Part 1 of 6 Parts

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

 

This is a great mystery, but, as far as I know, pretty much every symbol in the Scripture can be either positive or negative depending on the words or the verse or the entire chapter that modifies the symbol. Do you remember the principle of modification? We have talked a lot about this over the years. Adjectives modify nouns. Adverbs modify verbs. If we have the word “dress,” it could be an ugly dress; it could be a beautiful dress; it could be a man’s dress. In some cultures, men wear dresses. It could be a woman’s dress. So when you hear the word dress, it does not tell you very much, OK. Every symbol must be modified to tell you whether it is negative or positive. If the word or the symbol “mountain” means nation, we must find out which nation it i- -- or if it means mind, we must find out which mind it is. Is it the carnal mind, which makes it a negative mountain, or is the mind of Christ, which makes it a positive mountain?

And we see this principle throughout our -- the entire world, negative and positive poles. If you know anything about electricity, if you know anything about, you know, the atmosphere, everything, negative, positive, negative, positive. Even in our personalities, man is both negative and positive. We may not say it that way. How do we say it? Man is both good and evil. So this whole world system that we live in, including all of the inhabitants thereof, are characterized by having a dual charge, negative and positive.

Of course, we are a perversion, and the creation should ha- -- only have one charge, and that charge should be positive. It should be positive. We should all be under the dominion of Christ, the human beings, the trees, the birds, everything that is corrupting all the volcanoes that are manifesting and spewing lava out and killing people. That is all at that -- at least at the moment that they are manifesting, it is a negative charge appearing in this world system, which means that the creation is not at peace because there is only one peace in this world, brethren, and that is the peace which comes and exists when every negative aspect of this creation, whether in the mind of man or in nature, is in submission to the authority of Christ. That is the only peace that there is.

Men will never have peace with one another. Men will fight with one another. Men will kill with one another. Men will hate one another. Men will not have peace. Fallen man is divided. He is divided within himself, and he is divided against his brother, and he is divided against the human beings that he loves. Why? Because he has a mind which is at enmity with God, and the Scripture clearly says -- the Lord says to us, you say you love me, you liar. How can you say you can love a God you cannot see when you cannot even get along with your own brother who you could see? So, therefore, I know that you hate your brother, and you hate me too, therefore I shall correct you because I am not a man that will burn you in Hell forever. But I am God, the creator of the universe, and I shall correct you, and I shall whip you, and I shall beat you through painful experiences until you learn -- does anybody know the word? Righteousness, because man does not know righteousness. 

Man in his fallen condition is unrighteous. He is born unrighteous, and he dies unrighteous, and the most he can hope for in this world is to be raised up under a certain set of circumstances or under authorities that will chasten him as a child and teach him how to exist in a socialized world so that he does not wind up in a disastrous life. That is the best he can hope for, but he will still die unrighteous, whether he learns to channel his unrighteousness or whether his unrighteousness is allowed to run wild so that he becomes -- that he goes from being an untamed child to being an untamed adult.

When you are a child and you get corrected, we are talking about having a few whacks on your behind. When you are an adult and you are untamed, we are talking about some serious stuff, brethren. We are talking about the law punishing you. We are talking about Satan punishing you. Therefore, the Scripture says the parent who does not punish their child with a few whacks on the behind hates their child.

I would like to just take a couple of minutes to comment on Hell, just in case you have forgotten where it is. I would like to remind you that Hell exists on two levels. It exists outside of us, and it exists in our mind. We see an imperfect -- if you can see it with me, see it with me, an imperfect manifestation or contrast between heaven and Hell. If you place the Unites States of America and the lifestyle that most people -- not all people, but most people in this country have available to them and you compare this to the people starving to death in Somalia or in Biafra, if you could see it, that is a contrast of heaven in Hell. We are not in torment, brethren. Most people in this country, most have roofs over their head. Most people have food. Most people have clothing and have basic needs met.

There are nations in this world where people are sleeping on the streets, wh- -- the majority of people. I am not naïve. I know we have that problem here. The majority of people are sleeping on the streets, are starving to death, are suffering from hideous diseases, many of which are produced from malnutrition and poor sanitary conditions. So we see a manifestation of the physical world known as heaven -- worlds known as heaven and Hell. Can you see the contrast? OK.

Well, then right here within the Unites States of America, we can see the contrast between heaven and Hell when we look at people’s lives. We can take two people. Both have a roof over their head; both have food to eat; both have decent jobs, an extra dollar in their pocket; people around them, fellowship. One person is happy almost consistently, has skills, has emotional skills which enable them to deal with problems and just flick them off like you would flip a fly off of your shoulder. And his brother standing right next to him has all -- who has all the same military -- material benefits, is in torment in his mind. He does not have the ability to flick the problems of this world off his shoulder as if they were flies. Everything hurts him; everything upsets him. He has trouble getting his problems solved. Can you see it, heaven and Hell in the mind?

So do not look at the outward appearance, brethren, but try the spirit because you could be in the midst of a glorious celebration where, externally, you are in a beautiful environment. People are well-dressed and happy and ever -- has all -- have all the trappings of success. And you yourself can be enjoying yourself. There could be a dance band. You could be fellowshipping, and there could be someone standing right next to you whose mind is in Hell.

Did you ever hear of being lonely in a crowd? There could be someone standing right next to you whose body is screaming to shoot up. There could be somebody standing right next to you whose emotions, whose soul is in agony because of a weakness in that soul, and, usually they go together, a failure to deal with the spiritual arrows which fall on pretty much everybody in this world. But their walls are down; their defenses are down; their spiritual defenses are down. They are fair game for the predatory animals in the soul realm. Paul said, “I wrestle with beasts at Ephesus.” In case you do not know it, the predatory animal is man, the mind of man. I do not care how nice he is; I do not care how soft his voice is. He is a killer.

So we must be aware, brethren, as sons of God, that we are to look beyond our natural senses. This is the command of the Lord to us, and we will have it in the message this morning. We are not to judge with our eyes and our ears, but we are to judge by the mind of God, which is in us, as to somebody’s condition, as to somebody’s need, as to somebody’s cry for help and as to whether or not all is well because, if everybody is dancing around to the dance band, it does not mean all is well. My Bible says they cried peace, peace, and -- because sudden destruction has come upon them.

Do you know how many times the Lord has given me a dream of the church sitting at a resort area? It always looks like Puerto Rico to me, one of those big hotels with all the umbrellas up, everybody hanging out drinking their piña coladas, and the demons are coming up from out of the sea. I had a dream like that once. I really did, and the demons were coming up from out of the sea. The resort was on the seashore, and they w- -- they had their generals. The demons, they had their generals. You see, there was this big fence going around the island. There was a cyclone fence. You know the metal fence that is woven toge- -- everybody ha- -- know what a cyclone fence is? And the metal poles of the cyclone fence were buried deep in the mud or the ocean bed out s- -- off the island.

            [INAUDIBLE]

I cannot draw.

            [CROSSTALK]

But this was the -- this was like the cement patio that you have on these resort hotels, and these are tables, believe it or not. They have big umbrellas. There is their piña colada, OK. See, here are all these people chatting away, enjoying themselves, enjoying the sun. And this is the ocean over here, and there is this big cyclone fence. This is the ocean bed down here. Here is this big cyclone fence rooted down here, and it goes -- actually, it goes all the way up. You cannot get to the island, OK. Now right over here by the cyclone bed were these generals standing, criminals, spiritual criminals, and all the demons were coming up from under the ocean, but they could not get past this fence. They could not get over it.

            [INAUDIBLE]

They went under it, so these generals -- there was one on each side, and every time the demon popped up, wherever they came from, they were pushing their head down so that the demon would get under the fence and come up on the other side. And the demons were just penetrating into this resort area, which is the church, as fast as those generals could push them under that fence. There were going plop, plop, plop, and they were popping up on the other side, and they were all running along this patio, just like if you would see a movie about an attack by some guerilla company of the Green Berets or the SEALs or something, you know. And they were all looking like this, you know. They were going to plant their dynamite and do everything, and they were looking to see if these fools could see them.

Do not get insulted if the shoe fits, and these fools were all sitting there sipping their piña coladas, and the demons, they were running up and down the patio, and they were planting their dynamite, and they were doing all their dirty work. They came right up to these fools and looked them in the eyes, and these fools did not even know what they were looking at. Do not get insulted; ask the Lord to make you wise. Try the spirit. If you are a fool, ask the Lord to make you wise. Nobody even budged. They are all in la la land, drinking they are piña coladas and looking at the sun and getting a sunburn with their bikini bathing suits.

Brethren, the church is an army. The Lord Jesus Christ is the captain of the host. You are in the army. You can get a pass now and then, but you have to know you are in the army. Twenty-four hours a day, Christ in you is supposed to be keeping the peace. You want to be a man, or do you want to stay a baby for the rest of your life? You have to open your eyes. But I congratulate you all. Praise the Lord. Better late than never. Victory is sweet, and your response was excellent. Glory to God.

So I just want to leave you with this one thought, that Hell is everywhere around you. It is all around you. I walked down the streets of Manhattan once with hundreds of people, executives, well-dressed office workers scurrying up and down the streets, and in the midst of all this was a man lying on the cement, writhing in agony, and everybody was just walking. They were just stepping over him, you know. Now I am not faulting the people because what could you do except call the police for someone like that who -- there was a time they would arrest you, but they do not even do that anymore. They just let you lay in the street. So everybody was just stepping over them and going -- doing their thing. But when you are a son of God, you can always pray, always pray, and you are one duty while you are awake, and you are on duty while you are sleeping. If you are truly a son, you have assignments in your sleep, so we must be ever vigilant. Ask the Lord to help you. Did you have a question?

            [INAUDIBLE]

OK.

            This morning just before I woke up, I -- well, last night my son --

Oh, Mary, excuse me. There was one -- the Lord told me to say one more thing that I forgot to say. When there is a problem and the Lord makes a judgment that you should have dealt with that problem and you did not deal with it and there is any kind of loss to a human being, their blood is on your hands. Brethren, do not think that you are going to come to church and dance around and sing and get this delicious teaching and all that and not have any responsibility which will bring you consequences if you fail to execute it. You cannot have all these good things of God over a period of years to the point that you are no longer a baby, that he considers you old enough to have some responsibility, and not execute your responsibility without having consequences for your failure to execute that responsibility.

So if you fail -- now this is without condemnation. I am supposed to be training you up to be a soldier. You did not know you were in basic training, did you? That is why I beat you up all the time. Listen, if the situation arises -- and I do not make the judgment; the Lord makes the judgment -- that you should have recognized a need to pray and you did not do it and the end of that situation is hurt to any human being, you will reap what you have sown. God is not going to kill you, but there will be some kind of a correction made. Why? Because you must learn to respond to a call for ministry. And the truth is learn now because, you know, if someone skins their knee and you could prevent them from skinning their knee and you do not do it, well, it is not that bad. But you better learn now because if the day comes that God puts you in a place where he expects your eyes to be open and they are not open and somebody dies, their blood is going to be on your hands. Or if someone goes into deep sin and really gets hurt, God will call you to task for it.

