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Praise the Lord, brethren, we are going to have a round-table discussion this morning. There is going to be participation from the congregation, and we are going to, hopefully, identify rebellion and how rebellion manifests in our thoughts and in our belief system and in our attitudes. I really do not have much else to say right now except that we are just going to jump in and believe that the Lord is in this because this is what He told me to do.
I will start off, though, by telling you that there are two sides to our carnal mind. Can anyone review that for us? What are the two sides to our carnal mind?
COMMENT: Good and evil.
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, but the personal names....
COMMENT: Conscious and unconscious.
PASTOR VITALE: No, Satan is evil, and Leviathan is the one pretends to be good. The goodness is in pride. You see, Leviathan is pride, and the goodness is in pride. So Satan is the evil one, and Leviathan is the good one, but we know that goodness in the light of righteousness is nothing but filthy rags. When the light of righteousness shines upon it, it is nothing but filthy rags.
So, there are two sides to our carnal mind. It is true, good and evil, but the names of good and evil....they have personal names, and they are Satan and Leviathan. Another name for evil is rebellion. See now, that is shocking to a lot of people because we say, you know, we are just everyday people, so we rebel a little bit, how could you call rebellion evil? But the Scripture says that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and I do not think many people who love the Lord would have a problem saying that witchcraft is evil.
What we are doing here in this ministry, and what the Lord is trying to do is to help all of His people to recognize, to expose and discern their evil side. First He is trying to help us to understand that we have an evil side, without condemnation. It is a part of us that He wants to help us overcome, and He cannot help us overcome it if we cannot admit that it is there, and then, after we admit that it is there, we have to see the operation of the evil in our thoughts and in our attitudes so that we can work with the Lord to cover that evil so that we might enter into true righteousness which is eternal life. That is what this program is all about. It is not to hurt anybody, to get anybody, it is not about retaliation, and it is not about exalting the person who is helping you to see your sins.
It is to help you to enter into the New Covenant, and this is very hard for the church to believe, that it could be so difficult to appropriate the New Covenant that has been given to us by inheritance. The mentality of the carnal mind pretty much is....we look at things the way they happen in this world. Somebody dies, your father dies, your uncle dies, you miss him, you are sorry that he died, but you know that everybody dies, and you rake in the cash if you have an inheritance. There is really nothing for you to do except your life to get the inheritance, but it is the exact opposite in the spirit world.
All that Jesus has to do to impart the inheritance to us is to be alive, and He lives, but for us to receive the inheritance we have to die to this lifestyle. Do you hear what I am saying? Jesus, in order to be eternally alive so as to impart this inheritance to us, had to go to the cross, had to go through everything that He went through, and I personally believe that we do not even know a fraction of what Jesus went through, of what kind of spiritual pain He endured, what kind of mental pain He endured. I believe that He endured something very similar to what we are experiencing here and probably much more so. Plus, of course, the cross and being arrested and beaten by the Pharisees.
Can you imagine standing some place and having crowds of people booing you or shaking their fist at you and hating you? It must be an awesome, awesome experience. It must be horrible, but, of course, even more than that, I know what kind of emotional pain I am experiencing, and those of who have broken through the wall and are presently experiencing our emotional pain...it is not just me.
See, if you are in this program and you are not experiencing emotional pain it means your walls of denial are still very strong, and the more you are in this condition, that your walls of denial are very strong, and you are not experiencing your pain, the more somebody who is empathetic in Christ Jesus is experiencing your pain because we are all one body. Somebody has to experience the pain, and it is righteous that we should each experience our own pain. So the Lord is in the middle of tearing down this middle wall, this wall of partition.
The Scripture says that when Jesus was crucified there was a great earthquake, and the veil of the temple was rent from the top to the bottom. I have not looked up that "top to the bottom" in the Scripture yet, but I know the Lord has told me that, that rending of the veil was not just for Jesus. It was for all of mankind, and the veil, we have been teaching this for a couple of years here. Does anyone remember who the veil is?
COMMENT: The carnal mind?
PASTOR VITALE; What part of the carnal mind?
COMMENT: The unconscious part.
PASTOR VITALE: No, the conscious part. The conscious part of the carnal mind separates us, the personality, who desires to be good. We desire to be righteous. Most people do. Most people in the church do anyway.
It is the conscious mind that separates us from our heart's desire and from the operation of the evil within us. It is just a gut reaction, a knee-jerk reaction, until we are educated to do otherwise, that because we want to be righteous we just push that evil side of us away and convince ourselves that it is not there because we do the good works of going to church and studying the Doctrine of Christ. These are not bad things, but we are not saved by going to church and studying the Doctrine of Christ and praying for people.
We are saved through union with the Spirit of Christ, and to be joined with the Spirit of Christ we must be divorced from the spirit of the carnal mind which is Satan. I see that I may have caused you some confusion here. I have been preaching that Satan is good and evil. I guess the Lord just corrected me. I did not guess. The Lord just corrected me. The carnal mind is good and evil. Satan is the evil part, and Leviathan is the good part. So we have a little shift to make here. The Lord just corrected me.
This is the same situation that existed before time began. Adam was married to a woman made from the earth, and she was good and evil. Now you probably remember that I preached that. Adam was married to the good woman, but she had an evil side called the Serpent, the primordial Serpent, and the primordial Serpent whispered from her unconscious mind. So the good woman which can be likened to our conscious personality today, she had her husband Adam telling her one thing openly like I speak to you, openly, because Adam is Christ Jesus in me speaking to you through me. And the primordial Serpent is still present today in all mortal men in the form of Satan whispering from behind the shadows, putting thoughts into our mind and blinding us to the fact that they are not Christ's thoughts, but that they are the thoughts of our evil side.
What happened to Adam in the garden is happening to the church today. Nothing has changed. There is nothing new under the sun. If Christ is being formed in you, you are Adam. You are young Adam, and you are married, Christ in you or Christ Jesus in you, depending on how mature He is, is Adam in a renewed form, and He is a married man. Or a potentially married man. He has a wife, okay. The marriage may not have been consummated yet. Why do I correct myself? Because we have recently differentiated between Christ Jesus and Christ Jesus the married man. Christ Jesus formed in you, and Christ Jesus the married man who has covered over and penetrated your Fiery Serpent, thereby imparting righteousness to you.
So, Christ Jesus is the bridegroom in you, but He may not be married, He may not have married you yet, but He is within you. And we, the personality, we are His wife. It is the same thing that happened in the garden. There is nothing new under the sun. It is still happening in a many-membered people.
Now, is this only for the church and not for the rest of the world. No, it is for everybody, but you are only in this category....what category? I am saying it is still going on. You are only partaking of this play; that is what it is, it is a play, it is psycho-drama. You are only partaking of this if Christ is being formed in you, but the Scripture says it is for the whole world. Anyone who wants, come drink at this fountain, let Christ be formed in you, and this message is true for you too. Nothing has changed. Wow. We are still in the garden.
Do you know why I said wow? Because I was at a convention a couple of years ago. I am sorry, I was not at the convention, but I heard a message of the convention where I believe false doctrine is being preached, where the people that are preaching this message pretty much are saying that there is no Satan, and there is no evil. And this man that was preaching, he preached that you are still in the garden, you never left, but he was preaching it from a positive point of view, saying you are Christ, and you are God, and you do not need anything added to you, and you do not have to worry about a sin nature, your sins are forgiven, and you are still in the garden, you just have to remember that you are still in the garden, and you will be fine. And I said, wow what bilge, but what just came out of me by revelation, by the spirit of revelation, is that it is true, we are still in the garden. Adam is present in the form of Christ in us, the woman is present in the form of the personality in us, the primordial Serpent is still present in the form of Satan in us, and we are still in the garden, but there is only one difference between what I am saying and what this other preacher said.
We are still in the garden, but we have shifted to the female side of the garden. See, this other preacher was saying that you are still in righteousness, you are still in power, the only reason your life is all messed up is because you forgot who you are. It is true, we have forgotten who we are, but the reason we have forgotten who we are is that all memory that has to do with God is in Christ. And when we, the personality, turned away from the thoughts of our true husband and received the thoughts of the primordial Serpent, even if we did not understand it, we did it, and when we turned towards the primordial Serpent that separation, that turning of our backs on Adam, killed him.
