. Just -- but the Spirit is still moving, so for those who want to stay, we are still going on. God bless you.

            [INAUDIBLE]

OK. So long, Kathy.

            [INAUDIBLE]

            [?I will call you?].

OK.

            [INAUDIBLE]

            [INAUDIBLE] tomorrow?

OK.

            Good night.

OK. Mary, I am asking people not to do that because it breaks the anointing, OK. I am asking people to leave quietly, OK. So is there anyone else that has anything to say? OK. You know, we are -- for a long time, it was very hard on me. I was very embarrassed to -- you know, to preach about this topic, but the Lord told me that the people have to have the information, and a lot of people went into financial ruin over that teaching on no tithing, and Nigeria is a perfect example.

When I went to Nigeria, one of the fellowships that I was led to, supernaturally, the pastor's wife came to me, and she asked me if I would not preach on tithing, that her husband had preached this message, that tithing is not scriptural. And the whole congregation had withdrawn their money, and nobody would give a dime, and she happened to be a wealthy businesswoman. So she was expected to foot the whole bills for the ministry, and she resented it. It was not fear. They provided the building where they fellowship. They provided whatever finances were there. She paid -- everybody expected her to pay for it because she had the business, and they did not give a dime, nobody. And there were people in the congregation, doctor, lawyers, people [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- in Nigeria, people with money, middle-class, working people that could have afforded to give something, and they had dumped the whole thing on her. So this teaching on the tithing was severely perverted when it first came out, and as I said, I made that mistake myself. So the question was -- it came up, and I had to preach on it. I do not like it. There is usually a manifestation in the congregation when I preach on it. It is such a touchy issue. It is hard, you know.

            [INAUDIBLE]

Praise God.

            All I can say is that God has given me a happiness about tithing.

Yeah, well, you have that. I know that. You have that gift.

            And I cannot believe it because He keeps giving me more and more money. He -- even my husband is [?making a mistake?]. He gives me money to go shopping.

It works. It really works. It is real.

            And it is really so much, I am taking it, and I am putting it in there for whatever God wants.

Yeah, it is real.

            I cannot believe it.

It is very real, but I am the first one to acknowledge to you how hard it is until you get into it because it killed me. It killed me when God brought me into this faith walk. It absolutely killed me. He took everything against my will. I would have never let go of it, you know. He just utterly stripped me, and now I am in this faith walk, and there is peace in it. There is real peace in it, but, of course, if you work, you know. But it works. It is just real, you know. Just make sure you are not cheated. No one wants to be a fool. You know, do not be cheated.

            I even believe when that 4,000 -- remember the 4,700 came in?

Oh, yeah.

            I believe that was all because money did not mean anything [?to me?] because it kept coming.

            [CROSSTALK]

            [?It was just?] coming.

Yeah. It really does work.

            I would not even spend it, and it would turn out to be it was mine.

            I mean [CROSSTALK]

            We put it for the taxes, but [CROSSTALK]

Yeah. Praise God.

            Celia just sparked a thought. You know, I am not working anymore, and it just seemed -- I am not supposed [?to do?]. I just feel I am supposed to be doing something here a little more, and I continue to go to the nursing home to see my [?poor patient?], and even there, she gives me $10. She says, it is always for the gas and for [?going along?] [UNINTELLIGIBLE] least expect it, you know.   It is funny that they hold, you know, in her --

Yeah.

            -- account or whatever it was, but who would ever expect, you know --

Yeah.

            -- that she would even think, you know. And she is in her -- what, how old is she? I forget now, 87. [?It is strange?].

It is real.

            Yes.

But the mistake, in that church, I just want to say it again, is that the way it is preached is if you put in a physical dollar, you will get back 10 times. That is not true.

            [CROSSTALK]

It is an attitude of the heart. It is an attitude.

            [CROSSTALK]

It could be wise but not hoard, an attitude that is open to God, and it -- you just become a flowing river, just a flowing river. Praise God.

06/16/15 – Transcribed by VerbalFusion

06/19/15 – 1^st Edit CAS/BP