Now, look, I am not here to frighten you, but I am here to grow you up. And if I am putting a fear in you, if it is a godly fear, be afraid. You have got to stop this childishness, and I say that to you with all love. The Lord told me to tell you that, that if it is right in front of your face and you cannot see it and someone is hurt, he is going to hold you com- -- he is going to hold you responsible for it. It is in the book. Does anybody not know it is in the book? They are blood is on your hands. He said it to Jeremiah. Do your job. OK. Yeah?

            Last night my son had his bachelor party, and my -- his fiancé had her bachelorette party, so, needless to say, I went to bed praying for them last night. And just before I woke up this morning, I had a very fast dream in which I saw all of my children. It was like a gigantic tub. Soap was in it, and, one by one, I was [?showering?] each of them in the tub, one after the other. And I instantly thought, well, the Lord is protecting them, but I heard a voice say -- like, cut right through it because I was not able to hold onto the dream, and the voice said, “I am cleansing my body.”

[INAUDIBLE] OK. Once again, I tell you that it is the pride of man. God, help us. We are all carnal. He is trying to grow us all up, OK. We all have to come through this tendency to think that every dream we have is about us, and this tendency is rooted in a spirit of divination, OK. It is rooted in a spirit of divination that wants to hear what the card reader has to say to me. What says the Lord? In the church they call it witchcraft prophecy. Do you have a word for me? What did the Lord say? The Lord said, “Arise, and come out of your sin and serve me.” That is what the Lord said to you. Stop going around looking for individual prophecies because you have a spirit of divination on you. You know what you are supposed to do: Cease from sin. Love your brother as you love yourself. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and your mind and your soul. Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay. You do not need any witchdoctor giving you a word.

So consider yourself rebuked. I went through it myself. I used to lust for a word. I was in a ministry where the pastor had a -- was very anointed with a gift of word of knowledge, and at the beginning of every service, he could call out as many as 10 people with a prophecy or a word or a healing, and I used to lust for him to call me out. He never called me out, except maybe once in five years. I asked the Lord why. He said, “What are you lusting for that for? You f- -- you hear from me yourself. What is the lust to hear it from another man?” And I found out it was a spirit of divination, and before I came to the Lord, I was all involved with card readers and astrologers and all that junk; I did it myself, so I was not delivered. Do not take your demons and transfer them over into Christ; you have to come up out of that stuff.

So all of us go through this. It is an immature -- it is a stage of immature spirituality. That is what it is, and we have to grow up out of it. I tell you that 99 out of a 100 times, your dreams or your visions or your trances o- -- excuse me, the symbols or the people in your dreams, in your visions, in your trances, will symbolize or represent other people. Ninety -- 100 -- 99 out of a 100 -- out of a 1,000 times, the dream is not even for you personally. It is -- with regard to the body of Christ. Why? Because the Lord wants you to pray. Why? Because the Lord wants you to come up out of this selfishness which is killing you.

You may recall that we learned, when we did the message on Elijah in 1 Kings 19, that fallen man is joined to his own soul. What does that mean? It means he is always looking at himself. He is always interested in himself. All he cares about is himself, in most instances, and the end of such a mind, the end of such an attitude, the end of such a lifestyle is --

            Death.

-- death. Now if you want to come up out of death, you have to start looking away from yourself. You have to start looking at other people, how they feel, what their problems are, what you can do to help them. You have to start sacrificing your needs so that their needs could be met, and when you do this, you grow away from your own soul. That man who is joined to his own soul starts to separate from his own soul, and the result of this is resurrection from the dead.

So it could be that you have a dream which is about you, but I want to tell you that, until you are delivered from this tendency towards divination, the chances of you have a dream about yourself are very small. Why? Because the Lord wants to break you away from this -- it is narcissism. It is an obsession with oneself. He wants to break you away from it. He wants to put your eyes on someone else, on something else. He wants to give you goals in life that is not looking at you, so he will give you a dream, and he will say pray, or he will give you a word about his promise to all of mankind, not just you. All of mankind needs the Lord.

So that dream, although you had your children in the dream as symbols of -- meaning that they were God’s children, and the message of the dream is that he is cleansing his children, which is the church, and most Christians say, amen, hallelujah, get rid of those spots in those wrinkles, until they find out what the cleansing feels like. Then they say that cannot be God; that must be Satan. The Lord would not hurt me. Brethren, what you need to be cleansed of is joined to your soul. All of the spiritual filth that you need and that I need to be cleansed of is joined to our soul and our spirit, and they are growing together. Brethren, if you -- did you ever Krazy Glue two fingers together? It hurts when you try to pull them apart. This cleansing hurts. You have a question? Please, put it on a microphone. Is there a microphone for this side of the room here?

            The -- last week, I did not share this with you, but I had -- it was not a dream, but I do not know if there was something that was planted in my mind. But you and Rita, we were down at Cedar Beach, and I saw -- Craig was at one end of the beach yelling out my name, and I was almost [?to where you and me were?], and you guys were in the water. You both had on your bathing suits. And he kept going, Joseph, Joseph. He was yelling. I could hear him yelling hard, but it -- from a distance, I could not see him yelling, but I could see his face up close, you know, and the saliva coming out of his mouth [?when he was yelling?]. What could have that meant? I did not daydream it. It just [CROSSTALK] that just popped into my mind.

So that was a vision then, OK.

            [CROSSTALK]

Or a trance, yeah. Well, what it says to me -- well, first of all, you have to ask yourself who Rita and I symbolize, and I hope we would symbolize Christ in the church. And who does Craig symbolize? He symbolizes a man who is trying to help you, but he is not Christ, right? So -- and Rita and I being in the water, the water symbolizes the spiritual realm. So it says to me that you were headed towards the spiritual realm of God and whatever he has for you in that area and that someone who is not a part of that realm was trying to call you back out of it. But you kept on going, right?

            Well, I [?came out of it?] [INAUDIBLE]

Oh, I -- but I mean, in the vision, you did not turn back.

            I got up to -- I got my ankles in the water, I remember, and Rita was, like, doing this, and then I -- well, and then I came out of it.

OK. So you did not turn back; that is good. And Rita must have typified Christ. Christ is saying to you, come on, you can do it. Come on, you can do it. OK. There was one other thing I wanted to tell you, and it just went out of my mind.

See, whereas, in that other church where I was trained up in, we had min- -- instruction in spiritual ministry by example, OK. Someone was asking me the other day how I teach people to pray. I do not give instruction in prayer; I demonstrate it. Follow me as I follow Christ. Well, I learned pretty much everything that I learned about praying for the sick and casting out demons. I learned almost all of it by f- -- watching other people do it. This is a mature ministry. We are not giving instructions here. Well, we do have some instruction in prayer. When anybody prays, if I pray, if Rita prays, we do not do it every service, but whenever someone anointed prays, you have received instruction. If there is some here who does not know how to pray, you have received a lesson in how to pray, OK.

So we do -- we have had some demonstration of the casting out of demons here, and sometimes I pray for the sick, and sometimes I lay hands on, although it is not an every service thing because the emphasis in this ministry is new order. If you stop to think about what we do at almost every service, which co- -- would be the equivalent of my old pastor going out and showing -- and demonstrating the power of God to heal and deliver and word of knowledge and all that, which are gifts of the Spirit.

Does anybody -- well, does anybody know what we do here that would be the equivalent of that in this new order ministry? Does anybody want to take a guess? We just did it over this last half hour, OK. We give instruction in how to interpret dreams and visions and symbols, OK. And as the Spirit leads, we instruct on how to move in the Spirit. There was an exhortation on the warfare today and how to recognize the enemy and the works of the enemy, and we give personal, individual examples, OK. And that is more or less the equivalent of a pas- -- an old order pastor going out and demonstrating the power of God to heal and deliver and the gifts of the spirit, the word of knowledge, et cetera. Anybody have a problem with that? OK.

So there was something else I was supposed to tell you, and it is skipping my mind. I will take a minute though to tell you that Stootsy [SP] called last night and confirmed that the spiritual activity has been very, very high. We had a war going on here for two days. I was in a war for two -- oh, I know what I wanted to tell you, yes.

I wanted to tell you I do not -- there is a good chance somebody is thinking this because, for me to make a statement like this that -- like I am about to make, it is usually an answer to somebody’s mind. But whether it is or not, I will make -- I will be obedient to the Lord, and I will make this statement to you. I do not perceive myself to be under a different set of rules than you do. When I come into the meeting late and when I sit in there having breakfast when the meeting has already started, I consider myself under the same rules as you do, but sometimes I have a problem, and sometimes the warfare is so intense here that it is a miracle that I have my notes ready to preach to you from. I -- so I do not consider myself under a different rule; I am just having a problem. And if you would like to pray for me to help me to get into the meetings at 10 o'clock with you, I would very much welcome your prayers.

I receive a severe spiritual opposition every time I try to study. Yesterday was horrendous. I was up at 6 o'clock in the morning, and I did not even start studying until 6 o'clock at night. I had tremendous opposition coming against me on -- against my mind as I tried to study. I was up until 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning, and then I woke up at 6 to finish the studying. So I do not consider myself better than you or in a different category; I consider myself afflicted. So if you would like to help me, help me. I would like nothing better than being in this chair at 10 o'clock because I enjoy the music. And even though I was not working, just sitting in there eating, it is not the same thing as sitting here and letting the anointing soak into you without doing anything, so praise the Lord. Anybody have anything to say about that? OK.

            [INAUDIBLE] to my mind, but I was going to talk to you tomorrow.

It was your mind.

            [CROSSTALK]

Well --

            [CROSSTALK]

-- praise the Lord. OK, just one second. So here, brethren, we see an excellent example of the ability of someone who is moving in Christ to perceive another person’s thoughts and, of all people, your thoughts because sometimes you have a problem believing that I perceive your thoughts, OK. So here we have an excellent example of the person whose mind is Christ, to a certain degree of maturity, to perceive other people’s thoughts.

And I would like to just give you something to think about, that if I c- -- or e- -- if me -- if I or anyone else in this condition can perceive your conscious mind, I want to suggest to you that, when it is the will of the Lord, I can perceive your unconscious mind also. And whereas most of us are aware of our conscious mind, frequently, many of us are not aware of our unconscious mind, and this is where the son has a l- -- has a deep measure of warfare, that when they believe that the Lord has enabled to perceive somebody’s unconscious mind and the Lord has told them that that thought has got to be exposed because -- why? Because it is hurting the -- because it is hurting me? No, because it is hurting you, because it is hurting that person. That thought m- -- that they are in denial. That thought must come up into the conscious mind so that the light of Christ can be shed on it so that it could be killed, OK.