So all memory of life with God in the garden was lost, and we shifted. It was a spiritual shift. We shifted to the female or the right side of the garden which is the heart center. We have preached that before too, that the left side of the heart center is the Garden of Eden, and that is where the Tree of Life, the olive tree of life grows. So we shifted.
Now remember, this world that we see is just an image of the spiritual reality. The heart center, what I have been preaching as the heart center, is a spiritual location. This whole world is a projected image of the right side of the heart center which is a spiritual location, and because we shifted from the left side of the heart center to the right side of the heart center, the projected image of our location changed.
So now we are in a corruptible world where labor continuously, if for nothing else to keep ourselves and our living quarters clean. What an absolute waste of time. If you are thinking of time in terms of giving every second to developing Christ in you, to thinking with the Mind of Christ, to setting people free, to bringing forth the word, from that point of view, what an absolute waste of time washing clothes and making beds and going to the supermarket and cooking and washing dishes. But, of course, we must do these things because we are on the right side of the heart center. When we fully shift back to the left side of the heart center, there will be no more physical labor.
So the heart center is the Garden of Eden. It is true what that preacher preached, we are still in the garden, but we shifted to the other side of the garden. It is also true that we lost our memory, and that we are in this condition because we lost our memory which is what that other preacher was preaching, but where he goes off is how we get this memory back. I do not know about you, and this has happened to me in the church world on several occasions where someone would say something to me, for example, I cannot remember exactly what was said to me that produced the reaction that I am about to tell you about. For example, if somebody said to me, you are already God, you already have all kinds of supernatural power, Satan is ashes under your feet, you have all the power that you need to provide for yourself in this world. All you have to do is remember who you are.
I, according to my history, for those who are listening to this message that do not know me, I who was an absolutely desperate person, physically dying and emotionally and spiritually overcome by the powers and principalities of this world, hanging on by a thread waiting for my deliverance to come, which eventually did come. My response to such a statement, just remember who you are, and you will be fine, my response is "how do I do that?" "I am dying, I am physically, emotionally, and spiritually dying, how do I remember who I am?" I do not believe the answer is out there. They do not know the answer.
So I came to the conclusion many years ago before the Lord put me into this ministry, before He saved my life, although He was saying my life the whole time, I would have been dead. I tell you, I was hanging on by a thread, it was just the grace of God that I hung on by a thread. I know that He told me at the time to just ignore these people and turn away from them because this kind of preaching made me more upset than I already was because I came into the church believing that my healing would come quickly and maybe some people do receive a quick healing, but my healing has taken years, and I am still not where another person my age who has led a full robust life would be. But I am doing pretty good right now.
This preaching made my whole stomach and heart turn over inside of me. I could not bear it. It caused me pain, but you see, for people who are not desperate, it just feeds their pride, "I am already God, I have no sin nature, there is nothing for me to do, and I will remember and someday I will remember and I will be moving in power again." But for the desperate, this message is deadly. It kills their hope, and utterly condemns them. The people who are in desperate need of help are taught to believe that they cannot get this help because they are incapable of remembering. It puts the whole burden of deliverance upon them.
The subject of this message is rebellion. What she looks like, how she manifests in our thoughts and in our attitudes, and how she destroys us. That is what this message is all about. So this whole introduction was to tell you that nothing is new under the sun, that, yes, we still are in the Garden of Eden, but there has been a shift from the left side of the heart center which is a spiritual location. It is not this heart inside of you. It is not even your etheric heart. It is a spiritual location that I have to tell you honestly, I do not fully understand it myself. I understand it in principle, and I am comfortable with my understanding, but as to exactly where it is I cannot tell you.
I just know it is a place that you to go in. It is an inner world, and I have seen Hindu pictures of what appears to be a tower, a drawing of a tower, and they show the different levels on the tower, as you ascend in the tower, different levels of consciousness. Several of those levels have trees and foliage on them, and I asked the Lord about that years ago. I do not really have an answer yet.
The areas that appear on the Hindu drawing signify states of consciousness, and that each level which is shown to be a garden with trees and foliage.... the Lord is answering my question now after all these years. Those levels signify a state of consciousness that projects a visible world. Every state of consciousness does not project a visible world. Now I do not understand that fully either.
Let me draw this on the board for you because you are all looking at me. First of all, I want to answer the question, why are we looking at a Hindu image? And the answer to that question is that the Scripture clearly says that the Serpent is very wise. She is wiser than the children of light. The Serpent has spiritual knowledge of the spiritual condition of this world, none of which is taught in the Bible, in the Scripture. The Scripture is a declaration of Jehovah's intention to apprehend the rebellion which is the primordial Serpent and put her back down under her true husband, Adam. The Scripture is to declare that there is an evil in this world, and, if you can get it by the spirit of revelation, how this evil departed from her two husbands.
You see, Jehovah.... yes, He created the light, and He created the evil. Yes He did. It is in the Scripture, but He created the evil for a specific purpose. She is the dark part of the negative that is necessary to project a visible world, and Jehovah created her to be under the spiritual man who would restrain her from doing evil deeds. See, there is a difference between being evil and doing evil deeds. Big, big, big difference. So Jehovah created the evil. He never ordained for evil deeds to come upon His people.
So, the Serpent rebelled against her true husband, Adam, formed this whole world, and she who formed it, although she stole the primordial substance, she used it to form this world. She is very wise. She has awesome spiritual knowledge beyond anything I could even comprehend. Of course, the Serpent is a mind. She is in the form of a mind today. A collective mind.
And the Scripture tells us nothing about these spiritual principles. Does not mean they are not true. See, this is what the Scripture is talking about when it says, forever seeking knowledge but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. One man could spend his whole lifetime pursuing spiritual knowledge and probably not even touch it with his pinkie toe. So what the Scripture is saying is that to pursue spiritual knowledge alone will not bring you into a knowledge of the truth. So the Scripture is saying to God's people, pursue the truth. Seek ye the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then all these things will be added unto you. What things? A $400,000 house? A Cadillac? Nice clothes? A husband? What will be added to you? Pursue the Kingdom of God which is spiritual and righteousness, which is the spirit of truth, and then all the spiritual knowledge of this world will be added to you, and it will not kill you.
You see, to pursue spiritual knowledge, to pursue Hindu spiritual knowledge without first being securely joined to the Spirit of Truth will destroy you. The Scripture is a message from the Father to His people about the truth of our condition, that we are fallen, and that within us, and comprising all of us, are the same elements that were in the garden before the fall. We are just in another form, and that unrighteousness has overturned righteousness and put Him under her authority, and that Jehovah has promised to restore all things to the right moral order. That is what the Bible is all about. And in the meantime, it gives us a guideline, a guideline to follow, how we can be prepared for this restoration or this regeneration, Thou shalt not. You are fallen. Your mind is fallen. You still cannot even believe that it is rebellion in your mind, Thou shalt not. Thou shalt submit to authority, thou shalt not.
Why did God have to say, Thou shalt not? Because your carnal mind is saying, Thou shall, it is okay, do it. So, until your righteous mind is restored, you come under authority. That is what the Bible says in two sentences. You are fallen, you cannot tell your right hand from your left, but I have not forgotten you, I am not condemning you, I am here to restore you, and I am restoring you by giving you My mind which you do not deserve, you deserve to die, all of us including me, but I am giving you my royal mind because that is the only way you will know, you will remember the truth, you will understand the truth or you will be able to return to me.
Your carnal mind will never return to me so in order to prepare yourself to receive my righteous mind, live a holy life, clean up your behavior, and, to the best of your ability, clean up your mind and wait for this great salvation, and when My mind begins to mature in you, then I will teach you about the spiritual truth of this world. Why? Because Christ Jesus has to know all things, and it is Christ Jesus in us, the Son of the glorified Jesus Christ, who is growing up to the point that He, Christ Jesus in you, will return to the world above where the glorified Jesus is, and when He appears there we will appear in heaven with Him.
