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-- -ant to. If you do not want to, just say pass.

            OK.

OK. And then I will come --

Yeah. I always thought he was talking about the people that were seeking for natural riches. I -- that is what I thought, and that these people that are called and going for their own will and the -- and seeking the things of the world, that the Lord was saying it is coming down. That is what I thought.

OK. Well, I believe that that is probably true on some level, OK, and I believe that the apostles, when they wrote these epistles -- is something on? I believe that the apostles spoke on a very deep level. Even in the event that it sounds carnal on the surface, they were speaking -- in those events, they were speaking in parables, just like Jesus. But I think a lot of the teaching, our carnal mind just automatically assumes that they were talking about a carnal thing. Romans, I think it is Chapter 13, for example, just -- I am not going to comment on it very much. I just want to put the right chapter in this message. Romans -- yeah, Romans, Chapter 13. I have heard a lot of preachers preach that that Sc- -- that chapter is speaking about secular authority, the police force and the army, et cetera, et cetera, but if you read it very carefully, Paul is speaking about the authority in the church, and, you see, this is the operation of the carnal mind.

The carnal mind in the church today, OK, is filled with rebellion and thinking and determined that they do not have to submit to the fivefold ministry that God has raised up t- -- and this is what they think. They think that they come to church. They give their 10 percent tithe, and every once in a while, they give their pastor a gift like he is their pet dog, and in many cases that is true. They keep him, and they take care of him, and they meet his needs, and that that is the bottom line, and that is all that they have to do. And they do not realize that the whole relationship in most -- I cannot say all because I do not know, but in most instances -- I guess, we are doing this again. I guess, God wants it in the message. And the average Christian does not realize that, in most instances, the relationship between the church and the pastor is out of order.

The church is mar- -- or the pastor is married to the church. The pastor is the spiritual man, and the church is his many-membered wife, OK. We see the operation, in this hour, of spiritual polygamy. And I tell you that when Christ is fully manifested in the earth, he will be one man with many wives, every member of the church. Christ is the only man who -- in this day and age, who is allowed to practice polygamy, and we know that polygamy was practiced in the Old Testament. A man could have as many wives as he could afford to take care of.

In the Western world today or in the Christian world today, it is illegal to have more than one wife because Jesus said, “Let each man have his own wife.” But, spiritually speaking, polygamy is still a reality when the husband is the Lord Jesus Christ and his bride is the many-membered church, and we see a type of that in the local fellowship today, one pastor and a many-membered wife. Now that does not mean that male pastors are allowed to engage in adultery. We are talking about spiritual things. The relationship between the pastor and the church is that the pastor ministers; the pastor gives. The male gives, and the bride receives. Well, the wife receives. That is God’s examples of relationship, OK.

And in the typical church today, the b- -- the wife is ruling. She is in control, and the reason she thinks she is in control and in fact is in control, many times, is because of money. And in this fallen world that we live in, money rules. Why? Because the truth is that power rules, and you cannot have power without money. You cannot have power unless you can enforce it, and you cannot enforce your power without money. If you are a dictator, you need an army behind you. You have to pay your men. You have to equip your men. You have to give them guns. You have to feed them. You have to take care of them. Money and power go hand and hand, OK.

The one who has the power is spiritually male, and the one who receives of the power is spiritually female. So if you go into the average church today and you see the situation where the church is holding the strings on the pastor because they are threatening to remove his money or they are threatening to vote him down because of their prestige or their pow- -- political power in the church, you have a condition where the wife is known as a jezebel. And if the wife is Jezebel and the husband is sitting for it, her husband’s spiritual name is --

            Ahab.

-- Ahab. He is a good little boy, and he does everything his wife tells him to do. And he wants something that he cannot get, his wife goes out and gets it for him using any means at her disposal. This is the scriptural type. Look it up and read about it yourself. King Ahab and his idolatrous wife, Jezebel, who threatened the life of Elijah, the prophet, God’s man of the hour, and would surely have killed him had she been able to succeed, and Ahab went right along with her. He tried to kill Elijah too, God’s man of the hour.

So we see in the church today, with only very few exceptions, the relationship between the pastor and the church, one of Ahab and Jezebel. The woman has the money; the woman has the power to cast the man out any time she wants. The woman has the control, and the result is that the church is weak, spiritually weak, and spiritually powerless and spiritually corrupt. And God may visit that church for a season, but he will surely leave in the hour that he says to the man, stand up and rule this fellowship, or you are going to be here without me.

And that is why we have whole denominations where you used to see the power of God move, and you do not see the power of God moving anymore because, brethren, the power of God does not move through the wife, and it will stay with the man long enough for the man to get up on his feet and bring that woman into proper order. And if the man fails to do it, the Lord will go get himself another man because there is no way Jezebel is going to twist the Lord’s arm to make her a pastor because the woman is not allowed to teach. I just blew everybody’s mind, right?

There is no male or female in Christ Jesus. We are talking about spiritual manhood. The one whose mind is Christ is a man. It has nothing to do with your body, so all you silly physical men out there that have refused to let God’s anointed, when they appear in a female body, preach, the day is coming that you must repent of your silliness, and I am sorry, but that is the truth. The woman is not allowed to preach. If your mind is female, you are not allowed to preach. If your mind is carnal, you are not allowed to preach. If your mind is Christ, if it is appearing in a donkey, you put the donkey in the pulpit. Only God has chosen to preach through men, so it is not likely you are going to find a donkey preaching, but if the Lord wants to do it, he can do it. Is that not true? That is true. Glory to God.

So we find many Scriptures where the Lord is speaking about his church, but the church does not want to believe it because they do not like what he is saying, if it applies to them, OK. The s- -- church does not want to believe that Romans, Chapter 13 is saying to the church, you have to submit to the authority that God raised up, and that means more than paying your tithes and putting your body on a chair on Sunday morning, that every authority that is truly been raised up by God has authority over your life in certain areas. And those areas are where Christ is moving to bring correction of ungodly attitudes, ungodly behavior, ungodly emotions.

That man of God says drop your wife off at my door tomorrow night; you do not do that. You do not have to read the Bible; you do not do that. If he tells you to commit suicide, you do not do that. And if he is talking to you about your lifestyle, your life attitudes, your life’s choices and it is truly a man of God, he has a right to do it, and very few people in the church today know e- -- have even heard this or would believe it if they hear it. Why? Because they do not want to believe it. They want to believe they have control over their own life, and you only have control over your own life while you are a bastard. As soon as you become a son, you have got a Father. You get a mother. You get a spiritual family, and you start to come under the authority of a God-ordained authority, and you will either walk in by yourself, or you will come in, in chains, if you are truly a son, one way or the other.

So back to James 5. “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.”

And I suggest to you that the rich men that the Lord is speaking to are the men who are rich because the Spirit of the Lord has engrafted to their human spirit. He is speaking about spiritual riches, and the only spiritual riches that I know about is, anybody? Yeah, Christ. Amen. He is the only spiritual riches. He is the gold, and he is bringing you to silver, and he is the pearl of great price, and he is the only thing that is worth anything. He is the only thing that cannot be corrupted in this entire universe. So all of you who are rich because the Holy Spirit has engrafted to your human spirit and Christ is being formed in you, it is time for you to howl and weep because your infancy is over, and the Lord is beginning to bring a correction to the way you think because the way you think determines what you say and what you do and how you act and what you do with your life.

And if you are aging, if you expect to die because everyone of your family that reached a certain age eventually die, if you do not believe that in this life you will go on forever, that means you need correction because, if you were perfect, you would not be aging; you would not be sick, and you would not be dying. So if you bear in your flesh the signs that you are a fallen man, you need correction in some area, and it is time for you to wail and howl because the judgment is headed your way. It is time for you to be toilet trained. It is time for you to dress yourself. It is time for you to start picking up chores in the house. Social pressures are about to be exerted upon you, spiritual, social pressures. You must conform to the standard. And our standard is?

            Christ.

The Lord Jesus Christ, yes. The Lord Jesus Christ. You must conform to the standard. You cannot be the only one who is going in your pants at 6 years old; you cannot do it. You cannot steal or murder; they are going to put you in jail. You cannot run around without your clothes at 10 years old; you have to get dressed. You must conform to the standards of the society in the natural, and you must conform to the Lord Jesus Christ spiritually, if you want to go on with God. And whether you want to go on with God or not, if he has called you, if he has engrafted to your spirit, if he is growing within you, if he has chosen you because you cannot choose him, he is adopting you, and you must conform to his standards.

And the part that most people have a trouble wi- -- have trouble with is that even if we agree in our heart and we agree, we will conform to the standard of the Lord Jesus Christ. The truth is we do not have the power to do so. We do not have the power, excuse me, to do so. There is a Scripture in the Book of Job where Job, lifted up in an attitude of pride, believing that he does not deserve the judgments which are falling upon him, says to the Lord, “Why are you doing this to me? Why do not you just tell me what you want and I will do it? Why do I have to go through all these trials?” And the Lord says to Job, Job, you are just lifted up in pride. You do not have the power to be righteous.

And there is only one way that you will become righteous, and this is true for the whole church today. Your carnal mind must be wounded. Your -- the errors of your behavior must be pointed out. Behavior that is -- that may be socially acceptable in this fallen world is not acceptable to God. You must conform to the standards of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, first, you must be shown what you are doing that is wrong, and, secondarily, you must try to conform, and you will find out that you cannot conform, and then the Lord Jesus Christ will bring that conformation by the wounding of your carnal mind and the forming of his Son in you. It is painful, so you are going to howl, and you are going to have misery.

It is just like telling that 5-year-old child, OK, that he has to [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- let us say a 2-year-old child, that he has to stop having that temper tantrum. That is the terrible twos. He cannot stop having a temper tantrum. Did you ever see a 2 year old having a temper tantrum? They cannot stop, so you let them lay on the floor. You just make sure there is nothing around that they could hurt themselves with, and you let them scream until they become so exhausted that they give up. And then when they come out of the temper tantrum, you love them, and you hug them, and you kiss them, and you tell them that you are sorry that they are feeling this pain, but they just cannot have everything that they want. OK. No, OK.

            [CROSSTALK] [?have a question?].

OK.

If I remember correctly, I am not sure in my family, but I do not think that it was allowed [CROSSTALK]

To have a temper tantrum?

Yeah. That you would just pick that child right up and whip them, and I thought it was not supposed to be expressed, like, a temper tra- -- tantrum, that they are supposed to be taught to stop doing that. But am I wrong?

Well, I do not really know, you know, s- -- I could not tell you that this is the authority of the Scripture. That is been my experience, that -- I do not know why you would whip them. I really do not know why you would whip them because the b- -- t- -- as far as I can see, the purpose of the temper tantrum is that the child must learn to deal with these emotions. Every fallen human being has raging passions within him, and the child must be taught to learn to deal with them himself. His ability to deal with them must be internalized.

            [?Oh, wow?] .

You see, so I cannot tell you that this is the authority of the Scripture, but this is my feeling. If you beat the child, what you are telling them is they are being punished for expressing honest emotion.

            Oh, wow.

And I would think, from where I am coming from, that that would cripple their ability to deal with emotion, yeah. But --

            I never knew that happened.

Yeah.

            Can I have this just --

Yeah.

            -- just for a second?

But if you let them go through what I just described --

            Yeah.

-- they will learn their own lesson that that kind of behavior will not accomplish their goal. What -- let us say they wanted a lollipop, and they are allowed to scream and yell until they are exhausted. They will learn that screaming and yelling will not get them that lollipop without being punished for their desires. Because, you see, listen to this, there is nothing wrong with wanting the lollipop, OK. And -- but what they need to know is that that behavior will not accomplish their goal, not so much -- it is true that that behavior is ungodly, but we know that 2 year olds have temper tantrums; it is in all the books. So rather than punish them for doing what is natural for a 2 year old, it is much better for them to learn that that is not going to work, so let us try the next thing.

Say please, junior, and you can have your lollipop. Do not want to say please, no lollipop. Ah! After they scream for half an hour, would you like to say please, junior? Please, mommy, I would like the lollipop. Here you are. Now I do not see why a parent should beat a child under -- when we have these choices as a parent, OK, either do what I just described or beat the child and tell them that expressing themselves in the only way they know how is wrong. Is it not better to let them find out for themselves that it just does not work? That is how I feel about it, but I do not have any scriptural --

            Yeah.

-- basis for it right now.

Well, that could be a very important point if -- because I know that we were spanked for -- we would be s- -- no emotion was allowed to be expressed screaming or crying because -- somewhat, but not that much because, even after being whipped hard, the release was to cry. Then we would be whipped for crying.

Well, that I do not agree with. Certainly --

            So I know there is --

-- you should be able to cry.

            -- something wrong with that.

Yeah.

But you are supposed to -- the child should be able to cry. That is the whole point, that they should be broken and then allow them to cry and then receive them. You know, but I think there was whipping for temper tantrums too, but -- I do not know about 2 years old, but -- it might have been, but, I guess, that it was thought that it would teach the child to live by the Spirit, yeah, or some way, some --

Well, the --

            I am not saying that they --

Yeah.

            -- thought that, I will teach them how to live by the Spirit, but --

Yeah.

            -- somehow, in their mind, it was like that is Adamic. I am cutting it.

Yeah.

            You know what I mean?

Well, it just seems to me it would do the child much better to just find out that it does not work.

            Yeah.

It does not work.

            On their own.

Yeah. Let them [CROSSTALK]

Because then they might grow up, psychologically, feeling like -- that they we- -- I do not know. It could be damaging, that they cannot express any emotion, and they are just trapped, and they have got to be perfect. That could have been a drive of perfection there, and I know out in public though it is really hard for parents to deal with that. [?I mean?], when I see it out in public, I want to -- I would think that the parents would want to make their kids stop it because I have seen them do that out, you know, like come out of stores and be jumping up and down and screaming and yelling and running away from their parent, running down the --

Well, that is not a t- --

            Now that is way out of order.