Then it is the job of the son to follow whatever -- however the Lord is showing it. Usually, you pray in the spirit. Then there is a confrontation. Sometimes the person gets offended and says, no way, I am not thinking that. So we have a stalemate, and it takes the power of God t- -- assuming this is all Christ, it takes the power of God to pierce that person and bring that unconscious thought up. And -- but  the way the Lord does it is that he does it through a son who will have a co- -- who will be willing to have a confrontation with this person, knowing that the person is going to say you are out of your mind or you are paranoid or something like that. So the son does it in faithfulness to Christ, knowing the other person is going to oppose him, believing that, God being in it, the end of the whole unpleasantness will be deliverance for that person, OK. Anybody have anything to say about that? Yes. What were you going to say? Please, put it on a microphone. You forgot. I am sorry.

            [?Would that be in?] spiritual warfare?

That is spiritual warfare.

            [CROSSTALK]

Well, please, if you say anything after this, put it on a microphone, OK. That is spiritual warfare, and it is the spiritual warfare which is specifically -- which specifically occurs between the son of God and the individual whom the Lord intends to set free from a bondage in their mind that they are in denial over. You see, if God has turned the -- let us say that is a sin in the person. Well, it is always a sin in the person’s mind. If the person is not in relationship with Christ, the Lord turns them over to Satan for that correction.

Now when Satan comes to correct you, he does not come to you and say, look, this is the thought in your mind. The Lord wants it flushed out. You ha- -- it has to be dealt with. Satan just comes and whacks you; he hurts you. You know what Satan can do. So that is the difference between the judgment which is mediated by Satan, which is called the wrath of God or the reaping and sowing judgment, which is the governing spiritual authority of this world system. You commit evil, and Satan comes looking for you because he is the chief henchmen. He is the executioner over this world of Hell. You can only do bad so much. You can only go so far, and you will surely reap what you have sown. Every sin shall have its just recompence.

But when Christ becomes your savior, he takes over the process of judging your sins, and when Christ judges your sins, he does not want to kill you because he has the ability to rehabilitate you. Satan has no ability to rehabilitate you. That is why, under certain circumstances, they lock people up in jail and throw the key away. Sometimes they kill them because Satan, the men of this world, have no power or very, very minimal power to rehabilitate you. But when Christ takes over the judgment of your sins, he has the power to rehabilitate you, so he will -- but he has to be your savior. He has to be in your heart.

He will send a son to you who is willing to take all that you are going to dish out on them because you do not -- because you really do not understand what is happening, and you believe everything that you are saying, and you think they are your enemy, and you come out punching. He has a company of people that are willing to take that because they know that the end of the fight is that the seed of Christ is going to be implanted in your mind, that you cannot kill them. He will raise you from the dead no matter what you do to them, and that the end of it is that you shall be delivered from the sin that is killing you and that your life shall be rehabilitated and revitalized in Christ. And whereas you were a negative force in this dual creation of positive and negative people --

I hope you all know everybody is both positive and negative, but some people are primarily positive, and some people are primarily negative. That is why we have jails all full of people. They are people that cannot function in society. They lock them up and throw the key away. They are negative elements in this society, but Christ can make that which is negative positive, so when Christ comes to you, he tells you what you are doing wrong. He says what you just said, it is wrong. That attitude, it is just wrong. That behavior is just wrong. You have got to change. I am going to give you the power to change. Start working with me or I will break your legs. That is what he did to Jacob; he crippled his leg, and he walked away limping. Why? Because he wrestled with the angel all night, and he would not shut his mouth. The angel could not get him to shut his mouth or to put down his pride, so the angel crippled his leg. You fool, you cannot win with God, and that is the love of God unto you. If he did not love you, he would let Satan kill you.

So it is one or the other, brethren. When your time comes, when you come to the end of your wickedness, when your number is up, either Satan is going to do whatever the Lord lets him do to you, some kind of disaster in your life, or you are going to receive the correction of Christ, which is very painful for a season. But that season comes to an end, and on the other side of that season is green pasture and peace and joy and contentment and the good things of this life, so do not be a fool. [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

-- the Book of Zephaniah today. We will be doing chapter 2. I will just give you a brief backup on chapter 1. The Lord showed us that chapter 1 of the Book of Zephaniah is a legal declaration by Jehovah as to his intentions towards fallen man, who is lost in his own wickedness. Jehovah, almighty God, the righteous, holy creator of the universe has declared unto wicked, fallen man: I see your sin, and I see your filth, and I acknowledge, before myself, that I have the power to heal you, and I choose, says the Lord, to not condemn you to Hell forever, but to rehabilitate you through the forgiveness of sins and to elevate you back up to the righteous realm of my spirit.

I remind you that the Lord swears by himself because there is none greater than him, that he is the highest appeals court in the universe. There is none more righteous than him. There is none more holy than him. There is none more merciful than him. There is none more forgiving than him. There is none greater than the Lord Jesus Christ. Now the Lord Jesus Christ and Jehovah, in this hour, are one. There is none greater than our God, and, in his greatness, he has humbled himself, and he has sent his only begotten son to appear as a man, to take on the flesh of a man, to share our experiences with us and to die for us, that our sins might be forgiven, that we might be restored back up into righteousness.

Chapter 1 of the Book of Zephaniah is a legal document. Jehovah is a legalistic God. We are told in the Book of Isaiah that the government shall rest upon the Lord Jesus Christ’s shoulders. There is a spiritual government, brethren. Write this down; you must know this, that to be a son of God is to be a high officer in God’s government. You have a job to do. Dancing and singing is fun. Learning is enjoyable to me. I do not know why you are in church. Some people like it and get pleasure from it, but you are in training. You are in training to do what? Does anybody know the scriptural expression of our assignment? To judge the righteous cause of the widow and the orphan and the weak things of this world who cannot defend themselves, who are victimized by spiritual powers that are unrestrained in this world because, outside of Christ, the only government present here is the government of men, which are under the authority of Satan.

The sons of God are a new government. They are officers, high-ranking officers of a new government who, because of the righteousness of Christ which is appearing in them, can change circumstances and events in this world through prayer in the spirit. You see, fallen man tries to fix things from the outside in. If somebody is sick, they cut up his body, but the Lord knows that everyone who is in Christ knows that every problem in this world has a spiritual root. And if you have the spiritual authority to fix the spiritual problem, you do not have to cut up anybody’s body.

So we, as sons, are called as high-ranking officers to stand for the righteous cause of the victims of this world. We are the victims defense league of Jehovah’s appeals court, and there are certain qualifications that you have to measure up to enter into and execute this office. And one of those or the outstanding quality that is necessary is what, anybody? Righteousness. Brethren, you cannot judge righteousness if you are not righteous. You cannot determine people’s true motives if you cannot tur- -- determine your own true motives, so, therefore, we are all in training. We are all being exposed to a cleansing so that we can be exalted into the glorious office in Christ, which will defend the weak and the innocent that are being victimized and destroyed unto death in this world system.

And who are the innocent because the Bible says, “None is good, no, not one”? The innocent, brethren, are those people who are being destroyed because of family line curses but who have cried out to the Lord and said I confess my sins; help me. They become the innocents and the victims that the sons of God are here to defend and to deliver out of the snare of the fowler. And when the Lord Jesus Christ sets you free, he does not set you free to go out and get into trouble again; he gets you out of your trouble. He builds you up. He strengthens you. He totally rehabilitates you and rebuilds you and renews you, and he sends you back to -- when you are strengthened, strengthen your brother. He sends you back to strengthen and deliver your brother.

Brethren, there is a price to pay for deliverance at the hands of Jehovah, and the price that you pay is that, your whole life, he saves you. He saves you from destruction, and you become his. You cannot take this great salvation and go off and not help someone else. You cannot do it. Depending on where you are or what measure of help you have received from the Lord, either you lose what you have received, or the Lord will give you no choice, and he will just bring you into a high level of ministry as you scream and yell and kick, as some of us here have experienced, screaming and yelling and kicking all the way. As he corrects you and changes you and forms you in his image, you shall do his bidding because every human being has a master. This is a secret; the world does not know it, but everyone has a master. Either your master is Satan, or your master is the Lord Jesus Christ. You are not your own, brethren, and, if you think you are, you are deceived.

So chapter 1 of the Book of Zephaniah is a legal document declaring that the almighty God has chosen to have mercy on man, whom he calls a worm. That is what we are in relationship to the Lord. We are ugly, red worms, bloodsuckers. When you step on us, the blood squirts out. We are bloodsuckers, brethren. We cannot keep ourselves alive. We need to suck on the blood of other people or other things, or we will die. We need food from the outside; we need water from the outside; we need love from the outside; we need sunshine from the outside; we need fellowship from the outside; we even need clothing from the outside. We are the only animal that needs clothing. So if you have any doubt about how weak and miserable you are, compare yourself to the other animals. We do not even have a fur coat, and, spiritually speaking, we are bloodsuckers, cer- -- parasites, brethren, parasites. But the Lord Jesus Christ has looked upon us, you see. He has not covered over our sins. He has not lied and said, no, it is not true; you are glorious and you are beautiful. He has not said that.

He said I see you as you are, and I love you anyway, and I love you so much that I am not going to let you stay in this condition. I am going to fix you. I am going to rehabilitate you. I am going to break you into a million pieces. I am going to rip the tongue of your carnal mind out. I am going to break a rod across your back, and I am going to do it through a company of men who I am going to sacrifice so that you could live. I am going to let you kill them, and I am going to let you hate them, and I am going to let you come against them. In some instances, I am going to let you crucify them and boil them in oil and saw them in half, and I am going to let you do it. Why? Because I am a legalistic God, and I will not judge you or pronounce judgment upon you for a sin that you commit against another sinner, but you sin against my son, and I will judge you, and that judgment will save your life. Therefore, I sacrifice my sons unto you. Kill them, and I shall raise the two of you from the dead. That is what he said. Is that incredible?

The rest of chapter 1 tells us, then, how Jehovah intends to raise us from the dead. We found the mention of the three stages of the resurrection, in more or less of a technical form. We have had a lot of teaching about that here, the three stages of resurrection. We shall be -- we, who are dead, shall be raised from the dead and out of this condition of a dead mind and out of this condition of a dead soul and a dead body and a dead world. We shall be raised from the dead in three stages. First, our mind shall be raised from the dead. Then our soul shall be raised from the dead, and then this world system will be converted. This body is passing away. It is going to be broken down into its basic atoms, which atoms will be reused, but this body in itself will not go into the kingdom, OK. I do not want to spend too much time on that right now.

Moving on to chapter 2. Glory to God.

“Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired; before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of the Lord come upon you, before the day of the Lord’s anger come upon you.”

We have discussed many times how the Hebrew prophets, especially as the King James translators have translated them, sound so gory that some people cannot bear it. We even have some translations of the Bible which have omitted large portions of Scripture, specifically in the Psalms, and there is one Bible. I think it is called the -- that is not the New Jerusalem Bible, is it? What is the name of that Bible you have there? No. That is not it. I think it is called the New Jerusalem Bible. They have omitted just about every warfare Scripture in the Psalms, the man who translated this Bible, saying that God is a God of peace, therefore these Scriptures must have somehow wound up in this Bible. It could not be from the Lord.

The bottom line is this, brethren. If you have trouble reconciling the blood and guts of the Old Testament to the peaceful nature of the savior, the Lord Jesus Christ -- and I had that problem for years -- this is the reconciliation factor. This is how you connect the blood and guts of Jehovah to the love of Jesus Christ. Jehovah’s enemy, brethren, is spiritual. The enemy of God is spiritual. The warfare of God is against Satan and the carnal mind. In the Old Testament, there was warfare between the nation of Israel and the heathen nations because the -- that is the way the Lord set it up, and we are told in a place in the New Testament that everything that happened to Israel was done so that we would have an --

            [?Example?].

-- example so that we could understand spiritual things. But in this hour, all of the blood and guts of the Old Testament is in spiritual warfare. Jesus said forgive your brother. Leave your gift at the altar until you make it up with your brother. Do not ask me for anything until you have reconciled with everyone that you have ought against and that you have made every effort to reconcile with people who have ought against you. We are not responsible for other people’s unforgiveness. The reason Jesus said that is that, in this hour, this is the hour that the carnal mind is coming down. Satan and the carnal mind and the kingdoms that he possesses are going to be brought down and handed over to the Lord Jesus Christ. So stop fighting with your brother; stop being manipulated by the spiritual powers and principalities of this world who would set you one against the other. Love one another, and wage the warfare against their wicked mind, which will result in everybody being set free and raised from the dead.

So we are in a training to separate our human lives from the hidden spiritual life in our heart. Everybody has a hidden spiritual life in their heart. Brethren, the world knows about it. Pick up a psychology book. Pick up any psychology book that teaches about the id and the ego. They will tell you the id, he is a raging, wild beast. The unconscious mind of man, he is a wild, raging beast. Sounds like Satan to me. It says if the ego does not rule over the id in a man’s mind, that man will be so socially deformed that the society will have to lock him up. The whole world knows that.

We have an unconscious mind that is a beast. Do not tell me you are OK; you are not. Your behavior may or may not be OK. Lots of times we think our behavior is OK, and it is not, but at least behavior can be seen. But if you think that you do not have a raging beast deep down in your heart that is thinking evil and wishing evil and that needs to be controlled by your socialized personality, which is called the ego, if you do not think you have that, you are deceived. Go to any psychology student, and they will tell you; it is in there.

So do not be a Pharisee, brethren, because Jesus said to the Pharisees I came to give you sight, and you tell me you are not blind. There is nothing I can do for you. Brethren, Jesus came to deliver us from our sins because it is our sins that is making us die and ruining our life. And if you really believe that you have no sin, there is nothing Jesus or I or anybody else can do for you, and you will live out your lifetime, and you will die like everybody else. But if you have any hope at all of this resurrection from the dead, then you -- what do you do? Anybody know the Scripture? For those who have hope in this resurrection, you purifieth yourself. You look upon your filthy heart, and you see your sins, and you f- -- repent, and you ask the Lord to have mercy on you and give you dominion over them before they kill you.

So your denial, brethren -- which everybody has, some one degree or another. Your denial will kill you. The denial of this covenant is likened to the blindness of the Pharisees. It is going to deprive you of the opportunity to be raised from the dead. It may give you some peace for the moment, in your heart, to think that you have no sin, but when you see all your brothers and sisters being raised from the dead and you are locked out, the pain is going to be terrible. Take the pain of the correction now, brethren, and live, for it is the Lord’s desire for you.

I had time to do five verses in chapter 2 of Zephaniah. It is a very long message, so we will do what we did last week. I will probably preach for another hour or so, and we will finish up tonight. I am not going to read you the whole chapter because the English translation is just -- or I should say the true translation is just so different than the English translation that it -- I do not even feel to read you the whole chapter. Let us start. W- -- it is very exciting. It is hard to believe that the true translation is so different than the King James.

Let me just remind you of this: We have a double problem with the prophets. We have the problem of the translation, that the King James translators were not spiritual and therefore did not have any idea whatsoever of what the spiritual message that is in the Hebrew was and therefore chose words that made sense to them in English but have nothing to do whatsoever with what the Lord is saying. And then we have a second problem, that even if you can get the right words, the prophets spoke in parables. So to unlock the understanding of the parable, you must unlock the meaning of the symbol. It is like breaking a code. Some cha- -- some prophecies of the prophets are much easier to understand than others.

These five verses are difficult, and they are more symbolic than some others, so I am going to go a slowly as I can, and try not to ask me questions until the end of the message because I get thrown off. Please, make notes of your questions. I will be glad to answer them. It is just that when the anointing is flowing on me, it is -- it really throws me off if you -- I really cannot stop in the middle of the message. Well, let us see what God is going to do with this.

Verse 1, “Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired.”

Let me point out to you the words “gather together” are repeated twice. God does not stutter. If a word is repeated twice, there is a reason for it. The first thing that I do when I see a word repeated twice is I check out the Hebrew to see if it is the same word. Sometimes it is two different Hebrew words. In this instance it was the same Hebrew word.

Let us investigate further. The word “gather” is Strong's 7197; it means “to seek for,” “to gather oneself.” It can be translated “to seek for;” it can also be translated “to gather oneself.” That means to gather one’s thoughts together. So you could be, excuse me, externally seeking for a book. You could be seeking for God with your heart, and the same word can be used to say to you gather your thoughts together. I say lots of times. Give me a minute. I need to get myself together because some confusion hit my mind. Basically, these are the two ways we are going to translate this same word. Seek for God, OK.

I will give it to you more clearly. Father, help me to bring this message forth. This Hebrew word appears twice. I suggest to you that the Scripture is saying seek to find your true self, which is spirit, and then gather together the mind of Christ. Remember, the expression “to gather” is used to describe incarnation. In this instance it is being used to describe, I suggest to you, the renewing of the mind. First, locate your true self, which is spirit. Realize that you are not this body, but that you are your human spirit. And, secondly, liberate your human spirit from Satan and the carnal mind, and renew her in Christ. That is what the Hebrew is saying. Gather yourself. Introspect. Look at yourself. You are not your emotions. You are not your flesh. You are spirit trapped inside the prison house of your carnal mind and this dead body. When you find out who you are and when you realize that you are spirit, escape from the clutches of the carnal mind of Satan, and join unto Christ. Gather yourself into Christ.

So let us do a brief rene- -- review on the renewing of the mind. I will put that on the board for you. We find that when a baby is born, the baby does not know anything about itself. You look at a newborn baby that can lift up its leg. You will see it laying in the crib, and it finds its foot. It does not know that its foot belongs to itself, and it finds its hand. It does not know that its hand belongs to itself. And in the same manner, we find that a baby who is very close to his mother all the time cannot tell the difference between his body and his mother’s body. He thinks his mother’s body is his body. He cannot tell the difference, OK.

So we must discover ourselves. We are not this flesh. This flesh is not supposed to be leading our life. If this flesh wants a drink, our mind is supposed to say yes or no. If this flesh wants to eat too much, the mind is supposed to say yes or no. The ruler of the body is the mind. The ruler of the soul, which is your emotions, is the mind. The head of the wife is the husband. The head of the body and the soul is the mind, and mind is supposed to be a spirit. The -- that part of us which is spirit is found in the mind, OK. So we see, in this hour, fallen man has a perverse mind. Let us do this. How is a mind formed? What do we start with?

            Human spirit.

Your human spirit, OK. And she is male or female?

            Female.

The spirit of man, the human spirit, it is the same thing; she is female. Now, basically speaking, spirit is male, but God has put a female manifestation of spirit inside of man, specifically for the purpose of reproducing his nature. God, who is spirit, has pla- -- has taken from his own substance and formed a temporary manifestation of his male spirit, which is female spirit, for the specific purpose of reproducing his nature in man. So God breathed the breath of life into the man. That male breath left the Father, and, when it entered into the man, it entered in, in a weakened form that had the potential to join with the Spirit of God in his full strength and reproduce the nature of God in the form of a mind in man. So the human spirit or the spirit of man, therefore, is female, OK.

From time to time, as the Lord leads me, I will ask you if you have any questions in a particular area, OK, but if I have not opened it up to you, please do not stop me. Right now, does anyone have any problem with this? OK.

The second factor to form a mind, what else do we need? We have a female spirit and a --

            [?A male spirit?].

-- male spirit. Now I heard someone say a soul. The human spirit is a part of the soul. Human spirit is a part of the soul just as a woman’s ovaries are part of her body, OK. So we have a male spirit, and there -- and when the f- -- male spirit enters into the soul and locates the human spirit, there is a union, and a mind is born. That is how the mind came into the creation, and then the mind joins with the soul, and they become one, just as the organic brain is a part of the human being. So we have a soul, which is our emotions, basically, and we have a mind born into it. And when the Father of that mind is Jehovah or the Lord Jesus Christ, the name of the mind is --

            Christ.

-- Christ, and Christ is spirit. He is a mind which is as a mind should be; he is normal. You might say heterosexual, if you will. And when the mind in the creation is Christ, the man lives, but we had a problem early in time. There was a problem before the creation was completed, not that God was not able to do the job, but during the construction, because man -- because of man’s weaknesses, we had a problem, and that spirit which is in men -- well, let me go back on this. And a part of the soul, not the human spirit, but another part of the soul rose up and joined with the female human spirit.

Now let me just show you the parts of the soul so this could be clearer. God made a man. That man was soul. We will draw it as a circle. He was soul, made of the earth, and in that soul was the spirit of man. God breathed it into him. Now in this earth, God is so great that the earth that he formed was of a much higher spiritual order than the earth that we walk on or even the earth that we are made out of. This earth had an intelligence in it. It had an intelligence in it, and that intelligence, we are told, was morally impure. Is everybody OK? Morally impure intelligence. This morally impure intelligence had what kind of a charge?

            Negative.

A negative charge. Now the way the Father set it up was that Jehovah was supposed to join with the spirit of man and form the mind of Christ in this soul, and that mind of Christ would have been a po- -- well, let us do it, OK. Jehovah joined with this human spirit, the spirit which was in man, and Christ was formed. And Christ has what kind of a charge?

            Positive.

