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Oh, we have several messages of the hour here. There was much fruit coming forth in this ministry, information that we need to prepare ourselves for the event of the hour. Does anybody know what the event of the hour is? What are we waiting for? What is the whole world waiting for? They may not know what they are waiting for.

 

Does anybody not know that it is possible to have a feeling of anticipation in your heart and not know what you are waiting for? Does anybody not know that it is possible to even have an intellectual knowledge that there is an event coming, a world-changing event? But it is possible that your idea of what that event is could be incorrect. Is there anybody here that does not know that? You need to know it.

 

We have a similar situation here frequently. People have discerning of spirits in operation. For example, you may recognize that somebody is angry, and that may be a totally right-on, 100 percent, A-target discernment. The person is angry. Why? They are jumping up and down and kicking their feet. It is obvious they are angry. But you may be wrong as to what they are angry about.

 

We must draw this separation. It is very important. One of the things we do in this ministry is a training to learn how to think logically and rightly divide the word of truth because, from the minute you get a wrong thought in your mind, you are on your way off on a tangent, and you cannot end up anywhere except out in left field. Amen?

 

Anybody here not understand this? One wrong step, brethren, and if you keep on going, you are going to go off the edge of the pier eventually. So it is very important that we learn how to think correctly and how to evaluate information that our ears hear, that our eyes see, and that our spiritual eyes and ears perceive. We must learn to evaluate.

 

Well, first, you have to learn to see. First, you have to learn how to evaluate information with your natural eyes and your natural ears. But as we mature, we are clearly told in the Scripture that the man who is spiritual in Christ will not live his life based on what he sees with these eyes or what he hears with these ears.

 

Now, I love all of you, and I will keep on telling you. If I say something and it sounds like you, it probably is you. But it is a loving correction. I am never out to get you or to hurt you or to embarrass you. There are people here who say all the time, But that is not what he said. I know it is not what he said, but it was not just my natural ears listening. I also had spiritual ears listening. And the Scripture clearly tells me that, when I know that my spiritual ears work, and I hear one thing with my natural ears and another thing with my spiritual ears, and I have any reasonable reason to believe that those spiritual ears were working, I choose which set of ears? My spiritual ears.

 

If we do not get spiritual, and you do not have to get spiritual. It is no skin off of my nose. But if you do not get spiritual, it is skin off of your nose. Paul said, We know no man any longer after the...

 

COMMENT: Flesh.

 

PASTOR VITALE: ...flesh. Brethren, if you are trying to figure out who or what I am because of the way I look, you probably would not even talk to me twice. I do not look like a Son of God. I do not dress like a Son of God. I even wear eyeshadow. But if you are looking for the Son of God, you had better get past your Phariseeism because this Son of God wears eyeshadow and preaches without shoes or socks and pants. You do not like it, that is tough.

 

So the Scripture is clear. We know no man any longer after the flesh. You have got to get your spiritual senses functioning, or you are going to wind up in the drink. I am here to teach you. And I can lead you to the water; I cannot make you drink.

 

And I continue to encourage you to at least pray. If I say something, or another spiritual person says something, and you really cannot see or hear, your obligation is to say, Lord, Jesus, if there is any truth in this at all, please let me see and hear. If your reaction to something which sounds foreign to you, or if your reaction to something, frequently, which is fear, you may not recognize that it is fear. If you hear something that sounds alien to you because you do not know where this person could have possibly gotten that thought from, I encourage you to ask the Lord to help you to not respond like a defensed Christian. And what is your defense that is not in Christ? Your carnal mind.

 

I encourage you. I exalt you with all of my strength to pray, not when you are hearing the foreign thing or seeing the foreign thing but when you are calm and when there is no challenge in your life, when you are speaking to the Lord, to ask Him when the challenge comes. What challenge? When someone says something to you that hits you like a ton of bricks in your head because the thought never entered your mind in a million years, and your spiritual eyes and ears were not working, and you hear something that is shocking to your ears because you heard someone with spiritual eyes and ears express what they saw in the spirit.

 

Ask the Lord that, in that hour, to shut down your carnal mind and, at the very least, enable to you say, Father, if it is true, let me hear. At the very least, let me not reject the idea, but let the idea come into my mind. And if it is not of you, rip it out. But if it is of you, let me understand. Because, if you cannot do this, you are the only loser.

 

So I do not even know how I got on that. We have several messages of the hour coming forth here. There is an event which is about to happen in the world. People in the Church know something is happening. People in the world know that something is happening. But everybody has a different opinion about what is happening. Chicken Little says the sky is about to fall. Humpty Dumpty says he is about to fall off the wall. The Pentecostal Church says we are going to be raptured. Nostradamus said the world is coming to an end.

 

And the Kingdom Church says the Sons of God are going to stand up. And then the Kingdom Church is divided, and one part of it says, Well, all you do is sit around shooting dice, and you are going up automatically. And the other part of the Kingdom Church says, No, you are once saved, always saved. And the other part says, No, you have to speak in tongues; if you do not speak in tongues, you are not going up.

 

And over here, in this little corner of the world, we are preaching something that, personally, I have never heard anyone else preach. Now, maybe they are preaching it in China, and maybe they are preaching it two blocks over, and I just do not know about it. But what we are preaching here, and if you have any wisdom about you at all. Wisdom has nothing to do with basic, raw intelligence. You can be a very intelligent person and be ignorant. Another name for ignorance is foolishness in the Scripture, and to be foolish means to not even consider what the other person says. Makes you a foolish person or an ignorant person. It is not an insult; it is a real condition that exists in this world.

 

So we are going to talk about what we are preaching here. And I hear all the Pharisees screaming. You mean you think the whole Church world is wrong, and you are right? Yes. Did you not hear what happened when Jesus appeared? The whole Church world was wrong, and He was right. Oh, you think you are Jesus? I think I have the Word of the Lord. Yes. You do not like it; do not listen to me. Do not listen to me; do not consider it; do not pray about it, and fall off the edge of the pier. I am not responsible for you. My responsibility is to tell you the truth, and that is the end of my responsibility.

 

I want to tell you there is great pressure coming upon the prophets of God in this hour. The pressure is intense. Now, what happens to you when you are a prophet of God and you are under this intense pressure? You become a sharp threshing instrument. I told you last week, and I told you the week before. I am becoming a buzzsaw. Get out of my way. Or if you are not out of my way, I hope all you lose is your carnal mind because it is not even a conscious choice.

 

Someone told me on the phone last night, This person does not like you anymore. I said, Well, is that not too bad? So if you think something like that is going to make me feel bad, you better think again. You come and sit in this chair for a couple of days, and you will find out how insignificant it is to me whether you like me or whether you do not like me, or whether you approve of what I am doing, or whether you are putting me before God, or whether you are checking me out. I could not care less. You do what you have to do, and I am going to do what I have to do. And if you stay, you stay. And if you go, you go. And there is only one thing I care about in this world: that Jesus finds me faithful.