That is not a temper tantrum. Running away is not a temper tantrum. I would spank --

            You know, the mother has --

-- for that.

-- their hand, and, all of a sudden, they are screaming I want da-da, da-da, da, and turns and starts running away.

Yeah.

            I mean, do not the --

Well, that is --                       

            Are they not supposed to be spanked?

-- a different set of circumstances.

            Yeah.

I would just -- I really do not want to turn this into a child rearing conversation, but that is a different set of circumstances. When you are outside, the child has to do what you want them to do. You take them by the hand, and you bring them where they have to go. You know, you either carry them, or you drag them.

            Yeah.

OK. So as we were saying, Verse 1 of James, Chapter 5 is speaking about Christians to whom the word of God has engrafted. They have Christ. The adoption process has begun. They are no longer bastards doing whatever they want, rebelling against the authority in the church, but they are now in the proc- -- they are sons by faith, and now their spiritual makeup must conform to the Lord Jesus Christ, which will make them sons in the reality and that this correction is painful, and it comes through painful experiences, which makes us weep and howl because of our misery. And the reason why we have to be miserable is that we do not have the power to change. As much as we would like to, the chastening is necessary; it is called the judgment seat of Christ, and the judgments of God are merciful. They are painful at the moment, but they yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness, which is Christ, our internalized, unshakable ability to do righteousness. And at the time that that ability comes forth in us, the chastening stops, so it is just for a season.

The Hebrews knew that the judgments of God were merciful. If you look through the Psalms, they are crying and praying for God’s judgment because, without judgment, you will surely die. You will go on in your sins, and depending on -- well, m- -- sin, you reap what you sow every day, depending on how afflicted you are. You not only eventually will die from your sins, but you will have death manifest in your life every day, the destruction of relationships, the destruction of self-esteem, the destruction of employment opportunities. Destruction, when it is in your life, it is in your life every day. Sometimes it is in your life every hour, death. When it is in your mind, it is a part of every aspect of your life, so that carnal mind which is producing death in your life, it must be wounded.

Sometimes the Lord permits destruction to come upon your flesh. Sometimes the Lord lets destruction come upon your emotions, but that carnal mind, if he is bringing destruction into your life against your will, it means he is too strong. He is too strong for you to rise up and stop him from bringing destruction into your life, so the Lord Jesus Christ, because he loves you, comes and wounds your carnal mind or the expression of your carnal mind, which is the physical body that you live in. And you need to know this because you cannot run around saying that every bad thing that happens to you is Satan. Satan cannot touch you without permission from the Lord. He must have legal ground. There must be sin in your life for Satan to bring destruction upon you, so I --

[CROSSTALK] so what if you are gambling, a person who is gambling, and you just said that this person or these people -- that is a sin. Gambling is a sin, taking your hard-earned money and gambling, and -- that is a sin to me.

I believe so.

[?Before?] -- without paying your tithes first -- well, regardless of paying your tithes, so if that is an open door for sin and Satan is standing right next to him saying, look, I got him again, he is -- you know, he took no advice. He is still doing what I want with that sin that is there on him, and you have no control over this man, so let us let him fall into -- let him lose his money or let him -- let me have some victory over this guy. Let me have some fun for once. He will say, OK, let it be, maybe?

The Lord? He is -- are you asking me if the Lord --

            Right.

-- will do that?

            Is this correct?

Well --

            You just said that he opens -- he will open a door to --

Yeah.

So could this be one aspect of someone’s life where they think that they are winning and then, all of a sudden, wham, they lose a big one, and then they, wham, and they lose another one? Is that because of this particular sin that these things are [?occurring?], that he is opened that door for these things to happen?

[CROSSTALK]

And where was he when he was winning, winning, winning, winning, winning, or did the greed get too much for this person that he just had to let it happen?

Well, I think that gambl- -- when one gambles, one reaps what one sows. You just cannot win all the time. The whole world knows that. You do not have to be a Christian to know that, so God -- he is not a God that stands there watching everything that you do, ready to give you a couple of lashes when you do something wrong. That is not the way it works. There are spiritual laws that are set up in the world. Just like we have physical laws, if you jump out the window --

            [INAUDIBLE]

It -- well, [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. You could hurt you body. A bone could break, OK. Gambling, I believe it is ungodly because it is based on -- it is against scriptural principles that say if you do not work, you do not eat. It is an ungodly way of making money, and you will reap what you sow, and the Lord will let that continue until such time as he is ready to deal with you on that issue. When someone -- the Lord calls someone into the kingdom, there is no way they can be cleaned up of everything all at once.

So if there is sin in a person, he allows it? So what you are telling me is if a -- you come into the kingdom. He has accepted you as you are, which is his judgment --

Right.

            -- for righteousness upon you, I guess, right?

Mm-hmm.

So if this is the case, well, we know he has this in him, and we know he has this, but yet he has another side to him that we are going to work on, and we will wor- -- we will get rid of the evil in my time, but I am not going to let too much temptation come towards him, or -- is that fair to say, or [CROSSTALK]

Oh, I do not know about that.

            You do not know what he is thinking.

You are supposed to --

Well, there is a certain amount of temptation. I would believe that he is only going to give you so much that you cannot -- you can bear. He is only going to give you so much you can -- we talked about this the other day.

Well, that is -- we are talking about two different things now, OK. When the Scripture says he is only going to -- he is not going to give you more than you can bear, the Scripture is talking about persecution for righteousness’s sake. He is talking about you are, for example, going to church five nights a week, OK, and it is really to -- I do not know if that is a good example or not. If persecution is coming against you -- Lord, give me an example for this man. OK. You are doing the best you can in an area, OK, and you are trying as hard as you can and you just -- let us s- -- well, why cannot I think of an example?

Someone -- your boss, OK. Your boss is persecuting you, abusing you, pressing you to the wall. The Lord will not give you more than you could bear of that, but if you are willfully going out and gambling your money when you know that it is wrong, that comes under a different law, and the Lord will say, well, I told you it is wrong. I told you that not only should you not be gambling, but you have not -- from what you just told me, you have not fulfilled other monetary obligations. You are using money that is your tithe money; it does not even belong to you. You want to go gamble? Go knock yourself out, and you will reap what you sow, so that is a d- -- that is a reaping and sowing law. It is different than he will not give you more than you could bear, and he -- and as you reap, you will sow, and you are sure to get hurt because everybody that gambles gets hurt, and you will keep getting hurt until you start crying out to God saying, Jesus, please help me to stop.

Please -- and when you start crying out strong enough and hard enough that you are really convicted in your heart -- and I do not know where you are in your conviction, OK. But the Lord will let you get hurt by the natural reaping and sowing until you cannot take any more and you cry out, Jesus, you have got to help me because this is wrecking my life. At that point, he will come in and start to give you the strength to overcome, but you have to be crying out for the strength to overcome, and I am not too sure, but I do not think you are quite at that point yet. I think you are enjoying yourself with your gam- -- I could be wrong, you know, but I do not think that you are at the point where you are really down on your knees saying, Lord, I have just got to stop this gambling. I do not think you are at the point that you were at with your alcoholism, where you cried out and said, Jesus, I have just got to stop. This is just wrecking my life. I do not think you are at that point with your gambling. Am I wrong? I think you are enjoying yourself. You know, you are really not -- that if you could win, you would really go for it, you know. Well, that is where you are, right? That is OK. There is no condemnation in it.

So the Lord has to bring conviction of this sin to you. What does that mean? The Lord Jesus Christ has to bring in understanding in your heart that this gambling is so destructive to your life that you are going to be on your knees begging him to take it away from you. And the way he convicts you of your sin is that he lets you reap what you sow. I do not know what is g- -- you are going to lose all your money. I do not know how far it is going to go. You told me once -- you taught me something about gambling that I did not know, that you bet without money. Well, maybe you are going to bet without money. You are going to get some thugs coming looking for you one night. I do not know.

            [?I have done that?] [INAUDIBLE]

I do not know.

            [CROSSTALK]

Oh, well, that is good, y- --

            [CROSSTALK]

OK. That is dangerous, right? OK.

            It is very dangerous, yes.

That is very [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- you will get your arms broken that way, right?

            [INAUDIBLE]

It is dangerous, huh? So --

            [INAUDIBLE]

Yeah. Get into trouble. So please use the microphone. So the Lord is going to -- this is the reaping and sowing law where he is going to let you reap -- he is going to let you learn from this gambling just like he would let a non-Christian learn from it, but the second you reach a point where you are convinced that this gambling is bad for you and hurting you, then you cry out, Jesus, I have got to stop. Then it comes under another law which says he will not give you more than you could bear. Did I make that clear? OK.

So the Lord -- there is no way that he is going to even try to clean us all up at once because we are so dirty that, if he cleaned us up all at once, he would probably kill us.

It is like -- you ever saw the movie “Superman,” when he had lost his strength, and then he had received it back by going through this incredible thing? He had to step into this ice thing, and his -- the colors came and powers came, and everything came back, and his body reflected the image of a skeleton.

I did not see the movie, no.

            Well, that is -- he had lost his powers to fight off any --

            [INAUDIBLE]

-- wickedness, you know, the strength and the whole nine, and he lost it. He became mortal man, and when he got hit for the first time, he bled, and he we- -- he cried. He, you know -- and it is something like what you just said reminded me of that, how you can lose your str- -- you lose your strength in an area, but it a- -- it is all possible to come back, but you have to step into, you know --

[?Well?]  --

            You have got to let the enemy within come out.

Absolutely.

            Right?

Right. You have to lose your strength.

            You have to lose --

Lose your satanic strength, and then you are weak for a season, but then you receive the strength of Christ. And most people, when they start to feel that weakness, it terrifies them because they do not understand that it is just for a season, and then they will be strengthened in Christ. They think they are going to be weak forever, and you cannot be weak in this world. You are destroyed if you are weak in this world.

            [?It is true?].

You get stepped on. You become victimized. Terrible things happen to some people in this world because they are weak, so the average person, when they feel that they are being weakened, it frightens them. But you need to know that, if you are in Christ and that if he is moving in your life, that he will protect you during this transition period, and then it is just a matter of time until you receive strength in righteousness, which can never be taken from you once it is given to you. So you have to humble yourself and submit yourself for that season to be, literally, remade into a whole new man. That is the promise of the Scripture. You are going to be remade into a whole new man in the image of righteousness, and you will never be defeated.

You are going to become the head instead of the tail and the lender instead of the borrower, and that is not just speaking about money. That is speaking about everything in life. You are going to be -- what it means is you are going to become spiritually male, and you will be the one who will always be giving, but you are going to have something to give. You know, there are a lot of people in this world. They want to be big shots. They want to give advice. They want to give, but they do not really have the goods, so people who take their advice get into trouble, but in Christ, you will become the head and not the tail. You will have wisdom to give; you will have strength to give; maybe even you will have -- the day will come that you will have money to give, but you will have to be responsible to God that you give that money righteously.

But you do not become the head and the lender overnight, and some people have more spiritual problems than other -- however long it is going to take to straighten your head out and straighten your life out and straighten your behavior out, God has made a promise unto you. If you submit yourself unto him, he is going to make you the head and not the tail. He is going to give you a whole new life, but he has to break you because you are like a leg that is been set wrong, and the only way to get you in the right order is to break you. You have got to be broken, and most of the breaking, if not all of the breaking, comes through other people.

Now if you are under Satan’s judgment, if you are still in the reaping and sowing judgment, the people who will break you will be ungodly people. For example, some criminal who you owe money to because of a bet catches you in a dark alley one night; you are in the hospital for a couple of months. That is Satan’s reaping and sowing. But if you are blessed, you will come under the white throne judgment of Christ, where the Lord will put you under a minister who will point out your sins and tell you what you are doing wrong and give you an opportunity to repent and ask Jesus to help you. If you submit to that, the g- -- the pain involved with changing will be at a minimum. In -- if you will not submit or if there are certain areas in which you will not or cannot submit, then in that area, you are turned over to Satan to get your flesh wounded. Paul said that he turned someone over to Satan so that he would learn not to --

            Blaspheme.

-- blaspheme. OK. So choose ye -- but choose ye which way you are going to go, but the bottom line is, if God has put his mark on you, if God has determined to adopt you, you are going to change. And if he has called you to be a man of God, you are going to become a man of God one way or the other. And once he has put his mark on you, you have nothing to say about it. You are going to be a man of God however how long it takes, no matter what you have to go through, the he has to put you through, and people go through all kinds of things because they are running away from God. If you could just believe that there is no place to run and that he is going to get you one way or another, maybe you could batten down the hatches and just sit for the judgment. I know I had that revelation, and it went -- well, it took a few years, but I sat for it, you know, and it went pretty fast for me, faster than anybody else I know, actually. Praise the Lord.

“Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.”

It is really unfortunate that the King James does not give the full explanation that the misery is the judgment seat of Christ. It is unto the glory of God, and the end of it is righteousness. So because the church does not understand this, they assume that this prophecy is for the heathen, and we have this problem throughout a large segment of the church. They believe every judgment that is written in this word is for the heathen. They do not believe it is for them. Is that not true? They think they are saved and they are going to heaven. They are going to get their own mansion --

            [CROSSTALK]

-- and their own street of gold and that there is nothing more for them to do except to say I receive Jesus as my Lord and savior and spend the next 40 years sinning and -- against everybody and die and go to heaven, and they have been taught a lie.

            Yeah.