So, He has to know everything, and He is capable of understanding everything. But to start to learn spiritual truth and....let me tell you something, spiritual truth is addictive. I cannot get enough of this stuff. If I was not living in this world, I would not do anything except pursue spiritual truth. I cannot even tell you how it makes me feel. So, if you get hooked on this spiritual truth without first being hooked by the Spirit of Christ you may become a very bright, intelligent person. You may have all knowledge of this world, of the spiritual principles of the world, but you are still dead because you only live through union with the Spirit of Truth, and if you go after spiritual knowledge without the Spirit of Truth it would take a miracle to bring you to the Spirit of Truth. Why? Because it is another spirit that is giving you all this knowledge, and the more you pursue it, and the more you gain of it, and the more it builds in you, the more Satan is building in you on the good side of the tree. You think you are okay because you are not doing anything evil, but it is all Leviathan that is giving you this truth. And it strengthens her tie with you, you have a marriage with her, every man that is born of a woman is married to Leviathan and pursuing spiritual truth strengthens those bands.
So, seek ye first the Kingdom of God which is the Mind of Christ, and let the Spirit of Christ enter into you, and let the Spirit of Christ lead you to spiritual truth, and, yes, if you have a lot of pride it may be very hard for you to believe that the Lord is using spiritual instruction and spiritual information that has been recorded by the Serpent's crowd. Am I insulting them? No, they tell you openly that they worship the Serpent. You cannot believe that? You better take it before the Lord because it is the truth. As far as I know, it could be I do not know about it, but the Lord has taught me so much that I find it very hard to believe that if there were writings by a true Christian about the kind of spiritual material that we teach here, surely He would have brought them to my attention. Why would He direct me to Hindu books and not to other Christian books?
So, as far as I know, we are the first Christian ministry that is pursuing the spiritual life to this degree by the Spirit of Christ. That makes us pioneers, and life is very hard here. Everyone in this ministry or attached to it in anyway knows how hard life is here. We are cutting a path for people who will come after us.
So, yes, the Lord has led me to Hindu books and some things He teaches me on, I look at them and sometimes He answers me and sometimes He does not, sometimes He tells me it is truth, sometimes He tells me it is not, but as far as Hinduism goes, most of their principles are true. Not their understanding about Christ. I do not go to Hindus to find out about Christ. I go to the Bible, and I go to the Spirit of Christ to find out about Christ, and who He is, and where He is going, and what is going to happen to Him, and what His future is. The Scripture teaches me about Christ, but when it comes to our fallen condition the Lord sends me to Hindu and Buddhist books to find out about our fallen condition.
You have to understand our fallen condition because we have to get out of it. How are you going to get out of it if you do not understand where you are, or who you are, or what is happening behind all these layers of consciousness that we have. So, that is why I have a Hindu drawing on the board for you. For anyone that is interested, it comes from a book called Kundalini by?, if I pronounced his name right.
I saw this image years ago, and I said, Lord I do not get it, there are four different gardens, and I do not understand what it means. And the Lord just told me, sitting there as I am preaching to you, He just gave me this revelation years later.
This tower indicates the different levels of consciousness available to mortal man, and we know the Scripture talks about a tower. It talks about the Tower of Babel. I have been preaching for years that the Tower of Babel was a spiritual tower, is a spiritual tower, because Satan is rebuilding it today. It signifies the Tower of Babel, or a tower signifies an accumulative level of consciousness. It is just another way of saying timeline. We talk about Leviathan's timeline and Christ Jesus's timeline. As we ascend into the energy centers, that is what the tower is.
So, this Hindu image shows four different gardens, and the Lord just told me that each level of consciousness that projects a visible world is called a garden. So apparently, there are other levels of consciousness that do not project a visible world. I want to tell you that this really helps me. Let me tell you how it helps me because I know that I am, and many of you with me, have been laboring in this doctrine for years, and we are still in this visible world.
My life has gotten better, my health is better, my financial problems are gone, I am comfortable now, I do not have to know where I am going to get my food from every day, but the world is the same. The evil is the same. I have all of the problems that I have always had. I am just overcoming them. All of the problems are still there. Life is very hard. You see these levels of consciousness where there is no visible world? If you can relate to what I am saying, it is for you too.
We are ascending. I know that I have been ascending, but where is the power, where is the miracles, where is the people getting up out of the wheelchairs, where is the glory. We have talked about this a lot. We are ascending in doctrine, we are ascending in spiritual knowledge, we are getting stronger, we are overcoming, we are fighting Satan and Leviathan and overcoming, but look at this world. Where is the glory? We have not gotten there yet. A world with the glory that is produced by the Spirit of Christ pouring out comes from a specific, specified spiritual location.
So let us just say that we are down here at the second level. You see, the first level is earth only. That is before we knew the Lord Jesus. We had no spiritual heaven, or the spiritual heaven was closed. I should not say we did not have it. It was closed to us. Then, we ascended into the next level of consciousness where a spiritual heaven appears. The Holy Ghost is a spiritual heaven. If you receive the Holy Spirit, you received a spiritual heaven.
What is a spiritual heaven? Something in you that enables you to start thinking spiritually or having spiritual experiences. Did you ever hear the Holy Spirit talk to you? Did you ever feel Him move on you? Did He ever anoint you to pray in the spirit with power? Or speak in tongues or prophesy? A spiritual heaven has been added to you, and the spiritual heaven in this level is equal to the spiritual earth. With a lot of people the spiritual earth is stronger than the spiritual heaven of the Holy Ghost. Most of their life is taken up with the things of this world.
Here we see three levels of ascension before we get to the next heaven that projects a visible world. I believe the Lord is telling me right now that all of these years of study and growth has been projected in our own selves. Everybody has grown, we have matured, but it has not really changed our world. We are passing through these three levels of consciousness, and the outpouring that the Lord has been prophesying here for several months now, the outpouring of the Spirit of Christ, which will be even greater than the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the early 20th Century will be from this level of consciousness.
You see, before the Spirit of Christ is going to pour out of His spirit we are climbing this mountain, and as soon as we ascend into this next level of consciousness that projects a visible world, the projection of that visible world will come forth from the Spirit of Christ in us. But the Spirit of Christ may be very active in these three levels, but there is no mechanism in these three levels to project a visible world. What do I mean to project a visible world? To openly affect the visible world around you, we are approaching this level up there, and when we approach that level there will be an outpouring of the Spirit of Christ that will touch thousands and millions of people, and even people who do not believe in it will know about it.
Nobody believes we have ascended. We know that we have ascended. Who believes it? Do you know anybody that believes that you have ascended? Do you, do you, do you? Your families laugh at you, your families discourage you. I do not have a husband or someone that close to me that would be mocking me, I do not have that in my family, but I did at one time. Nobody close to you believes that you are ascending, and that Christ is in you, and that you really have power in prayer, but when we ascend into this level of consciousness there will be no question about it.
This is what the Scripture talks about when it mentions Jesus' public appearance, and, yes, the Scripture talks about His public appearance. I think it is Peter that says He will be appearing, we are waiting for Him to appear. He will not appear from these levels. He will only appear from this spiritual place, and from there He will pour out of His spirit and everybody....nobody will be able to deny it. So this is what is coming next, and if you can see it, the heaven is greater than the earth. Down here, I did not see it in the Hindu drawing, but I believe the Lord is telling me, and I know this, that the earth is much greater than the spirit, but up here the spirit is about twice the size of the earth, and then there is one more level of ascension. This would be where Jesus is.
Of course, the Hindus draw it as a garden. Jesus is now in the unlimited visible world which has no boundaries, no visible earth. I should change that to no visible earth. It is an unrestricted heaven. The earth is completely spiritualized. All evil tendencies are dealt with, and the Scripture describes this condition.
See, everything I get from a Hindu book, if you have ears to hear, it is witnessed to in the Scripture. Does anybody recall what the Scripture calls the man who ascends to this unbounded place, this unbounded spiritual place? The Old Testament calls Him the Ancient of Days, the one who no longer needs a physical body to exist, and the New Testament calls Him the Glorified Man.
Now, the Hindu's do not understand...., I should not say that, there is a place in the carnal mind where the Hindu believes that he has reached an unbounded place, but, of course, he is unbounded within the black hole that he is bounded by. So, it is a lie. That is why Satan is a liar, but in Christ Jesus we truly break out of this black hole and go into the unbounded place. What is the unbounded place? Jehovah is all that there is, this whole world and all of the universes are just a drop within Him. The unbounded place is Jehovah. Union - unfettered, unhindered, unlimited union with Jehovah.