A positive charge. Christ was spirit, and his positive charge had the authority to neutralize the morally impure intelligence in the earth because, in this world down here, a positive and a negative makes a negative, but Christ -- because he was the Father as well as the Son, Christ has the Spirit of Christ within him. He is the Father and the Son. He really has a double positive charge, therefore one positive cancels out the negative, and we are left with a positive charge. Is everybody OK? OK.

But something went wrong at the beginning of time. We had a mind which was the Son of Jehovah, which had the authority to control the moral impurity in the earth of the soul, but this Christ was -- what was his biggest fault? He was --

            Inexperienced.

-- inexperienced, and he had everything he needed to stand, but he had a tremendous deficit: He could not recognize sin when it came right up in his face. He could not recognize sin because he had no experience with sin. You see, the Father said to him this is what sin looks like; this is what sin sounds like; this is what sin walks like; this is what sins talks like. And when sin came right up and looked him in his no- -- in his e- -- in his nose -- and looked him in his eyes, he said, oh, I wonder if this is not a pretty bird that I can play with.

Brethren, I could talk to you for the next 600 years, and I cannot help you. You have to have your experiences, you see. You listen to me talk, and it goes into your head like your head is a computer. Then the Lord Jesus Christ gets a hold of you and gives you your experiences, and then when you are laying on the ground crying because you messed up, he says to you, do you remember what Sheila said in that meeting six months ago? This is what she was talking about. And you say, oh, well, if I mess up like this again, I am going to see it coming. I am going to see it coming next time. I heard her preach it, and I heard her preach it, and I heard her preach it, and I got mad she was boring me with her preaching it. But when it came up to me eyeball to eyeball, I could not see it until it killed me. It is the truth of our condition. It is true of me too. You are no good without your experiences. You are no good without your overcoming experiences.

So we had a problem over here. I am not going to go into all the details now; we have this on other tapes. But this moral impurity in the earth, she was female. Brethren, everything that is negative is female, and everything that is positive is male. Now the women libbers, I keep saying they are going to kill me if they -- they are going to try and kill me if they get a hold of me. Listen, it has nothing to do with women today. These -- male and female is a type for understanding spiritual things. The Scripture says there is no male or female in Christ. You are what your mind is, and when your mind becomes Christ, it has nothing to do with your body.

Therefore, we have a problem in the church today for people who do not have spiritual eyes. We have physical men in the pulpit whose mind is female. They think like women when it comes to spiritual things. And we have women in the pulpit today whose bodies are female, whom -- whose mind is male, who thinks as males when it comes to spiritual things. There is no male or female in the ministry or the spiritual ministry of Christ, and it is very confusing because you cannot go by what your eyes see. If you go by what your eyes see, you are going to fall in the ditch; you are going to follow the wrong person; you are going to obey the wrong person; you are going to listen to the wrong voice, and you are going to die. Spiritually, you will die. You cannot obey your eyes.

Look, there is no con- -- if you are having trouble with this, there is no condemnation in it, but you should know that the more trouble you have with it, the harder the Lord is going to hit you over the head. Why? Because he does not want you to die; he wants you to live. He has great plans for you, and he has a purpose for you, and he has a ministry for you, and he has no intention of letting you die. He will beat you within an inch of your life for you to learn the lessons that you have to learn to survive in the spirit world. He is not about to let you go. You are worth much more than many sparrows. He has invested a lot in you.

So there is never -- if you ever think I am condemning you, you have misjudged me. I am never condemning you, but I will tell you the truth with my dying breath. If you have a thick head, be prepared to have a thick stick broken across it, and the thicker your head, the thicker the stick. Praise the Lord.

So the moral impurity in the earth being negative automatically tells us that she is female. Why is that? Because the traditional roles, brethren, the traditional, physical roles of fallen man, which has nothing to do with where you are in Christ -- there are laws containing or controlling the law -- there are laws controlling the relationships between men and women. There are spiritual laws as well as physical laws, and that law says that the man gives and the women receives. Now everything is all messed up in this country today, but if you take away all of the inventions of Satan that have made it possible for women to come out of their natural roles and you force -- and people are forced into the roles which are dictated by their physical beings, you will see that the man is strong and the woman is the weaker one, that the man gives and the woman receives. That has nothing to do with spiritual things. In spiritual things, it is the -- well, I am not going to get into that now.

So that is the way -- so, therefore, women are negative because they are receive -- they receive. God is positive; he gives. Man, as a whole, is negative. I said it before: We need everything from outside of us. When you are in a female body or a male body, spiritually speaking, you are female, and you are negative because you are not sustaining yourself from within yourself. Christ sustains himself from within himself with such -- or to such a magnitude that there is so much left over that he has to give to others. Jesus. The whole society is in a severe case of role- -- our whole society is in -- under a severe spirit of role reversal.

A young lady called me up not too long ago to talk about some relationships between men and women, and [?shed?] -- I said something to her, and she said, “Well, that is not the way it is today. The men are not like that today. It is the other way around.” And I said that is because they are not men. I do not care what their body is. In many areas -- not everybody. In many areas, we see human beings in male bodies whose personalities have female characteristics of weakness because there is a heavy spiritual manifestation over this nation that is trying to destroy the manhood here, and that is the truth. They are trying -- there are spiritual forces that are trying to just do away with men.

They say -- women say they do not need men to father their children anymore; they get artificially inseminated. They do not men in the family anymore. Twenty-two percent of the kids are -- I just read some statistic -- all messed up because there is no fathers in the family. It is really hard to raise boys without a father. They have to have someone to look at. They have to learn how to be a man. We are finding a large percentage of the boys that grow up without fathers have struggles with their manhood because they did not see enough of it. Now there is ways to compensate it. You can have an uncle; you could have friends; you could have a minister, whatever, but the ideal way for young boys to become men is to have a role model right there in the house with them. So there are spiritual forces in the nation right now that are trying to wipe out the manhood, and if you have spiritual eyes, you could see it. If you do not have spiritual eyes, you think I am crazy. That is OK, but I know what I am talking about, and I am telling you the truth. Glory to God.

And there are some militant feminists in the country right now that are actively pushing social reforms that would literally, if they could do it, just wipe men out. They just do not want them. And at its ultimate extreme, if it ever goes that far, we will see a society with physical men in traditional female roles and physical women doing all the traditional male roles, and there are societies that this has happened in. It is documented in the history books. It happens in pagan nations. And as this country turns away from Christ, this crisis is radically escalating. Why? Because Satan is female, and as she exalts herself over this nation, we see her lifestyle being played out amongst the people.

So Satan was -- is negative, and we see that Satan, who is a part of the earth soul, rose up and decided she wanted to be the man, and she joined herself with the spirit of man and brought forth her mind in the soul. And the name of that mind is the --

            [?Carnal mind?].

-- famous, God help us, carnal mind. So we see the mind, which is supposed to be spirit in the fallen man, is not spirit but is really soul because the female soul has fertilized herself. Well, it is not too far from artificial insemination. So we have, in this hour -- or man, fallen man, has a mind which is supposed to be spirit but is not spirit. It is really soul because the soul brought it forth of itself, like a weed comes forth from the ground. It is not planted. The ground is not plowed. The seed is not sown, but the ground brings forth of itself, Jesus tells us. It is called a -- Jesus calls it a tare. He -- the ground or the earth brings forth a plant that was not planted. It was not cultivated. It is wild, and it is not subject to the law of God. And it is that mind, that rebellious, lawless carnal mind, which in this hour has the possession of God’s people.

So the prophet Zephaniah tells us, or the Lord Jesus Christ tells us through the prophet Zephaniah, I recognize that man does not have the power to deliver himself from his beast nature. We have a beast nature in this hour, and you are too weak to deliver yourself, says Jehovah, so I am going to do it for you. And this is how we are going to start doing it: You have to work with me. I am going to be the power source, and I am going to give you instructions. Number one, start examining yourself, and learn that you are not this body. You do not have tells you t- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT] Neither are you your soul; neither are you your emotions, and you do not have to do what your emotions tell you to do because I am going to give you a mind. I am going to give you the mind of Christ again that is going to enable you to rule your soul and your body, and therefore I shall bring you back up into righteousness and holiness, when you stop listening to your flesh and you stop listening to your emotions and you start obeying your new mind and your new husband, which is Christ. [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

Well, let me just put this on here for you. The spirit of man is positive. The moral impurity in the earth is negative, but because we are lacking the spirit of the Father, we now have a positive plus a negative equals a negative. So the carnal mind is negative. She is female. She receives. She is needy. Everything must come from the outside of her, OK. So what element here -- we have the spirit of man, the carnal mind and the soul. What element here is present both in the mind of Christ and in the carnal mind? Which spirit?

            [CROSSTALK]

The spirit of man is present whether the mind is Christ or whether the mind is carnal. When the Lord says he is renewing our mind, what he has to do is break up this carnal mind, which is made up of three parts, the moral impurity in the earth, the spirit of man and the actual mind, which is carnal. To renew this mind, God has to break all this up and get the spirit of man free, so that is what he is doing. He is breaking all this up. He is killing the carnal mind. He is separating the spirit of man from the [?mural?] -- from the moral impurity in the earth, and the Lord Jesus Christ is marrying the spirit of man and bringing forth his own mind in the creation called Christ.

So in order to do this, he has to break up the carnal mind. That is like saying I have to break up your brain, brethren. That is like saying I found out that you have a cancer in the innermost part of your being, and I am going to operate on you. I am going to cut into your body through the layers of tissue and bone and muscle and whatever else is in there, to get to that innermost organ to repair it. It hurts. If you think your mind is going to be renewed without pain, you have been lied to.

And the worst part of being lied to is this: When the Lord comes to save your life and he picks up his spiritual scalpel and he cuts your chest open and you feel the pain, you say this cannot possibly be God. Get me away from the vessel that God is using to save my life because I do not believe you are of God, and I do not believe that the ministry of Christ hurts, and I do not believe that I have to listen to this junk about what is in my heart. Neither do I believe that I have to listen to you, whoever it is you think you are, and I do not think I have to submit to anybody. I am going to sit home and listen to tapes, and to heck with you. And it is being said all through the church today.

And because it is a great mystery that the judgments of God take a long time to fall, in many instances, we have believers sitting home for years believing this lie. But when their times comes and the judgments begin to fall on them, they will be in a quandary. Many will think it is Satan, and they will be saying how could Satan have this kind of dominion over me. It is not Satan, brethren; it is the Lord bringing a correction to your wrong thinking. He has talked to you in dreams. He has sent people to see you. He spoke to you through the Scriptures, and you still think that you are in right order, and you have refused to listen to him. So the last resort -- who is the last resort? Who is the last one he sends at you?

            Satan.

[UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- you better believe it. Guess what. Last night at the board meeting, he signed the order to turn you over to Satan, and guess what. No matter how hard you yell and scream, it is too late to overturn the order. He gave you the opportunity to go the easy way. You would not take it. He begged you. He pleaded with you with blood and pestilence for years. You would not listen to his prophets. You tried to kill his sons. You rebelled and went in the opposite direction every time he gave you an instruction, and he has just sold you to Satan, and you have not had a drink in 20 years. Guess what you did last night. You went out and got drunk, and you have not done whatever it was that you did, yeah. Whatever it is that you were delivered from for 20 years, all of a sudden, it is all over you with power, seducing your mind, drawing you, tempting you. God does not tempt you, brethren. If you are tempted, you have been turned over to Satan in that area.

And it is wormwood judgment. What does that mean? A specific set amount of time has been allotted to you. You have received the sentence of a judge, and there is no parole. God said 70 years to Judah, and not one man came out of that captivity one day sooner. In fact, that whole generation that went into captivity died in Babylon. It was their children who came out. So what does that mean to us? It means that if you are so thick that God has begged you and pleaded with you and sent people to you, it is possible -- I am not saying it has to be true, but I am saying it happens on occasion. It is possible that the Lord might make a judgment to turn you over to Satan unto your death. No matter how you cry out and plead, his response to your prayer will be in your children, which is very nice, but you are still dead.

So we see that to receive the salvation of the Lord, our mind must be renewed. Salvation is not of works, brethren; it is a free gift in that you are given the weapon. You are given the power for free, but you must use what God has given you. You must work the works of God. You must submit yourself to teaching and to ministry and to correction. You must work the work. If you think that you are going to sit there like a princess and receive the things of God, you have been lied to, and there are people in the church that preach it. People are hurt because of wrong teaching. You have got to work the work, brethren. There is a labor which is in Christ. You have to study to show yourself approved. You have to submit to spiritual ministry. You have to be willing to be corrected. You have to spend time in prayer. You cannot go out living in the world and expect this wonderful miracle to change your life. If you have been taught that, you have been taught incorrectly.

So your mind has to be renewed, verse 1 of Je- -- Zephaniah 2. Locate your true reality. Do not be that baby lying on its back, looking at its foot saying, oh, wow, I wonder if this is where my life source emanates from, my toes. No, your physical life source emanates from your heart, and your intelligence from your organic brain. But an infant does not know that, neither does an infant Christian know that its true life source is resident in and dwelling out of the spirit of man.

Do you know most people do not even know that man has a spirit? Many people do not know that man has a spirit. They think he -- they know he has a soul, but they do not realize that the soul is separate from the spirit.

            That is true.

I am telling you that s- -- I know it is true.

            [?I just?] talked to somebody [?like that?] [CROSSTALK]

They think the s- -- they heard about a man having a spirit, but they think the spirit is the same as the soul, and the reason they think the spirit is the same as the soul is that our human spirit is dead, therefore she is not manifesting. She is not functioning. You cannot see her. She is not doing anything. All you see is the soul, so the carnal mind of man says, well, they must be the same thing, but they are not the same thing. The problem is that she is dead. When your human spirit is raised from the dead, she does a lot of things. She does the -- what does she do? What does she --

            I was saying she does a lot of things separate from your soul.

Absolutely. She does the righteous works of God; she does righteousness.

            [INAUDIBLE]

She does righteousness. She does the works of God, and she saves people from sin. She shows the mercy of God. She executes the judgments of God. She shows the sinner his sins. She feeds the hungry. She delivers the afflicted. She clothes the naked. She visits the captives and sets them free.

So Zephaniah 1 -- 2:1 says locate your true reality. You are not emotion, neither are you the lusts of your flesh, but you are spirit which has died, and you have the potential to be raised from the dead. So locate your true identity, and, when you find her, you will see that she is in bondage to her carnal mind. When you finally open to doors to that dungeon -- the carnal mind is a dungeon. There is only one way to open the doors to the dungeon; that is with Christ. Get her out of the clutches of the carnal mind. Break up that wicked carnal mind. Help the Lord to break it to pieces, that your spirit might be set free and marry her true husband, Christ, that the mind in your person might be Christ and not carnal, that you might live and not die.

Well, it sounds good. How do I do it? Do I pick up a stick? The Bible says the Lord is going to beat our enemy to pieces. How do we beat our carnal mind to pieces? Do I go out and cut a stick off the tree? Do I buy a gun? Do I get a cat of nine tails? Brethren, your mind is spirit. You must have a spiritual weapon to defeat a spiritual weapon, so, if you do not have your spiritual weapon, you better leave good enough alone because Satan punishes you if you try to resist her. What is the name of the spiritual weapon? What is the name of your -- the spiritual weapon that opposes the carnal mind?

            Christ.

Christ. Christ is the weapon. Any -- you see, some people -- we talked about this at a recent meeting -- are born with the law of God written in their heart. They just have some knowledge of right and wrong. No one ever taught them; it is just inside of them. Well, if you are one of those people but you do not have Christ and you try to do righteousness, Satan will punish you. If you know anything about spiritual things, you know this is true. You try to do good when your god is Satan, depending on the family line curses in your life, she could put you in the hospital; she could wind you up in an ungodly marriage where you will be tortured for the rest of your life; she could put you on drugs, put you in a mental institution. Satan has power over the people of this world.

So that righteousness which some men have, which are manifestations of the law of God written on a man’s heart, do not have the spiritual strength to overcome Satan. Righteous as they might be, they are without strength to perform their righteousness. You remember Paul saying I desire to do that which is good, but when I try to do that which is good, when I try to say something good, the strangest thing happens. Something comes out of my mouth that I did not even know was there, and I wind up getting into trouble. I tried to do something good with my hands. I have the best intentions, and I knock over the glass of water. I know what is good. I desire to do what is good, but I am incapable of doing good. And Paul said, how come? And he answers his own question, because there is a spiritual law that dwells in me that is more powerful than my desire to do good. He called it the law of --

            [?Sin?].

-- sin and death. But he said, take heart, brethren, because, in this hour, there is a new law manifesting in mankind, and it is name is the spirit -- the law of the Spirit of life. I think that is what it says, the law of the Spirit of life, which is in Christ Jesus. Hallelujah. The spiritual weapon that has the power to defeat your carnal mind, which is killing you, is available to men in this hour, but you have to lay hold of it. It comes to you in the form of a seed, and that seed must be planted in you, and it must grow in you. And when it reaches maturity, it can and it will kill your carnal mind, and when your carnal mind is killed, it will be killed by being broken up. Your human spirit will escape from the clutches of Satan and the carnal mind and will be eligible to join with Christ, thus raising you from the dead.

            Praise God.

So Zephaniah says to us -- Zephaniah exhorts the church. Locate your true reality, spirit. I know that when you find it, it is going to be found in bondage to the carnal mind, so deliver yourself from that bondage. Gather your thoughts together. Break down the carnal mind, and re-gather a mind, in your person, in the image of the righteousness of Christ. Any questions in this area? No?

            I have a question, but I do not know [INAUDIBLE]

OK. You have a question, but you do not know what the question is, OK. I can relate to that.

            I am serious. [?This is?] --

This is very hard.

            -- overwhelming.

Yeah.

            [CROSSTALK]

J- -- please, use the microphone. People have the s- -- there are people with the same questions as you. Jesus, OK. Praise the Lord. Now, listen, all of you here. If you are not understanding this whole thing, do not worry about it. The primary purpose of you being in this meeting is not to make yourself into an intellectual giant with --

            [CROSSTALK]

-- great knowledge that can make you exalt yourself above your fellow man. There is spiritual ministry manifesting here. The Spirit of Christ is present, and his primary concern with you right now is piercing your heart. He wants his seed inside of your heart, and when his seed gets inside of your heart and his life begins to be reproduced in you, you will understand all things. So if you understand, that is fine, but, if you do not understand, that is OK too. When that seed gets inside of you, you will understand. If you will submit yourself to these kinds of meetings, he will do the work.

We talked about this a little earlier. His salvation is a free gift, but there are things for you to do. You submit yourself. You do as best as you could do, and he will pick it up where you cannot do anymore. That is his covenant with man. I do not require you to do any more than you could do, says the Lord, but I require you to do what I perceive you to be able to do, not what you think you could do, what I think you could do. This is the Lord speaking. You do all you could do. If all you could do is turn the page of this book, if that is all you have the strength to do, he will pick it up from that point, but you have got to do something.

Freebies do not work. You do not know what I mean? Freebies do not work. Getting something for free does not produce fine qualities in men. Men need to compete. They need to strive. They need to overcome. They need to succeed to build their confidence and to build their self-image as a human being, OK.

We are finding in this country today that we have a big problem with welfare, that we have second and third generations of people on welfare. To them, it is a way of life. I am not saying welfare is bad, if you are in trouble and you need a hand, a helping hand, but it is not to be a way of life. It makes weak people. Men are supposed to lay hold of God, and together they are supposed to go forward and have their needs met and to meet the needs of their families and whatever else their obligations are. When you give people something for free, they do not appreciate what they have, and it tears them down; it makes them weak. It is not good, thus the Bible says, if you do not work, you should not eat. See, the carnal mind of man says, oh, God is a hard God. My goodness, the poor guy is starving to death, and you will not feed him unless he works, da, ta-da, da. It is not good to give people freebies; it destroys their soul.

            Yeah. That is true. [CROSSTALK]

It destroys your soul, destroys their self-confidence and their self-image, and they begin to hate themselves. It is p- -- it is a very bad thing. You help people who cannot work, people who are sick, but as soon as they are healthy, you must go to work for your own good and for the good of all society. You must be a productive citizen. You do not want to be a productive citizen? Well, then you cannot eat here. You pay your way.

So we have a lot of carnally-minded people that listen to this kind of teaching and call you cheap. Well, you can call me cheap if you want to, but I do not support people who are out there messing up their lives. [INAUDIBLE] you help yourself; I will help you, OK. Everybody OK?

            [INAUDIBLE]

Please, use the microphone.

            [INAUDIBLE]

            What about the people who have a hard time receiving things, in contrast with what she had said? Like you said, not to g- -- once they are healthy or whatever, like, get on their way. Because I have a hard time receiving things. People want to give me things all the time, and I -- my pride will not -- my pride would not let me take 50 cents yesterday, and I needed it to make a phone call.  I had the money, but I just did not -- people did not have the change for me. So can you help me in this area, or are you just --

Well, y- --

            This does not have [?relating?].

Well, I will answer your question, but I do need to --

            But it [?fell on?] [CROSSTALK]

-- get on with the message. But, well, you know, you ha- -- you reap what you sow. If you needed that 50 cents and you would not take it, you did not have the 50 cents, you know. So your own sin, the Bible says, will correct you. There is such a thing as healthy pride, and then there is such a thing as unhealthy pride. There is healthy pride, that you should not take gifts. You should work. You know, you should earn your own way, but if you are genuinely in need and you cannot take it, that is an unhealthy pride.