And if they are blessed enough for the Lord to receive them, they are going to be weeping and howling in the near future. Anyone else have any questions or comments on Verse 1?

            [INAUDIBLE]

OK. Verse 2. Will you take Verse 2? [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

“Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes.” I do not know. When I think of -- when I look at it, I can only go by what the f- -- what you said about it is not n- -- it is not the money part of it; it is spiritual. And it is like we just discussed with gambling, that once you have spiritually -- I assume, with this, it would be -- once you have tried to get there and you cannot do it on your will, that you are going to fall, and you will be eaten. You will be eaten alive. It is like the thought of someone going into a lion’s den and not having the spiritual power that David --

Daniel.

            -- Daniel had, excuse me, and being eaten. That is what this tells me.

Is there anything you wanted to say?

Yes. I think about -- when you were saying that this is spiritual, I am thinking, you know, how [?weep?]  -- because the misery you are going to go through when your f- -- carnal mind is exposed for what you really are and that your garments are moth-eaten [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- once the moth eats the garment, you cannot wear it anymore, so that is what is happening to us. We are losing our garments because our mind is dead, and it is the carnal mind, so he is saying weep and howl, you know, for the misery that comes upon you. I am thinking that is the judgment, death for sin.

Amen.

And your riches are corrupted. Your carnal mind is corrupted, and your garment is wearing out, so you better weep and howl and get yourself before God to change your heart.

Right. if you do not -- if Christ is not formed in you by the time your garment wears out, you are going to not have a mind, and if you do not have a mind, you are going to die because you cannot live without a mind. It is time for this creation to wax old like a garment. I believe that is the Scripture. The garment is waxing old, or this world is waxing old like a garment. I believe it is somewhere in the New Testament; I do not know where. So the whole world is waxing old. Our body is waxing old. The soul is waxing old. If you do not get Christ, there is going to be nothing left of you.

            Yeah.

If you have Christ in you and your body falls apart and your soul falls apart, Christ goes on for the life of the ages. He is the only thing that is incorruptible, and unless he is joined to our human spirit, we will cease to be.

So then the moth that has eaten through our garment is our carnal mind. The serpent is eating us up, right?

Well, that is an interesting ques- -- [AUDIO CUTS OUT] Scripture says, in another place, the only one that has the power to kill your soul is the Lord Jesus Christ, so I am just wondering if the moth is not typifying Christ. And we know in Revelation 9, the locusts are typifying the -- are typifying Christ. Most of the church world thinks the locusts are demons, but we found out that the locusts of Revelation 9 are Christ coming to eat -- and locusts eat vegetation, OK. Locusts eat vegetation, so Christ is eating the vegetation of the carnal mind.

But I was thinking the dust will be the serpent’s meat, so I thought the serpent was feeding on the garment.

Well, you may have a point there. I am just -- I have not really studied this. Well, your riches are corrupted. Christ is corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten, OK. I guess, we could say that the reason your garments are moth-eaten is because Christ is corrupting and is no longer preserving them, so that would mean that your garments are corrupting because of sin. OK. We could say that, but the bottom line is that God has cursed this creation. It is true. I think both are true, OK.

            [CROSSTALK]

God has cursed this creation.

            Yeah.

And if your soul and your body is dying it is because, yes, Satan is cor- -- eating it up, OK. He is -- the dust is the serpent’s meat, but God has cursed this creation, and God has empowered Satan. I believe God has empowered Satan. I believe when God pronounced the curse, he empowered Satan. He cursed Adam and Eve --

            [CROSSTALK] curse.

-- and the serpent, and that was the curse, that he empowered the Sa- -- that he empowered the serpent. So the bottom line is that God is responsible for all things.

            OK, yeah.

OK. And so the question is though is the moth the carnal mind or Christ, so I guess you are right, that the moth would be the serpent because if the moth is eating the garment because your riches are corrupted, then I would have to sa- -- agree with you that the moth is Satan in this particular Scripture. Did you follow what I just said?

            Mm-hmm.

Yeah, OK.

Oh, well, I was seeing it as a possibility, even though that he was saying your riches are corrupted, so I sent Christ after you. I was thinking --

Yeah.

            -- if you said that --

Uh-huh.

            -- I could still see that it could happen to be Christ.

Yeah.

            But --

But -- yeah, no. I do not think so. I think that you were right, OK, and that is what I call -- we were talking about this the other day. That is what I call working something through. You have to think about it. You are supposed to think and reason and eliminate certain decisions and choose other possibilities. You choose a possibility. You think about it, and you either accept it or reject it.

            [?Yes?].

Then you take another thought, and you think about it, and you either accept it or reject it, and sometimes your second thought results in your res- -- in your rejecting your first choice. It is called reasoning.

            Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

            I love just going --

OK.

            -- through the Scriptures.

That is what we are supposed to do, and --

            It is like [CROSSTALK]

Right. And nothing is written in stone. You could -- at any time, you could say the decision that I made, I was wrong. If you thought that that was God at the time but the day later or a week later you feel a witness in your heart that it was not God, it is OK to say, well, I guess, I made a mistake, or it was God at that time, but it was for that moment. That was then, and this is now. You have to be flexible and free to change as the spirit leads us because to have an attitude of heart or a condition of mind where you cannot change, that is death because what is good today may not be good tomorrow.

And the ideal example that I have given this fellowship many times is pride. The pride of man for the fallen, natural man is a weapon that man needs to survive. This world is a spiritual jungle. This fallen world, Hell, it is a spiritual jungle. If you do not have pride, you cannot survive in this world because everybody is out there trying to dominate or kill the other guy. But when Christ comes and says I am here to defend you, it is time for you to lay down your natural weapons. I want you to lay down the pride because now Christ is here, so at that point in your life, if you cannot lay down the pride, that which was a weapon which made life in this spiritual jungle possible has now become your worst enemy because he is separating you from Christ. Can you hear that?

            Mm-hmm.

Can you hear that? It is a very important point. Some people get in a religious bondage, and it kills them. G- -- I know somebody said to me -- let me give you another example. Somebody has said to me once, speaking about a preacher, that man, I believe he is the apostle called to Long Island, and as far as I am concerned, I said to the person, he was the apostle called to Long Island, and his ministry was powerful and glorious then. He is not the apostle called to Long Island now.

            [CROSSTALK] yeah.

He lost the call.

            Right.

And you are still following him. You have got a problem. The river of the Lord twisted, and you kept going straight, and you are in trouble.

You know what it is with Scriptures, it is like a -- more of a study. With prophecies and dreams, they are -- you know, well, they pass away, the Bible says, but my -- they are harder to really get into and try to figure -- it is -- the -- sometimes they are shaky. You cannot -- you do not know for sure what they are saying, you know. They are not, I guess, as solid as the Scriptures, and it is harder for me to deal with dreams and prophecies --

OK. But you --

            -- and [CROSSTALK]

-- still need to prac- -- you need to --

            Yeah.

-- practice. This was a good word for you.

            Yeah.

You need the practice.

            I agree.

OK. Praise the Lord. OK. That was Verse 2. “Your riches,” which is Christ, “are corrupted.” That -- let me go over what that means, “Your riches are corrupted.” Well, from the minute Christ begins to be formed in you, your carnal mi- -- it is an ongoing process. It is a gradual procedure. It is a process that Christ is growing up in you, and as he grows up in you, your carnal mind is supposed to be -- as Christ increases, your carnal mind is supposed to be decreasing, OK. Another way to say it, as Christ is formed in you, your carnal mind should be corrupting.

So what James is saying in Verse 2 is that, if Christ is corrupting, it means your carnal mind is going in the wrong direction, and the roles have reversed. Christ is corrupting, and your carnal mind must be increasing. Somehow you got messed up there, and you started to increase instead of decrease, and because you started to increase, Christ is decreasing. So you better cry out to Jesus to help you because somehow your carnal mind found increased strength and is taking dominion over your Christ mind, and the process of spiritual growth has been reversed in you. And if it does not -- if it is not reversed back again, Christ in you shall corrupt to the point that he aborts and completely dies. So the second you get the slightest inclination that you are going backwards, you better fall down on your face and cry out to the only one who can help you.

The only one who can help you is the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not idolize your pastor. If you cry out to the Lord Jesus Christ and he answers your prayer through your pastor, that is OK, but if you think your pastor can save you from falling, you are as good as fallen because no man can save you from falling. Only the Lord Jesus Christ can save you. He is your help, and he will keep you from falling, and he will do it through other human beings, but do not go directly to the human being. Go to Jesus, and let him pick the one who he will help you through. Amen. Do not make that mistake. If you put all your eggs in your pastor’s basket and your pastor falls in the ditch, you are going right in the ditch with him. Do not do it; be smart.

So your Christ is corrupted, and your soul and your mind are moth-eaten, and your body are moth-eaten. It depends on where you are coming from. We can say your -- we c- -- I know we can say your undergarment is your mind, and your overgarment is your soul, or we can your undergarment is your soul, and your overgarment is your body pretty much in accordance with how you are interpreting these Scriptures, but technically speaking -- I know I said it a little differently earlier. Earlier I opted for the more carnal translation. I said that your undergarment was your soul, and your overgarment was this body. For whatever reason, I did that. I do not know, but technically speaking, if you are coming out of a spiritual mindset, your undergarment is your mind, and your overgarment is your soul, and the Scripture is not really dealing with this body except that we know if your soul is corrupted, you will g- -- have a disease in this body for sure. Leprosy in the soul produces leprosy in the body. Leprosy is a type of sin. But, technically speaking, the garment which the Lord is weaving, it is a garment for the spirit, and we are really talking about the mind.

            [INAUDIBLE]

We are talking -- the garment that the Lord Jesus Chwi- -- Christ is weaving --

            [CROSSTALK]

-- is the mind.

            -- the mind.

I know. I --

            [CROSSTALK]

-- do not -- yeah, it is the mind.

            The mind. Then the mind is moth-eaten.

But the -- in the English, the word garments is plural. I do not know whether or not it is plural in the Greek, OK, and I know that, in Bible days, men wore two garments. They wore a l- -- a type of loincloth. I guess we would call it underwear today, and then they wore a robe. So the undergarment is the mind, and the overgarment is the soul, and God does not really deal very much with this satanic body. But in the context of James 5:2, it probably does include this physical body because if your mind is corrupted and your soul is corrupted, then this flesh is going to be corrupted; it has to be. OK.

Verse 3. I think you are up.

“Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.” OK. I guess, it is talking about the gold and the silver is cankered, so it cannot be the gold and silver that comes from Christ. And the -- it is proven it is going to be a witness against you that it is not Christ, right? And it shall eat your flesh as it were fire. It sounds like the judgment that comes from Satan. Is that right?

Well, I do not know. We are just going to talk this through and see. Would you do me a favor and look the -- this verse up in the amplified for me while we are talking about it? Did you have anything that you wanted to say, Joseph, on this verse? OK. My feeling off the top of my head is that it is spiritual. I know that gold typifies the spirit, and silver typifies the soul. Pure silver typifies the soul which has been saved, and we are told in one of the prophets that reprobate silver speaks about a soul who is not -- which has not in fact been saved. So you are -- let us just try it out. Your spirit and your soul is cankered. What does it say in the amplified for cankered?

            [INAUDIBLE]

            Completely rusted through.

Completely rusted through.

            [CROSSTALK]

Pardon me?

            Corroded.

Corroded. OK. Let us try and work this through. What is rust? Rust is a byproduct of metal being exposed to the air. Iron exposed to the atmosphere produces a byproduct that is not functionable in this world, OK. Now we know that gold and silver do not rust. It is iron that rusts. Iron rusts. Gold and silver does not rust. That is one of the primary g- -- qualities that makes gold and silver valuable is that gold does not produce any byproduct when it meets the air. It g- -- it [?rain?] -- maintains its value. Silver will tarnish, but you just wipe the tarnish off, and the silver is still good. But iron, the rust eats away until you cannot use the iron anymore, so we have an inconsistency here, which would indicate to me that it is speaking about spiritual gold and silver because we know that spiritual gold can corrupt if it is not yet in perfection.

Now listen to this, OK. This is very interesting. Rust appears on the surface of iron, OK, and eats down into it. If you have Christ being formed in you and the carnal mind appears on top of the Christ mind and starts eating it up, you might be able to say that the gold of your spirit is corrupting. Can you hear it? OK. And I think that is what James is saying. Christ is being formed in you, but the carnal mind is on top of you, and he is eating down into the Christ. And if you do not put a stop to it, he is going to totally consume that embryo or that fetus of Christ that is in you. So your gold and silver, your spirit and soul, which is in the process of being renewed because Christ is present, is showing signs of rust. Something is wrong. What does it mean? It means your riches are being corrupted, and your garments are being moth-eaten.

And then we see “the rust of them shall be a witness against you.” Well, natural rust could not be a witness against you, but if the spiritual rust is the sign that the carnal mind is appearing -- you know, when a piece of iron is completely rusted out, you cannot even see that it is iron; it just looks like a piece of junk, right? It is all red and ugly, and if you touch it with your hands, it comes off on your hands, and you get dirty, and you cannot even see what that piece of metal was before it rusted out, so it will be a witness against you. Even if Christ is being formed in you, if you do not take care of what is being formed in you and that spiritual rust forms over your Christ to the point that when someone reaches out to touch you they get dirty, OK, it is going to be a witness against you.