So, people have asked me from time to time what is the point of that if we are going to return to spirit, what was all this about? We were spirit, and we are going to return to spirit, what was all of this for? Brethren, we were in the spirit in seed form, but the seed form that we were in was far superior to the mind that we have now because we are fallen. But we were in seed form, and that seed, Jehovah's sperm, has actually joined to the earth, the personality.
See, in the New Testament, the church tells you "soul." I do not like to use the word soul because for two reasons. It really does not explain to you what a soul is. If someone says to me "personality," I can deal with that much better than the word soul, and second of all, the word soul in the New Testament has a totally opposite meaning of the word soul in the Old Testament. The word soul in the Old Testament is talking about the living thing that Elohim created, but the soul in the New Testament is talking about the dead soul of the mortal man who was separated from God. So I say personality.
So that spiritual seed that came from Jehovah has been joined to the earth, to the personalities of humanity, and when that seed of Jehovah returns to the unlimited spiritual world of Jehovah he will not be the same. We are not going from spirit to spirit. He will return to the unlimited world of Jehovah with his wife. The seed of Jehovah is marrying the earth. There is a Scripture in Isaiah that says, and your earth shall be married.
So the Son of Jehovah is going home with a wife. He will not have a physical body like this anymore. I do not really understand it myself, but Paul said, we see Jesus, a glorified spirit, a spirit who is joined to the earth; yet, the spirit rules over the earth, and in no way binds him or restricts him. He is omniscience, he is omnipotent, he is un-defeatable, he can take human form if he wants to; he is a shape shifter. He can take any forms he desires to take. Yes, he can form himself as an animal, but why would he do that? That is what witches do. Of course, if he takes the form of a man that is an animal. He has taken the form of an animal.
That is what we see, the glorified Jesus Christ. He is not the same as the seed that left home. Left home a very young, inexperienced young man who made a very serious mistake, but he returns home a married man filled with wisdom, with the wisdom of God. That is what the story is all about.
So we are talking this morning about rebellion. We are talking about that part within us that is determined to prevent us from returning home, that part within us that is so much a part of us that the average man has an emotional problem believing that something as evil as the Serpent in the garden could be inside of us. This was the problem that Adam had. He knew that he was married to the woman. Exactly what form it took in those days, I am not going to go into right now. I do not fully know. I just know that Adam was spirit, and he was married to the earth, and that the earth had a form of consciousness. What does that mean? When you have consciousness, it means you think, you have ideas, you have opinions, you have attitudes.
And I also know that the consciousness of the earth, the ideas, the opinions, the attitudes of the earth are the exact diametrical opposite of the ideas, the thoughts and attitudes of Christ Jesus. The complete opposite, 180 degrees turn. That is why, as we have studied Samson and Delilah we have heard many times the Scriptural expression, Adam stood opposite from Leviathan. What does that mean? We say the movie, Merlin, and we say Hollywood portray it with Merlin who was supposed to be good, this movie was about good and evil, against queen Mav, and they were both standing on mountain peaks with this big ocean between them laughing at each other. Is that what it really means to stand opposite someone? No, it is a state of mind.
You could be holding hands with someone, you could be kissing somebody, but if, if your mind, you are completely opposed to a position or an opinion that person has, you are standing opposite them. Whether it is your husband, or your pastor, or your daughter, or your son, or your teacher, to stand opposite is a spiritual position that really has nothing whatsoever to do with your determination to do good works. If it happens with your husband or if it happens in this ministry, you are not going to stop coming to church, you are not going to stop performing all of the ministries that you have agreed to perform, you are not going to stop doing any of these good things. You are not going to stop praying for the person you are opposed to, but if in your heart of hearts, whether you can understand it or not, whether you can see it or not, if elements of your mind, because we are mind, that is what we are, if elements of your mind are standing opposite of this person, you can do all of the good works in the world, and if you are standing opposite someone who is in righteousness you are guilty of the sin of rebellion whether you understand it or whether you do not understand it.
The purpose of the Lord Jesus giving us understanding is to help us to break the back of Satan within us because we live in a dog-eat-dog world. We live in a jungle. God does not expect anybody to just lay down what they believe to be right and submit to somebody. Satan requires that of you. Jesus does not require that of you, and I have never required that of you. Jesus is a teacher. This is why He is a teacher. Christ Jesus is a teacher, and this is the principle that Christ Jesus works on.
If somebody who was sold out to God, to the best of their ability, has an opinion or an attitude that is truly of Satan, but they do not know it, and they do not believe it, and someone comes to them and tells them, what you are thinking and feeling is Satan, and they cannot see it "for beans," what Jesus does is He sends a teacher to explain it to you in the language that you understand, and then by the Spirit of Christ He must convince you of the truth, and I am such a teacher; therefore, I must believe that He will do His end if I do my end, if I teach you, that He has to send his Spirit of Truth somehow to convince you; otherwise, this is a fruitless labor on my part because I will not try to convince you.
I have been telling you for years, all I ask of you is that you hear me out, and that you understand what I am saying, and then you take it to the Lord and see what He has to say to you. Jesus does not force you. That is what Satan does. Jesus wants you to come willingly. He wants us to give up sins willingly. He wants us to prefer Him and His thoughts and His attitudes and His form of reasoning over Satan's. Satan, the one who Satan flows through freely, that is the violent man. That is the man who tries to take the kingdom by force without explanation - just do it because I told you to just do it, that is why, I said do it, so do it. That is not Christ.
Christ says to you, do it. You say, I cannot, I do not understand it. Christ will say to you, do it anyway; give me a change to explain it to you. It may take some time. Not that it is going to take the Lord time, but we all have all kinds of resistance in our mind. Do it anyway until I convince you. If you say, no, Jesus does not punish you. What happens if you say, no? He reasons with you. He says, do it anyway, give me a chance to show it to you, and you say, no, what happens to that person that says, no? They depart from the Lord in their heart in this area. Does no
t mean Jesus has rejected you, and you are going to die tomorrow or anything like that. In this area, you depart from the Lord in your heart, and you become vulnerable to any kind of judgment that Satan would want to bring on you.
Now, I am not trying to frighten you, and it does not have to be death or sickness or a car accident, but you will eventually experience something that will make you open your eyes and say, oh, wow, what I could not believe five years ago, it was really true, but in the meantime you have lost that whole five years of going forward in Christ. That is how Jesus moves.
So, we are talking about rebellion today. Rebellion, the spirit of rebellion, is Satan in the individual. Satan's thoughts, Satan's reasoning, Satan's motives. Satan works with Leviathan to convince the personality that these are the thoughts of God, that these thoughts are righteous and just, and almost inevitably, almost without exception, projects the guilt of the wrong thinking and the wrong motives onto the other person.
So what we do in this ministry, by the grace of God, is to give a contrast, to show the righteous thoughts....first of all we have to identify the situation, have to identify the problems in the situation, look at the person's thoughts and look at the thoughts in this case, it is me. I believe I am a representative of Christ Jesus and talk about it and answer questions and, hopefully, bring the spirit of truth forth, not just for this incident. But so that a permanent change can take place in the individual, so that Satan can be fully exposed so that you, the personality who is joining in your conscious mind to Christ Jesus, can put her down.
The rebellion must be put down. That is Scriptural. That term is Scriptural. The rebellion must be put down. Satan must be forced into the bottomless pit. She must be silenced. This means that her operation from the depths of our unconscious mind where she generates her evil thoughts....see, Satan generates evil thoughts and Leviathan comes in and makes them look good, see. Remember, we are the woman who was in the garden, we were married to righteousness; we are the descendants of those same principles. We were married to righteousness, and the Serpent started whispering from behind our back. That is the Scriptural term for the unconscious mind - behind. We were happily married to Adam, and the Serpent started whispering from behind. We did not see her motives, we did not see her coming. The thought just simply oozed into our mind, and we thought it was our own thought.
First mistake. Every thought is either from Satan or from the Spirit of Christ. The Holy Spirit could give you a thought too. Nobody has an original thought. So if you do not have that revelation, where do we go from here? The conscious mind does not generate thoughts. All thought arises out of the unconscious mind which we cannot see, which we are blinded to.
Back to what I was telling you at the beginning of the message, the renting of the veil of the temple is tearing down the conscious mind so that we can see. And not only will we see Satan, but we will also see the Spirit of Christ and be able to distinguish between the two.