 

So this is the message we are preaching here, brethren. There is an event which is about to happen on the face of this earth, and that event that is the glorified Son of God, the first and so far only begotten of the dead, the only begotten Son of God, the only man to have risen from the dead to date, is about to appear, in the fullness of His life, in the flesh of fallen men. That means you and me, fallen men, men who are sinners. The righteousness of God (we are told in the Scripture that righteousness appeared to men), He is about to appear again.

 

I just pray that the Lord order my thoughts. There is so much information flooding into my mind. I am starting to trip on my tongue.

 

Listen. There is good and there is evil in this world today. Humanity, as we see it, is known as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The reality is that men are both good and evil in this hour. And there is a spiritual measuring stick.

 

Let us make it simple. Let us put up a scale of 1 to 10. And everyone whose deeds and behavior are good, and their goodness measures above the 5 mark on the scale, we will call them the good people in this world. They still have evil, but their overall lifestyle and behavior, as measured against all of society, is good. When I was in school, we called this marking on a curve. You could get a 10 on an exam, and if they marked on a curve, and everyone else in the class got a 5, you got an A.

 

And if your overall deeds and your overall behavior and your overall lifestyle is below 5 on this scale, you are one of the bad guys. Some people call it cops and robbers. But you too have good and evil. No matter how evil you are in this world, if you are human, you have a seed in you, a potential, whether you be good or evil, to be restored unto righteousness.

 

So you see, even when you are good in this world, you are still fallen. You are still dead, and you are still going to die the rest of the way. Your spirit is dead, and your soul is dead, and it is just a matter of time until this body dies, and you pass out of this world. You could be the greatest hero in this world. You are going to die, brethren, because there is sin in your mind.

 

PASTOR VITALE: The Scripture says, If you offend in one point of the law, you are guilty of...

 

COMMENT: The whole law.

 

PASTOR VITALE: ...the whole law. Boy, when I first got this revelation, it was a shock to me. You can do good for people and do good for people and do good for people, and spend 50, 60 years of your life doing good for people, and you do one evil deed, and all the good you have done is forgotten. It is a law of our fallen, dead condition. Your goodness will reap you some blessings and some comfort down here in hell. Your life could be better or worse down here in hell.

 

But the only way you shall rise above this world (and I keep telling you, if you have a good life here down in hell, you are just a trustee in the jailhouse. And they do not lock you up in the cell, and let you out, let you walk around. And you get a few other benefits, whatever that might be). The only way you are getting out of hell, the only way you are going to stop dying, the only way you are going to escape the torments of this world system permanently and completely is to ascend into righteousness.

 

And righteousness is a different state of being. It is a different world. Symbolically speaking, it is a different tree. This is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We are a spiritual tree, brethren. We are leaves on the tree. You have to get into another tree, and the name of that tree is the Tree of...

 

COMMENT: Life.

 

COMMENT: The Tree of Life.

 

PASTOR VITALE: The Tree of Life. Righteousness is in the Tree of Life. If you want to live (and that does not mean continue to live in this fallen, hellish condition that you are in right now). If you want to enter into true life, you have got to transfer out of this hellish tree into the Tree of Life. And there is only one way you could do that. You have to go through the door, and the door is Christ Jesus. He is the only door. He is the only way. He is the only truth, and He is the only true life. And you could con whoever you want, and you could connive all that you want, and you could twist around with your words and your manipulation and your lies, and you are still dead, brethren.

 

So I do not have time for your games because I intend to go through, if I have anything to say about it. If the Lord shuts the door in my face; there is nothing I could do about it. But so long as that door is open for me, I am not waiting for you while you are busy beating each other over the head with your baseball bats and your Raggedy Ann dolls. I am too busy.

 

What am I busy doing? Confessing my sins and repenting of my sins because I am just as fallen as you are. I may be chief trustee down here, but that is all that I am. And if I could drag you up, I will drag you up. But you are not taking me down. I have not come this far to turn around and go back now for anybody, none of my flesh family and none of my spiritual family. I will cut you off without a second's thought if I think that, if I do not do it, you are going to take me down.

 

So I believe that the life-changing, the world-changing event that we are waiting for in this hour is that the righteousness of God, the only true life, which is spiritual life (and when that spiritual life appears in you, He gives life to your soul, and He preserves this body that you are in). He has already appeared to men, we are told in the Scripture, in the form of Jesus of Nazareth. He is about to appear again in a company of fallen, sin-filled, dead men. And when He appears in us, the Spirit of Life shall have entered into us, and we shall rise from the dead.

 

And my Bible says that this fallen humanity shall behold us, and there shall be what in their hearts? As the two witnesses were lying dead in the street, the Spirit of Life entered into them. And all who saw it had great fear.

 

Now, a lot of people know that. The question is, How do you, and how do I, get to be the one, or one of the ones, in whom the Spirit of Life is entering into? There are all kinds of theories out there. If you lay hold of the wrong theory, you are not going up. Jesus is no respecter of persons. No, he is not.

 

So how come you did not get hold of the right theory? Maybe your ears were closed. Maybe your pride was in the way. Maybe your stubborn, rebellious heart would not go where he told you to go. Maybe it was not comfortable for you in the church He sent you to, so you went someplace else where you got the wrong information. Maybe you got all caught up on some soapy, emotional mess that led you in the wrong direction.

 

He is not any respecter of persons. Your mind is all messed up. So you better make your covenant with the Lord to take you despite your messed-up mind because, if you follow after your own mind, there is no way you are going in. You are going to wind up in the ditch instead of in the door.

 

What I am trying to zero in on, brethren, is the teaching that is coming forth here of how we get in. And this is that teaching. It is a process. It is a series of steps. What is a series of steps? How we ascend into everlasting life, which begins by raising Christ from the dead in us, then continues by giving life to our soul and continues on to preserve this body. Jesus said, No man can take My life unless I give him permission. And I do not hesitate to give him permission because, as soon as He takes my life, my Father is going to raise me from the dead, so do your worst. You cannot kill righteousness. Only a fool thinks he can kill righteousness.

 

How does this process start? First, the seed of righteousness must be imparted to you. Behold, brethren, the Kingdom of God is within you. If you think your salvation is coming from Mars, you stand there with your telescope scanning the sky, and this salvation is going to come and go. And by the time you turn around, you are going to turn around just in time to see the door closing. And the Bible says, There is going to be wailing and gnashing and teeth. Oh, but once saved, always saved. Oh, really? What do you do with the Scripture that says there is going to be wailing and gnashing of teeth?

 

You have to get the seed of your life inside of you. Jesus says, Behold, I stand at the door, and I knock. Open the door, brethren. You have to walk through. And how do you walk through? By renouncing your sin-filled lifestyle. You must hate it and love righteousness.

 

We see a lot of people in the Church world today. They have the revelation. The Kingdom of God is within you. Hallelujah. They dance, and they sing. Some of them have the Kingdom of God; some of them are dancing and singing, and they do not even have the Kingdom of God within them.