Let me give you another Scripture along this line. “Jesus said, Ye are the salt of the earth, but if your salt has lost its saltiness, what good is your salt?” What he was saying is your spirit is a preservative. Salt is a preservative. If your spirit is not doing the job of preserving your soul and your body, what good is it? So if you have Christ in you but your carnal mind is so strong because you are still in agreement with your carnal mind that he is covering over your Christ mind and corrupting every potential for righteousness in you so that all that could be seen in you is your carnal mind, what good is having Christ formed in you? If Christ is being formed in you and you are living out of your carnal mind, it is going to be a witness against you that your spiritual riches are showing rust. You have not maintained them. You have not done the maintenance on it. What is the maintenance that will preserve your spiritual gold and riches? What is the maintenance? Confession of sin.

            Exposure.

Exposure, confession of sin, repentance and deliverance. You have got to get that rust off. Rust -- if you catch rust before it really eats everything away, you can preserve the metal. Can you not? If it is just a thin layer of rust, you get some kind of rust cleaner or whatever they call it. You clean it off, or maybe you have to shave it off with some machine. I am not sure. And then you put some kind of preservative on the iron, and you seal it. You put a sealer on. You seal it off, whatever you put on there, you know. So if your rust is showing on your Christ mind, if all you could see is rust when I go looking for Christ, all I could see is rust, it means you are not confessing your sins. You are not repenting, and you are not getting the deliverance. And the very fact that I get rust when I reach out for your Christ is a witness against you. In other words, you are your own witness that you are not living out of Christ, but you are living out of your carnal mind. When you have an opportunity to do good and you touch another person and they get dirty because you touch them, it is a witness against you that you are not doing your part to bring forth Christ in you.

So your gold and your silver is cankered; it is rusted. “And the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire.” Well, your flesh is your soul. Glory to God. “And the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and the rust shall eat your flesh.” Well, I suggest to you that the rust, if it is the carnal mind, is going to be eating your flesh, which is in Christ. That is what it is saying. It is c- -- it is -- following through from Verse 2, your Christ in you is corrupted, and it is corrupted because your carnal mind is eating your Christ flesh as if it were a fire, spiritual power.

“You have heaped treasure together for the last days.” I feel like I have lost you, but I believe this is what the Lord is giving me, OK. The reason judgment is falling on you -- Verse 1, the reason judgment is falling on you is because Christ in you is corrupted, and your mind and your soul are being destroyed. Your gold, your spirit, and your silver, your preserved soul, is rusted. It is not doing the job that it is supposed to do. It is eaten. It is being destroyed. People that reach out for you for help are not getting help; they are getting dirty. And the -- your own witness within you that you are not confessing your sins and getting repentance is that when you try to minister, people are not getting help, but they are getting dirty instead, and that that rust, your carnal mind which has risen up in power, is consuming your Christ flesh like a spiritual fire.

“And you have heaped treasure together for the last days.” I am not sure what that means. What does that say in the inter- -- in the amplified, that last phrase there?

            “You have heaped together treasure for the last days.”

Well, I am going to have to go past that because I really do not know what it means. Does that --

            [?Are we in?] Verse 2?

Yeah, the last phrase of Verse 2. What does your translation say?

            Well, it says, “Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes.”

Oh, I am sorry, Verse 3.

Oh. “Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days.” So seek and ye shall find, if not --

Well, off the top of my head, what comes to me is Jesus’ statement, is that you have -- I cannot quote it exactly, but you have gathered -- you have given the whole world --

            [CROSSTALK]

-- and this night -- you have gained the whole world, and this night your soul is required of you. So he may be speaking about -- we could say in the natural that these men that are in this condition, they have tried to gather up natural riches for themselves thinking that their salvation is money, or we can also say that they are into self-preservation. If we want to take this on a deep spiritual level, we talk a lot about self-preservation in this ministry. So I present both possibilities to you.

There is nothing wrong with having money as long as you know that your savior is Jesus Christ and that your money is not your savior, OK. If Jesus gives you the money, there is nothing wrong with it, but if you think that money is your savior -- and going back to what we said with Verse 1, if you think because you are tithing and your financial success, that that gives you authority in the church, that that gives you the right to be a jezebel over your pastor, OK, this attitude towards riches is causing your gold to corrupt and your silver to corrupt, and the rust is going to kill you. And you have heaped up riches for yourself in the last day. That is what God is giving me, so it could be natural money, or it could be self-preservation, that you are sacrificing the Christ in you because you are heaping up salvation unto yourself by pr- -- by trying to save your own life with the fallen man’s weapon, which is --

            The carnal mind.

-- yeah, the carnal mind and pride.

            That is what I was thinking is --

Yeah.

            -- the heaping up the treasure of the carnal mind.

Yeah, exactly. Let me say it again, that the reason your Christ mind is corrupting is that you are living -- I mentioned it earlier, is that you are living out of your carnal mind. You cannot seem to believe that you have to stop defending yourself in the old ways and start using Christ’s ways because it appears to the carnal mind -- it [?compere?] -- it appears as weakness, and it frightens a lot of people. They believe that they are vulnerable, and they are not willing to give up their old ways of defending themselves. And because of that, it is causing the Christ mind to corrupt and to produce the roo- -- the rust, and the carnal mind is increasing. And that is what I have from it without studying it. That is as much as I have gotten.

            Can I read the one that -- it had a reference to the -- another Scripture?

Sure.

It was Romans 2:5, “But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up th- -- unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” I thought that definitely related to it --

OK.

-- because the treasuring up to yourself wrath is your -- in your own carnal mind against -- that you are up against the judgment of God.

OK. Anybody else? OK. We will go on to Verse 4. That was a very deep interpretation of that Verse 3. It was very deep, OK. Joseph, do you want to take Verse 4?

            [INAUDIBLE]

I am in the King James, but --

            [CROSSTALK] [?same thing?].

            No. That is New --

            [CROSSTALK]

            -- NIV. This is amplified. Do you want the amplified?

            [CROSSTALK] [?the cheapest?]. What verse [?is this?]?

Verse 4.

            “Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.” Continue on or --

            [INAUDIBLE]

This is a very symbolic chapter apparently. It is really hard to just comment on off the top of your head. Is there anything you would like to say about it, Joseph?

Well, I can only think of in a worldly sense back in these days, that -- and it goes into nothing whatsoever what we have finished discussing 1 through 3. This just throws something new at me. It is like the wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you f- -- you know, cheap labor.

Right.

Hard labor, cheap money, and they are saying to themselves, well, how could he have done this to us? Mentally and physically crying. And then they go on. It says the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty, and it appears that God can hear cries like this, and he is know that you -- and he knows that you are overworked, that he is going to bring judgment upon the person who f- -- who has not satisfied you with your -- you know, paying you your right wages that you had coming to you. Spiritually speaking about it, I do not know what I could share because I do not see -- I think it is a mouthful, like you said. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Well, that is fine. That is good. What we are doing in this message is we are getting a surface interpretation and a deep interpretation. That is excellent. I think it is an excellent balance, and I think that was a very good evaluation. Is there anything you would like to say on that verse, Rita?

It just says in the amplified, “But look, here are the wages that you have withheld by fraud from the laborers who have reaped your field, crying out for vengeance, and the cries of the harvesters have come up to the ears of the Lord of Hosts.” I just have a question. Who is the spiritual hire?

OK. Well, without answering your question directly, it appears to me at this point that James is now in the natural, and I now go back to that last phrase of Verse 3, and I believe that what is happening is that James is indicting these Christians that call themselves Christians, who are cheating their employees. He is saying -- look, let me go briefly over Verse 1, 2 and 3. He is saying, look, you rich men, you have Christ. Apparently, they are rich in the natural. C- -- now as we look at Verse 4, I see that he is talking to men who are rich in the natural, but they also have to be rich in the spiritual because they would not be under judgment if they did not have Christ, OK. And, apparently, he is talking both in the natural and in the spiritual in Verse 2 and 3, but that last phrase of Verse 3 says you have heaped up treasure together -- he is talking about money, natural money, there, and he is saying this is how you have heaped up the natural money; you have cheated your employees.

            I --

You want to say something?

[INAUDIBLE] I do not know where this message is going, but sometimes I think that at where I am at, in my walk with God, I say this to myself, wages that I think I should be earning. I do not know if it is self-centered or suffering or whatever you may call it, but I think of this often, without even knowing what I was just reading. This thought comes to me, and I say, well, Lord, if you are going to bring judgment -- and I see judgment at my work, you know. Something breaks down or, you know, something happens, and it comes to pass.

You just have to be very careful that you should know -- listen to me -- that God is your provider. And if your boss is underpaying you, that it is the Lord’s place to support you and that vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and he is the one that brings judgment. So you would not want to come under judgment yourself because you just do not understand this, OK. You have to be careful.

So what I s- -- what I just said, you could understand where I am coming from, right?

I understand where you are coming from.

But now when I said to you that sometimes things just happen un- -- [?for?] unknown reasons, and I say to myself, well, is that judgment, or could that be judgment because of these -- of some other -- or could it be sin on a person’s life? So this is where you are telling me to be careful.

Be careful that you are not wishing for judgment or that, if it is judgment, that you are not rejoicing --

            Oh, I know.

-- at this judgment because God is going to take care of you one way or another, OK. And, besides, he is a heathen; he is not a Christian, so God is having mercy on him, so just do not get into trouble, you know, with your mind. You know what I am talking about? Do not be condemning your employer with your mind, but be looking to Jesus to meet your needs, whether Jesus meets your needs by softening your employer’s heart or by getting you another job. That is up to the Lord, but another Scripture says do not judge another man’s servant, so the Lord take will take care of everything.

So he is saying, you rich men, you are rich in the spirit; you are rich with -- you have received the wealth of God. But you are heaping up treasure for the last days by cheating your employers. “Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth” -- the laborers are crying out to God, “and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.” Father, I just pray, if there is any spiritual interpretation of this, that you give it to me now because we are just hoofing this, and I have not really had time to pray about it. Do you have an idea? No.

            Oh, for number 4?

For a spiritual interpretation --

Yeah.

-- of that?

I was just -- I was going to ask you do you see any spiritual interpretation of this at all --

Uh-huh.

            -- because I was --

Yeah.

You know, I was looking for it, to see if there was also a spiritual interpretation.

Right.

            The only thing is -- I can think of is that the field could be your mind.

The field is a symbol of your mind.

And the hire -- maybe the hire is the spirit because the hus- -- the spirit is crying out because the carnal mind has done wrong to her maybe. I do not know, or Satan is crying out again- -- for --

Yeah.

            -- the Lord to -- for vengeance against Satan maybe.

I do not know. It seems to be pretty natural, “which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth” -- at the moment -- and as I said, I am hoofing this; I have not studied it. I really cannot see any spiritual application to that at the moment except that you are calling yourself Christians, and judgment is upon you because you cannot have Christ and be treating your laborers unfairly.

Now I have not looked at this in the Greek, OK, but what [INAUDIBLE] [AUDIO CUTS OUT] OK. The Scripture which is coming to me is Jesus saying the fields are white unto harvest, but the laborers are few. The harvest is referring to the glorification. The word, harvest, in itself means the separating of the fruit from the vine, and in this natural world, once you pluck the fruit, there is no more use for the vine, and the vine usually dries up in the field, and the farmer comes and rips it up and chops it up and turns it back into the soil as fertilizer.

Now the plant for the life of Christ is humanity. We are the spiritual plant, and when we produce the fruit of Christ to a degree of maturity where he no longer needs a human body to survive in -- and the only one that this has happened to is the Lord Jesus Christ. He no longer needs a human body. He can take any form he wants. He is a glorified man. Once that happens, the body is no longer needed. The plant is no longer needed, and just as in the natural, so it is true in the spiritual. Jesus’ body -- if you can hear it, hear it.

I am going to repeat what I just said to you. In the natural, when the fruit is separated from the plant, the plant is left in the fields until it dries up, and it is ripped up by the farmer. It is chopped up. It is turned into the ground. It is plowed under, and it is used as fertilizer. Does anybody know that that is true? Anybody here know that? That is what is true. In the natural, when the spiritual fruit is mature enough to live without this human body, the human body dries up and is chopped up. Spiritually speaking, it is broken down into its basic atoms, and it is turned in. It goes inward to the inward parts of the spiritual man, and the spiritual man just swallows him up, and he is turned under. That is what happens, and that is what happened to Jesus. So the harvest is speaking about glorification, the full spiritual maturity of Christ in us to the point that he does not need a human host anymore.

So let us try and apply that to this Scripture here. This should be interesting. So, “Behold, the hire of the labourers” -- those who have been hired to do this spiritual labor, who are we? We are the natural man in whom Christ is coming forth, and our spiritual labor is that which needs to be done to separate the fruit from the vine. We must confess our sins. We must repent, and in Christ we are supposed to be killing the carnal mind.

We are supposed to be -- what is the harvesting? The separating of the fruit from the vine. The problem in our spiritual life is that the vine will not let us go. Christ does not want to let us go, so the harvest is the killing of the carnal mind, which will simultaneously result in the maturing of the fruit and the ultimate separation. The labor which results in the harvesting, brethren, is the rejection of our carnal mind through confession of sin and repentance. It is going to dry up, and it is going to die as we live our life through Christ, and our living our life through Christ will mature the fruit of Christ, and our denial of our carnal mind will case that mind to dry up and die, and that is the labor of the harvest.

And James is saying that there are some men who have been hired to labor. That means Christ was given to them in their hearts, and they “have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud.” The only thing that comes to me h- -- Jesus said in another place that he came for the fruit. He said it in a parable. He came for the fruit, and the people that he left in charge of his vineyard would not turn the fruit over to him, would not -- what does that mean? It means that there are pastors out there who are bringing forth the fruit of Christ in their congregation, and when they see the fruit of Christ in their congregation, they want to possess it for themselves. They do not want Christ in the individual to ascend and have the freedom to express himself, but they want to hold onto the fruit that comes forth in their congregation to build their own kingdom. Do you know what I am talking about?

