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PRAYER
We thank you for every person You brought here. We thank you for a personally elected group. We pray that Your sole purpose be accomplished tonight. That every hungry heart should be filled. That every hungry mind should find the answers that are out of Your Spirit and that You should be glorified and magnified and lifted up and increased and that You should be exalted tonight. And we pray that everybody has a life changing experience, and experiences that grow in Your Spirit which is leading towards everlasting life. And we thank You Father, in the Name of Jesus. Amen.
We don't sell the tapes, they are all free. It's a matter of conscience, obviously we need money to operate; whatever donation you would like to give would be received. In the United States, we do ask for a donation of any amount. We give you anything you want. Overseas, we send them for free. On the other hand, this couple has a lot of our tapes and they have a lending library.
Anything that you would like to hear, if they don't have it, I will send it to them and then they will keep it from that point on for the library. So you have your choice as to anything you like. Okay? Okay, praise the Lord, do you have a question?
COMMENT: My question was just about what had happened to me a couple of nights ago. I don't know if it's anything, it was just when I was laying down on the bed, before I went to sleep, I had a little conversation in my mind with God. I heard a click and then a flash of light, like a reddish, yellowish light, while my eyelids were closed, came past my eyes and they opened up and it was like I wasn't in control of my eyelids or anything and they just opened, and my heart was beating fast and I was just wondering if you knew, or if that was any type of spiritual occurrence, or if it was just my carnal mind.
PASTOR VITALE: Your eyes opened, your eyes opened and closed, is that what you said?
COMMENT: They just opened, like I was closing my eyes, I was just asking okay, talking with God, like, okay, what's going on, as far as not reading or I was not praying so much, I'm resting. All of a sudden I heard a click in the background and the light flashed before my eyes and my eyes popped open and there was like a rush through my body and I was just wondering if there was something spiritually happening to me as far as maybe deliverance or the Holy Spirit or whatever; or something being thrown at me, a spiritual gift or something.
PASTOR VITALE: So, you didn't see anything when your eyes opened. As I understand you correctly, your eyes opened outside of your own sovereign will, your eyes were just opened. What that says to me is just another witness of this current move of God operating in your life. And now this is the story, whether this is what's happening in this hour; we think that we are our own, but we are not our own. We were talking about this at dinner tonight. All of our lives, our mind decides it would like a drink of water. We get up off the chair and we go get a drink of water. That's not Christ doing that in you; that's your carnal mind because we have been carnal for all of these days and when we come to church, we praise God, we sing songs, we listen to doctrine and we are spiritual for that moment. But our every day life is under the control of the carnal mind. This is our condition right now, and what we don't realize is that we are really not doing these things of our self. We're just so one with the carnal mind that we don't know any difference. What I'm telling you is that your carnal mind is completely controlling your body, except in the areas of morality and righteousness, where your teachings in the church, when you were small children, you were taught morality, you were taught about Jesus, you were taught about ethics. There are certain things your carnal mind cannot make you do, because you are exercising your will against them. You were taught that they were wrong, you believed that they are wrong and you were exercising your free will. You were saying, I don't care if that thought comes up in my mind, I'm not going to do it.
So, we are told in the scripture that the Lord is ever present with us no matter where we are, if we are in heaven or if we are in hell, that the Lord is with us.
And we are told in the Psalms that David cried out, "Don't leave my soul in hell." He's with us everywhere. He's spreading a table in the presence of our enemies. And in the worse conditions, we have the Word of God, that's not in the book, but that it's in our heart. You have a revelation of right and wrong. So we see in this existence that we have down here, where there is much evil, we have a presence of God, guarding and keeping us from being turned over to a utterly reprobate mind. There are people in this world, or you just have to walk to certain areas, I guess you must have it here in New Jersey; we have it in Long Island; I know it exists in Manhattan; people laying in the streets, people leading absolutely hellish animalistic lives completely overtaken by addictions and all forms of ungodly lifestyles. And if they could possibly see a way out, they would get out of it. You know what the low life forms are. People trapped in prostitution, can't get out. People trapped in real low places of life in their mind and sometimes it's just in their mind, people lead a double life. They are in a very low place in their mind and they come home to a respectable neighborhood; some people, their whole lifestyle is just on the streets, completely given over to Satan. So, we see that the carnal mind has the ability to control our physical body to the fullest extent that he is not being stopped by moral and religious teaching that is much more than an intellectual knowledge, but moral and religious teaching that has manifested itself as a spiritual reality in our life. Jesus is a Spirit. You don't just read this book. You read this book and the Spirit that wrote the book gets on you. He gets on you, He gets in you, He protects you, He protects your children, He blesses you, He prospers you, and praise God, you are not one of those poor people laying down there in the streets somewhere, completely overtaken.
So, I just want to say that again. The carnal mind is ruling in this world. He can do pretty much whatever he wants with people, except in the areas where Jesus is present saying, "You can go this far, and you can't go any further." So, you say to me, "But what about the Hindus and the Buddhist that don't believe in Jesus?" And this is what I say to that. Jesus is the creator of the universe, He is God, whether sister or brother, so and so, or Mr. Hindu or Mr. Buddhist knows it, Jesus is God, and He made this world with certain spiritual laws. We know that there are physical laws. If you jump out of a six story window, your body is going to go plummeting downward and you very well might die. If you don't die you get a few broken bones, your head could get smashed.
It is the law of gravity; what goes up must come down. There are spiritual laws in this world. It doesn't matter whether you are a Hindu or a Buddhist or whether you are an atheist, there are spiritual laws. An example of spiritual law is the Ten Commandments. We have societies all over this world, some of them never heard of Jesus, some of them heard of Jesus and reject Him, but they are living according to the Ten Commandments. They have societies they are taught not to murder, they are taught not to steal, they are taught to honor their father and their mother. Well, where do they get these spiritual laws? Paul clearly said, that there are Christians in this world that have the law of God written in their heart.
And not only that but he said; that you, who are living a pharisaical life style and who don't have the law of God written in your heart, you are just doing a religious work. The person that has the law of God written on their heart is entering into the Kingdom before you. So Paul clearly stated, we have people out there that never heard of Jesus who are complying with the spiritual law of God. Honor your father and mother and you shall live long on the earth. There are people out there that live longer than a lot of Christians. Why? Probably if you investigated, there are Christians who are dying at 33; I know someone right now, every male in his extended family dies by 35. Can you imagine the pressure this young man is living under? Christians, it's in the operation of a judgment, somewhere along the lines, nothing to be frightened of, in Christ we have power to overcome these things. And there are things that can be done to overcome them. It's not our message tonight, but there are people out there that don't know Jesus. They have been honoring their mother and father for generations and you read about them in the newspapers every once in a while. They're living to a 109 years old, they are strong, they are healthy. I heard about a 90 year old grandmother jumping out of an airplane. She was on TV last week. One person doesn't live to 90 years old to have that kind of strength and another person dying at 33 from a corroded liver for no reason; things happen for a reason.