 

So first, you have to get the seed. And the seed has to attach itself to you, to your spiritual being, which is in the form of your human spirit. And when the seed of everlasting life , which is foreign to us, brethren. It is foreign to us. When it enters into us and attaches itself to our human spirit, Lord willing, it begins to grow. And as it grows, Lord willing, the Kingdom of God increases in you. Remember, the Kingdom of God is the smallest, most insignificant seed. It is as small and insignificant as a mustard seed. But when it is full-grown, it grows up into a big tree which filleth all of your earth, says our Lord. And it becomes powerful enough to grant life.

 

So you have to get the seed. The seed has to attach itself to your human spirit. The Tree of Life has to begin to grow in you. The Tree of Life is another name for the Kingdom of God.

 

Well, what does all that mean to you? There is a tree growing inside of you? I read a book once called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. What does that mean, there is a tree growing inside of you? Sounds good. Preach up a storm with a lot of emotion. And you walk out of church, and you scratch your head and say, well, what do you mean there is a tree growing? What am I supposed to do? What is the Kingdom of God in human, everyday language? You are talking to someone on the street that barely speaks English. What is the Kingdom of God? What is it?

 

A new mind. The mind you have is diseased. It has leprosy. It is rotting in your person, in your body, in your flesh. It is rotting away. And your soul is rotting away, and so is your body, and so is your life. You are leprous. The Kingdom of God is a new mind. It is wonderful to get the new mind, brethren. It is definitely a reason to rejoice and be grateful. But the problem is, when you get the new mind, now you have two minds. The Scripture says you are double-minded.

 

Did you ever see that horror movie, The Two-Headed Man? Two heads in one body, and they fight all day about what their left arm is going to do and what their right arm is going to do, which way you are going to walk, what you are going to do for a living. It is a confusing condition to be in, brethren, double-minded. It is an unstable condition to be in, brethren. It is nothing to be desired, but it is a transitional necessity because, if the Lord were to rip out our carnal mind before the Kingdom of God, which is the Christ mind, was fully mature in us, we would not survive.

 

So therefore, Jesus said, let the two grow together. His disciples had said to him, Lord, someone has sown tares, or weeds, in our garden. Shall we rip them out? And the Lord says, No, do not rip them out. Do not rip out their carnal mind before the true wheat is fully grown because there is no way that you could rip out those weeds without also destroying the Kingdom of God, and the person will die. So let them be double-minded for a season. Let them be carnal. Let them hate each other and fight and scrap and steal and do all their sin while holiness dwells in the midst of them.

 

It is a great mystery, brethren, but all Israel is not Israel, that the true Church is within the Church. You are looking at all these so-called Christians and expecting to find righteousness; you are not going to find it, brethren. The most wicked people I ever met in my life are in the Church. I remember, when I first came to the Lord, I said, Oh, wow, I am home. I have never met such evil people in all my life as I have been meeting for the past 15 years when I came into the Church.

 

So we find a lack of education to be a very serious deficit. Brethren, if you expect something that there is no way you will ever achieve or attain, you are setting yourself up for a heartbreak. You must have realistic expectations in your life and realistic goals in your life. Jesus said, They hated Me before they hated you. And you come to the Church expecting love? Jesus did not say the people in the street hated him. Who hated him? Who hated Jesus?

 

COMMENT: The Pharisees.

 

PASTOR VITALE: The Pharisees hated Jesus, His beloved brethren. Have you ever read the Psalms? We went to the synagogue together. We broke bread at the same table. My beloved friend has put a knife in my back. Wake up and smell the coffee. If you are looking for something that does not exist, you are surely doomed to failure.

 

You are looking for the fulfillment of the Scripture; you must look to the Kingdom Age. You must look to the perfected Son of God who is not yet amongst us. Are you going to stay a child, or are you going to grow up? Are you going to roller-skate through this Church Age, or are you going to fight the war that will end in your spiritual maturity, which will enable you to be amongst the first to experience righteousness? You choose to experience righteousness.

 

They hated Me first, said the Lord, and they will surely hate you. They crucified Me, and they will surely crucify you. Do you think the disciple is better than the master, that they should crucify Me, and you are going to be loved? Christ is despised, brethren. Wherever He appears, He is rejected of men, hated, lied about, blasphemed, maligned, cursed, deprived. If they could do it, they would starve Him to death. Paul worked with his own hands because he knew what a true manifestation of Christ would have to experience if he expected the body of Christ to support him.

 

Get rid of your childhood fantasies. We are in a war. You want to be in kindergarten? Go to the church down the street, where everybody does not know the other person, and they all come in once or twice a week saying, Hallelujah, praise the Lord. Is not everything wonderful?

 

And they go home, and they talk about you. And when you need them, they are not there, and you do not have the teaching that you need, and you do not have the counsel that you need, and they do not love you anyway. It is just phony; they hate your guts, and they are filled with envy and hatred and malice. They are just lying about it. You come to a church where Jesus is, and they are not lying about it, so you see it in them. But at least they are confessing it, trying to get help. And the people who are lying about it condemn the people who are exposed and trying to get help.

 

So you have two minds, brethren. Wow, you have got the Kingdom of God. All of a sudden, everything in your life is going wrong. Nothing is happening the way your childhood fantasy told you it was going to happen. I have one person, who is a very anointed person of God, who says that for the almost 10 years they have been in the Church have been the worst years of their life. Christ is persecuted wherever He goes. And if you are not being persecuted, you do not have it. You really do not have Christ. I do not care if you have a dove pin. Dove pins are not persecuted. The spiritual Christ, the spiritual man Christ Jesus, wherever He is appearing, is persecuted, hated, chased, driven.

 

If you are truly called, you can expect someone or something in that fellowship determined to drive you out of that church. And if you go, you suffer the loss because of disobedience. Brethren, persecution is no reason to leave a church. If you are not being persecuted, you probably should not be there anyway. If the Devil is not trying to get you out, that the Devil in you is not in danger. If you think the Church is a picnic, you have been lied to, and you are in an anti-Church. You are in a false Church.

 

You like to play baseball; that is wonderful. Your little girl cuts paper dolls and draws pictures of Jesus; that is wonderful. But Christ is not being formed in you, not likely at all, if you are not being persecuted. Not likely at all. Oh, you like getting dressed and going to church on Sunday morning. It makes you feel clean. Well, you may feel clean, but you are not clean. You are not clean. How do I know? You still get sick and die, and you sin every second of every minute of every day, on some level in your unconscious mind.

 

So we have two minds, brethren. Those of us that have gotten this far, we have the Kingdom of God within us. We have gotten this far. We have two minds. We now come up against the Church that says, well, just ignore your lower nature. Oh, yes, we acknowledge you have a lower nature. There is something called the Devil. Do not say it. Somebody is getting nervous. Get nervous, Devil. Your time is short.