For whatever reason, I am thinking about a scene from the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy. Xxxxx knew the answer, she listens to every work I am saying. God bless you xxxxx. I saw that scene in the Wizard of Oz where they finally make it to the wizard's home, and he is talking in this big booming, terrifying voice, and they tear back the veil, and he is just a little scared guy talking through a microphone. I do not think Satan is just a little scared guy talking with a microphone. I think she is very powerful and very vicious, but she is veiled, you see? And the truth is that no matter how powerful she is and how vicious she is, if we could just see her we could take authority over her. If we could just SEE her.
The biggest problem is that we think we are right, and that we think we are getting a true discernment of our motives, but Satan is a liar. The Scripture says she is a liar, and she is a deceiver. So what is she lying about? And how is she deceiving us? Is she deceiving us into buying lamb chops instead of pork chops or pork chops instead of lamb chops? Is she deceiving us...., she may be, but we are talking about weighty spiritual issues here right now. She is deceiving us about our own motives. She is deceiving us that it is not God speaking to us, that it is her speaking to us making us think it is God. In this deception is death, and this is hard to receive, that what you have believed for years may not be true, and you start to doubt your own self, what can you believe, what can you not believe?
All that I can tell you is that your faith has to be in Jesus Christ, and the carnal mind must be broken to shivers. That is the Scriptural judgment. She is a hard shell that is over the Mind of Christ, and she must be broken to shivers. And she must be broken to shivers, and this is how we are doing it, by talking about specific situations and trying to uncover them.
So we do have a situation that we are going to discuss this morning. I did tell you at the beginning of the message that it was going to be a group discussion, and I would like everyone to give me their definition or write a definition. We are dealing with rebellion this morning. I have already defined that for you that rebellion is Satan. See we have all heard that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, but I think this is shocking for me to say this, that rebellion in a man is the operation of Satan in the man. I think that is shocking to people who have really been trying to live righteously all their life. I have heard people say, and even I, myself, have said, oh yea, I have rebellion. That means that Satan is operating in you, and I know that you told me many years ago, I think you told me that a Catholic priest in the Catholic church told you that you had rebellion.
You told me that, you said that you were told years ago that you had rebellion. So what do we do? We walk away with this, and we say, yes, I have rebellion, Lord please help me to overcome rebellion, but most people never get down to the nitty-gritty and say, what about me is rebellious? What attitude is rebellious? What thought is rebellious? So before we can determine what rebellion is, we have to establish righteous behavior because rebellion manifests in our thoughts and in our actions. And we recognize sin by contrast. So we have to understand what righteousness is before we can recognize rebellion.
So the only way I can think of starting is to really get right down to it, and that is following the rules of any organization that you belong to. I have told several of you here that if you were in the Army you would wind up in Levenworth because when they tell you to do something in the Army they expect you to do it, and if you come back a few weeks later or a month later, and you say, oh I forgot about it, the Sargent would say, is that not too bad little girl, get your toothbrush and scrub the latrine floors, and then you stop forgetting the rules. You remember the rules, but I do not have that kind of authority to execute those kinds of punishments on you. That is not my job.
But to know what the rules are one day, and to forget about them the next day or the next week or the next month or the next year is a manifestation of rebellion. You see, there has to be a reason why you cannot remember. Whoever cannot remember the rules, you must at least try to understand that everybody does not have this problem, and that there is a reason for everything. If you cannot remember the rules....anybody can make one mistake, but if you consistently cannot remember the rules it is a spirit of rebellion operating in you that does not want to obey the rules.
Now why would you not want to obey the rules? Everybody has to have a motive, and it is...., it is always rebellion, but a personal motive, something that is an event in their life. They have to have a reason why they do not want to do it, and most people cannot face these reasons. They cannot see the reasons, if someone suggests it to them they cannot face it or they do not believe it. So I am just talking in generalities. If you cannot remember to obey the rules, it is a spirit of rebellion operating. It is not true that you just forgot, and that you are innocent, and that you are sorry, and that there is something wrong with your mind. It is a spirit of rebellion if you cannot obey the rules.
Rebellion has a motive. There has to be a reason why you are rebelling against this particular rule. You do not have any trouble getting here for three meetings a week, you remember that. Why? Because you want to be here. So what you do not want to do, you forget, and the conscious part of your carnal mind says, that is not rebellion or I am not doing anything wrong, cannot somebody forget? And this is called, does anybody know what that is called? It is called justification, and that is Leviathan, you see. Satan rebels, and Leviathan justifies the rebellion. So we see the two are partners in crime. Together, they are our whole carnal mind, Satan and Leviathan. The Lord is challenging everyone in this hour to divorce ourselves from Satan and Leviathan.
So the first thing we have to do is recognize that simple "forgetting" is not just a simple forgetting, but it is rebellion, and then pride covers it up by saying that it is not a serious sin. okay? And then the really hard part comes, that we have to ask the Lord what our motive is. Why do not we want to do that? And that is not always an easy thing to do. So we do have a specific incident that we are dealing with. I am just sort of hesitating, waiting to see how to proceed.
Any organization, whether it is the Army, whether it is local corporation or whether it is a ministry, every organization must have a chain of authority that pulls all elements of the organization together and keeps the organization healthy. The most basic, important element in operating in a healthy and productive manner is what? What do Armies do as soon as they apprehend a new area, what is the first thing that they do? Does anybody know? What do they build, usually?
COMMENT: They set up camp, and they have a foundation.
PASTOR VITALE: No, the first thing they do is set up communications before they set up a camp, before they do anything. They establish communications by walkie-talkie or telephone, and then they build roads, and they build airports. So the most important thing is communication and ingress and egress. They have to be able to get in and get out of the area safety and quickly.
So communication is the most #1 essential factor in any organization, that there is communication from the chain of command, from the authority down to all the members; therefore, to say that you do not want to send me a copy of an email because you do not want to burden me with work is irrational thinking. It does not make any sense. The emails have gone out for over a year now, at least twice I have sent emails around saying, any email to do with ministry business is to be copied to me. I must know what is going on in every element of the ministry so that I can exercise a godly authority over it, and there have been several occasions that you have not, actually you have refused to send me a copy of the email. And the reason in your mind, what you have told me, is that you do not want to bother me.
Now, I am suggesting to you today that is not a rational answer. It is not a rational answer especially since it has been requested of you several times. You really have to go before the Lord and ask Him why you do not want to do this, and why you have made a decision....listen, you have made a decision in your own mind that directly opposes my request.
Everything that I do in this ministry encourages communication. Anything to do with transcripts should be copied to the whole transcript team. Anything to do with any ministry business at all, as long as it is not personal, I want a copy. I want to know everything that is going on in this ministry. Do you think that there is something ungodly about that? Do you think that is an ungodly control, to want to know everything that is going on in every area of the ministry? You can answer me honestly.
COMMENT: No.
PASTOR VITALE: So then, what has happened is that you have made a decision that directly opposes the head of the ministry. The head of the ministry says, I want to know everything that is going on. I want a copy of every email. I have sent out that email several times, have spoken to you personally several times, but you will not do it, and when I come to you and say, xxxxx why did not you send me a copy of the email? The response that I get is, I did not want to bother you as if you never got the email, you never heard me ask you to do it, as if you have never heard me explain how important communication is.
You have chosen a thought in your mind that directly opposes the will of the headship here, and you have had two thoughts. Now listen to this. This is exactly what happened in the car. There were two thoughts. The thoughts that you have heard or two suggestions that you have heard directly from me, openly, not hiding behind anything, telling you and everybody openly, I want this communication. And then you had another thought from the back of your mind that says, oh no, that is going to be too much of a burden for Sheila, and you have chosen to listen to the thought of your own mind over the thought of the head. In this instance, this is an example of how the spirit of rebellion is operating in your mind.
So, in this case, it is not so much that you forgot what I have requested, but just like the woman in the garden you had the opportunity to choose between your husband, and, of course, as this leader of the fellowship I am married to the fellowship, you had two choices to do what I asked you to do or to follow the thought that came up in the back of your mind. And you chose to follow the thought that came up in the back of your mind, and that is the spirit of rebellion. So we have identified a spirit of rebellion. Does anybody want to say anything at this point? This really is a discussion. You can just raise your hand if you want to say something pretty much at any time.