The Scripture says, "The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." Every individual human being is a product of a group of variable positive and negative spiritual forces, which we have inherited from our parents.
Let's give it another name. The positive forces are called blessings, and the negative forces are called curses. Some people get upset when I use the word curses. There is really nothing to get upset about; if you don't like that word, I really don't care if you use another word. You want to call it a bondage, you want to call it a negative force, that's okay with me; I never get hung up on words, but it is a fact of our existence, that there are a positive and negative variables in our life that cancel each other out.
If you have more positive forces in your life than negative, you are really leading a path for a decent life style. You are reasonably happy in your marriage, your children are healthy, all of your financial needs are met, you are leading a decent life. If the negative forces outweigh the positive forces, you are one of those poor souls in Rwanda or laying down there on the street somewhere. And that is a fact of our existence. So all that to say this, to answer the young man's question. Although most of us are not aware of it, our carnal mind manipulates our body so automatically that we think we are doing it. But it's only because we've been living so to speak, with the carnal mind for so many generations, that we think that it's normal. In this hour, there is another mind appearing in the earth. His name is Christ and the mind of Christ is appearing in a group of people called the Body of Christ and He wants to be our primary mind. He wants to be so one with us, that when He thinks, we go. We don't have to stop to pray about it, we don't have to stop to be religious about it, but when the Mind of Christ looks out beyond our human ability; let's say there's a man walking down the street; what's your highway number? Route 9, over there; and the Lord wants you to minister to him.
You are all Christians in this room; or maybe the Lord says, it's that man's time to come to the Lord; and He wants one of you to go out on Route 9, and meet that man right where he is, and give him the Word. Now the average Christian might feel the prompting in his mind and say, "Now what would I be doing getting up from this couch; it's dark out already, and walking out to Route 9; that must be the devil," but the truth is Christ saying, "There's a man out there, and I'm calling him," and we don't go, because our carnal mind gets in the way. So, in this hour, as we are maturing in Christ, our new mind is at war with our carnal mind for possession of this body. Now it may sound shocking and foreign to you, but it's the truth. Our condition right now, is that our carnal mind is our state of being. We do what he tells us without a second thought, because we think he's us.
Christ is the invading force; He's the newcomer on the block and everything He tells us to do, we question, because we're not sure it's God. Therefore nine out of ten things that He tells us to do, we don't do. In this hour, however, Christ is maturing. You see, this condition of Christ moving into our life and becoming one with us to such a degree, that if He Christ, our new man; Christ Jesus, the God within us, our Savior, wanted to minister to some man walking down Route 9, right now; He wants to be so one with us, that we won't even have the opportunity to reason it out, and say, "That must be the devil." We would rise up off that couch and walk out to Route 9, and have a confrontation with that man, and say whatever words the Lord wants us to say, that would save his life. This is what the Lord is moving towards. There must be an exchange of minds. Now the Lord can't just rip our carnal mind out, because we would die. You can't live without a mind. Therefore what He's doing is slowly maturing the mind of Christ in us until such time as the mind of Christ is mature enough to sustain the life of this flesh. Now remember the Lord is growing in us like a tree. Jesus said, He's planting a seed in us, a least impressive seed; you could find a mustard seed; but when it matures, the Lord said, it will grow up into a great tree which will fill all the earth of our soul. Okay. So the life of Christ in us is growing. Jesus Himself, we are told, grew in wisdom and in Grace. There was a continuous increase of His life in Him. Even at the time of His crucifixion, Jesus said, "I and the Father am one, but nevertheless, the Father is greater than I." So we see that there is an evolution of maturity in Christ, there is a growth in Christ. You know, you are not reconciled to the Lord and stay where you are for the rest of your life, you grow. What maybe surprising to you to hear, is that there is growth beyond that which we see and believe, as of twenty and thirty years. We are a mature group here tonight, so we have been around believers that have been in the church for thirty years, but we think that's the ultimate. Christ however, is rolling into this world with an ever increasing strength. He's increasing from glory to glory, which increases us from glory to glory, and each generation that lives on the earth, is becoming more and more mature. Brethren, there was a time where no one had the Holy Ghost, they had faith, they had the Word of God, but people didn't speak in tongues, back in the eighteen hundreds, people didn't speak in tongues.
So, we see that there is an increase in Christ which is generational. It's very slow, so perhaps if no one pointed out to you, you don't see it, but we have something in Christ now that the human beings in this country, a hundred years ago, didn't have.
Therefore, is it so unreasonable to believe that fifty years from now, or twenty years from now or, if in fact we are at the point right now, where humanity is ready to go into the next stage, just as those faith believers moved into the Holy Ghost believers; if we are at the point right now, where the Lord is moving the whole church or the faithful in His church unto the next stage, whatever that might be, it could be within the next five years. There is about to be an increase in Christ available to those believers who the Lord is calling to be the first ones to experience it. Now everybody didn't get the Holy Ghost at once. It started with a small group on Azusa St., in California, if you've heard that story. When the word went out, people were flying in from Europe and from all over the world to get the Holy Ghost. So, I'm suggesting to you, I'm telling you outright, there was an increase in the life of Christ coming to His people. And I believe it's about to start soon as similar experience to what happened on Azusa St., the next step up in maturity. And it's going to be starting with a small group and it will grow and it will increase.
My point is that what you see in faithful men and women of God who have been following the Lord for twenty, thirty and forty years, if you are assuming that that's all there is, because these people have been around for twenty, thirty or forty years, I'm telling you, I'm suggesting to you, you don't have to believe it if you don't want to, that, that's not true. What is true is that Christ is increasing in the human race from generation to generation. It is a slow change which causes some people to think that right now we have all there is and then we die and we get something else. But I'm suggesting to you; I'd like you to pray about this; I have no problem with you if you don't agree with me. I just recommend that you pray about what I say, would be to your advantage to ask the Lord if it's true. You probably never heard this before, but ask Him if it's true.
So, back to your question. What's happening is that Christ is moving to exercise more control over His people in this hour. Christ wants to be the mind that thinks and we move automatically and that the carnal mind should be the mind that we should stop and think about. He wants to reverse the situation as it exists now. And this is reflected in the scripture in Revelation, Chapter 20. I think it's Verse 4, which says, "And I saw the souls of them which were beheaded for the witness of Christ."
Now, many believe that there will be a tribulation and there will be human people physically beheaded. But when I read that Scripture, it says, "I saw the souls, not the bodies, I saw the souls of them which were beheaded for the witness of Christ." And I suggest to you that every human being has a spiritual head, which is sitting on their soul. And whoever is your spiritual head, it is the mind of your person that, because he's sitting on your soul, when he thinks, his command goes immediately through you and you get up and do whatever he says.