 

Do not talk about the Devil too loud. We do not want to give him any glory. Actually, we do not even believe he exists. The Bible says he is ashes under my feet. Got to have a positive confession. All you people, stand up and act like you are putting out a cigarette on the ground. Get those ashes under your feet. You silly people! The Devil is a spirit. He is laughing at you. As a matter of fact, he is the one that stood up in the pulpit and got 500 respectable adults, including men, to stand up and act like they are putting the Devil out with their shoe. He is made a fool out of you right from your own pulpit.

 

So we have two minds in us. One is righteous, incapable of sin. And the other mind is good and evil. Brethren, a negative and a positive. Does anybody know what that equals? Anyone take any math here? A negative and a positive equals a what?

 

COMMENT: Negative.

 

PASTOR VITALE: A negative. If you are good and evil, you are evil. So you have a mind that is good some of the time and evil some of the time, but overall evil. Let me put it in a way that is easier for you to deal with. You are good some of the time, and you are bad some of the time, but you are dead all of the time. And you have another mind in you which is righteous.

 

Now, we have a great mystery here, brethren. Within the carnal mind, within the fallen man whose name is the Devil (your complete fallen personality is the Devil). Where there is good and evil, the evil is stronger than the good. We have people in this world whose hearts are broken because they are without understanding. How could the evil be greater than the good? How could the evil be stronger than the good?

 

The evil is stronger than the good, brethren, because this creation has been turned over by our creator to the evil government of this world. There is a god of this world. His name is the Devil. He has authority over us. We have some power to do some good, but the overriding government is fallen, dead evil, and therefore the evil is stronger than the good. And every good thing that exists in this world is because the Lord Jesus Christ has not left us empty or ashamed in hell. He spreads a table before us in the presence of our enemies. And there is no place that we could sink so low that He will not hear us when we cry. Every good thing is from him.

 

PASTOR VITALE: What does the Scripture say? Every good and precious promise.

 

COMMENT: Every good and perfect gift.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Every good and perfect gift is from above. So the evil is greater than the good.

 

I was taught, as a child, you do the best you can. You work continuously. You sacrifice. You make every human effort you are capable of, and you shall surely succeed. That may be true for some people, brethren. But for people who are cursed beyond that blessing, it is not true.

 

If the curses on your life are powerful enough, you can do everything humanly possible available to you as a person and crash. If you are one of those people who has made every possible human effort, you have done every responsible thing in your life, and everything you touch turns to ashes in your hand, if the curses are that heavy in your life, you need to know that the good variables or the blessings in your life are just not strong enough to even give you a decent life. And your only option is to try for the righteousness which is in Christ.

 

And if you think that the god of this world, who has so much power over you as to defeat your every effort every time, is going to bend his knee and say, Enter, Lord Jesus, you are silly. He is standing with a machine gun, a machete, an armed calvary and armed tanks determined to knock Christ out of your life [AUDIO CUTS OUT] and to knock every person whom Christ has sent to you, out of your life. If you have any hope of overcoming this negative heritage, it will not be without a warfare. You do not like to fight? Well, lay down and die. Your choice.

 

So we have two minds, brethren: one righteous and one evil. There is an element in the Church that teaches, Just ignore the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He is just ashes under your feet anyway. The righteousness which is in Christ is much greater than the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Surely the Lord will not let that old Devil overtake you. Actually, there is nothing for you to do. There are just these powers and principalities waging war in the heavenlies. You just stand down there like Chicken Little waiting to see whether or not the sky is going to really fall.

 

Brethren, you have to pick up the power which has been imparted to you in Christ and kill your carnal mind. You must slay that old dragon in the sea. If you are living in darkness, and I come in one day with an electrician and wire your whole house and leave with everything done except flicking the switch, and for whatever your reason, you do not want to flick the switch, you are still in darkness, brethren.

 

Jesus has done the work. He has made available all of the power necessary to get you out of here, but you have to flick the switch. And that is no small thing. First of all, you have to learn how to flick the switch. Second of all, the switch is much too heavy for you to lift up. You have to grow up and get strong enough to flick the switch, after you learn how to do it, by watching all the diagrams on the board. Then you have to practice flipping the switch, and you have to survive your pride when you find out that it was not as easy as you thought it was and that you are going to fall down a few times. When you find out you are not as great as you thought you were or accomplished as you thought you were or qualified as you thought you were, you are going to have to survive your own pride.

 

And then, getting to the point of this whole message, you must slay your own fallen personality. You must slay him when he is weak. Now, this is it. Open up your ears. You have done all these other things. You are strong in Christ. You have got power. You are overcoming. You have got doctrine. You are planted in a New Order church; the Devil has been trying to bomb you out for years, cannot budge you. You have overcome every obstacle. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in you is way down, buried under your feet.

 

This is the message, brethren. There is a surge of power coming to the Devil in your life. And if you do not have him at least paralyzed by the time this strengthening comes to him, he is going to rise up and kill you. He is going to rise up and kill the righteousness in you. Oh, how could God be killed? Because this is the second generation of Christ, which is not yet fully matured in you. Jesus Christ, the glorified Jesus Christ, cannot be killed. Jehovah cannot be killed. The Spirit of God cannot be killed. But He is reproducing His nature in your fallen humanity. And that seed, which is not yet perfected, can be killed.

 

Now hear the word of the Lord. If you do not kill that old Devil by casting him in the Lake of Fire, or at least start by paralyzing him, before this wave of strengthening comes, he is going to rise up, and he will be too strong for you to kill. Oh, you do not like this message; too bad. And how do you paralyze him? He must be dismantled. He must be weakened, a step at a time, through the what? The confession of sin and repentance, confession even more important than repentance.

 

And that shocks everybody. There is no way you can ever repent unless you can first see your sins and confess that they are sin and that they are within you and that you hate them, that you wish they were not there, that you are sad that they are there, but that you are powerless to remove them from yourself. Then the Lord Jesus Christ, who has already overcome the world, will kick in and paralyze and eventually kill the Devil in you.

 

Pride will stop you from this process, brethren. If you believe, because of the pride of your own mind, that you have the Devil in check, and that you confessed your sins once a hundred years ago when you came to the Lord, and that there is no necessity for specific repentance of specific sin, the day is coming that that other side to your personality, that split or that other personality, is going to rise up with such a fierceness that he will kill the Christ in you, and it will be too late.

 

The Scripture expresses this by saying, Bind the sacrifices to the horns of the altar. The Devil in you is your sacrifice. Oh, you thought Jesus was your sacrifice. No, brethren, Jesus is the bloodless sacrifice by whom the Kingdom of God is formed in you. The sacrifice that Jesus made resulted in the Kingdom of God being formed in you. Now your spiritual nature must flee into that kingdom, and the Devil is not about to let you go.

 

You must strip him of his sin. He must be a sacrifice without spot or wrinkle. Before Christ in you lays hold of the Devil and casts him into the Lake of Fire, he must first be purified. And we do that by confessing our sin and repenting and receiving a spiritual cleansing until the Devil is so weakened that only that part of him which remains is cast into the Lake of Fire and utterly, eventually destroyed.