So this is an excellent identification of rebellion. You know, the church needs this. People, they do not know what rebellion is. If you see a young teenager mouthing off to their parents, you know that is rebellion, but rebellion is not always so obvious. Rebellion is a thought, a suggestion that arises in your mind which opposes the request of the authority. That is what rebellion is, even if you do not do it.
Even if you choose to follow the request of the authority and reject the other thought, you need to know that other thought that you have pronounced wrong came from Satan, that it was a spirit of rebellion. So it is not just enough to say, no I am not going to do it, that is wrong, I am going to do this. That is good if you could do that, but the next step, if you want to go on in this program, is to turn around and say, I know that was you, Satan. That was not just me thinking that. That was you in my unconscious mind, trying to make me fall, trying to cause trouble, trying to bring destruction in my life by suggesting that I do something the exact opposite of what the headship has requested, and I rebuke you, and I curse you, and I break you, and I burn you in the Lake of Fire. See, it is not enough to just not do it. You have to identify this thought as Satan who is rebellion personified.
Another form of rebellion is to not respond to communications. Whether you do not respond to an email that is written to you or you do not respond to a question, it is the spirit of rebellion. I have found that with a lot of people that I have ministered to over the years; that I will ask them something and they just do not respond to me.
I was watching one of these judge shows on TV the other day, and Judge Judy is the best, there is no way of getting away from her, but this was a man, I do not know what his name is. He had a couple of teenagers up there, and he was asking this teenager several questions. He had stolen another boy's bike and wrecked it. I do not know if he wrecked it, but he stole the other boy's bike, and the young man would not answer the judge's questions.
I want to tell you that it was such a blessing to me to hear the judge's response to him because I am in a very tough position. This is a very hard job, and the tendency of the carnal mind is to really say, who does she think she is? Talking to me like that. This judge sounded just like me when someone is really not having a godly response, and he rebuked that young man. He said, I know what you are doing, you are not answering me because you are thinking you are just buying time. You just do not want to face what I am telling you. He was very strong and very stern with him as I have sounded in times past, and it was a spirit of righteous authority. Hopefully, he shook that young man up. But that was just a teenager, you see.
What we are doing here in God's church is that we are dealing with adult people, established adults that do not expect to be spoken to like that, who are totally unaware of how ungodly their reactions are. If someone asks you a question you should answer, and I know that several times in our conversation Friday, at least two or three times, I said to you, do not you remember that we went through this six months ago? And there was no answer. You just looked at me.
So there are several....do you remember that?
COMMENTS: There are times you will put a question to me, and I really have no memory of it, and I really cannot....I have no words to express at that moment, my mind is blank.
PASTOR VITALE: Then you should say, my mind is blank or I cannot remember. You should answer questions.
COMMENTS: There were several things that you said as you went along. For instance, that we know that we are going to be at this meeting, and we know that there are certain things we are going to do, and we never forget that. I can think of one instance, and I do not know if she recalls or not, but I had to call her up and say a silly little thing, and I said, I cannot remember what time the meeting is today. Can you remember me doing that? There were several times I have come here, I know my way by heart here, I have gotten lost. I did not want to mess myself up and do any of that. I was trying to do what was right, but the memory did not lead me. I find it difficult to say that I purposely, intended to be rebellious in those instances. I just find it difficult.
PASTOR VITALE: Nobody is saying that, xxxxx.
See, this is a typical answer that comes out of pride. Nobody is saying that you sat down and said, now I am going to rebel, and how am I going to do this? Rebellion is hidden behind the veil. That is why the veil has to come down. It is a hidden motive. Nobody in your position who is in this deep with God would deliberately sit down and plot to rebel, but it is the enemy within us. It is Satan, the unconscious part of our carnal mind who is trying to hinder us going on with God that is plotting to rebel. And as long as that veil is in place we cannot see her. We cannot see her, and we have a lot of trouble believing that there could be a hidden....that is why it is called a hidden motive.
And my testimony along these lines is, everything you are going through, I have been through, and when the Lord started dealing with me, with all of my hidden motives, I did not get it from an individual person like you. I got it from cruel employers, and many other sources, and one day when I was too sick to work, I was just laying on the couch, and the Lord directed me to a public broadcasting station where I say John Bradshaw, and I watched all of his lectures.
I remember him saying that a family is a system, and one particular type of person in that system decides to get sick, and I was so offended because I was very ill, and I had been ill since I was 11 years old. I was very offended because I thought John Bradshaw meant that I had deliberately, like you just said, and consciously sat down and said, I am going to get sick because I want attention. You know what really hurt me most of all when he said that? It was that my mother had accused me of that. My mother had accused me of getting ill deliberately because I wanted attention, and when I heard John Bradshaw say that it really freaked me out until the Lord brought me to understand that to get my healing, because I was dying for a long time, that to get my healing I had to start facing my unconscious motives, and that there is no condemnation in it and certainly the Lord is not saying that anybody did anything deliberately.
What we are after is exposing Satan who is the hidden motive of our heart. She is the hidden motive of our hearts. That is what we are after. That is what the Lord is after, and the way we get delivered from her because she is messing us up, the way to get delivered from her is by tearing that veil down and seeing her for what she is and starting to control her. You see, Satan controls the average person. If they are not an evil person, then they are living in the goodness of this world, and their life is largely controlled by Satan. Their life and their motives. It is not the motives of Christ Jesus.
So when Christ Jesus comes to dwell in you, He wants to control your negative principles, and the personality has a choice of agreeing with the negative principles to control Christ Jesus or of agreeing with Christ Jesus to control the negative principles. Whoever the personality agrees with, that is the man that is going to prevail over her life. Now to think that you are agreeing with Christ Jesus when, in fact, you are agreeing with Satan and Leviathan will end in your death, in your spiritual death, and your ultimate physical death. This is the whole purpose of this message today, and anything else that I tell you, that Christ Jesus wants you to live, and Christ Jesus wants you to go on to eternal life, and for this reason He is exposing to you, as hard as it is to believe, that you, the personality, even though you do not know it, are in agreement with Satan's hidden motives.
That is what this is all about. He is educating you. First, to tell you that it is not only possible, but it is probable because of your own....if you have to start by saying, it is possible. You start where ever you can, but the truth is that it is probable that even the Christians in the church, most people in the world, are fully controlled by the goodness of Satan which is Leviathan.
What does that mean? It means they are not doing what Jesus would do if He had full control of you at that moment, but you are doing what Leviathan wants to do. But the average person does not perceive it as Leviathan. They say, that is just me. You just said it, you are Leviathan. Whoever is saying that, you are Leviathan. We are the personality, we are the glove that fits over the spiritual man, and we are either an expression of Satan or Leviathan or an expression of the Spirit of Christ and Christ Jesus. It is one or the other at any given moment of our life. We are expressing one man or the other, either the New Man or the old man.
Nobody is ever saying you are doing anything deliberately. On the contrary, I am saying and Christ Jesus is saying, through me, I know you did not do it deliberately. It is a hidden sin of your heart, and that hidden sin of your heart requires an agreement with Satan even though you do not know you are doing it. That is what you did. So if you want to live, Jesus is saying "live," I want you to live.
So do not put your eyes on the past because Leviathan's going to come up in you and try to defend you and try to cause you to focus on saying, I did not mean it, I did not do it deliberately, I did not mean to do any harm. That is not what Christ Jesus is doing here today. We are not talking about the past. We are not talking about 5 minutes ago. We are talking about right now, let us look at her. Let us see who is behind that veil like we saw in the Wizard of Oz. Let us see, let us see the one who is putting these suggestions in our mind. Let us see the truth; that every thought that is not out of Christ is out of Satan. Let us look at it so that we can restrain her. Do you hear me? Let us look at her so that we can restrain her in the next minute. We are not looking back there saying that you did something bad. We are looking to the future saying, let us expose her so that I can stop her the next time she tries to do this. You got that?
COMMENT: So you are saying that when I forgot the time of the meeting, when I forgot the road or when I do not go to protocol with the email that there is something in me that wants to sabotage the ministry? Or that I do not want to be here in my own mind?
PASTOR VITALE: As far your missing the meeting I do not really know. I could pray about that, but that is not really the issue right now. Let us stay with the issue that happened, and I would not say that you wanted to sabotage the ministry, I think that...., you are going to look at me like I am out of my mind, but I am going to tell you what I think.