This is the dominion that the carnal mind is exercising over all of humanity in this hour. Christ is the newcomer, fighting and waging war with the mind which is sitting on our soul or possessing us, if you will. And it is Christ's full intention to behead our soul from that criminal mind, because the carnal mind is a criminal mind, and for Christ to sit down in his place, and to be the Lord of our life. Meaning what? I know you say, He's the Lord of my life, I say He's the Lord of my life, but brethren having Jesus as the Lord of your life, is a condition, a state of being, which if it is a reality in your life, means, that when Jesus thinks, you do, without thinking. And the only person that I know about that has experienced this condition, 100% to date, is the man, Jesus of Nazareth. We are double minded. See, most believers, they read James, and he says, "A double minded man is unstable in all his ways." So everybody thinks, well, I don't want to be double minded, I'm going by my own will power, I'm going to be single minded. But double mindedness is a necessary transitional period.
It's speaking about that period that Christ is maturing in us, in preparation for the beheading of our soul. Because possession is nine tenths of the law. The carnal mind owns us in this hour. Christ is growing in us. As soon as He becomes that big tree, which fills all of our earth, He's going to kick the carnal mind out. And we read about this in allegory form in the Book of Galatians, "Cast out the Bondwoman and her son and let the true heir enter in and possess the purchased possession."
So, getting back to your question. In this hour, in a very small group of believers; well let me say this first, the Lord has a plan. Everything He does is planned carefully. There is a season for everything. What I'm speaking to you about, the possessing of Christ of His possession, because we are His inheritance, He has been given all power in heaven and in earth, He has been awarded all of humanity by His Father in heaven, who raised Him from the dead, but the situation today can be likened to a King in exile.
How about the man in Haiti, he's the elected president. We have the same situation in Nigeria; I made three trips to Nigeria, so I know a little about Nigerian politics. They have an elected president there. He is elected by the general populace, and he is being blocked from taking his position by the sitting military dictatorship, which will not get up and move out of his way. The man can't rule in Nigeria, the other man can't rule in Haiti. They are both elected by a mandate of the people, but both of them, if they want to move into their inheritance, if you will, have got to wage a warfare, because the seat's occupied, and the one sitting on the seat won't go, and possession is nine tenths of the law.
Well, this whole creation has been given over to the Lord Jesus Christ. But the sitting king won't get up and move. So we find ourselves in a spiritual warfare and the Lord Jesus Christ in this hour, is moving to unseat the possessing sitting king. This warfare is being waged in an individual at a time. In this hour, the actual unseating of the one who is stealing the throne, if you will, is occurring in only a few believers that have a very close relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Why? Once again, if Christ Jesus is not mature in the person, and the carnal mind is removed, Christ will not have the strength to sustain the life of this flesh. Now you may ask, am I saying that God is not strong enough to sustain the life of this flesh? Yes, Jehovah is, the Lord Jesus Christ is, the Glorified Christ is, but the Glorified Christ is outside of us, He went to Heaven, right? He's reproducing His life in the heart of the individual. If you have received the Holy Ghost, you have received the seed of the life of the Glorified Lord Jesus Christ. He was crucified, He rose from the dead, He ascended, He became the Glorified Spirit. He appeared to Paul as a ball of light, He was completely spiritualized.
In this hour He is pouring out His Spirit upon all flesh, He is pouring upon us as the rain, He's raining on all humanity. And when you receive the Holy Ghost, what has happened to you, is that a drop of His life has landed on your heart. He's the seed. Is not Jesus the seed? Now that's the mustard seed. When that seed gets inside of you, it's connecting with the earth of your soul, Lord willing. Because we know from the parable of the soils, that even though the seed lands on your heart, it doesn't bring forth fruit unto perfection in everybody. But the believers who have the good ground, in whom the seed is bringing forth fruit unto perfection, he's moving in that direction. Those are the mature believers in this hour in whom Christ is maturing to the point where He is getting ready to slay or behead their carnal mind and sit right down and preserve the life of that person. So we see that, of course, God has the power to keep you alive, but we are talking about the reproduction of that life in the individual. Okay. We are not talking about the Glorified Spirit of Christ, when I say He may not be strong enough to sustain the life of your flesh. We are talking about the God in the midst of you, okay? The reproduction of Christ as your personal savior. If Jesus is in me as my personal savior, and He can sustain the life of my flesh, that doesn't mean His seed has landed on your heart and that He's mature enough in you to sustain the life of your flesh. Because just as the Holy Ghost is given to one, and the other doesn't have it, the same thing is the reproduction of the complete person of Jesus Christ in your own heart. So, we see that it's possible because the Lord's still working to save us. He's still working to deliver us out of the clutches of the enemy, which is in our own heart. Therefore everybody is not in the same place. As soon as Christ has grown up into that big tree, which is strong enough to sustain your life, He's going to cut the carnal mind off of your soul, sit Himself down and you'll be a manifestation of the life of Christ who will automatically respond to every thought of the Mind of Christ, without a second thought, you will do it as automatically as you respond to your carnal mind now. And when the Lord thinks there's a man walking on Route 9, that I want to hear this word, you may not even know why you are doing it. But you will rise up from this couch and walk out the door and walk right out there and do what the Lord tells you. Now being a mature group, everybody here is likely that you may have had similar experience, maybe not on such a extreme level.
Have you ever woken up in the morning and walk down the street and you didn't know why, or were you ever at the mall and you wanted to go left, but something said, no, go right and you wound up witnessing to somebody. Did that ever happen to you? That's what I'm talking about on a more intense level. The Lord wants to think and you go without hesitation. Because it's His full intention to pull this whole creation up out of the bad conditions that we are in.
COMMENT: This place that you are talking about as far as Christ sitting on top of our soul, is that saying that there will be no more warring, there won't even be a thought, it's just our feet moving to where we are suppose to be and we run into somebody and we slip into conversation and bring forth the word imparting the seed of Christ, where God wills it to be, is that the idea?
PASTOR VITALE: I believe we will reach the place where we will be completely under His control without even thinking why.
COMMENT: Will we have a thought?
PASTOR VITALE: Well, we will have a thought. You see, this is a great mystery. Let me try to explain this to you. This thought causes some people a lot of anxiety. They receive it to think they're going to be completely controlled. And it's frightening to think that we will be completely controlled, unless you have an understanding that we are already completely controlled by our carnal mind. But because that carnal mind is sitting on our soul, okay, we don't even realize that we are controlled. We are so one with that carnal mind. We think that we are the carnal mind. And I don't have all the information, but there is not a doubt in my mind, I am absolutely convinced that when Christ completely controls our life, it will not be a bondage, but there will be more liberty in that condition, than the most blessed person in this condition of being controlled by their carnal mind. If you have the most you could possibly hope for in this world, you will be more content and at peace and safer with Christ controlling your life, than in an optimum condition of the various possibilities in this world. So that word, control, scares a lot of people. It used to scare me, but if God should witness this to you that we are controlled, we just don't realize it. Jesus said, "My burden is light, My yoke is easy." What was He talking about? He's saying, don't be afraid. He's saying, you don't have any idea the degree to which you are controlled by your carnal mind. And there is a switch over coming, don't be afraid, because it's going to much easier to be controlled by Me than it is by your carnal mind. The whole problem is you don't understand and lots of time when you feel fear; people feel fear when I preach this message, it's really your carnal mind that's afraid. It's your carnal mind that's afraid, we are so one. The scripture says, we are married to our carnal mind.