 

We are talking about a deep, exact introspection of our unconscious mind. We are talking about an in-depth examination of our true motives and the intents of our heart that can be likened to 10 or 15 years in psychoanalysis. Sin must be located, exposed and destroyed. And it must be done by the Christ in you. You must first purify your own carnal mind through the exposure and confession of the sin. Whether you act it out or whether you do not act it out, it is still killing you. The very fact that you have a potential for this sin, that the thought comes up in your mind, means that it is a part of your nature, and that is why you die.

 

If you choose to stay in denial, you shall surely die in your sins. No man can come out of denial of his own accord. I strongly exhort you to place yourself before the Lord, humble yourself and tell Him that if you believe this, that if He does not open your eyes to see and tear down your walls of denial, you shall surely die because no unclean thing will enter into the Kingdom of God, brethren.

 

You know those Scriptures that say no fornicator is going to enter in or adulterer is going to enter in, no robber, no homosexual is going to enter in, and the Pharisee sits there and says, Oh, no, not me, Lord; I have not done any of those things. You are all of those things, brother.

 

Let me give it to you on the positive side. Did Jesus not say, You are locked out because, when I was hungry, you did not feed Me, and when I was in jail, you did not visit Me? And did not the people say to him, Lord, When did we not feed you and not visit You? He said, All of these people that you did not have mercy on, as you did it unto them, you did it unto Me. And then He said, Oh, all ye faithful that have fed the poor and had mercy on the sick and visited the captive in jail, you did it unto Meme. Enter into My kingdom. And the people said to Him, Lord, when did we feed You and visit You in jail? And Jesus said, As you did it unto these, you have done it unto Me.

 

Every man has the potential for every sin known to man. So long as you have that potential, you are guilty. It does not matter whether you do it or not, does not matter whether you smoke or not. It does not matter what you are doing with your hands. Now, do not lay hold of what I am saying and say Pastor Sheila says it is OK to sin. That is not what I am saying. Of course, you are supposed to restrict ungodly behavior. But it is not enough.

 

If you think that you are safe and that you are home free because you are not doing ungodly deeds, you are deceiving yourself. So long as you have the potential to sin, which every man has, you are not going to enter into eternal life unless you look upon your own fallen heart. Admit that you are fallen, brethren. Hate what you see in yourself and ask God to remove it and to help you not to act it out until it is removed. It is the only way you are going to enter in.

 

We call it the binding of the sacrifice to the altar. We are talking about the transition from having a Kingdom of God and a fallen mind, being a double-minded man. We go through a transition of going from the Kingdom of God to the Kingdom of Heaven. And the difference between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven is that you can have a fully mature Kingdom of God in you, a fully righteous man dwelling within you; His name is Christ Jesus.

 

So that means that you could look at this person one day, and you could see a true spirit of righteousness on them. So this confused me for a long time until God gave me this revelation. You could look at someone and see a true spirit of righteousness on them, a spirit of holiness, knowledge, wisdom, all the gifts in play, doctrine, spirit of counsel, every good thing. And the next day, you go knocking on their door to have a cup of tea with them, and some raging beast answers the door.

 

And you sit back, and you say, I must be having a bad dream here. Well, one day, you met Christ Jesus. And the next day, you came when the Devil was up. You have got a double-minded man there. So you are going to curse out God for this? You are guilty of pride. Repent.

 

The Kingdom of Heaven is your mind only after the Kingdom of God in you, that righteous man whose name is Christ Jesus, succeeds in laying hold of that old Devil and bringing him under His authority, binding him. Christ Jesus binds the Devil to Himself, thus paralyzing him, rendering him incapable of sin.

 

At that point, you are no longer a double-minded man with the Kingdom of God as one of your minds. But your mind becomes the Kingdom of the Two Heavens. If you look it up in the Greek, it does not say the Kingdom of Heaven. It says the Kingdom of the Two Heavens, the two heavens operating as one heaven, the heaven where God is and the heaven where the Devil rules, operating as one heaven under the authority of Christ Jesus, the only mediator between God and man.

 

At this point, you have become sinless, brethren. And the man whose mind is in this condition will never turn. You could knock on his door 365 days a week, 24 hours a day, and you will never find the beast there, but you will always find righteousness. In this hour, I do not know of anyone in the flesh who is in this condition. It is a process. There are some people; you could knock on their door 300 days out of the year and meet Christ Jesus, and 65 days, you will meet the Devil. Then there are people who, if you knock on their door 300 days, you will meet the Devil, and 65 days, you will meet Christ Jesus.

 

If you are looking for perfection, stop wasting your time, and put your eyes on yourself, and get yourself cleaned up because you are not perfect. So where do you come off expecting everybody else to the perfect? You Pharisee, you. Get off your high horse and look at yourself. Look at all the work you have to do.

 

I have two clips that I would like to show you on this video. It is a secular movie about a man with a multiple personality, one apparently harmless and the other a homicidal maniac. It is an extreme example, but I think it really makes the point. And at the very end, the second clip that I want to show you, the two personalities are flipping back and forth within a minute of each other.

 

And the harmless personality, who was in a duel with his friend, a sword duel with his friend, who did not know what to do, did not want to hurt the man because both personalities are living in the same body. So his friend did not want to kill his body because, if he killed the bad guy, he killed the good guy also. Well, of course, it was the bad guy having the sword duel. The good guy came to the surface just long enough to say, My dear friend, kill me now because, if you wait until the beast arises in this same body again, you will not be able to take him.

 

If you hesitate in a moment of weakness because you are deceived, that beast is going to arise in one second and will kill you. Do you hear what I am saying? You have to kill the body that may look harmless to you when it is harmless. But if you are too soft, and you wait until the beast is possessing that body, it is going to be too late for you.

 

I am talking about your own beast. We do not go around killing the beast in other people, brethren, unless we are a Son of God and the Lord has sent us under the specific instructions of the Lord Jesus Christ. These men are called the two-witness company. Then you go around killing the beast in other men. But basically speaking to anyone who is going to be hearing this message, you are after the beast in your own mind. If you do not kill him when he is weak, he is going to rise up and kill Christ in you. You better get him now.

 

You know, Jesus did not use visual aids, but He did speak in parables. He spoke in parables. Our minds are darkened, brethren. I know I have preached things for weeks and for months, and I talk to people, and I am amazed. It is like they never even heard me. It just never penetrated their minds.

 

So visual aids, parables and visual aids, are very important to help us to understand that natural examples are very, very important. It should not be more than five or 10 minutes of this film. If you enjoy it, fine. If you do not like this kind of thing, please ask the Lord to give you some patience because there are people here who are going to be very much helped by this visual aid. And each of us is not the only one here.