            You did not help me [?with that?].

Well, I am sorry. Do you want to a- -- I will give you one more chance. Do you want to ask me again?

            Once again. Why do people have a hard time receiving things? Someone wants to be nice to Joseph, here. And I constantly say, well, a person notices this; it is becoming a habit. Why [UNINTELLIGIBLE] offer you something nice, you do not want it, Joseph? What -- this is what I am saying. [CROSSTALK]

Oh, well, no. But in your case, I perceive it is largely because you --

            Anybody, not just me.

Well, everybody is not exactly the same.

            Well, a lot of people cannot receive things.

OK. Well, it is very frequently a spirit that wants to c- -- be in control.

            OK

OK. Now up until a point, that is godly. We are not supposed to have people controlling our lives that do not have a God-given authority over our life. If you are a minor, your parents have a God-given authority over your life, but, if you are an adult person --

            [?Right?].

-- you are not supposed to have another person controlling your life because they are giving you money or any such thing. That is an ungodly submission, so it would be a correct thing to say, no, I do not want your gift because I know that taking that gift will result in you having an ungodly control over my life. But sometimes it is OK to take a gift. You have to each circumstance, OK.

            Yes. Thank you.

OK. You are welcome. Yes? OK.

            You were talking about people have to work, you know [INAUDIBLE]. What   about, like, when it comes to a man and a wife and the wife stays home and has kids? Now the wife is working. Is she working [CROSSTALK]

She sure is.

            I am just saying.

            [CROSSTALK]

            I do not know what you mean by [CROSSTALK] or do you mean working as -- and getting money or working [CROSSTALK]

No. You have to be involved in a -- the word is eluding me.

            [CROSSTALK]

In productive labor, thank you. You must be involved in productive labor. You do not have to have a job outside of the house. Women work.

            Well, I mean, I do not understand what, you know [CROSSTALK], you know what I mean?

Well, some people -- we have a whole subculture in this society of people who collect a check every month and do not work, and we have a very easy welfare system. And I think there are a lot of people, especially single men, on welfare that are one welfare because they are drug addicts or whatever, that if they found out that they had no food to eat, they just might be motivated to clean themself up, at least enough to go earn their money for food, you know. So we do not help them by letting them out on the streets and sell their food stamps and do all this other junk that they are into out there, spending their welfare money buying alcohol and drugs and buying street methadone and all that stuff, you know.

So the pro- -- I really do not want to get off this too far, but the problem as I see it in this society is that the government is engaged in -- boy, where am -- I am losing my vocabulary this morning. The government is engaged in an authoritarian role that God has assigned to the family. Now if you have an extended family like they have in Africa, OK, you have an extended family, OK, with 30 or 40 people and there is an acknowledged head of the family, OK, the elder of the family, and you have someone in that family -- there is no social programs at all over there. If you are hungry, you go to your family, and the elders -- and the several elders of the family look at this guy, and he is fooling around, and he is not working, or whatever money he has, he is playing around with. They will just throw him out.

But when that man really has a genuine need, they will help him; they will take care of him; they will feed him. It is a personal ministry to a man who is known of the eldership. They know him since he was a baby. They know whether his complaint is legitimate. They know whether he is playing games. There is no going out and selling your food stamps when it is your family that is supporting you. They take you out over -- the men take you out and give you a beating. Do you hear what I am saying?

So it is this impersonal government that is writing checks to people who are abusing the system. It is not functioning, and the major reason that it is not functioning is that they have broken God’s law, and the family is breaking down, and the government cannot control these people. This is a job for the family to be mediating, and the whole society is upside-down, and it is all messed up. Do you understand what I said?

            Yeah.

OK. Glory to God. OK. You know what they do to a man he is -- who is beating his wife in Nigeria?

            [INAUDIBLE]

No. They turn him over to the women of the village. They all gang up on him and beat him up, and the men -- the other men in the village --

            [CROSSTALK]

Yeah. They will not say a thing. As a matter of fact --

            Wow.

-- the way they do it -- if a woman has -- there is a women’s council in the village, so if her husband is beating her, she goes and makes a complaint to the women’s council, and they summon him to the council. They give him a trial, and he has to come because, if he will not come, they go after him, and the men in the village will not interfere. He has to show up. They have a hearing, and they give him a warning. And if he hits her again, every woman in the village goes after him with sticks and beats him up.

            Wow. Are you referring to Christian women?

No. It is not Christian.

            [CROSSTALK]

Tribal life.

            Yeah.

Tribal life.

            Is that not something? [CROSSTALK]

            This is in the [CROSSTALK]

No. These -- this is in the tribal, out in the bush.

            [CROSSTALK]

Yeah. They have justice. They have a strong extended family. If you are abusing your child, the whole family council comes together. They have a meeting. They take a vote, and, if you are really doing it, they just pick that kid up and take him out, no court order, no -- but it is done in righteousness. They remove the child from your house, and it works. It works better than this system over here. You cannot have an impersonal ministry of justice. God set it up that it should be personal. He set up the rulership of people whose natural tendency is to be criminal to be under an extended family. That is God’s plan, and we have broken up his plan in this country, and we are seeing the evil fruit of it, OK.

Let us go on. B- -- I do not know what happened to this message this morning. OK. I have a witness for you, Ephesians 4:23, “And be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” Renewal, brethren, is in the spirit of your mind. So we now have two witnesses that there is a spirit in man. We know there is a spirit in the mind of man, and Job said in another place there is a spirit in man, and that renewal is in the spirit which is in your mind. She has to be divorced from the carnal mind and Satan and married to her new husband who is in the image and who will give her his image of righteousness.

“Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired.” The Hebrew word translated “nation” means “a Gentile nation.” I point out to you that this prophet is speaking to Judah and that the Lord is calling Judah a Hebrew -- I am sorry, a heathen nation. Brethren, if your mind is carnal, you are a heathen nation. If you think you are a Christian and you are living out of your carnal mind, I have got a flash for you. You better check out your definition of Christian because, to be a Christian, you must be under the rulership of Christ. You are not a Christian because you wear a cross or because you go to church six nights a week.

So we see the Lord, through the prophet Zephaniah, calling Judah a Gentile nation, and the whole church today, with a few exceptions, is a Gentile nation. That is how Jesus can say the day will come that you will say, Lord, Lord, why did you not take me? And Jesus said, I will say unto you I never knew you. I did not have a union with your spirit. Knowledge is an experiential knowledge. For the Lord to know you, he must join with you. That is what the word knowledge means.

I never knew you. I never had a union with you. My Son was never formed in you. The whole time you were crying, Lord, Lord, it was the carnal mind in you, and we had that. We found that in Zephaniah 1 in the last message. The whole time you were crying, Lord, Lord, your mind was carnal, and you were giving me lip service, but you were obeying Satan and the hoards of demons that were in your mind. And in the hour of the unveiling of Christ, your true nature shall be revealed. Is it Christ in you, or was it death in you? And you could lie with your mouth, and men lie with their facial expressions, and men lie and put on all kinds of airs by the clothes they wear and by the cars they drive, and some people make you think they are rich until the whole bottom falls out, and everyone comes and collects everything. I am telling you the truth.

            [CROSSTALK] truth.

Right? You marry a man. You think he is rich, and two weeks after you marry, the collectors --

            [CROSSTALK]

-- come and take everything. I know somebody that that happened to on their wedding night. On the next day, they came and took all the furniture out of the house. He did not make the payments.

            That is funny.

I never knew you. You are a phony.

            [INAUDIBLE]

Glory to God. Oh, I am so glad we have a good spirit back here. I am having a good time today, OK.

“Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired.” “Not desired,” Strong's 3700; that word can be translated “shamed.” The Lord is saying, Judah, you are a shamed nation. There is a spiritual shame. Someone said to me at a meeting once -- well, they thought that when I used that word, you shall be ashamed, that I was condemning somebody. Brethren, any scriptural word that I use -- well, it could be a spirit of condemnation, but I use scriptural words. You shall be ashamed in that day. In what day? In the day that Christ appears in the fullness of his life in the minds of men. If you are ashamed, what does it mean to be ashamed in that day? It means that, in that day that Christ is appearing in full stature, if he is not appearing in you, you shall be spiritually shamed. Jesus said it; I did not say it. It is in the Bible. The shame of the Scripture is to be found in adultery with Satan. Shame on you. Repent, and ask the Lord to restore you. [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

Well, please, double [?check?] [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [INAUDIBLE] everything OK?

So the Lord says, lest that shame should come upon you -- he says, I do not want that shame to come upon you, so I am telling you all this. I wrote in the book. Well, you may not understand the book, so I am sending preachers to you. I do not want you to be ashamed, so follow my instructions. Locate your true spiritual nature. Confess that she is in bondage to Satan and the carnal mind. Do everything you can to work with me to get her free, that the mind of Christ should be formed in you, so, in the hour that I appear in full stature, you should not be ashamed but be glorified because my Spirit shall be revealed through you. He says, I am giving you the message because I do not want you to be ashamed. If I have a preacher that is preaching condemnation, he should not be, but if I have a preacher that is just giving you the message and you are condemned, it is the pride of your own heart that is condemning you. I am telling you the truth. I am giving you the opportunity to avoid the shame, so take authority over your own carnal mind and your pride, and confess your sins, and let us get on with the breaking up of this wicked mind so that it could be reformed in my image.

I do not have any references for you because this message -- I do not believe how long this message is, but, in any event, even when I was preparing the notes, for whatever reason, I chose not to go back into our old studies, but we did find this expression, shame, this word shame used in several of the prophets, indicating the spirit of Satan, the shame of the spiritual man. And, of course, this message is written to the house of Judah, who is supposed to be a spiritual man. The church, we are supposed to be a spiritual man, so the shame that the prophets talk about is the spirit of Satan. The shame of your adulteries shall be revealed upon you, adultery of the mind. Your union should be with Jehovah, and, in the New Testament, we call him the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus.

Alternate Translation, Zephaniah 2:1, “Recognize that your true identity is spirit, you shamed Gentile nation, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind.”

I put that in a little better English for you.

Amplified translation, Zephaniah 2:1, listen to this, “Face the truth, you heathen nation, that your true identity, the spirit of man, is married to Satan, and reform your mind in the image of Jehovah.”

Face the truth, all you heathens in the church, all you Pharisees, your true identity, your spirit, is married to Satan. You are not the genuine article. How do I know? When you are put to the test, when the pressure comes on you, you manifest the carnal mind. They crucified Jesus, and all he had to say was what? Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing. They are too blind to see I am the Son of God. So, again, there is no condemnation, but know who you are. How are you helping yourself by telling yourself that you are without sin? How ridiculous. Glory to God. God, help us.