We are told in the Book of Romans that we are to renounce our present husband and we are to act as if we are already divorced from him. Now that's not talking about a human husband now. It's talking about our spiritual husband. We are to act as if we are already divorced and submit to our new husband, Christ. So there is a divorce coming. If you need a scripture, that's a good witness for you. We have a spiritual husband that we are married to from the moment that Christ comes into our life.
We are to resist him and submit to Christ and the end of that whole process is a complete divorce which is just another way of saying, having your head severed of our carnal mind and our marriage to Christ. Is not the church the Bride of Christ? What does this marriage mean? This is what it means. He's going to be so joined to us that He will be the mind of our person. And being the mind, He will direct our every path, except I don't really feel like doing that today, well, tomorrow, direct my every path. Oh, you couldn't really be telling me to do that Lord. He wants to direct our every path. He said that His burden is light and His yoke is easy. It's just that men fear the unknown. No matter how uncomfortable our life might be right now, at least we know what we've got. It's just scary to think about a change.
PASTOR VITALE: Did you want to ask a question?
COMMENT: You were talking about the carnal mind or a mind being totally controlled. It's just like right now the carnal mind is really the one that's in control and we think that it's our thoughts and we don't feel as though we are controlled, but we feel as though we are in control. And so when Christ is the head of our soul, it will be the same way that it will just be natural, except for our thoughts will be righteous thoughts and yet there will be any sin in our thoughts or in our heart or mind.
PASTOR VITALE: Very well said, exactly. We won't feel controlled. We will be so one with Christ that we will think it's us. And He said, I don't say or do anything that the Father doesn't do or say. Neither will it be a struggle to obey Him. Right now we have to wage a warfare to obey God. Why? Because our carnal mind is king in this hour. We Christians, we like to say, well, Jesus is King. Well, He's King by promise, just like the man in Haiti, is president by promise, okay, but He is not king by reality, unless possibly in one or two or five areas, where he was overtaken by some sin and now Christ is completely given you victory in that sin. He may be Lord of your life or King of your life in that one area, but generally speaking, He's King by inheritance, but He hasn't sat down on our throne yet. And if you are honest, that's just the truth. We war to be righteous, we war to do righteousness, we're tempted every day to do unrighteousness. And even if we get ourselves to a place where our behavior is pretty consistently righteous, we war with the thoughts in our mind. We have unrighteous thoughts, everybody has unrighteous thoughts in their mind. So Paul says, "Cast down every imagination." We war continuously, yet the promise of the Scripture is rest. Rest from what? Rest from the war that keeps sin under the feet of Christ in us, so that we are not one of those people sleeping on the streets. We are promised rest from this labor.
It's a spiritual labor of keeping sin under our feet. In parable form we are told that our soul is a garden. A garden in which the seed has been sown and in order for it to grow up and to be this great tree, we have to guard the garden and keep it weeded, and keep the stones out. Well, stones and weeds, that's speaking about sin. Because the thorns and the weeds will grow up; and what does Jesus say? Choke the seed. So we have to be continuously weeding our own garden. I don't know about you, but I get really tired. These sinful thoughts come up in my mind day and night; they come up when I'm cooking, they come up when I'm walking. Sometimes they come up when I'm preaching, they are all over the place. Maybe you don't have that experience, but I'm casting down imaginations day and night. I pray without ceasing - get out of my mind, you wickedness you. Get out of here. We are promised rest from this and you really put it very well. Our thoughts will be righteous continuously. Right now the Scripture says, "The thoughts of man are evil continuously." But our thoughts shall become righteous continuously and we shall lie down in rest and in peace. That's our inheritance, that is the promise of our inheritance. And I don't believe it's after you die. I believe that the Lord has promised to us in this human existence, that we and our decedents are not determined to live a life of this continuous exhausting labor, which always ends in our losing anyway, even if our behavior is clean. Those wicked thoughts, one of them sneaks under the barbed wire here and there. We have got to repent, because Jesus said, "If you look at that woman to lust after her, you've committed adultery." And He also said, "If you've hated your brother, you've killed him and you are guilty of murder." So those thoughts, they get under the barbed wire. We have to continuously confess our sins and repent; it's exhausting. And I read this Bible and my God has promised me rest. And I look forward to that rest from that spiritual labor of keeping sin from rising up and swallowing me up and destroying my life, which he would do if he could.
So what am I saying? I believe that we are on the eve of the next increase of the life of Christ in humanity. He's is moving to possess His possession. We are His possession. He wants to be sitting on our soul, He wants our thoughts to be righteous continuously. He wants the carnal mind moved out, He wants to sit in the position that He has inherited from His Father and He wants to rule without hindrance. And He's starting with a small group. He's moving to begin to cause our body to respond to Him. And because our mind is still carnal, because the carnal mind is still sitting on our soul; the way it registers in our understanding; is that a force outside of ourselves has opened our eyes. So without understanding it is frightening. Someone who is experiencing this, who doesn't hear this message or who hears it and doesn't believe it, whatever, it's frightening to think that some force has opened your eyes, some force has closed your eyes.
And the first thing you think about is; surely it's the devil, and you say; Jesus help me, Jesus help me. Well maybe it's not a devil, maybe it's Jesus who is moving into your life with a greater strength and heard your prayer and exercised His power.
If you could just hear this, Christ in you, exalted Himself, by showing that He is in the process of increasing you to the point where He is beginning to control or manipulate your very life, and you are going to go where you never thought of going. I walk in this to some measure.
I labor in doctrine so I have a lot of research that I've done that's on tape. And I have been having requests for a long time now to put the understanding that God has given me of the Scriptures into written form. What I do is I study in the Hebrew and the Greek and the Lord has shown me that as with the English language, you would pick up Webster's Dictionary, for example, and look up any word. There could be up to twenty definitions for any one word. And in the same manner, if you take any Hebrew or Greek word in the original Scriptures and look them up in a Hebrew or Greek Dictionary, there could be twenty or thirty or forty definitions for the same word. And the King James translators, they did the best they could, they looked at these forty definitions and they picked a word.