            Yeah.

OK. Do you know what I am talking about? OK. So we can see, possibly, c- -- saying that these rich men are men who have the ability to bring forth Christ in other men, and they have reaped the fields. They have built h- -- their ministry. Christ in the individual be- -- has built up the ministry because the ministry is not just a pastor. Every member of the congregation comes. We are told in another place everyone comes with a contribution. Come with a testimony; come with a song; come with a dream; come with a question. Everybody together makes this fellowship what it is, and everybody together makes this service, every service, what it is, and the Lord clearly says whatever Christ has given you, bring it to the service, and you should have the opportunity to manifest  Christ so long as it is Christ.

So we see that there are rich men, men who are rich in Christ, and they are bringing forth Christ in other people, and they have reaped down the fields. They have killed their carnal minds. Christ is appearing in them, OK, but you have not paid them. You have not let them manifest the Christ that is coming forth in them, and they have cried out to the Lord of hosts. Now, brethren, if you think this is a way-out interpretation, I want to tell you this was my experience. This was my experience with the man who raised me up, and I thank God for everything that he taught me, but when he saw Christ coming forth in me, he decided he did not like it, and he tried to capture it, and he would not let me go. And I cried out to God. I cried out to God; that was exactly my experience.

And the Lord set me free in a manner that I would have never expected. I had no intention of ever leaving that church; I wanted to stay there for the rest of my life. I expected the Lord to speak to the pastor and show him that he was crushing me, but that is not what happened. The Lord pulled me out and gave me my own ministry, so you never know how God is going to set you free, but I do believe that there is a spiritual application to Verse 4, as I have just told you. Glory to God. Any questions or comments on Verse 4?

Verse 5. I think it is your turn, Rita.

“Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.”

And what does that say in the amplified?

“Here on earth, you have abandoned yourselves to soft (prodigal) living and to the pleasures of self-indulgence and self-gratification. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.”

Do you have anything to comment on that?

Well, I guess, the -- yeah, let us see. The day of slaughter is the day of the Lord, right?

Mm-hmm.

That he cuts off the carnal mind, and they fattened their carnal mind in the day that it was going to be cut off.

Excellent. Instead of starving it to death, they are fattening it, amen. Do you have any comments on that, Joseph?

            [?No?].

OK. That was excellent. “You have lived in pleasure on the earth.” Brethren, we are not supposed to be living in pleasure on the earth in the day of slaughter. On the day of slaughter, we are supposed to be fasting from the pleasure of the soul realm so that our carnal mind dries up and dies, OK. The day of slaughter, it is the day of slaughter of the carnal mind. At the same time, it is the day of the harvest of the fruit of Christ. Christ must increase, that -- we must decrease, that Christ should increase. Our -- every aspect of our soul life must decrease in order for Christ to increase, so it is the day of slaughter. Christ is here, and the only thing that is going to bring this separation is a fasting from soulish pleasure.

And if you fatten your carnal mind, you automatically produce corruption in your Christ mind, so we are back to Verse 2. “Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.”

In Verse 5 we are told how it is happening. Instead of slaughtering your carnal mind, you have made her fat, and it is either one way or the other. Either your Christ is increasing and your carnal mind is decreasing; either your Christ is being built and your carnal mind is being slaughtered, or your carnal mind is being fat and your Christ mind is corrupting. Jesus said either you are for me or you are against me. You cannot walk the line. Either you are going forward in Christ and your carnal mind is being killed or your carnal mind is being built and your Christ is being killed. There is no such thing as neutrality; it has to be one way or the other. You cannot serve God and mammon, and most Christians that hear that Scripture think it is talking about money. Well, it -- Jesus is talking about money, but much more than money. You cannot serve God and mammon. One must increase, and the other must die, and there is no getting around it. You have a question?

There is such a thing, though, of going five steps forward and four steps backwards?

Yes.

            But you are still moving in Christ --

Mm-hmm.

            -- when you do that?

As long as the overall result of your walk is that you are going forward. I do not care if you are crawling, OK. When you look at where you have been six months ago compared to where you are today, if you are ahead, you are on safe ground. You have got to be going ahead. If you are backsliding compared to where you were six months ago, you better cry out to Jesus because you may need some help. Christ Jesus in you is not strong enough to overcome your carnal mind, so you better ask Jesus for help.

There is no shame -- you see, there is no shame in being overcome. There is no shame in saying that Christ Jesus in you has not been strong enough for your car- -- to overcome your carnal mind; there is no shame in that. The shame is in having so much pride that you cannot cry out to Jesus and say, Jesus, I am not strong enough. This carnal mind is too strong for me in this area. I am being overcome in this area. Not being able to do that is the sin of pride, and the shame is in the sin of pride. There is no shame in being weak because the carnal mind is just too strong for all of us.

Some of us are stronger in certain areas than others, and that is ha­- -- well, the Scripture says strengthen your brother. S- -- give each other of your strengths. Where you are weak, I will give you my strength; where I am weak, you give me your strength. That is what it is all about, but there is no shame in being weak in the kingdom of God. Maybe in this world there is a shame in being weak, but God knows that we are all weak. He knows, so confess it, but you do not go confessing it to someone that is going to kill you. You have got to confess it to someone who -- confess it to Jesus, and then confess it to someone in Christ that you trust. You do not go confess it to someone who is going to really take advantage of you. When you tell it to them, you have to have wisdom.

            [?They will?] condemn you.

Or condemn you. No. You have to use wisdom.

So Verse 5 says you have lived in pleasure on the earth. Again, I have not seen the Greek. “You have lived in pleasure on the earth, and you have been wanton.” But I suggest to you what this Scripture is talking about is that you have not, in any way, restrained your fleshly appetites. You have just given in to everything. Now if you are a carnal person, that may not be the worst thing in the world, but if you are called to Christ, you are supposed to be moving into Christ, and moving into Christ always requires a sacrifice.

As you move into Christ, you lose something of your carnal mind, and I suggest to you that, although this Scripture might mean that the person was buying themself [sic] anything they wanted -- some people might say it is talking about sexual pleasure. I do not know. It is not clear to me that it means that. It might mean that, but on the deep spiritual level, what it is meaning is that you have given yourself -- you have given your soul everything that she has wanted, and if you were truly moving into Christ, you could not possibly be giving your soul everything she wants because moving into Christ requires a sacrifice. If you are truly pressing into the kingdom and you truly want God, every day your sins are being exposed; every day you are required to confess them; every day you are required to repent, and that is a price. It is killing your pride. So if you are living in wanton pleasure, it means you are feeding your pride; you cannot be doing both.

So I suggest to you that the bottom line of this phrase in Verse 5, “You have lived in pleasure on the earth” -- you have lived in the pleasures of your carnal mind, and you have wantonly engaged in spiritual adultery with the carnal mind. You have denied yourself nothing of this world, which says to me by reverse inference that you have sacrificed nothing for Christ, that that which you could gain from Christ without giving anything of your carnal mind up, you have taken. But anything that requires a price, you have refused to pay the price. That is what this verse says to me, and I know people like that. They are not willing to make that extra effort. If it does not come easy to them, they just will not reach out. If God feeds them like they are infants, they will take it.

You have to press in. You have to get to church when you do not feel like going. You have to listen to a tape when you do not feel like listening to it. You have to shut your mouth when you feel like screaming. You have to sit down and be quiet even when think your pastor or your boss is wrong. You have to be pressing in, taking dominion over your own soul and emotions. You have to fighting the war, or the war is fighting you. And if you are not fighting this war, if you are not pressing in, you are a captured soldier. You are a prisoner of war. There is no battle in your life. If Satan is leaving you alone, it means you are leaving him alone. That does not sound too good to me.

So you have lived in pleasure on the earth of your carnal mind, and you have been wanton. You have been engaged in full-scale spiritual adultery with your carnal mind. “You have nourished your hearts,” and I remind you that we have two hearts. A heart is another word for mind. We have a carnal mind or a carnal heart, and we have a Christ mind or a Christ heart, and I suggest to you that this Scripture is saying you have nourished the wrong heart, and that is proven out by the next verse which says, “as in the day of slaughter.” And we know that Christ is not being slaughtered, so in the day that your carnal mind is supposed to be slaughtered, ripped to pieces, you have been feeding her and strengthening her and making her fat.

Any questions or comments on this verse here? Would you take Verse 6 and then Joseph could take the next two? He is busy making some notes. Please.

“Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.” The amplified is, “You have condemned and have murdered the righteous, innocent man while he offers no resistance to you.” Oh, is that talking about the just offers no resistance?

Mm-hmm. I believe so.

            So maybe that is the carnal mind condemning and murdering Christ.

I believe that verse can be taken on two levels. We can be a human being who is breaking the heart of the righteous man, and a righteous man is not a perfect man, but a righteous man is the man who is really doing the best he can to live out of Christ and to be honest. Maybe he is a man who used to steal to make his money, and he is determined to not steal anymore. Here he is trying to earn a decent living, and you are robbing him. So I see it on that level, and I also see it on the spiritual level, that you yourself, you wicked man, are living out of your carnal mind, and you are killing the Christ mind in you.

So then, “and he offers no resistance,” meaning that the righteous man will, for a season -- this will just take the wrong -- is that it? Is that right?

I do not know that that is what it means. In this instance -- hmm, well, maybe it does mean that. “You have condemned and killed the righteous; and he doth not resist you.” I think what it means is that Christ will not resist on a carnal level. He d- -- he will not fight back on the carnal level, OK. Either Jesus Christ will raise him up or he will cease to be. I think that is what it means, so we are dealing with two indictments: The carnal mind both condemns and kills.

            So this is not the same as the verse that says resist not evil?

No, not at all. Let me finish c- -- exho- -- this exhortation, and I will comment on that verse, OK. So the carnal mind condemns, and that condemnation, when it has fulfilled itself, will kill Christ.

            Uh-huh.

OK. Condemn- -- the end of condemnation, when condemnation has born its fruit, that fruit is the death of Christ, so condemnation is murder; it is a very serious sin. And when a carnal mind kills the Christ within himself or comes against the Christ in somebody else in condemnation, that condemnation is the murder of the Christ, and the Christ will not resist by trying to murder him back. If it is truly Christ in you and it is someone else condemning you, you will forgive their sins. You will pray for those who are -- you bless those who hurt you and pray for those who are despitefully using you, and it is C- -- and Christ will not resisting, believing that the Father will raise him from the dead, OK.

            So he is not resisting evil then is he not? [?In?] --

Well, that is a different Scripture. I will talk about that in a second, OK. The f- -- if the Lord let us you spiritually die, then he will raise you from the dead, but there is another possibility, that the Lord will anoint Christ Jesus in you to rise up and render righteous judgment, OK. What this means is that there is no resistance; there is no carnal resistance. That is what this means. But if you are mature enough, God can anoint you to rise up in Christ and rebuke the person, OK. So it is saying that you will not -- that the Christ does not resist in kind; that is what it is saying.

So depending on whether Christ Jesus in you is mature or immature, your response will be different. Some people with an immature Christ Jesus are not c- -- are not up to rendering righteous judgment, and they will receive a death blow, OK. And sometimes the Lord will say do not respond with righteous judgment. I want you to receive the death blow; it is for my glory. That was what happened when Jesus was crucified; the Father said do not fight back. But the Scripture that says resist not evil, as far as I know, what that means is there are certain times where you do not resist evil. For example, if somebody is totally out of control, I will not come against them. I will withdraw. I know where I am in Christ. I know the extent of the authority that I have. I know what I could do, and I know how far I could go, and I see that that person is either totally out of control or dead bent on not yielding to me in any way, I know that my authority in Christ is not strong enough to override them. I will back off, and I will resist not that evil because I do not have authority over it. I know I do not have authority over it, and I will back off. I will leave.

            So you will not go the way of man.

I will not go the way of man. I will withdraw. I will retreat. I will definitely retreat, and everybody has that -- every incident has that moment of truth where you have to know who you are and where you are in Christ and whether or not your Christ is strong enough to overtake this manifestation. And if it is not, you then decide whether you are going to try and take him on with your carnal mind or whether you are going to retreat, and if you have pride in operation, you are not likely to retreat, and you are in trouble. If you do not have control over your own pride, you are not going to retreat. You are going to cut -- as soon as you see Christ failing, as soon as you see that Christ Jesus in you is not strong enough to defeat this person, either your own carnal mind is going to rise up and take over or you are going to walk away. Yeah. So you resist not evil when you do not have the authority to resist it. Did I make that clear?

            How do you recognize when Christ Jesus is not strong enough in you?

Well, the only way I recognize it -- well, I do not know how to tell you. I just know that -- I might try and talk to the person. I might pray. I use all the techniques that I have. I might pray silently. I might try a rebuke. I might try reason, as I feel the situation calls for it. And if the person is just not yielding, I know that I am not strong enough to overtake them. It happened just here a couple of hours ago. I tried reason; I tried rebuke. Neither one worked. I withdrew. And what happened when I withdrew?

            So how do you --

Wait a minute. What happened when I withdrew? My Father moved and brought conviction of sin, and the situation was resolved, but Christ Jesus in me failed to take the victory over this strong mind, but then the Lord moved, OK. That is the truth, and it happened right in front of our eyes today. But the Father will not always move. On certain -- on -- maybe he would have. You know, sometimes he just lets it go. I do not know his mind. I do not know how he does it. But resist not evil; that is what it says to me. If you cannot take the victory in Christ, back off. Anybody else on this verse? Jesus.

See, it is really -- and I give God all the glory, OK, but I am telling you it is a very rare minister in Christ that can find that fine line. You have to have a lot of deliverance to back off, to recognize when you are in over your head and to walk away. You have to be a very delivered person, yeah.