 

OK, now, we have just watched about five minutes of this clip, and I would like to point out to you that, if the hero had hesitated one more second, he might not have been able to kill the monster in the man. And apparently, that monster in the man was getting stronger and stronger. And the moment at which that monster would completely overtake that flesh body, so that the gentleman may have never been found again, was getting closer and closer. So if the hero had hesitated one more second to kill the body of his best friend when it was in its weak manifestation, the beast would have risen up in him, and the hero may not have been able to kill him.

 

Therefore, those of us who are moving on in spiritual strength, we have to be praying always for communication with the Lord and for discernment with the Lord, but there is no room for weakness here. And sin must be called sin wherever it is manifesting. I do not care how much you love the person. I do not care if they are your friend of 20, 30 or 40 years. When sin appears in them, if you want to go on with God, you had better call it sin, and you had better denounce it before the Lord. And if the Lord raises you up to be the one to expose it, or whatever God raises you up to do, if you do not do it, you are going to lose. Your position in Christ will begin to deteriorate, and it is unto your death.

 

We are in a war, brethren, and there is no room here for softness or for any sort of silliness because your own life, and not only your own life but the life of everyone that the Lord has placed under you for safekeeping, is at risk. And that usually includes the lives of your natural family and whatever spiritual family the Lord has given to you. There is no place for weakness in this army because that moment's hesitation could result in your death and the death of everyone that you have authority over.

 

The second thing that I would like to point out to you is all that electricity activity. What was happening there is this. This movie, or this TV series, is about supposed immortals that exist in the earth. And of course, they are Hollywood-type immortals. They are not what we read about in the Scripture, in that they have all kinds of human fallibilities. They are not sinless. There are some good immortals and some evil immortals. And any wound to the body will be healed, and they rise again. The only way to kill them is to cut off their head.

 

And this is very interesting because my first reaction to this was, well, how could they be immortals if they could die when you cut off their head? Until the Lord showed me that, even when we attain to full stature, it is possible to lose our everlasting life until we have entered into glorification. It is not likely to lose it after we attain to full stature because, just as in a natural pregnancy, the first three months are the hardest and most likely to lose the baby, within the first three months. Once you attain to full stature, you are not very likely to lose your full stature, but it is possible.

 

Satan is still whispering to you. How do we know that? Jesus heard from Satan in the event called the temptation. And even in full stature, Jesus said, The prince of this world cometh, but he has nothing in Me, which means the prince of the world was coming, trying to bring Jesus down. That means there was a small possibility that, if (and how does the prince of this world come? He comes tempting you to sin). We are told in another place in the Book of Revelation, in chapter 20, I believe, that Satan gets out of his prison and goes up on the breadth of the land and tries to bring forth sin in the believers. But lightning came down from heaven and destroyed them. That means the Christ mind killed this attempt of the carnal mind or the Devil to get out from under the authority of the man Christ Jesus.

 

Therefore, this movie is very accurate. You can be immortal because a person of full stature has everlasting life, with a small potential to lose it under certain limited circumstances. In this fantasy version, the certain limited circumstances are that they could only die if you cut their head off. And of course, in the scriptural account, you can only die if your head gets cut off, your spiritual head. If Christ gets cut off, that is the only way you can die. And in fact, the way fallen man is dying to this deadly existence is by having his head cut off. And I saw the souls of those who were beheaded for the witness of Christ. It is the removal of the carnal mind, who is the head or the authority over every fallen human being in this world system.

 

The principle of the electricity is that, when the evil immortal was beheaded, the spirit of that man enters into the victor. That was what all that electricity was. The body dissolves, and the soul dissolves, but the spirit goes into the victor. I find that very interesting because we preach something very similar here. When a man dies, the body goes back to dust. The soul goes back to the lump of clay. But the spirit is gathered unto the fathers.

 

We have a couple of messages indicating that the fathers are not in heaven somewhere. The father of humanity is not Jehovah, which is out in eternity. But the fathers is speaking about the original ancestor of this creation, which is a spiritual man who is journeying through the earth. And this man has died because of separation from God. Because he is dead, the bodies and the souls that he lives in continue to die.

 

So we have one spiritual man journeying through the earth who keeps on changing his garments, keeps on taking on new souls and new bodies until such time as he is raised from the dead by the Spirit of Christ and therefore finds within himself the power to preserve the many-membered soul, and the many bodies that he lives in, so there is no longer any reason for him to lose his garments. And this event is the resurrection of the dead.

 

So we see the human spirit being the only thing that survives the death of a man. It is very consistent with what we saw on this TV program. Very consistent with it and I find it very interesting. Every time I watch that part of the spirit going into the victor, I find it very interesting.

 

The only thing that I find inconsistent, at this point, is that there are some good immortals and some evil immortals. I do not see that in the Scripture at this time. But the principle behind it is that only one can remain, that at the end of the scheme of things, there will either be one evil man or one good man. In other words, the principle is that good and evil can only coexist for a season, that eventually the creation must be either good or evil.

 

Which leads us into something else that we are been preaching here, end time doctrine, that this creation is a maturing creation. If you have spiritual eyes to see it, we are very young. We are just approaching spiritual puberty. And up until now, the creation has been neuter with a few precocious exceptions, or with the exceptions of a few people who have spiritually matured early. That is what precocious means. If you see a 9-year-old girl that is old enough to bear a child, that has a body like a woman and is old enough to bear a child, she is called a precocious young woman. So we have some people in the human race who are actively practicing spiritual power. It is not the spiritual power of God. It is the spiritual power of Satan. They are spiritually precocious. They are mature for their age in a negative way.

 

But we see that the whole creation is maturing, is coming of age. The way the Scripture puts it is that the creation is coming of the age where she is ready for love. And that means she is ready for love with Jehovah. And that, in that union with the Creator, she will find the ability to practice the spiritual power of God, the legal spiritual power for which there is no wage, which is death.

 

Therefore, in this hour, as small children have male and female bodies but are neither living a male nor female lifestyle, we have people in the earth today who are born with spiritual power. They are called the he-goats of the flock, people who were just born with a strong spiritual mind. They find themselves with spiritual power. They have not done anything to get it. They are just born with it. They are the he-goats of this flock of humanity. And we see some human beings that have little to no spiritual power at all. They are the females of the flock.

 

We see the whole flock, however, maturing. And every individual is about to differentiate, either into a manifestation of righteous spiritual power, which means the man Christ Jesus will stand up in them and possess them in righteousness, or they are going to mature or differentiate into a manifestation of evil, in which event the Devil will stand up in them, and they will be a full expression of the personality of the Devil. Oh, well, maybe that is the principle of some good immortals and some evil immortals.

 

There is a very real possibility that we are going to find, more and more and more over the next 1,500 years, human beings who are either fully spiritually mature in righteousness or fully spiritually mature in evil. And there will be a battle between those two forces. We know that the righteousness of Christ will win.

 

And I do believe that, in many if not most if not all instances, when a human being has differentiated or fully matured into a full expression of the evil personality of the Devil (I do not have this 100 percent). I think it is going to be irreversible. On the one hand, I believe it is going to be irreversible, and they will have to be destroyed. But what confuses me is the deliverance of the Gadarene demoniac. So I have to wait for God to speak to me about this conflict. There is never an inconsistency in the Scripture; it is just a lack of understanding of the person who is trying to understand the Scripture. God is perfect. There is no inconsistency in the Scripture. I just do not know the answer to that yet.