And the Lord has shown me that this Bible is valuable, it's glorious, but there is a hidden message in it. Jesus clearly told the disciples, I speak in parables to the those outside, but the mystery of the gospels, the mystery of God is only for the disciples that are close to me to understand. And I believe there is a deep spiritual mystery in this Bible. I don't change one word of this Bible, I may change English words, but I have not changed one Greek or Hebrew word. If you listen to the tapes, I give you all the details, I look up Strong's number, so and so, I went into such and such a Lexicon, you could look it up yourself by the book. Do you have a Christian book store? Do you know about Gesenius Hebrew Chaldee Lexicon? Yes. And then there is a Greek one, Thayer's. I use Thayer's and for the Hebrew I use Gesenius. You look it up, it's coded to Strong's numbers and you will see there is forty different words that you could choose and it's right there. So I do change the words in the King James but I have never changed one Greek or Hebrew word. I look at all the options, I pray about it, the anointing comes on me, and I bring out the Spirit of the Word as the Lord gives it to me. I've been doing that for seven years and I've had requests to put all these, what I call, Alternate Translations, in a writing. I've been convinced that I didn't have the time to do it all this time, but on the morning or two, before I left for my third trip to Nigeria, I opened my eyes, and I had a whole list of things in my mind that I was going to do, but I couldn't do them. My body got out of bed and I went to my computer and I started preparing these booklets. And the whole time that I was preparing them, my carnal mind was screaming it's head off, saying, I'm on my way to Nigeria, this the last thing in the world I had time to be doing, but Christ Jesus in me wanted these books out. And I'm telling you I couldn't get up from the computer.
So finally I got the message, because I've experienced this before that either the devil had a hold of me, or Christ had a hold of me, because I couldn't do what I wanted to do. So I started to pray and I said, Lord, if this is not You, if this is a ploy of the devil trying to hinder my preparation for my trip, please release me from it. But if it's You, I yield to you. And I prayed for about a half an hour as I was working, and I couldn't get up from that computer. So, as long as it took me to do it, this was the result of it and I took these books with me on my last trip to Nigeria. I have experienced this several times where I cannot do what I want to do.
Another example of it, was this book, Mind, Hell & Death. I had the same experience. I woke up one morning, I went to my computer, I was studying and preparing notes from which I would teach in a meeting that night, and I was typing a note into my computer. And I kept typing and I kept typing and I kept typing and I said, Hey this looks like more than a note. I better get to a new screen in my computer. And I worked on that book for two weeks. I couldn't do anything else, my carnal mind was screaming the whole time and I just prayed to the Lord, if the devil's got me, get me free, but if it's You, let it be. And I spent two weeks, I couldn't do anything, except work on that book. I worked from seven in the morning till one, two o'clock the next morning, slept for a few hours, got up and worked on it and that's what came out. I have experienced this on several levels and the Lord gets a hold of me and I just do what He wants me to do.
Another more simple example is the time I was having meetings in my house during the day, I was expecting people at 10:30, it was 10:10, and I got this overwhelming urge to go to the supermarket. I said, this is irrational, I'm expecting a house full of people and I usually try to do spiritual things before a meeting, what am I doing going to the supermarket? But the urge was so strong, I said, this might be the Lord, I'd better go. Got in my car, drove into the shopping center, split second timing, there was a woman I hadn't seen in years, I knew her from church. She came over to my car, got in, talked to me for five minutes. I found out that she was moving to Connecticut and had been praying all night for a church to go to in Connecticut. I knew the church, gave her the name of the church, she got out of my car, kissed me goodbye. Haven't seen or heard from her since. She moved to Connecticut, and she went to that church. So this is what we are talking about. I'm telling you, split second timing. My car drove by, she was on her way to the bank. It has been my experience that the Lord does not say to me, Sheila, I want you to go down to the shopping center to meet someone you know, because she is going to be there, He doesn't do that. For whatever reason, if it will change in the future, I don't know, it rises in my mind as some carnal thought, but an overwhelming urge to do something.
I pray, I say, Lord, if it's not You, hinder it, if it is You, let me go, and I go. When this first started happening in my life, it was on a lesser level and it was almost humorous the way it started. I was visiting my parents, one Sunday night, had dinner there, it was 10 o'clock, I certainly had enough food for that day, and I received an overwhelming urge for a hamburger. And I said, this is crazy, I don't want a hamburger, but it was so intense, I said, well, let me check it out. So I said goodnight to my parents. Did you hear this testimony? You didn't hear it. I said goodnight to my parents, drove down to the local diner, walked into the diner. Every seat in the diner was taken except one seat at the counter. Every booth was taken, there was absolutely no place to sit, except this one seat next to a rip-roaring drunk. He was absolutely soused. As soon as I saw that, I knew it had to be God. So I walked up, and everyone is looking at me, saying, this woman must really be crazy, sitting down next to this guy, sitting at the counter, going, mom, mrom, ma. I was surprised they didn't throw him out, he was really bad.
Everyone is looking at me, what's she doing, she must really be a foolish woman. And it was very hard for me, as God moved me into this kind of experience with him. And even he, when he saw me sit down, in his drunken stupor, must have said, what is this woman doing sitting next to me. Do you know that God will sacrifice you to meet the needs of His desperate people? He will. It was very humiliating for me. The man reached into his pocket and took out a money clip with a pack of a hundred dollar bills, and threw them down on counter in front of me. And everybody is looking to see if I'm going to pick up his money.
God help me, I was so embarrassed, but I knew that the Lord had sent me and I knew that I wasn't budging off of that seat, until whatever God had sent me in for, was done. I talked to that man, he offered to buy me dinner, I wouldn't let him buy me dinner. And the eyes of the whole diner were on me. Nobody could figure out what I was doing there. And I just listened to him and listened to him, and I was praying silently in my mind the whole time. And finally this sobriety came upon him and he just looked at me and he told me, you know I was in Vietnam and the Communists sent these 7 children into the camp and they had grenades pinned all over them. And I had to decide whether or not to kill the kids or to let my whole unit be blown up, and I killed the kids. And a pain in his eyes was horrendous. And I knew that, that's what I was there to hear and I knew that he had been drinking ever since. And the Lord did something supernatural. He also told me that his mother was a Christian and had been praying for him. Well, the man was in his thirties, she had to be praying for ten to fifteen years. He had been a drunk ever since, he never got over it. And the Lord did something supernatural. Can't tell you that I understand it myself, but could just tell you what happened. I looked into his eyes, now this goes with your eyes a little bit.
And my eyes locked on his eyes and it wasn't me, something within me raised my eyes up to look at his eyes. He was like something right out of a science fiction magazine. Our eyes locked, I had an awareness that something transferred through my eyes from me to him, and obviously it was the Spirit of God. And it wasn't even me talking, I said to him, "do you know that you could speak to God directly, I bet you could speak to God," and there's humor in it. He looked at me and he said, "Directly." And I said, "Yes, directly." And he just looked at me and something just zapped from my eyes to his eyes and my eyes were locked on him. I think that was all that was said. And then the Spirit released me and I got up and I just walked out. Just literally fled out of the diner. I have never seen the man since. There's not a doubt in my mind that his life radically changed, that he stopped drinking and he's probably serving God somewhere.
So we are talking here about the manipulation of our body by Christ. When He first starts to move in this way in your life, He gives you an opportunity to refuse. In other words I could have said, I'm not going to go for that hamburger. Okay? But as the Lord deals with me, I had a revelation at that point, that it might have been God.