[INAUDIBLE] [?me?] because what if you are a person that is not as delivered and you are having a hard time seeing it because you might be seduced by that person’s pride because your own pride, and so then w- -- I mean, what can you do? Are you supposed to jump in with both feet [?having?] trust in God because you know if that -- you know, if I -- if -- for instance, if I have pride, I can get myself in deep trouble dealing with somebody that has pride. Do I just go in trusting God knowing that I am not completely delivered of that?

Well, the first thing you have to do is get a very strong witness from the Lord that he has assigned you to this person. You should not be trying to minister to anybody that God has not assigned you to. If you are --

            Well, I am talking about somebody that you are assigned to.

Yeah, OK. If you are convinced that God has assigned you to this person, you go in. You do the best you can, and at the moment that you realize that your manifesting an ungodly spirit, get out. If you  cannot get out, cry out to Jesus to get you out, and then as soon as you are out of the immediate crisis, you have to repent, and you have to confess what happened to you, and then you go back, and it might happen to you again, and it might happen you again. But each time you will grow from it; you will recognize the signs; you will overcome. And when you repent, you should be getting deliverance from pride, and eventually you start to take the victory. That is how you grow in your ministry.

What is the first sign that you may be seduced by the others th- -- like, if the person has a spirit, a wrong spirit, and they are manifesting it and there is -- and they seduce your carnal mind to bring up that same spirit, what is the first sign that that might be happening?

Well, it is usually anger. But you have to --

            Oh, anger is the emotion?

Well, you have to be a- -- you see, all of this is very hard. You have to be able to tell the difference between righteous anger and emotional anger. As far as myself goes, the only way I can describe it to you is an awareness that I am losing control of the situation. That is the sign to me, better get out. I am losing control of the situation. Now that is presupposing that my control of the situation was a godly control which was in Christ, based upon my God-given authority over that situation.

All control is not bad. Christ controls. I -- every time I preach, I control the meeting. I am supposed to be controlling the meeting. You cannot have everybody jumping off the ceilings and doing whatever they want. Someone has to be in charge of the meeting, so that is the bottom line. If you know that you have a God-ordained right to be in control of a particular situation, the second you start to lose control, better get out. Get out, separate, withdraw. Get with God. Throw yourself on his mercy. Confess the fact that pride is rising up in you because that anger is probably pride. That pride is rising up in you, and get deliverance, you know, and that is how you get deliverance from pride.

I know that I had an encounter with someone on the telephone just a couple of days ago, and I hung up, and I knew that I was manifesting rejection and pride, and I just rebuked it. Right sitting at my desk, I just went like that. I said, pride and rejection, I curse you, and the tears started coming down my eyes, and I started yawning. That is how you get deliverance. Praise the Lord, a lot of deliverance here today. Anybody else? Everybody OK? OK.

We are up to Verse 7, Joseph, please.

“Patient in suffering. Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring and rains.” Oh, Verse 8, “You too, be patient. Stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.”

OK. Do you have anything you would like to say about that?

Well, if you are truly seeking Christ in your heart -- and I think it is a personal -- and he knows it too, and you know it -- you have to wait for that increase -- for your decrease and his increase.

And it requires patience.

            Patience [INAUDIBLE]

Amen. Anything you would like to say?

I was just thinking -- the early and latter rain. What do you say the early and ra- -- latter rain is?

The early and latter rain is the anointing in the church today, I believe is the early rain, and the latter rain is the anointing which will be flowing through the fully-manifested sons.

            [INAUDIBLE]

That is. The tape is not on?

            I do not think I turned the mic on. [?It was an accident?].

Oh, well, this mic is on.

            [CROSSTALK]

Yeah.

            The question did not get on, but the answer did.

Oh, I see, OK. That is OK.

So I was thinking, if that -- as a whole, waiting for the latter rain, being the imparted anointing in the full, manifested sons.

Amen.

            That you have to be patient to go into full stature, ouch.

Yeah. It is a long wait. I am just about out of patience. I can really relate to that. It is a long wait.

            It hurts.

It is painful.

            It is a long, long wait to have that pride completely killed --

Yeah.

-- the Adamic soul dead, that -- no flicker, like you say. No more flicker. You cannot [CROSSTALK] really, really --

Paralyzed.

            -- [?that Adamic?] soul dead.

Dead-dead, paralyzed. Oh, boy.

Let us take a look at that. Verse 7, “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.” Now, of course, it is the coming of the Lord within you, speaking about full stature. “Behold, the husbandman” -- that is the guy who planted the seed in the first place. His name is Lord Jesus Christ, “waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth,” and the fruit -- the earth is the soul, and the fruit that the earth is bringing forth is Christ Jesus. The husbandman is the Lord Jesus Christ who is now in pure spirit form, and he is reproducing his nature in you and in me, and the way he is reproducing his nature in us is that he is causing his Son to be formed in us. It is called a spiritual conception, the birth of the Son in us. His name in us is Christ Jesus. The Lord Jesus Christ is the glorified Spirit which was raised from the dead on Calvary, and the reproduction of his nature in us is the children of the Lord Jesus Christ, called Christ Jesus, Christ in you, the hope of glory.

So the Lord Jesus Christ is the husbandman, and Christ Jesus is the precious fruit of the earth, and the husbandman, the Lord Jesus Christ, has long patience for it. He is waiting 2,000 years already, “until he receive the early and the latter rain.” So we see the early and the latter rain as the two manifestations of the second generation of -- well, actually, the early rain is the outpouring of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the latter rain is the fruit, Christ Jesus, yeah -- “waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and the latter rain.” Well, I will let it go at that. I do not really know what the Greek says, OK.

And Verse 8, “Be ye also patient to establish or strengthen your hearts” -- “Also, patiently wait for the strengthening of your heart: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.”

What is the strengthening of your heart? We have a weak heart. Our carnal mind is a weak heart, and it is weak because our carnal mind or our carnal heart is formed by the union of our human spirit and Satan, so the strengthening of our heart is another way of saying renew your mind. Let your heart be strengthened by having your human spirit be joined to Christ instead of the carnal mind. That is the strengthening of your heart. Christ is the strong one. So be patient as you wait for your heart or your conscience to be strengthened: for the coming of the Lord is at hand, draweth nigh.

Full stature is the strengthening of your heart. I have been preaching this for a long time. We are spiritually weak in this world, so our heart is in the process of being strengthened. Lord willing, we are strong than we were yesterday, but until our heart is stronger than the prince of this world, we are still weak. I want to tell you there are a lot of Satan’s devices that are stronger than Christ Jesus in me. That is why I need the Lord Jesus Christ, so the full strengthening of my heart is the -- is Christ Jesus standing up in full stature. Glory to God.

How are we doing on that tape? That is the first side of the second tape? And how far is it?

            It is, like, a little over halfway through.

Yeah. Do you want to keep on going?

            Do you?

Why do we not take a couple of more verses so that we will f- -- at least fill up a 45-minute tape, which would be at least one complete side, OK? Would you please take Verse 9, Rita?

“Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the judge standeth before the door.” And the amplified says, “Do not complain, brethren, against one another so that you yourselves may not be judged: look, the judge is already standing at the very door.” Well, I guess, it would have to mean that -- do not judge somebody out of your carnal mind because the -- we know there is a judgment in Christ, and that if you do, that the judge, Jesus Christ, is right at your door judging you for it.

Is that what the amplified says, that -- the King James says grudge. The amplified says it means judge?

            Yeah. It said -- oh, “Do not complain,” it says.

Yeah, complain. “Do not complain” --

            [CROSSTALK]

-- “one against the other.”

“So that you yourselves may not be judged.” Oh, OK. Well, that -- oh, that is not judging then. That is not judging your brother.

No. That is not judging before the time. It says, “Do not complain one against the other, brethren, lest you be condemned: because the judge standeth before the door,” and we saw that happen today also. It is exactly what happened. Christ, the judge, manifested through me, and a judgment did come down. You are guilty.

            Yeah.

Guilty. So what is this saying? Look, let me make it clearer for you. Before you complain, you better but very careful because if the complaining is coming forth and -- you could have a legitimate compliant, but if you are bringing it forth in a wrong spirit, even though you have a legitimate complaint, watch out because the judge is right there to call you on that wrong spirit.

            Yeah.

That is what it is saying, so it is talking about a complaining spirit. You could have a legitimate complaint that you go before the Lord with, if it is legitimate, you know. I do not know that it was legitimate today or not, but if it is legitimate, you to- -- you take it before the Lord, but if you bring it forth in a complaining spirit and you are in Christ, if you are a son of God, the judge, Christ, is standing right there to call you on your sin. If you are not corrected, you are a bastard. That is what the Lord is saying.

            I just wanted to make a comment [CROSSTALK]

Yeah. Just -- I just had one more thing, OK. The Spirit is moving, OK. So, therefore, cease from complaining, brethren.

I just wanted to make a comment that the -- it seems like that this word, when we are coming together with the Scriptures here and studying, this word is actually coming alive and judging our lives. The chapter is the very thing that he deals with, and I just -- it is really powerful. So whatever needs to be dealt with in us -- I mean, that one night that -- I mean, it is so powerful, if you cannot repent it c- -- it is powerful enough to knock you out, so it is really important that there is repentance. And, I mean -- because this is a judging wo- -- the s- -- Jesus Christ is judging through this word, you know, so there is deliverance. There is repentance and everything else about the --

Jesus Christ is judging through this word. It is the living word that [CROSSTALK]

            Yeah.

-- [?judgment?].

Amen. The living word, it is coming forth through these -- as we go on the particular chapter, he is, like, judging on that particular thing, whatever it is that needs to be repented of.

Amen.

            I think that is really interesting. Talk about --

Very exciting.

            -- the word coming alive.

Yeah.

Whatever you preach on, we are going through, we are actually experiencing or being judged on.

            [INAUDIBLE]

Let me see. So do not complain against one another, brethren, lest someone in whom Christ is mature be standing right by and correct you. That is what it is saying. “Behold, the judge standeth before the door.”

Verse 10. I think you are up, Joseph.

“Brothers, as an example of patience and the fact of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.”

What does your Verse 11 say? Because my Verse 10 has another phrase on it.

            Oh. Was that supposed to be Verse --

Verse 10.

            Oh. Well, you want to hear Verse 11?

Yeah. What does your Verse 11 say?

“As you know, we considered blessed those who have preserved. You have heard the -- you have heard of Job’s perversion -- [?preference?] or whatever and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.”

OK. It sounds to me like --

            [CROSSTALK]

-- there is a phrase missing in your translation.

            Something is not right here.

Yeah. In Verse 10, my Bible says, “Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience.” Your Bible does not say that.

            It is like they changed the whole in- --

Yeah, OK. “Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and patience.”

            I am sorry. [INAUDIBLE] on Verse 10 and 11.

Verse 8, 9. “Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.” Yeah. They left those very important words out.

            [CROSSTALK]

They left -- well, they said suffering instead of affliction, I guess.

            Same thing.

Yeah. [INAUDIBLE] [AUDIO CUTS OUT]

So we see, from Verse 10, that the patience the prior verses are speaking about has anyone do with suffering affliction, so it is not a question of being patient, that you have to wait a few minutes. It means be patient when you suffer affliction. And as I told you, I have not studied this in the Greek, but I know that the word, patience, appears in other areas of the New Testament. And when I studied that word, I found it could be translated endurance, so I find the word, patience, associated with suffering affliction, it -- I find that it does not make any sense at all. I have trouble thinking about being patient when I am suffering affliction, but if you tell me that I should endure suffering affliction, that I can deal with.

What does it mean? It means you have to go through. I talk about it here all totally time. Strap yourself to the mast post. The affliction will pass. Do not let yourself be washed overboard and fall into the sea. Endure, make it through the affliction, and survive and grow and get your deliverance. And if you are looking for an example of endurance, look at God’s prophets. Look at how the affliction does not turn them away from God. Look at what the prophets do when they are afflicted, and I am a prophet. You want a living example? Check me out.

Cry out to Jesus. Do not attack your attacker. Do not attack God. Cry out to Jesus. It is all right to cry. It is all right to express your pain up until a certain point where -- it can go to a point where it becomes ungodly. It is all right to express yourself, but the bottom line is endure. Put yourself in whatever your activity is that will stir up Christ in you. Listen to tapes. Play your music. Study, whatever you do. Ask God to help you not to scapegoat anybody. Ask God to help you not to slip into self-pity, but get through. Know that it is going to be painful for a season, and just occupy your mind, crying out to Jesus, until you get through, paying -- praying for your persecutors every step of the way.

“Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of how to get through the suffering which comes from spiritual affliction, which is for righteousness’ sake.”

What does that mean? It means if you are speaking the word of the Lord, it means if you are trying to live for Christ, that Satan and your carnal mind will surely persecute you. They will try to cause you pain. They will try to bring affliction into your life, and the Lord will permit these trials. You need to make it through to the other side, and you need to learn how to make it through to the other side without sin. Now when the trials first start coming upon you, you probably will sin in response to them because that is just human, but your goal should be to endure through to the end of the current trial without committing sin, without gossiping, without condemning somebody, without blaspheming God, without getting into self-pity. It can be done as you mature in Christ, little by little. Do not be your own chief condemner. There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. These trials are severe.

The bottom line is that, if you sin under the pressure, if you gossip, if you revile, if you curse back under the pressure of the trial, it must be confessed as sin and repented of, and deliverance must come forth. That is the only thing that matters. There is no condemnation in the sin. The only condemnation is when you refuse to, at the very least, say to the Lord, I cannot see that it is sin, but if it is sin, I want to repent; help me. If you cannot do that, then you are up against pride, and pride is sin, brethren. So make it through. You can make it through. You can do all things in Christ, which strengtheneth you. Do we have room on that tape for one more, Rita?