I think that there is a strong spirit of pride that is operating in you that really wants their own ministry and wants to be independent of the godly control of the whole ministry, and it is interesting because I have experienced this. In your case, it is very subtle, but I have experienced this. I will just give you these testimonies so that you can see what I am talking about. It is easier to see the operation of this sin when it is in an extreme. It is really funny.
When the Lord first called me into the ministry I had a young lady living with me, I had an extra bedroom at the time, and the ministry was just starting up, and we had just purchased our first duplicator, our first Telex Duplicator, paid $1,000 for that machine 12 years ago, and this young lady that lived with me I offered her the ministry of duplicating the messages. I was the head of the ministry. The ministry bought the machine, the ministry bought the tapes, and she made a commitment....that is a commitment when you say I am going to duplicate the tapes, that is a commitment to work for the ministry.
She took it to her heart that this was her ministry, she became all exalted with pride, she was not important, she had a ministry, and she would not do anything that I told her to do. The position that she took was that she was now apart from me, she was a ministry apart from the headship. You do not have to believe this, but do you understand what I am saying? That she was a ministry apart from the headship, and if I were to say to her, for example, this is the memory that comes to my mind. I think that she was waiting 3-4 days to duplicator the tapes, and I had said to her, I do not really care how long you take to duplicate the tapes for the others, but I would like one copy right away. In those days I was going over the messages and looking for mistakes, and she refused to do it.
She would make me wait 3 days for the message, and finally I said to her, I really need that message right away, if not this same night, the very next day, and if you feel that you cannot do it I will do it myself. We lived in the same house. The machine was right there, and she said to me, you will not touch that, that is my ministry. That is what she said to me. That is my ministry, and you will wait until I give it to you, and I said, guess what? you just lost the ministry. In her mind, she did not sit down and say, I am going to rebel against Sheila. She really thought she was right. She completely forgot that I gave her the ministry. Of course, it was Christ in me, but I assigned her the ministry. She made herself this great one. Now she had a ministry, and she put me under her. This is typical.
Everybody in the church, if they really want to go on, really have to look within yourself and ask the Lord if there are any thoughts within you that are putting the true authority under you. Ask Him to show it to you because everybody goes through this. It is a very rare person in the church that does not go through this on some level.
COMMENT: I can give an example. In the working of the ministry, as the Office Manager, I took it upon myself to just go about it and order the tapes from the supplier, not taking it up with Sheila, and I was rebuked for it. I understand that I am supposed to be checking with the head of the ministry about these tapes because there was an incident that came up that she was thinking of not ordering those tapes, but doing something else. So, therefore, I was out of order, and I just wanted to say that. And there are a couple more, but that was the main one.
PASTOR VITALE: Thank you for that input because what you just said there if I could just expound on it a little was that the Lord helped you to understand why you are not supposed to order the tapes yourself, but you are supposed to make your needs known to me, and then I decide when and how to order them, that by you taking it upon yourself....okay, there was a real problem because I was thinking of going to another distributor, but I never shared that with you because it was not appropriate to share it with you.
So xxxxx just gave an excellent example of how the Lord helped her to understand what communication is important, and why submission to authority is important. Like in the Book of Judges, it says that in those days every man did what was right in his own eyes, and there can be nothing but chaos and confusion if every man does what is right in his own eyes. And that is just another way of saying that everyone is responding to Satan in their mind instead of Christ Jesus who is speaking through one man, the authority over the ministry.
COMMENT: I will go further and talk about myself. I know Sheila is over me, and I know xxxxx is over me, and so many times I was in rebellion. I want to go back to a time, Sheila, a few years ago, it was devastating, and you know it. When you first told me that I was Satan, I had never heard that from anyone. That was so devastating. I thought everybody in the whole world did not have it, but I had it. That was my pride, and I just wanted to share that now because it might help somebody.
PASTOR VITALE: Thank you very much. We are all Satan. We are Satan and Leviathan.
COMMENT: Why was not it appropriate for you to share with xxxxx about the messages when she is in charge of the office?
PASTOR VITALE: Because the right order is, the way we are going to function is that she tells me what she needs, and I make the decision as to when and what I am going to purchase.
COMMENT: So that is something you already had an agreement with between you.
PASTOR VITALE: I had been teaching it here for a while. This is right order, and otherwise is wrong order. No organization will survive with the people telling the head what to do, whether it is a ministry or a family or a corporation, it will never survive.
COMMENT: Getting back to what you said about the girl that was living with you, now I can see where that was outright rebellion. The fact that a request was made, that would go ahead of any other previous order. Even in the Marine Corps, they tell you the last order you do first. Now that was something that was right up front, and that was a request, and I can understand rebellion in that extent.
PASTOR VITALE: But do you understand that she did not think it was rebellion? In her mind, she really thought she had the right to do that. So we are talking about wrong thinking. That is my emphasis here. She really believed she had a right to tell me that because it was her ministry. Wrong thinking.
COMMENT: All right, let us get back to me. You said in the beginning that this was a lot of things directed towards me. I do not understand what you said about "I want a ministry."
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, I know that you do not know that. I suggested that to you...
COMMENT: Even the books that went out, that just came because you....it was always at your initiative to do things, it was never a thought in my mind. It was just a message that was here, you wanted to put it in a book, and different things. It was not in my mind. Personally, I have no desire for the responsibility or the burden. That is how I feel. When you say those things to me it really blows me away. Like I enjoy talking one-on-one to people and things like that and learning these things, but to have a ministry I know that is not my desire. I am not equipped for that, I do not want it, and when you say that to me I question.
PASTOR VITALE: I know that you do not see it xxxxx, you know, so let me ask you a question. Why, if you do not want....and maybe what your concept of a ministry is does not have to be a public ministry like this, but why are you standing between xxxxx and her work for this ministry? Why will not you let her communicate directly?
COMMENT: Because she is not there. She does not know how to do it without me.
PASTOR VITALE: Why do not you teach her how instead of mediating for her?
COMMENT: Let us say, I am trying and I have weaknesses in those areas where I have to rely upon my husband for lot of the communication, even so far as sending an attachment.
PASTOR VITALE: There is something really wrong here xxxxx. About six months ago we went through this whole thing, and an email went out to everybody saying that everybody has to choose their own messages, nobody can speak for anybody else, and xxxxx has to speak directly to xxxxx, and you just completely over road that, and I even spoke to you about it like a month ago when you called me to suggest a message to transcribe, and I rebuked you for that. I said, xxxxx, everybody has to choose their own messages. Even if you go eenie, meenie, miney, mo, and a month after that you are selecting a message for xxxxx. You are making her weak xxxxx, and you are exercising an ungodly authority over her.
We just had another problem off the message. The message came to an end, and one of the brethren here got up to go to the restroom, and you made a decision to wait for her, and you are not supposed to be making suggestions to the head of a meeting who is under the anointing of Christ Jesus. So that is Satan that rose up in your mind. Can you believe that at all?
COMMENT: I cannot at all. I said to you, do you want to continue now or wait for xxxxx? I asked you a question.
PASTOR VITALE: You do not have the authority to ask me that question xxxxx.
COMMENT: I am in charge of the message, is that not my responsibility?
PASTOR VITALE: No. If I want to wait, I will tell you to wait. You do your job, and unless I interfere. Christ did not tell you to do that xxxxx.
COMMENT: That is not presumption for me to just put it on and you just ahead if you are not ready?
PASTOR VITALE: Is that not what you always do?
COMMENT: Not when somebody has left the room.
PASTOR VITALE: Xxxxx, your job is to put the next message on and to look towards me to see whether I say okay or not, but you did not do that. When I looked up, you said "do you want to leave it off for xxxxx" or whatever. You told me what to do. Xxxxx, I am trying to help you. I really do not want to fight with you over this, but I am telling you that your thinking patterns need a lot of work, and the Lord wants to help you. That is what this is all about, and I am challenging you to think about this and pray about this and see how you took the lead which is taking the authority over me. It is your job to put the message in, to look at me, and I will say "go" or I will say "we will wait for xxxxx." It was not your place to do that. That is not your job to tell me, to make suggestions to me as to what to do. Can you not see that? Christ does not do that. Christ is in submission to authority where ever He goes.