Again, if you want to lie to yourself, that is OK, but, when you are a pastor and you are teaching your people that, and you are sending them -- you know, you are just sending them into destruction. May God have mercy on your soul. There is a tremendous responsibility in having authority in Christ, and that is another reason, going back to our exhortation earlier, why you should go out of your way to respect the person that God raises up to head a ministry, because, if they make a mistake, they have to pay a much greater price than you do for making a mistake, so a tremendous responsibility to be in leadership anywhere, actually.

Continuing with Zephaniah 2:2, “Before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of the Lord come upon you, before the day of the Lord's anger come upon you.”

Is there anybody here that can make sense out of that?

            [INAUDIBLE]

I am laughing because I cannot make any sense out of it either. “Before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of the Lord come upon you, before the day of the Lord's anger come upon you.”

Well, I do not know what that -- does anybody know what that said? Could you put that on pause for a second? [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

OK. Somebody in the congregation said this verse sounds like repent before the Lord’s anger comes upon you. Let us try and make some sense out of this. The word “before,” the Hebrew word translated “before,” Strong's 2962, can also be translated “the beginning.” Who is the beginning?

            [INAUDIBLE]

Christ is the beginning, amen. So this ha- -- apparently harmless word translated “before” can be translated “Christ,” and that is how we are going to use it. “Before the decree bring forth.” “The decree,” Strong's 2706; it means a -- “something appointed by God.” It means a law or a time or a portion, but the connotation of the word is that it is something that has been legislated. God has commanded it. The phrase “before the decree” is speaking about the appointed time of Christ, I suggest to you. You do not have to agree with me. Before, meaning the beginning, the decree. I des- -- suggest to you the hidden meaning in this verse is speaking about the appointed time of Christ or the age of Christ or the kingdom age, or another way to say it is -- where are the ages? In your heart, so the kingdom age, another way of saying that is the kingdom of God. Before the decree, I suggest to you, is speaking about the kingdom of God.

Remember, decree is speaking about a legal commandment from the Lord, and Christ is a law. Christ is the law of life in Christ Jesus. We are talking about the kingdom of God. Before the decree, before the kingdom of God bring forth. “Bring forth,” 3205; it means “ to conceive,” “to birth” or “to beget.” Before the decree bring forth, before the kingdom of God -- I am sorry, the kingdom of God is conceived. The kingdom of God is -- we are talking about the conception of the kingdom of God. And where is the kingdom of God? Behold the kingdom of God is --

            Within you.

-- within you, and that kingdom must be conceived in you. James calls it the engrafting of the word of God to your human spirit, is the conception of the kingdom of God. So the phrase, “Before the decree bring forth,” is speaking about the conception of the kingdom of God. “The day pass as the chaff.” “The day” simply me- -- well, “the day” simply means “day,” but we also know that Christ is the day and that the carnal mind is the night or the darkness. So we have a lot of symbology here. The day shall pass. It says pass in the King James, but in the interlinear, it says “shall pass,” Strong's 5674. “Shall pass” can also be translated “to pass over,” “to pass through,” “to pour forth,” or guess what, “to offer as a sacrifice.” Can anybody see what this word is suggesting? Who is passing through what?

            [INAUDIBLE]

Amen, exactly. The conception of Christ is underneath the carnal mind, and when he gets strong enough, he penetrates and passes through that carnal mind and layers over on top of her, sealing her wickedness off. And that act is called the sacrifice. It is really the death of the carnal mind, so he is sacrificing her unto the righteousness of Jehovah. And I suggest to you that -- well, this phrase, “Before the decree bring forth,” the day pass, the kingdom of God is conceived and is passing through and covering over the chaff. And who is the chaff? The day pass as the chaff. Day is -- it means “day.” It can also be translated “age” or “time period.” As the chaff, Satan and the carnal mind, as the chaff. The Hebrew word translated “as” is not really a word. It is a prefix. Does anybody not know what a prefix is?

            [INAUDIBLE]

It is like one letter that comes before a word that has its own meaning. For example, if you have the word you can make -- you can put an R-E in front of it and make it remove, and it changes the whole word. Well, in Hebrew we have the same thing, so that which is translated “as” is merely one letter. It is the Hebrew letter Kaf, and Hebrew letters each ha- -- the letter in itself means a letter -- means a number, and most of them have a meaning of their own. The meaning of the Hebrew letter Kaf is wing, W-I-N-G. And from many studies in the prophets, we have found that wing -- the word wing signifies the spiritual aspect of the being, that person’s ability to fly, and we fly in the heavenlies, so wing is indicating the spiritual nature of whatever we are talking about. We shall translate the word that the King James translated “as” as “wing.”

I suggest to you then that the prefix Kaf plus the word translated “chaff,” which means Satan and the carnal mind, are speaking about the spiritual power of the chaff or the spiritual power of the carnal mind. The day as the chaff, the day of Satan’s spiritual power. This world system exists on two levels. We talked about this in the exhortation today. In the mind it is called death, and the expression of death in our physical environment is called Hell.

Alternate Translation, the first third of Zephaniah 2:2, “The kingdom of God is begotten.”

The reason I do not say conceived is that a man begets and  a woman conceives. That is the scriptural term, so I have made it begotten.

“The kingdom of God is begotten and shall offer death and Hell up as a sacrifice to Jehovah.”

So what has the Lord said to us? He says, you want to be set free? Discover that your true reality is spirit; confess that your spirit is married to Satan and in bondage to the carnal mind, OK. And I shall conceive Christ in you, and Christ shall pierce through your carnal mind and sacrifice her up to Jehovah. That is his promise to us. He is going to kill her for us. He is going to kill for us. That is how much he loves us. Hallelujah. I think we will break. I have lost a couple of you.

            Can you just repeat that -- you know, that last [?principle?]?

OK.

            [INAUDIBLE]

OK. You really should -- ladies and gentleman, I should not have to be -- again, this is not kindergarten. I should not have to be asking everybody -- and I have had to ask at least six times today, if not more. I should not be having to ask you to use the microphone. You want to -- yeah, say that again.

            Well, would you please repeat that last statement, the --

OK. I will try.

            [CROSSTALK]

I do not remember exactly what I said, OK.

Alternate Translation, the first third of Zephaniah 2:2, “The kingdom of God is begotten” -- where? In your mind, and that is Christ -- “and shall offer up death and Hell, which is the carnal mind and Satan -- you shall offer them up as a sacrifice to Jehovah.”

The kingdom of God is conceived inside of the carnal mind. When he is mature enough and strong enough, he will pierce through that carnal mind and layer over on top of it, encapsulate it, surround it and cut it off and offer it up as a sacrifice to Jehovah. I said the Lord Jesus Christ loves us so much that he is going to kill for us. He is going to kill the one who is killing us. We found in Romans 8 Scriptures that said we have the hope that the Lord Jesus Christ will subject the one who has subjected us.

Every evil that the carnal mind has done to us, the Lord Jesus Christ is already in the process of doing to the one who has done it to us. He loves us so much that he is killing for us. He loves us so much that he is destroying the transgressor for us. He loves us so much that he will point out our sins and rip them out of us no matter how loud we yell. He will not listen, and he will not stop, and we found several Scriptures saying this. He will not stop until we are in his righteous image, and for him to listen to our cries of I cannot bear it, I cannot stand it, it is too much, da-da, da-da, da-da, for him to listen to those cries when he knows that we can bear it, the Scripture says would be an act of hatred towards us because the true love of God delivers you from your affliction, no matter how hard you are yelling. Even though you are cursing him and you are accusing him of evil and you are stoning his prophets, the true love of God delivers you from the bondage of sin.

I remember when I was a little girl, my parents took me to the hospital for a tonsillectomy. I screamed like a lunatic. They had to carry me up scre- -- I screamed until they put the ether mask on my face. My mother did not take me out of the hospital. I think my father was there too. They did not take me out of the hospital. They still gave me the operation. Brethren, if you do not have this operation, you are going to die. If your carnal mind is not broken up and your human spirit freed up so that she can marry her true husband Christ, you are going to die. You have got to have this operation, and part of the operation is having your sins exposed. You cannot just close your eyes and have the Lord cut your sins out. Would that not be nice? But the way he set it up is that we must look upon our sins. We must confess them. We must repent, and we must join with the Lord Jesus Christ to cast them out of us. That is his requirement. That is how he is doing it, you know. You have to admit it -- that it is there. I think most of us could go through if we did not have to admit it was there. Just cut it out, Lord. Just cut it out. [?I know it?]. Just cut it out, you know.

            [INAUDIBLE]

Yeah. Just cut it out. I do not want to look at it, but he wants us to look at it. Is that not true? [AUDIO CUTS OUT] [INAUDIBLE] everybody. I want to hear what everybody has to say [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

            [INAUDIBLE] to Mary Jane’s dream that she had this morning, that she saw herself scrubbing all her relatives, and that is God scrubbing us to cleanse our sins. It is not e- -- it is not nice when you are scrubbed real hard.

Amen. It hurts.

            It can be very painful.

Yes. And, well, we had deliverance this morning. We had new order deliverance this morning. That is what we had here, new order d- --

            And the dream [?came to pass?].

The dream came to pass. Actually, the Lord was telling you that deliverance was coming in church this morning, and that is what happened. We had new order deliverance.

            [INAUDIBLE]

And what does Malachi say? He is coming to cleanse us with what? With fuller’s --

            [CROSSTALK]

-- soap, and is there not fire also? Fuller’s soap. Is it not something else?

            Refiner’s --

Refiner’s fire. He is cleansing our spirit with fire, refiner’s fire, which is Christ. Does anybody here not know that Christ can burn you? He burns you. His words burn you, and the fuller’s soap is the cleansing of the soul because the Levitical law provides that metal shall be purified with fire and that wood elements shall be purified or washed with water.

            [INAUDIBLE] In the dream, it was a big, round, wood tub.

Wood tub, typifying man’s carnality, yeah. Man is typified by wood in the Scripture, amen. We are being washed. Hallelujah.

            I think of the statement people make sometimes. Oh, he has got a wooden head.

A wooden head.

            [INAUDIBLE] us, and [CROSSTALK]

Who is within us?

            The pit is within us.

The pit is.

            And it brought back the thought -- the saying in the world, you are the pits. In other words, you are really full of evil. You are a lowlife, you know.

            [CROSSTALK]

We all stink.

            Yeah.

            [INAUDIBLE] [?stinking dead?].

            [INAUDIBLE]

            Your carnal mind is stinking.

            When you were drawing that, the Scripture that had came to me, and you said it later, was that the Lord will say I never knew you, [?and?] --

Oh, really?

            Yeah.

Praise God.

            [?You confirmed it later?].

You are really moving in, Celia. The Spirit is really manifesting in you.     

12/07/15 Transcribed by VerbalFusion

12/07/15 1^st Edit by BP