            [INAUDIBLE]

Are we almost to the end?

            Maybe five minutes.

OK. Well, we will try it, OK. J- -- we will take one more then. Want to -- someone take Verse 11.

“Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.”

You have nothing to say on that. Joseph --

            [INAUDIBLE]

-- do you have anything to say on that?

            [INAUDIBLE]

Yeah. “W- -- behold, we count them happy which endure.”

            [INAUDIBLE]

You see, now, probably, if you look up that word, “endure,” in the Greek, it is the same Greek word that is translated “patience.” “We count them happy which endure.” Now this is a very important point. I have spoken about it before, that this happiness is a joy in the spirit. It does not mean you have to be jumping up and down clapping your hands, and we find some Pharisees the church coming to someone who has big, open wounds in their soul, telling them that they should be smiling and laughing and joyous, and that is a very ungodly and un- -- very sad attitude to take towards someone who is in pain. If you are in pain, you are in pain, and you are not to deny your pain.

But there is a joy in the Spirit that can only come when Jesus brings it to you, and I suggest to you that that joy in the Spirit comes through knowledge, through a knowledge and an understanding that, despite this pain, you are truly changing, that you are being translated from sin into righteousness, that you really see improvement in yourself, that you really know that Jesus is doing everything he has promised to do, that you know that you are better today than you were yesterday, that you -- knowledge that you have a reason to hope that the day is going to come that you are going to be standing in righteousness, in full control, in fully, godly control of your life.

And I am telling you this from experience: It is a real joy, no matter how much pain your emotions are in and no matter how much pain your body is in or no matter how much is happening in the circumstances of your life, when you get this revelation that this word is true and that Jesus is all powerful and that he has already overcome all of the powers and principalities of this world and -- in the man, Jesus of Nazareth, and he is fully determined to do the same thing in you. When you realize that the Lord Jesus Christ is fully determined to overcome every power and principality in your mind and that he has promised to do it and that he intends to do it and that he is full well able to change your whole life, you will experience a joy in the Spirit no matter how hurt your emotions are or no matter how distressed you are. And that is not something that any man has the power to do himself. This joy is through revelation knowledge, and it is a gift from the Lord Jesus Christ to the one who is enduring persecution so that he can be translated from darkness into light. Glory to God. Hallelujah.

Well, what is your vote? You want to fill the other side of the tape? You want to go for another 45 minutes? What is your vote?

 

 

What do you want to do?                                                                                                                                                                                            

You want to go on. OK. Let us take a little more.

            Do you want some water?

No, thanks. We are up to Verse 12. Who is going to take Verse 12?

            I did. I just did 11.

“Above all, my brothers, do not swear -- not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ no, or you will be condemned.”

Hmm. Have any comment? Rita, do you have anything to say on that?

In the natural, I think it is actually saying let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no. It is just simply saying that. Do not make any -- do not swear. Now is that making promises or --

Yeah. Do not say you are going to do something and not do it because you fall into condemnation --

            Yeah.

-- if you do that.

            So do not make promises. Do not make any oaths out of yourself.

Well, that can be taken starting out on a very simple level. If you say you are going to do something, do it because saying that you will do something and not doing it can hurt other people. It can cause them discomfort or distress, and then you have been found guilty of sin because Christ never wounds. That is on a mild level.

On a more severe level, we are told not to swear, “neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath,” so the apostle is warning us not to take an oath now. This can involve a blood -- some things that we find in other religions, blood oaths to stand together until somebody is completely wiped out, or even an oath or even a promise such as I will never leave you or I will never fors- -- or I will never do that to you.

 

The bottom line is you never know what you are going to be doing down the line. Do not make an oath you are not going to keep. Just do it. Do not make promises; just do it because man is fallible, and he is human, and lots of times we cannot do what we would like to do.

And do not say something like, for example, I will never hurt you. You do not know that you will never hurt me, OK, and it is probably not even humanly possible to never someone because people hurt one another. So do not make an oath that you may not be able to fulfill, but just take it a day at a time, and be good to each other. You might say to someone, I will do the best I can to not hurt you, but you do not know that you will never hurt anyone. I th- -- I do not know if that is the best example. Father, I feel that is not the best example. If you have another example for me, please bring it forth right now. Glory to God. OK.

If you are an employer and you are promising your employee a raise next month or next week and you are in a small business, it is a possibility you might not be able to afford it. Do not say I will give you a raise next month unless you fully intend to do it because you wound people, and you hurt people, and you, therefore, tempt them to sin in response to your broken promise. Broken promises hurt from the smallest, simplest little thing to the -- to a very serious promise that you do not keep. Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay, and we are told in another Scripture, who are we to even be saying I will visit you tomorrow or I will do this on the morrow? We should be saying, Lord willing, I will visit you on the morrow. Lord willing, I will give you a raise. How do we know what the Lord has planned for us to do the next day? So we are told in another place that it is really a spirit of pride saying that we know what is in store for us the next day, the next minute or the next hour.

Let us say, brethren, Lord willing or let us just do and not promise a promise that we might not be able to keep, lest we fall into condemnation. What does that mean? Lest it turn out that that which we said came out of our carnal mind. What is the condemnation? The condemnation is this, that if Christ spoke it out of us, we will do it, but if it was our carnal mind that spoke it out of us, it may not come to pass. And anything which is a manifestation of our carnal mind through us is a condemnation because it reveals that we did not manifest Christ in that instant. That word, condemnation, it is such a hard word. It is no- -- I do not believe it is a particularly good choice of a translation because I do believe that simply all that it means is that it will be made manifest that what you said came out of your carnal mind.

And we are told in another place that this is the condemnation, that the light came into the world and then chose darkness because their deeds were evil. So all that it means, brethren, is that you were talking out of your hat, they might say in the world, or in the church, we will say you were talking out of your carnal mind, and it is now revealed to everyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear that you were talking out of your carnal mind. So what do you need that for? Just do not say anything. Just do it, or if you say it, do it. Glory to God.

Did we finish Verse 11? “Behold, we count them happy which endure.” I talked about the joy of the Lord. “Ye have heard of the patience of Job.” We did not finish that verse. “Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord,” or the way the Lord brings things to an end, the way the Lord deals with problems, “that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.” So, “Behold, we count them happy which endure,” because, by our example, Job, we find out that the end of endurance is full salvation. You find that the end of endurance is that we receive the mercy of God, which is the salvation of our soul. And I remind you that Job had everything that he lost restored unto him twofold. Everything he lost was resorted unto him twofold. Glory to God. OK.

Now, here, Verse 13, this is the w- -- I have been counseling you this for a long time. Who is up to read Verse 13?

            Is it me?

Yeah.

“Is any one among you afflicted (ill-treated, suffering evil)? He should pray. Is anyone glad at heart? He should sing a praise [to God].”

So I have been telling you for a long time, when you are afflicted, do whatever you have to do to stir up Christ in you. Pray, make merry, sing psalms. Do whatever you do to reach or touch God or communicate with him. That is what you do, and it takes a long time to learn that lesson because the human reaction to being afflicted is to sc- -- and I have done it, is to scream, is to yell, is to complain, is to blame other people, is to feel sorry for oneself. I have done it myself. I have done it all, and it is very hard to follow this counsel, but I am telling you it is good counsel. I -- it took me a long time to accomplish it.

I now know that when I am afflicted -- and although I do not really scream and yell too much anymore, my inclination would be to lie down in front of the TV, and I know that I am just going to stay in front of that TV for hours and hours and hours, and it is -- I am not going to come out of this affliction. I have to either listen to a tape or get into a study because it is when I touch Christ that he brings up Christ in me, and I come out of my affliction. Screaming is not going to help. Well, you might exhaust yourself, and then when you lay down in exhaustion, Christ might rise up in you when your carnal mind shuts up, OK. It might work that way, but you would do much better if you would start praying and asking the Lord to help you in advance.

Pray -- do not wait until you are afflicted. When you are in your right mind, pray, and say, Lord, the next time I am afflicted, would you please help me to follow this advice? Teach me how to touch Christ so that I do not have to be screaming my head off for three hours or blame somebody or get into an argument with somebody or whatever you do when you are manifesting because the affliction is so painful that you are manifesting. You know, some manifestations are understandable, not that it is OK to express your carnal mind. It is not OK to express your carnal mind, but we are not there yet. We are not fully mature yet, and sometimes we get hurt so badly that all we can do is scream and yell and carry on, and sometimes we say stupid things, and sometimes we get into trouble. I have done it all. It is a response to hurt.

We express carnality as a response to a wound, and God knows when that is what is happening in you. He knows when your motive is evil and you are attacking for an evil motive, and he knows when you are manifesting because you have been wounded and you are manifesting because you cannot bear the pain. The Lord knows, OK, so there is no condemnation in it, but I am giving you a goal. Ask God to help you the next time the wound hits your soul, to help you to do what is going to stir up Christ in you because, when Christ stirs up in you, the manifestation, no matter how understandable, will go down, and these manifestations will ne- -- they are never good for you, although God is winking at them because he understands that they are a response to a wound.

It is in your own best interest to learn how to avert them, how to direct your pain and your frustration in a godly manner that will not be a manifestation of your carnal mind. It is to your advantage at a carnal level because if you are screaming and yelling at your boss, you could get fired. It is -- what do you do when you are having this fit? Do you go out and spend your money? Do you buy clothes or do things that you would not do otherwise? Do you go place a bet? What do you do? Do you spend money when you are upset? It would be to your advantage, when you are -- to pray to the Lord when you are not upset, to ask you to overcome this ungodly or carnal way of dealing with distress. Do you sound off? Do you beat your wife? Do you -- what do you do that is destructive when you are hurt? When you are calm, ask God to help you to begin to overcome your carnal responses to stress and pain and to learn how to deal with them in Christ, which will not result in sin against somebody else or against yourself.

Sounds logical. You try and do it; it is very hard. It is very hard, when you are in pain, to pray or be merry or sing psalms. That is the last thing you want to do when an arrow has just entered into your heart. Nevertheless, the Scripture says that is the thing to do, which will put an end to your pain probably 100 times faster than whatever it is you are doing to alleviate that pain, so ask God to help you. Jesus.

We are up to Verse 14, Joseph. Jesus.

“Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.” Now I have got a question, and it is not -- they sell oil, some ministries, Muslims or Christians. Is it already prayed over and that, if you -- with a donation, and you can --

You are asking how come some ministries sell oil.

            They sell it on the TV [?all the time?] [INAUDIBLE]

Well, a lot --

            [CROSSTALK] get some Crisco.

Well, a lot of very well-meaning Christian ministries, they -- it is usually olive oil that --

            [INAUDIBLE]

Yeah. It is usually olive oil that they buy, and they pray over it, and they sell it to you. And it is like saying, well, our prayers are on this oil. If you put it on your forehead, you might get healed. Then there are some people that are running a scam. They sell you anointing oil, and it is just a moneymaking scheme.

            [INAUDIBLE]

But the bottom line is that the only oil that is going to heal you when you are sick -- do you know the answer? Is which oil?

            [INAUDIBLE]

It is the oil of Christ. Christ is the oil. The Holy Ghost --

            [CROSSTALK]

-- is likened un- -- the Holy Spirit is likened unto water. And I know in the church they tell you that the Holy Ghost is the oil, but it is not correct. The -- Christ, the imparted anointing, is the oil, and the Holy Ghost is the living water, living wat- -- it is water. He is rain.

            [?I had that?] turned around [CROSSTALK]

He is rain.

            -- Jesus is the rain.

Jesus is the living water, as he pours out of his Spirit upon all flesh, but Christ in you is the oil. Christ is the oil. Jesus in his glorified form in this hour is raining on all of humanity, right? He is raining on all of humanity, and the -- he is in the form of the Holy Ghost, and he is water, but the oil is Christ.

What does it mean when it talks about get the oil and anoint them in the Holy Ghost?

What it means is -- it says go to the -- and anoint them in the Holy Ghost. Where does it say that?

            I think it says it in there. Does it not?

Get the oil, and then anoint them in the Holy Ghost?

I think it talks about anoint- -- [UNINTELLIGIBLE] -- anointing them with oil in the Holy Ghost.

            [CROSSTALK] says right here.

It says anoint them with oil in the Holy Ghost?

            [CROSSTALK] and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.

Well, that is not the Holy Ghost. It does not say the Holy Ghost. It says the name of the Lord, right?

            [CROSSTALK]

Yeah. I am thinking that it says it in the Scripture somewhere, but I do not know where, but I thought I read that somewhere.

Well, I just looked that up on my computer, and I think what you did was you crossed two Scriptures. The only thing that I could find about being anointed with the Holy Ghost is referring to Jesus. H- -- Jesus is the only one who was anointed with the Holy Ghost, and I believe that you crossed that Scripture with this Scripture right here in James, which says, “Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” So it is not really true. We are not commanded to be anointed with the oil of the Holy Ghost. Jesus is the only one, and he did not anoint anyone else with the oil of the Holy Ghost. Jesus was anointed with the Ho- -- not with the oil. Jesus was anointed with the Holy Ghost.

And I have a teaching on that on the message, “The Truth About Baptism,” and I believe that we have three levels of the Holy Ghost available to man. The Holy -- the measure of the Holy Ghost that we see in the church today, you are told that it is the baptism with the Holy Ghost, but it is not because there is one set of signs for those who have received the Holy Ghost, which is a lesser or immature manifestation of the Holy Ghost. And then there is another set of signs for those who have been baptized with the Holy Ghost, OK. The people in the church today have been -- have received the Holy Ghost. We speak in un-interpretable tongues. The apostles were baptized with the Holy Ghost. They spoke in tongues that were recognized as other languages, and Jesus is the only one who was anointed of the Holy Ghost, and I suggest to you what that means is that the Holy Ghost completed its work in him and brought forth Christ, and therefore the result or the end of the ministry of the Holy Ghost in the man Jesus was that the oil of Christ was flowing freely from him.