And every time something like this happens to me, and I find out that it is God, I become more sensitive to the Spirit and more willing to go. And that's just the beginning, that's just the beginning of an experience or even more than an experience, a relationship with Christ, where He will manipulate my body without giving me the option. I will just rise up and go and I will not know why. I experience both aspects of the ministry in this hour. Sometimes I get a thought in my mind, I recognize it's the Lord and I just go, but the thought is not strong enough to make me go against my will, but I yield to it. And then I also have experiences where I just rise up and go or I say things I can't even tell you why I do it, and the fruit of the experience is always that the Lord Jesus Christ is glorified in me. And I know that it was Him who has sent me.
I can't tell you exactly why He would open your eyes at that point. But what your experience says to me, is that you were praying intensely and intently to Him and that through that prayer, He increased in you to some degree, and as an expression of that increase, the Lord for whatever reason, He opened your eyes.
You see, we are called to be a supernatural people. In this hour the majority of the church is not supernatural. For those of us who are beginning to experience supernatural things, our supernatural things are pretty much limited to church on Sunday morning. You prophesy, you speak in tongues, or maybe you will have an experience similar to that which I described, but the Lord wants much more with us.
And if we can get just past our fear, He's offering us something very exciting, very, very, exciting, a supernatural walk with Christ Jesus. And in that supernatural walk, is supernatural power, not only to feed the people, we are going to be doing what Jesus did.
You know it's wonderful that churches today feed the poor, and they send clothing and food overseas and to other parts of the country that have been devastated, but this is only second best. This is not what Jesus did. And there is tremendous waste involved, tremendous waste. It costs thousands of dollars to ship food and clothing and medical supplies and there is so much corruption in the world today. At least 50% of it is wasted. Then we have all these human organizations that administer all of this shipment and this one is getting paid and that one is making $30,000 a year. And 50% of your donations are used to support the organization. It's inefficient, it's the best that we have at the moment, and thank God for it, for the people who are starving. Thank God for it, but it's the best that we have. But this is not God's best, it's not what He's called us to. He has called us to travel in the Spirit. To go over to Rwanda by traveling in the Spirit like Philip did and to provide food and medical care, like Jesus did. That's what He has called to do.
And He's moving in the church to raise up a company of supernatural men, who can do this, and it's taking time. Why is this taking all this time? Because this kind of spiritual power is not imparted to unrighteous people. This kind of miracle working power, which we saw in the man, Jesus of Nazareth is an outgrowth of righteousness. Not pharisaical righteousness, but a righteous condition of the heart. So in order for us to become truly righteous, we have to be cleansed of our sin. It's called the judgment.
We are told in the scripture, that the judgments of God are merciful. It's a spiritual cleansing. We are told about it in the book of Malachi. He's coming with Fuller's soap and a stiff brush. Paul talks about it. Everyone that has this hope of His appearing purifies himself. Let us be cleansed of all spiritual filth. All filth of the Spirit and the soul. In this hour the Lord is saying to those who He is beginning with, "It's now time to go beyond cleansing our behavior and to begin cleansing our spiritual person to purify us. The word in the King James is purify. It's time to purify. And we know, as a natural example, in the Book of Esther, all of the maidens who were hoping to be the queen, and that the King would choose them, they spent a whole year purifying themselves.
So we are being prepared for the marriage to Christ. In this hour the Lord is beginning with a small group, challenging us to purify ourselves. And that means to actually have sin, no longer controlled, but removed from us. You see, the true forgiveness of sins is the removal of the potential to sin.
We are told, in one of the minor prophets, that He will cast our sin behind our backs. You see, right now it's okay to just control your sin, because that's where we are in our spiritual growth. If you have a one year old baby, you don't get all upset if he's still messing in a diaper. But by the time he is ten years old, if he's still messing in his diaper, you are taking him to a child psychologist, because you are really concerned about him.
The church is maturing and it's time for the true forgiveness of sins, because, brethren, if you sin and you repent and you sin again and you repent, and you sin again and you repent, you might as well go to the Catholic church. Go in, see the priest, say your hail Mary's and don't bother with any of this other stuff. Now if that's all that the Lord has offered to you, well you do it. But in the hour that the Lord comes to you and says, "Come closer unto Me, I'm going to rip the potential for that sin out of you." From that moment that He makes you this offer, and you turn Him down, this repenting and doing it again, is not acceptable to God. He's saying to you, "Grow up, come closer, I want to deal with you on a deeper level." Like He did on what deeper level? Like He did with the adulterous woman. He didn't have her stoned. He said to her, "Now go and sin no more." He did something. Who? Jesus. He did something supernatural to her heart, that enabled this habitual adulterous to stop committing adultery. Did you ever stop to think about this? Would the Lord really go to an habitual adulterous and say to her, "Now I didn't let them stone you." (I am exaggerating, of course, to make a point.) "For the last ten years, you have been in continuous adultery, so now under your own power, because I did you this favor, don't do it any more." Brethren, He had to give her the power to stop doing it. He had to give her the power to stop doing it.
Now there have been all kinds of books written about what Jesus did, when He knelt down and He scribbled in the earth with His finger. We looked up every single word in the Greek trying to figure what that was all about. And this is what we found out. That Jesus really didn't kneel down and write on the physical ground. What He did was prepared Himself to do an outstanding miracle for this woman. And we read about it in parable form in the Scripture. You may know about the Zadok Priesthood, which we read about in the Book of Ezekiel. I want to stop here for a minute, I want to pray for you. I want to tell you that, when this message comes forth, sometimes it causes discomfort in your soul. It's your carnal mind that starting to get very nervous. So I want to pray for everybody here. Are you feeling any distress?
I want to pray for you, for I see it on your faces. And I just want you to know that it's very common. Your carnal mind is getting very nervous, because he is about to feel the presence of the Lord to begin to kill him, okay?
So, Father, in the Name of Jesus, I just bless everybody here. I rebuke their carnal minds, I curse all distress that they are feeling. I rebuke fear and nervousness and anxiety and discomfort and I rebuke every lie coming forth in their minds, that the carnal mind might be telling them, to cause them to remove themselves from Your Presence or from any element of this message that is true and coming out of Your Spirit, Lord Jesus. And I pray that You move mightily, that Your purposes should be done in these people that You have brought here tonight. And I pray that You give them comfort and You give them peace and that every attempt of the carnal mind to close their ears or their eyes to this message should be utterly defeated in the Name of Jesus. Amen. I just rebuke all smarting eyes and closing eyes and all attempts to put them to sleep and embarrass them. I just utterly condemn you and I just pray, Father, that You give them peace, in the Name of Jesus. And let me tell you, it is very common to fall asleep when I preach. All kinds of people have fallen asleep when I preach. So, it's the message and what's happening is that your carnal mind's trying to shut you down, so please don't be embarrassed. Do you have to leave? Okay, what time do you have to go?