 

So I did not have time to study last night. But apparently, the Lord did not leave us empty. I really enjoyed this message myself.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Does anybody have any questions on these issues? Anybody?

 

COMMENT: In effect, we all have the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in us to varying degrees then?

 

PASTOR VITALE: In varying degrees, some, but there is a line that you go over where you become, a lot like this movie, a murderer. You become dangerous. The average person spends his whole life keeping the negative side of him hidden, and he lives out his life, and he dies. But in this hour where we are called or we are given the opportunity to become righteous, it is necessary for the evil side to be exposed and confessed as sin.

 

Therefore, it is going to be easier for the alcoholic and the prostitute to enter into the Kingdom of God than the man who is led a good life because the alcoholic and the prostitute has no problem whatsoever seeing and confessing their sins. But the person who was raised in the Church and who has not really done anything terrible in their lifetime: they have gone to church every Sunday, all their life; they have been good children, taken care of their wives, their kids, their parents. They have a lot of trouble seeing their sins.

 

And they have a lot of trouble hearing this message that, no matter how much good, that is the good of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil now. It is not righteousness. No matter how much good that they have done, their mind is still that negative positive mind, and a negative and a positive, equals a negative. Remember that? You know what I am talking about? OK, that their mind is still a negative mind. And the name of their mind is called death, and they are dying. Jesus put it this way, If your righteousness does not exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

 

COMMENT: So in effect, all have to go through what the Pharisees and scribes went through. They were doing everything, behavior-wise, correct.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes, exactly.

 

COMMENT: But it took the Lord to expose what was in their heart.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right. 

 

COMMENT: And that is what has to be done with us.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Right. The hidden sins of our heart have to be exposed.

 

COMMENT: And these things are kept hidden from us.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Yes, yes. And the Bible says, If we are blinded, we are blinded by who? Does anybody know?

 

COMMENT: Pride?

 

PASTOR VITALE: Who?

 

COMMENT: Pride.

 

PASTOR VITALE: The pride of your own mind; that is good. And there is a second witness. If you are blinded...

 

COMMENT: I thought it was the god of this world.

 

PASTOR VITALE: One is Old Testament, and one is New Testament. That is correct. You are hidden by the pride of your own mind, and the pride of your own mind is the god of this world. It is the god of this world that is blinding you.

 

And if you recall the message from Thursday night, we had an Alternate Translation on a Psalm which told us that the Devil keeps us deaf to the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we have one Scripture or two Scriptures saying we are blinded. And we found, in the Psalms, a Scripture that says that we are deafened by the god of this world. The Devil is the god of this world. So we are rendered blind and deaf because the Devil is possessing us. It is only by the grace of God that we can even see our sins.

 

If we are these everyday churchgoing people, we are at a real disadvantage to the obvious sinner. People that are filling the jails are going to repent faster. They do not have any problems seeing their mess-up.

 

Now, in that video, the man was physically killed. And it is just a spiritual killing of the carnal mind.

 

We are talking about the spiritual killing. No, you do not have to die physically to enter into the kingdom. It is the death of your fallen personality, which is the Devil. And the mind of the Devil is the carnal mind.

 

COMMENT: In the event someone is coming at us, completely overtaken by Satan to come at us...

 

PASTOR VITALE: To come at us? What do you mean to come at us?

 

COMMENT: Violently, to come at us to kill us. There is no defense.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Physically?

 

COMMENT: Exactly.

 

PASTOR VITALE: Well, I question that. To be honest with you, I have not heard from the Lord in that. When I was in Nigeria, I was asked a very similar question. If the country goes into civil war, do you fight? I was preaching to a group of young men. I had to tell them that the Lord has not spoken to me on that issue.

 

The only word I have in my heart is a movie that I saw. The Lord teaches me through movies. The name of the movie is Captain York. I think it is Captain York, a young, peaceful man who had a relationship with the Lord and could not see going to the war, wanted to be a conscientious objector. But after much prayer, was convicted that, I think it was World War I, was a righteous war and that he had to go and defend his country. So it truly is a matter of conscious.

 

And I do not know what the answer to that is personally. That is the only witness in my heart which tends to make me think that the answer is, under certain conditions, you do defend yourself. But it is not strong enough in me for me to tell you that I have heard from the Lord and that you are supposed to do this, or you are not supposed to do this. I would think it would take a very special person to just stand there and be stabbed to death. I do not really know that the Lord wants you to do that.

 

But I do know this. Let me tell you this, that I believe, if you find yourself physically threatened, that, at the very least, the Lord wants you to cry out to Jesus. And then that is how I live my life. Whenever I come into a situation that comes on me suddenly, an unexpected situation that comes on me suddenly, any kind of a threatening situation, the first thing I do is say, Jesus, help me. And then I just do whatever I do, believing that He is going to either stop me from doing something destructive or enable me to do it. And that is what I live, and that is what I encourage you to do. You cry out to Jesus, and then you do what comes naturally.

 

All He wants is that commitment from you, that you are really turning it over to Him, but you are in a crisis situation, and you do what you have to do. But in principle, you have turned it over to Him. That means He receives the responsibility of either stopping your fist or moving your fist. I think there is a time that you fight, personally, unless you are in a place where the Lord is spiritually defending you. Now, I think that is what the Lord is saying.

 

Now, look, it is the same principle as with the healing. You know we were in a church together, and there were all kinds of supernatural healings going on there. I had many of them myself. And then, for whatever reason, that anointing left the church. People stopped getting healed. And I know that I made my covenant with the Lord right at that time. If ever you want me to go to a doctor or to a hospital, you are going to have to really tell me because I am not going. I have experienced supernatural healing. To me, it is a humiliation to have to go to a doctor. And I am willing to die. And I will die unless You tell me that you want to go to a doctor. And I made that fleece with the Lord when that anointing for healing left the church.

 

And then, sure enough, the time came when I was that sick, and I was ready to die here. And the Lord had to send three witnesses to tell me, Get your body in a hospital, or you are going to be dead in two weeks. But I was going to die right on that couch. I was going to die.

 

So it is the same principle, that you cannot really tell somebody, if you are physically attacked, you fight or do not fight. It depends on the move of the Spirit. If you are in a spiritual condition, I believe that God has told me that this is a promise for me, that I will one day experience what Jesus experienced.

 

They came to arrest him, and all He said was, I am. I am the one you are looking for, and they fell backwards. Now, if you have that kind of an anointing on you, why would you want to shoot anybody or punch anybody or do anything like that? There is no reason for it, right?

 

So, the question is, Are you in a place where the Lord is willing to defend you from a physical assault supernaturally? That is the first question you have to ask. If the answer is yes, that is easy. If the answer is no, then you have to find out what the Lord's purpose is in that assault. And you have to find out what it is.