And the word, anoint, in itself has to do with oil, and if you look it up in the Greek, what it means is that, once it goes on the skin, it does not come off unless you actually wash it off. It sticks. Like water flows over your skin or flows off your skin, dries and you would never know it was there, but oil stays on until it is washed off, so that anointing of the Holy Ghost upon Jesus meant that it -- that work was completed in him, and the fullness of Christ arose, which is the oil that sticks. The imparted anointing, it sticks; it does not come off. The imputed anointing is typified by water. The imparted anointing is typified by oil.

Now this might be off the subject that -- another issue. I am not sure. But why would Jesus need to be anointed with the Holy Ghost when he is the Son himself, if the Holy Ghost is --

OK.

            -- used --

Let us finish this out, OK.

            OK.

And then we will go on to that, OK. So we see in Verse 15 of James, Chapter 5 that the -- Verse 14, I am sorry. “Is there any sick among you? If you are sick, let him call for the elders of the church.” And who are the elders of the church? Are they people who are over 30?

            No.

No.

            Those that have the mature Christ.

Those who have the mature Christ. You can be a chronologically young person, although the more chrono- -- the more -- getting tired. The more chronologically mature that you are, the more likely you are to have a mature Christ, but not necessarily so. It is not likely that a very young person will have a mature Christ. Why? Because to have a mature Christ, it requires having many experiences and going through many overcoming trials, so you really cannot be too young. It is not likely you will be a teenager and be an elder of the church. It is not likely that you will be under 30. It is possible, but not likely.

So the Scripture says, “Go to the elders of the church; and let them pray over you, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” And what this means is that, when they pray over you in the name of the Lord -- and names in the Scripture typify, anybody? Nature or spirit. Nature is spirit, OK. So when you pray in the Spirit of the Lord, it means you have to be praying out of Christ. You cannot be praying out of the Spirit of the Lord -- not the Holy Ghost now, but the Spirit of the Lord, OK, and our Lord is the Lord Jesus Christ. So you cannot be praying out of the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ unless you have Christ, and Christ is the oil. So when you find someone who is spiritually mature and they are not praying for you out of their carnal mind, OK, which is being influenced by the Holy Ghost, but they are praying for you out of a mature Christ, you will be anointed with the oil, which is Christ. It is spiritual oil.

Brethren, if you are sick, someone can pour a whole bottle of olive oil, Crisco, peanut oil, whatever you want. The whole church can pray over it, and they can give you a bath in it, and you may or may not get healed depending on whether or not the Lord decides to honor that activity. But when you are prayed for by someone in whom a mature Christ is dwelling and that Christ rises up and prays for you through that person, you are therefore anointed by the oil of the Christ in that person, and you will be healed. No olive oil is going to heal you, and if you have a bottle of olive oil that somebody has prayed over, you really do not need the olive oil. All you need is their prayer, brethren. All you need is their prayer. There is no time or space in the realm of the spirit.

Now I know that the Scripture says that Peter and Paul took cloths from their bodies, and whoever touched that cloth got healed, but what happened over there was that there was such an intense power of Christ coming forth from their bodies that it got on the cloth. You have to have the Christ vibrating at a very high level of power to such a degree that it saturates your clothing. Then when you give your clothing away, it might help somebody, or it can help somebody. But if you are just a fallen man and you are being influenced by the Holy Ghost, there is really nothing special about that oil, and that does not presuppose the possibility that the Lord will honor your faith.

And if there is a man -- if there is a sincere man of God who is praying over this oil, that he is not in it for the money and he really believes that he is helping people and you buy that oil not as a measure of idolatry for this man but through faith in Jesus Christ, the Lord might decide to honor both of your efforts and heal you. But this is not the same situation as a man in whom a mature Christ is vibrating forth and touching you with the life of Christ and you are healed by that oil. Can you hear the difference?

            Yeah.

OK. Any other questions on this particular issue?

I just thought that when they sent out some of the apostles, they anointed them with oil and sent them out by the Holy Ghost I thought it said, but --

Well, I looked in my computer.

            [CROSSTALK]

If you find it, show it to me. I could not find it in the computer, OK. Wha- -- the way the computer works is that you compare words, and I put the word, oil, together with holy. I put the word, oil, together with ghost. I put the word, oil, together with anointing, and I only came up with that one Scripture about Jesus being anointed on the Holy Ghost. That was all I could find, OK.

So we have to be very careful because our carnal mind jumps right in when we read a Scripture like, “And have them anoint you with oil and pray for you in the name of the Lord,” and our carnal mind jumps right in and says, well, that is the Holy Ghost, but it is not. The name of the Lord is not the Holy Ghost. The name of the Lord is the Spirit of Christ, and if that Spirit which raised Christ from the dead dwell in you, it will quicken your mortal body. So if the Holy Ghost is the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead, how come you are not quickened? Because it was not the Holy Ghost that raised Christ from the dead. It was the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of Christ is a more mature expression of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of Christ is a mature expression of the Spirit of God which is powerful enough to raise a man from the dead. The Holy Ghost is not powerful enough to raise a man from the dead, although we do see this event happening as a gift. In an isolated incident, God has anointed men who serve him to raise individual people from the dead at the will of the Lord, but Christ raises people from the dead just by being in his presence.

Christ -- when Christ raises you from the dead, it is not a gift, you see. The raise -- let me explain this, OK. The raising from the dead that Christ does is when the Lord Jesus Christ comes to you and raise- -- and quickens your human spirit and brings forth Christ Jesus in you. You are being raised from the dead, and you are [?ring?] -- being raised from the dead daily, little by little, daily. And once you are raised from the dead, you will not be able to die anymore. The raising from the dead that you see done as a gift by the Holy Ghost is the raising of a dead human body back to this existence. They live another 10 years, another 20 years, another 30 years, and they die because everyone down here in Hell dies. But the true raising from the dead is the renewal of your mind and the transference over from death unto life, which raises you from the dead -- is that on?

            Yes [CROSSTALK]

Yeah. Which raises you from the dead into a place where you will never die again. The true resurrection of the dead, if it has happened to you, you do not die again. Why? Because you are raised from the dead, spirit, soul and body. The man who d- -- who was raised from the dead by someone who has received the Holy Ghost, only his body is raised from the dead. His soul is not raised from the dead, nor is his spirit raised from the dead, therefore the man lives another 10, 20, 30, 40 years, and his body dies again because the spirit was never raised from the dead. Did I -- is that OK? OK. If you would like to ask me that other question, I will try and answer it for you.

I would like to know why Jesus had to be anointed with the Holy Ghost when he was the Son himself and the whole purpose of the Holy Ghost is to conceive the Son.

Well, the translation is not the best translation. What that Scripture is really saying was that Christ Jesus was fully born in him. The anointing of the Holy Ghost is another way of saying Christ Jesus was fully raised from the dead in the man Jesus of Nazareth. Did I answer you? Jesus was not born perfect. He was born a human man from a human, fallen mother who had everything that human beings have, but, in addition, he had the mind of the Father. And in due season, somewhere about 30 years of age, the mind of the Father came to full maturity in him and defeated his carnal mind, OK.

            So you are telling [?me?] --

And then let me just -- and that full maturing of the mind of the Father in him is c- -- another way of saying it is he was anointed of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost produced the fullness of the anointing in him, Christ Jesus, the mind of Christ that was raised from the dead in the man Jesus of Nazareth. And the reas- -- and because the man -- because the mind of Christ was fully raised from the dead in the man Jesus of Nazareth and brought his carnal mind into submission, therefore that human being named Jesus received the privilege of changing his name from Jesus of Nazareth unto Jesus the Christ. Jesus was Christ because the mind of Christ or Christ Jesus was fully resurrected from the dead in him. He received the fullness of the anointing, which is in Christ Jesus. Can you hear that?

            [?Yeah?].

Did I answer your question?

            Yeah.

OK. Hallelujah. Anything else? Maybe we will take one more verse. I keep saying maybe we will take one more verse. I would like to fill up the tape. Verse 15, somebody, please.

“And the prayer [that is] of faith will save him who is sick, and the Lord will restore him; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.”

Hmm.

            [?No comment?] [CROSSTALK]

That is very powerful. “And the prayer of faith shall save the sick.” Now this is speaking about more than physical infirmity, brethren. Everybody down here in Hell is spiritually sick. We are spiritually sick. In some areas we are emotionally sick. And we are -- even the best specimen of us is physically sick. Why? Because we die. Eventually, we die. If we just die because we are so old that our heart stops beating, we are still sick. We were not made to die; we were made to live for the life of the ages. So all of fallen humanity is sick, and the prayer of faith -- and I declare to you that Jesus prayed that prayer for us in John 17. He prayed for -- the prayer of faith that is being played out in humanity in this hour.

And the sick shall be saved on an individual level, on a all of humanity level, “and the Lord shall raise him up.” Brethren, when somebody prays out of Christ for the sick, the Lord will raise them up. How do I know that? Because if you are a human being, you are still not perfect, and you have Christ in you, and it is not the Lord’s intention to raise a particular person up, Christ in you will not pray the prayer. Christ in you will not pray the prayer, Father, heal this person of this sickness, because the Son knows -- the Son only says what the Father tells him to say, and the Son only prays what the Father tells him to pray. So did you ever go to pray for somebody and find that there was no prayer in your mouth? There was no prayer in your mouth from Christ, so when the prayer of faith is prayed, when it is Christ in you praying the prayer, the Father will raise him up. And if the Father does not intend to raise him up, Christ in you will not pray the prayer because Christ does not say anything that the Father does not tell him to say. Your carnal mind might pray the prayer, but Christ will not pray the prayer. If you can hear it, hear it.

“And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he committed sins which resulted in this sickness, they shall be forgiven unto him,” because if the Lord raises you up when you were destined to be sick and die, that means that your sins are forgiven unto you. Did Jesus not say what difference does it make if I say take up your bed and walk or if I say these sins be forgiven unto you? What difference does it make? If you are healed of a disease, that means your sins are forgiven. Did Jesus not say that? It makes no difference whether I say take up your bed and walk or your sins are forgiven.

Your -- now we have doctors and workers of witchcraft in this world who succeed in healing the person’s body, but the test is what happens five or 10 years down the line after your body was healed. Now even medical doctors will tell you, if you have surgery for cancer, you do not really know that you have been healed for -- I think they give you at least five years. If the cancer does not come back after five years, you can say that you were healed. Brethren, if you receive a healing and you get another serious disease and you receive a healing and you get another serious disease, your sins have not been forgiven unto you. But if you receive a healing and you keep receiving healings and you get healthier and healthier and healthier and healthier, you know that your sins have been forgiven, and that is my experience.

I was dying when I came to the Lord, and when I did get a healing, another disease did not come in its place. I had many diseases, and the Lord took 13 years to completely heal me, but if you looked at me carefully, you would see that each time I received a healing, another disease did not come in its place. Yes, I was still sick because I had so many infirmities when I started out, and eventually I was completely healed. I now consider myself, infirmity-wise, equal to any normal human being. Whereas I used to be chronically ill, I am no longer chronically ill. I get a cold here or there, but I am not chronically ill anymore. My sins -- the sins which produced the diseases which were killing me have been forgiven unto me. How do I know? I am not dying anymore. So, brethren, you know, you are not forgiven if you are still reaping the results of your sin. [?You know?], that does not mean that God has not forgiven you. God may be in the process of forgiving you because the true forgiveness of sins is the removal of any potential within you to commit that sin ever again.

We have all been forgiven on faith, but it is not enough. It must become a reality to us. And given any particular sin, the proof that you are truly forgiven is that you become incapable of doing that sin again. I suggest to you when Jesus said to that adulterous woman, “Go, and sin no more,” that he had rendered her incapable of adultery, incapable of that sin. And this is a big misunderstanding in the church: Jesus does not forgive your sin so that you can go and sin again. He is not a Roman Catholic priest. He is the creator of the universe, and when he forgives you, he rips it out of you so that he does not ever have to forgive you again. And if you go out and you do the sin again, you know that the forgiving process had not been completed in you, OK.

There -- I think there was another Scripture where Jesus told somebody, “Go, and sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you,” and I just do not understand why, if he gave him the power to not sin anymore, then why would he give him a warning, lest a worse thing come upon you?

Well, the only thing I can tell you offhand is he did not say do not -- which sin not to do anymore, OK. I am not really sure, but I know that I have been healed of my sins that were killing me. Well, I could go out and commit a different kind of sin that would produce death. That is the only thing that I have to say to you at the moment, and, of course, I have not looked at that in the Greek, so I am not really sure what it is saying. But I do -- I can tell you that my understanding of the Scripture is that the true forgiveness of sin is when you are delivered of the potential for that sin. I think I -- you know, I think I looked that up once, and I cannot remember what it said. If the Lord will just let me, I will have to double check that.

            I would be interested in [?finding out?] [INAUDIBLE]

Yeah. And, of course, I am not familiar, right now, with what the surrounding circumstances were, the whole chapter or the Greek.

            Yeah.

OK. But f- -- just for the purposes of this message, I personally am convicted as to what I just said about the forgiveness of sins. And if the Lord lets me on -- another time, I will have a better answer for you. That is a good question.

Transcribed by Verbal Fusion 05/18/16

1^st Edit 05/20/16 rh