COMMENT: I have to get up at 4 o'clock
PASTOR VITALE: Okay, would you like me to stop now? I'll be glad to stop now. Okay, are you all right? Well, I usually try to fill up one tape. Okay, will that be alright?
So, we are talking about the adulterous woman. And when we looked up every word, we found out that Jesus had ascended within Himself, to a high spiritual place whereby He did a miracle to this woman. He made an adjustment in her soul that enabled her to start leading a righteous life in this area.
And we read about the Zadok Priesthood in the Book of Ezekiel, which is a type of the New Testament believer. We are told that there is going to be a new order of Priests, after the order of Melchisedec. We are told that in the Book of Hebrews. And the Zadok Priesthood is a type of that. We are told that they minister, both to Jehovah and to man. They are kings and priests. The priests intercede between man and Jehovah, okay, they give the sacrifices. And the prophet gives the Word of the Lord to the New Testament believer. If you are in this Melchisedec Priesthood, which everyone that has Christ Jesus in you, the man, Christ Jesus, He's the only mediator between God and man. And if Christ Jesus is living in you, to the fullest extent that He's living through you, you are a mediator between Christ in you and the person who doesn't know Christ, you are an intercessor.
So, we see also typified by Jacob's ladder that people who minister, both to Christ and then to man, that they're in a high point of their spirituality, when they are communing with the Father and they come down; they are still just as spiritual, and they are still just the same person, but they come down to minister to the man of lower estate, who doesn't understand. So, we see that within our own person, we ascend and fall, depending on who we are speaking to. A natural example of this, would be any human being. Someone has a Ph.D. is physics. When you speak to another Ph.D. in physics, you are talking on one level and unless you are a very crude person, when you come in the presence of someone who knows nothing about physics, you change your whole vocabulary, you don't embarrass that person, by speaking in high level language that nobody knows what you are talking about. That's being inconsiderate and it's being a snob, you just don't embarrass people like that, you talk on their level. Okay?
In the same manner, Jesus could ascend and fall within His Godhood. When He communed with the Father, the Scripture tells us, He was in a high mountain.
If you choose to believe that He climbed a mountain every night to speak to the Father, well, maybe He did, but maybe He didn't. Maybe He ascended into the mountain of Zion in the Spirit, but then He came down out of Zion, and He spoke to the man in the street. And He would say something as simple as, "Be healed," to perceive you have the faith to be healed.
When the Jews brought the adulterous woman to Jesus, He was speaking to a group of people, I suggest to you, in His low level of His Godhood. Why? Because He was ministering to men of low estate. But when He prepared Himself to do this miracle for this adulterous woman, the Scripture says; if you look at it in the Greek, He knelt down very low, He put His humanity down; Jesus was God and man, He meant He was the God man. He knelt down very low, He put His humanity down low and the God part of Him, came up very high and in His highest position of spirituality, He wrote in the earth of this woman's soul. Are we not made of dust? We are made of dust. And He wrote in her soul, and He wrote a new name. See, she had a mark on her, just like Cain had a mark on her, (it said adulterous), said, this woman vulnerable to adultery, this woman just under the right circumstances, vulnerable to adultery, and He came and He took His hand, His spiritual hand and He erased the mark, and He wrote "Holiness." And the Bible says in parable form, "And He wrote in the earth of the ground," but it's a mystery as to what He wrote, because you need to be spiritual to understand what He did. And then He said to the woman, "Go and sin no more, because I've erased that mark from your forehead and I've declared with my creative word that you are no longer an adulterous, but I declared you holy, now go and live in holiness, I've empowered you to do it."
So we see, appearing, or beginning to appear in the earth in this hour, a company of people that the Lord is appearing in, in greater strength. He's beginning to manipulate their bodies so that they'll do what He wants them to do, without arguing with them, saying, "Go do it Son." And you are saying, "Is that you Lord? Go do it? I'm not sure it's you Lord, I'll put out a fleece with you, I'll do it next month if I do have the same word in my heart." He wants you to go when He sends you, because somebody's life could be on the line. And yet He doesn't fault us for putting all these fleeces out before Him, but He wants to change us, so that when He thinks, we will go, without thinking. It's the hour of the supernatural in Christ. If you can hear it, if the Lord has brought you here for this message, He's calling you to it. If you can receive it, receive it, if you can't, it's between you and Him. I'm just His mouthpiece, but you are not here by any accident tonight, you are here to hear this message. If it frightens you, I rebuke it. I'm telling you, it's just very exciting. I'd like to give you one more testimony and then we will close, and if you would like me to pray for you, I will be glad to do so, if you don't want me to, that's fine.
I was ministering to a homeless man in a local shopping center. Just to make this story short, I wound up getting a Polish Bible for him. He told me he couldn't read English, so I purchased a Polish Bible for him. This was way back before I was in the ministry. And I would see him every day when I went to the shopping center. He looked like he was not in his right mind. This man would push a shopping cart through the shopping center all day yelling, (he didn't want one dollar), he wanted five dollars, "five dollar," "five dollar." One wasn't good enough for him, he wanted five dollars. Everybody knew him affectionately, that he wasn't in his right mind. I passed him by one day and an intelligence arose in his eyes that was beyond him. It was an intelligence that recognized me or recognized the Christ in me and was terrified, and it was an awesome experience for me. I think it scared me at the time actually. But I went ahead with my assignment, I purchased the Bible for him. The day that it came in the mail, I went out to the shopping center looking for him, and I didn't see him. I looked around in the general area and I said, "Well, Lord, I am here with this Bible, I went out of the house looking for him, is he really not around, what do you want me to do?"
And I had an experience which could be likened to (what was the name of that TV program with the bionic man?), The Six Million Dollar Man; yes. I had an experience like that, (I'm telling you the God's honest truth). You have to check out the fruit of your experiences.
It could not have been the devil, the man got his Bible, okay. The devil would not be giving this man his Bible. I felt my head lift up, see, the Lord did it without asking my permission (this is what I mean, when I said He manipulated my body).
My head rose and I looked and at the far, far, side of the shopping center, I literally felt my eyes focused, my telescopic eyes focused, (I'm telling you the truth, as God is my witness), my telescopic eyes focused and zeroed in and there he was, on the far, far, far side, standing in a corner by the Post Office which was closed at the time. So, I headed across the parking lot and I knew that he saw me coming, but he acted like he didn't see me. He was afraid of me. And as I got closer, he just put his head down, like that.
In those days, I was still pretty naive as to what the Lord was doing in me and through me. I said to myself, "Why is this man acting like this?" And I approached him but he didn't look at me. I went right close to him, and he looked up at me. The man was terrified. He was terrified and he was hiding from me. It was a burst of a word of knowledge. I just knew he was hiding from me. He either saw me before I saw him, or he knew I was coming. He got as far away from me as he could get, but the Lord didn't let him go any further than that, because He wanted him to have the Bible. So, I just said to him, "Well, here's your Bible, I bought it for you." And he just looked at me and he took it, and I walked away and I went home. Never had an opportunity to speak to him after that and that was quite a few years ago. I really don't know what God did with it. And my whole point of this testimony is that telescopic eyes manifested in me and to tell you the truth, it just really happened.