 

I know that there is a place in that Bible saying that the prophet went to the man of Israel, and he says, Hit me, right here. Hit me. And the guy says, Oh, no, I am not going to hit you. You are a prophet of God. And I think the man was attacked by a lion or something because he did not obey the word of the Lord. And the prophet went down the road, and he found the next guy. And he says, Hit me right here. Hit me. And the man recognized that this was the Spirit of God speaking to him, and he hauled off, and he socked the prophet, and the guy bled. And the prophet went and prophesied; I think it was to King Ahab, Thus saith the Lord, as this jaw is bleeding, thus and thus and thus will happen unto you.

 

So the answers are always the same. You have to do what the Lord tells you to do, but make sure that it is the Lord and that it is not some religious spirit in your head that is making you commit suicide or kill yourself. You know, that is the whole problem. It is such a fine line. To live that kind of life, you have to really be able to hear from God.

 

People are shocked to hear me talk like this. Every promise in that Bible is not for every person at every moment of their life.

 

And His purpose for you in your life is not the same at every moment of your life. Things change. There are certain things that never change, and then there are things that change. Does anybody know what the things that change are called? What?

 

COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE]

 

PASTOR VITALE: No. They are variables. The things that change are variables. Even last night, somebody questioned something that I was saying. I did not have time to answer their question. They said, Well, last week, you said this was a good thing, and now you are saying it is a bad thing. Gee, maybe this is a false prophet. No, the variables changed. Last week, it was a good thing, but I just got some new information.

 

Let us give a parable. Somebody went on a picnic, and I said, Oh, is that not a nice picnic spot? There is grass, and there are trees, and the sun is shining, and all that good fruit to eat. You do not even have to bring a lunch; just pick the food and eat. Is that not wonderful?

 

Then, the next week, I get a report. I get a piece of paper that says to me, It was discovered that all this food is poisonous, and everybody that went on that picnic and ate that fruit that was growing died. And I come into the next meeting, and I say, Do not go to that picnic location; it is bad. And the carnal mind says to me, But last week, you said it was good, and this week, you say it is bad. You must be a false prophet. No, I am not a false prophet. The variables, my information, changed.

 

This is the difference between rigidity and flexibility. If you have a rigid mind, you are going to die. The river of life is winding. If you zig when the river zags, you are going to go into the ditch. You have to be able to be flexible. You have to make changes. If you live under rigid rules, it cannot benefit your life in any way. This is one of the biggest holes in the law, having an administrator of that law (a judge, if you will) who is rigid and inflexible.

 

I heard a story once. This is supposed to be a true story about a great judge. I do not even know. He may have been a nominal Christian. He was a judge in a court of law in this country. And he had someone brought before him (it was a small claims court) for stealing a couple of loaves of bread.

 

And he said to the man, Why did you steal the bread? He said, Well, my babies were starving. I know that it was wrong, but my kids were starving. So the judge said, Well, you know, you broke the law. You are not allowed to steal the bread. The baker has suffered damages, and the law is the law, and you are just going to have to pay the price. So I am going to charge you the price of the bread plus (I do not remember how much it was) a $5 fine.

 

And the man said, But, Your Honor, I did not have money to buy the bread in the first place. And the judge said, The price of the bread and a $5 fine, or three months in jail. And the man said, I did not have the price to buy the bread in the first place. And if I go to jail for three months, my kids are surely going to die. The judge banged the gavel and said, The price of the bread and $5 fine. Sentence pronounced.

 

Then he took out his hat, and he took up an offering for the man, and he took out his own wallet and put in $5, and he passed the hat around. Can you hear this? The law must be satisfied, but law without mercy is hell.

 

If you have a rigid mind, if you hear yourself in this and you have a rigid mind, tell the Lord that you would like a flexible mind. He is the God who gives to all who ask for godly things. Now, He may not even give it to you. He will [AUDIO SKIPS] when you have to go through  [AUDIO SKIPS] and kicking about the [AUDIO SKIPS] to me. Well, you asked Me [AUDIO SKIPS] unrighteous, so I have got to clean you up from your unrighteousness. You told Me you wanted to be holy, son.

 

I heard a preacher say once in the pulpit, I do not know what I thought God was going to do. I guess I thought he was going to take a screwdriver and turn a screw in me or something. [AUDIO SKIPS] go through. For the Lord [AUDIO SKIPS]. No matter what you are asking, He comes to change you. He is coming to change you. He is coming to change you. [AUDIO SKIPS] opportunities. He is coming [AUDIO SKIPS] your pastor.

 

He is coming to change you. You are going to get 10 Sister So-and-so's until you learn how to love that person with that character defect in them. He is coming to change you. You are the one in whom Christ is supposed to be rising, and you are the one who He is maturing to the place where you can love everybody, no matter what they are doing to you or whether they are offending you or whether they are not.

 

People who are codependent [AUDIO SKIPS] conditions. They have a tendency. There is a problem in [AUDIO SKIPS] No, no. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] only one who [AUDIO SKIPS].

 

So for you to be an individual who is anointed by Christ to fix the other person, you have to be moving in some measure of righteousness. You have to have overcome at least in the area in which you are fixing the person. You see, you cannot be fixing a person because you want them to give you something that you need. That is a selfish reason to God.

 

And you cry out to the Lord, Think what they could give me. [AUDIO SKIPS] interfering with my getting what I need. He is not going to honor your prayer. [AUDIO SKIPS] and fix you. So He is going to fix you, and then He is going to make [AUDIO SKIPS] and fix [AUDIO SKIPS]. God does not fix people because of your weakness. He fixes you for [AUDIO SKIPS] choice it is to pray is when you pray for patience. It is manipulation.

 

Asking the Lord to teach you how to love is one of the most dangerous things I have ever done. When He teaches you how to love, He sends severe rejection against you, and He says, Overcome. He sends hatred against you, and He says, Overcome. Let us see you love them. Cannot do it? Got knocked down? Here, I will stand you up. Go on back. Let us see you love them.

 

You must be very careful what you ask the Lord for. It is not easy to be trained up by God, but you cannot be a Son without the training. It is difficult; it is painful; it is stressful. I do not know that I have ever seen anybody really enter into deep training without screaming and yelling at some point. I have never seen it. It is that stressful. It involves severe trials.

 

PASTOR VITALE: So any other questions or comments on this message?

 

COMMENT: I would like your prayers.

 

PASTOR VITALE: OK. We will pray for you as soon as we finish preaching here.

 

COMMENT: Thank you.

 

PASTOR VITALE: You are welcome. Any other questions or comments on this message?

 

COMMENT: I would just like to thank the Lord for the message because, although I tried to study yesterday, it was an unusually difficult day for me, and I did not really get much done at all. He has once again proved himself quite faithful. I found this very stimulating, a very anointed message, in any event.

 

Transcribed by VerbalFusion 06/23/21

1st Edit 06/25/21 rh