The Lord's raising up an army of supernaturally spiritual men in this hour and I guess He wants you. Because at least He's giving you the opportunity, I believe in this hour. Well, the Lord is drawing some people against their will, but basically in this hour He's offering an invitation for those who can hear this, who are bold enough to pray it through and if you get your own witness, certainly don't come because I told you so. Because I may see you again, I may not see you again. It's between you and the Lord from this point forward. Basically in this hour, He's saying, "If you want to come, come, if you're afraid, it's okay." As when Gideon raised up his army, if you want to go home, let all those who are afraid go home. But there are some people that He's taking against their will, and I believe the people that He's taking against their will fall into this category basically. People who have been crying out to the Lord for years in a general way, either people who are overcome, whose life is completely devastated, and they are saying, "Lord take me, anything you want, just help me." People like me spoke about it at the beginning of the message. People whose lives are just devastated and is there anything that you want. You know, that's how I got where I am today. Okay, I was physically dying when the Lord called me, and I would have taken anything He gave me. My prayer was, "Jesus help me." That was my prayer. Prayed it night after night, after night, "Jesus help me." Couldn't get anything else out, "Jesus help me." I had a small child, no one to take care of her, I was half dead and Jesus helped me.
I didn't know anything about the church, didn't know anything about the Bible, that was my prayer, "Jesus help me." Every time I open that Bible, I opened to a warfare psalm, I read it, didn't even know I was praying a warfare psalm, and look at what happened to me. I didn't tell Him what I needed, I didn't tell Him how to do it, I didn't tell Him what to do, He gave me the Holy Ghost, He moved me on, He educated me, He put me in the Ministry and now I've got this incredible message that I'm taking all over the world. Our books have gone into Greece and England and France within the past three months and it's just time the message is going out, He's pretty much offering an open invitation right now. But there are some people who have given Him this general prayer, "Just help me," that when He starts to take them, if they become frightened; it looks like He is forcing them, but He knows in their heart, they really want Him, they're just afraid of what's happening to them. But basically in this hour, it's the form of your choice, if you want to come, come, it's between you and Him. But I've got the job of giving you the message and it's a very exciting hour, if you can hear it. And you're blessed and I'm very honored to have delivered the message to you. I just want you to know that the devil doesn't like this, you know, and he's going to be giving you some trouble, either in your mind or he's going to be giving you some opposition. But you could do all things in Christ. So you pray this through and whatever the Lord's going to tell you or what He's going to do with you, that's what He's going to do. You got some really interesting teaching, you can see the Tape List, and I told you the library is here or if you want your own, for any donation of any amount. So I just bless you and pray that you have a good evening. Thank you for coming.
Does anybody want to ask me any questions before you leave, anything you would like to ask me. Do you have another question?
COMMENT: As far as you saying, "Jesus ascended before He came down and brought forth what He had said to the adulterous woman, is that like us, just unawares, doing something throughout the day, and as we do it, like bringing forth the word in our own mind, studying the knowledge that we have, is that ascending and bringing it forth to God, is that what that means?
PASTOR VITALE: That's it on a lesser level. One thing the Lord has shown me, is that every principle in the scripture exists on a less mature and a more mature level, simply for us to go back and forth between any carnal pursuit; cooking dinner, and then sitting down and getting into a deep study.
That is a ascending and a descending to go from cooking a dinner, to reaching out for the Lord, you are ascending and descending. So, we are doing it on a lesser level.
Of course, what Jesus did was on a much higher level. But it's a beginning of our transition from a natural man to a spiritual man and it's a continuous up and down, up and down, and up and down, and it's a warfare, because the devil doesn't like you getting up there. He doesn't like it at all. He doesn't even like you reading the Bible. He certainly doesn't like this message. And when you start walking in it, he gets real mad at you. So you have to really engage in a spiritual warfare to have this kind of a walk. And then you just keep on, up and down, and up and down, but you keep ascending and that fluctuation, the whole process ascends. So even when you come down, you're not as down as you use to be. What does that mean? Well, I don't have a secular job any more. I'm in this 24 hours a day. But even within that, I'm up and down, depending on who I'm talking to. Okay? When I do office work, even though it's ministry office work, I'm lower than when I am when I'm studying. When I'm studying, I am very high. I go in very deep when I study. When I come out of my studies, and I'm working with the people in the ministry or mailing out the books, I'm pretty low.
I go to visit my relatives that don't know Christ, I'm really low, because I have to come down to their level. They can't come up to where I am, I have to go down to where they are. So the best I can hope for is a carnal conversation that's not offensive. So we talk about politics and Godly things and every time that conversation starts dipping, I say, "Lord raise up this conversation." That's my prayer, that's what I do. I say, "Lord please elevate this conversation to the greatest degree possible, if it's going low, if it's descending into gossip, or if it's carnal." Once I had a woman in my house, who was talking about really ghoulish things, horrible people, mass murderers out in the streets, and I just prayed; serial rapists, I don't want to hear this junk, so I said, "Lord please raise up this conversation." And it's amazing, it just goes right up. It's when you are talking about politics or food, cooking, your children in school, anything that's wholesome, we have authority over the carnal mind. We don't have to be a part of that, we don't have to be a party to it. Neither do we have to fight with people. You have authority in the Spirit to stop that kind of wickedness. Even if you are in a position where you could walk away if you wanted to, if you just have this knowledge, why would you want to walk away. If you have the ability to raise the other people up, why would you want to walk away. If you walk away, you just remove yourself from it. But if you know that you have the power to raise these people who are in darkness; they don't even realize what they are doing to their own soul by abiding in this conversation; by all means raise up the whole conversation. And then maybe the Lord will even give you an opportunity to speak a word of life unto them. We have to know who we are and what power we have. One of the biggest problems of the believer today is that we really don't have a full idea of who we are or what kind of power we have.
Please don't let me keep you. I'll go on all night. I just feel led to give you this testimony. When I was in Nigeria this last time, I was told that all of the Universities were closed down. There are a lot of Universities in Nigeria I am told, that out of all Africa, they have the highest percentage of college students. Supposedly very intelligent people in a comparison to all of Africa and also the nation that is most densely populated. A large majority of the people go to school. I guess I went in May. All of the Universities were closed down. Well, they are all government run. Why did they close down? Because there had been a relapse across the nation back into witchcraft. Pentecost is failing in Nigeria. The spiritual power of Pentecost has proven not strong enough to overcome what they call the black and red witchcraft and voodoo, which is present. It's all over Africa, and the students, educated students, the college students; like our kids have fraternities, were falling into groups and beginning to practice witchcraft again. And the government couldn't stop it, so they shut down the Universities. Now I heard about it and at one of my meetings, I just prayed a short prayer against it.
6/30/00 Je