Peter comes in here to teach me on the computer, and I am in submission to Peter. I am in someone's house, and I am in submission to them. I go to that church across the street, and I am in submission to the pastor in that church. I would never tell her what to do. I would never even think about telling her what to do.
So we see that there are some patterns of thinking in your mind which result in behavioral patterns which are not Christ. So the issue is way beyond your taking authority over me in the meeting. The Lord Jesus wants you to live, and He wants to live through you, and in order for Him....He wants to control you. Someone has to control us. That is what the Scripture means when Jesus said, my yoke is light and easy. We are yoked animals. We are yoked oxen.
An ox is a bull that has been gelded. So we are the personalities, we are the present manifestation of the ox that was in the garden, and we are under a yoke. Either Satan or Leviathan are directing the plow or the Spirit of Christ in Christ Jesus is directing the plow. Jesus said, do not agree with your carnal mind. Agree with Me. My way is much easier. But this is really hard to understand, that it is one or the other, that everything that we do is the fruit of a suggestion that was made to us either by Satan or by the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of Christ never told you to do that. There is no middle ground. All thoughts come from, originate in the unconscious mind either from Satan or from the Spirit of Christ. The Holy Spirit can make some suggestions.
And this is the exact reason why the judgment is necessary. I was just working last night on our On-Line Meeting transcript, The Straight Gate, and this issue came up, and I remember when the Lord showed me this issue years ago when we were translating the Book of Revelation. Some things just never leave my mind, and the way the Scripture expresses this problem is that even though we have the Mind of Christ humanity is in a rut. We have been following the thoughts of Satan for so long that we are in a rut. We are in a ditch, we cannot get out of this rut, and this rut is Satan's thought patterns.
The only way we can get out is for this kind of exposure. I know of no other way. I have been studying this Scripture for over 20 years, and I have found no other way to get out of this rut of wrong thinking which results in wrong behavior than have it exposed as sin. You see, it is not just "I made a mistake." If you are going to continue to believe or think this way, that "Oh, I just made a mistake," that is Leviathan justifying your submission to Satan's thoughts.
Let me remind you that submission is worship. "Oh, I would never worship Satan." Oh, really? Submission is worship. When you do what somebody tells you, you worship the mind in them that instructed you. Now, if you are in a work situation, and you are obeying your boss that is not worship of Satan, but that honors God because you are supposed to be submitting to your boss. But, brethren, if someone comes to you and suggests that you go rob a bank with them, and you come under that suggestion you have been seduced by Satan in that person.
So the test is not whether or not you are submitting to your boss or some other carnally minded person out there, but the test comes when Christ Jesus is present. Whether Christ Jesus is present in your own mind or in the mind of the authority at the moment, when you have the choice between Satan's thoughts or Satan's suggestions and the request or the suggestion of Christ Jesus; that is the test that counts. And then you find out who you are truly worshiping. Worship is not waving your hand and saying "praise you Jesus." Worship is submission.
Now most Christians know that you are not going to listen to Satan when it comes to moral behavior, you are not going to steal, you are not going to kill, you are not going to commit adultery, and you are trying your best to honor your pastor and have a godly behavior, but what is killing you, what is preventing you from entering into eternal life is the submission to the thoughts that are so subtle that you are inclined to believe "cannot possibly be Satan, it is just me."
I can set priorities for my workday and never get anywhere near doing the priorities that I set because Christ Jesus controls me to a large....He certainly controls my workday. Christ Jesus wants to control us. Do you know that the word "Lord" means controller. He wants our hands and our feet and our minds to do what He wants them to do in every thought of our mind. Now, no one is capable of this, but if you can just hear this teaching and receive it in your heart you are breaking Satan right here. You are breaking her right here, and then the Spirit of Christ which is in Christ Jesus who is in you, if you are listening to this message He has to be in you, certainly everybody here.
It is your personality....it is the pride in us that has to give it up. It has to say, yes it is possible, oh my God, I wish it was not possible that I could be choosing Satan's thought over Christ Jesus. I wish it was not true, I wish it was just true that I just forgot, and that I just have a problem, but I confess that it is Satan. When we can do that, if we are sincerely doing it, it breaks her to the point that the Spirit of Christ will rise up and really wound her, you see.
The warrior in us is the Spirit of Christ, but He is hindered to the fullest extent that we, the personality, cannot admit that we have just obeyed Satan. If we can admit that we have obeyed her and repent, the Spirit of Christ rises up and punishes her. And every time the Spirit of Christ rises up and punishes her she goes down lower and lower and lower, and she loses her power over us more and more and more, and Christ Jesus is that angel, and the Spirit of Christ is the chain that He puts on Satan. He locks her in the bottomless pit and puts a seal on her so that....what does that mean? So that she does not make suggestions to us anymore. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life saying, oh was that God or was that Satan? I do not know about you, but I do not.
I spend hours of my day, sometimes praying about particular issues saying, Lord who was that, that said that to me? That is not the way it is supposed to be. Satan must be silenced so that we live in peace, without conflict, without any fear, but peace comes only after the warfare and the victory. So everybody that is hearing me, I know that everybody's spirit is right here. I praise God for that breaking in the spirit. Satan speaks through us. It is true. We have tried as hard as we can possibly try to years to be decent, honest, God-fearing people, and despite all of our best efforts, the very best that we can do, Satan speaks through us, and when we obey her it is worship.
Do you know how many people have been abused by their parents and have grown up saying, I will never do that to my child, and they wind up doing the same exact thing to their children. Brethren, mortal humanity without Christ Jesus is pitiful. We are pitiful. We cannot do it. The knowledge that we cannot make our self-righteous is the doorway to eternal life. We cannot do it, and we have to stop trying to make our self-righteous so that Jesus Christ can come in and give us true righteousness.
We, the personality, are the determining factor. If we will give up our pride, He will do it. We are in His way. We, the personality, in agreement with the thoughts of our carnal mind are in the way of Christ Jesus who wants to just rise above the Fiery Serpent within us and cover her and penetrate her right now. He wants to make a quick work of it. We are in the way. We are the Prince of Persia. The carnal mind, in all of the areas that we are in agreement, that the personality is in agreement with the carnal mind, we are the Prince of Persia. So that is a really big step.
Getting back to what I was saying before the issue of the message recorder came on, this desire to have a ministry does not necessarily mean to have a public ministry, but it means to exercise authority, a desire to exercise authority in God's ministry. It is ungodly, xxxxx, to make people weak and to hinder their own spiritual growth or any kind of growth, it is ungodly to do chores for people without teaching them how to do it for themselves and to keep them in that position.
I have been preaching this for a long time, I will not tolerate anybody speaking for another person in this ministry. Everybody has to make their own decisions, have to get before God and make their own decisions. Now if somebody cannot make a decision about what message they want to transcribe, that person is in pretty bad shape. I would wonder if that person was retarded. What is wrong with them that they cannot pick up a message list and say, Lord what message should I transcribe? And even if they do not hear anything, just wave your hand around and put your finger down and where ever it is, that is what you do. I do not understand what is so hard to understand about that. Anybody who really cannot do that, for another party to encourage them in that weakness, is sin, and the sin is the sin of pride. And the motive for such a sin is the desire for ministry, the desire to rule over another human being. That is what it is.
To me, that would be offensive, and you can ask xxxxx because I have gone through this many times with her. Anyone who asks me to do something that they should be able to do for themselves, I am offended. Why am I offended? Because, most of the time, I am Christ, and that is an ungodly request. All ungodly requests come out of the carnal mind, and all thoughts arise out of Satan. So, whenever the carnal mind relates to me in a way that is really seducing me to do something ungodly, it offends me.
If someone comes to me and asks me to do something for them, and if the spirit on them that is an ungodly submission that wants to make themselves weak and make me strong, they are coming out of their carnal mind, and it is seduction to me. That is a seduction to me to tempt me to exercise an ungodly authority over that person, the result of which is that I will feel big and strong, and they will be weak. So when someone comes to me with an ungodly request, Christ in me is very offended. Because this ministry is in Christ, the rule here is that everybody must do everything for themselves if they possibly can, and, if you really do not know how to do something, I will teach you how to do it or we will make another way, but I will not speak for you. This issue has been around for a long time.
I remember a couple of years ago that you sat down and you typed for xxxxx, and I told you, we have talked about this xxxxx, I know a couple of years ago we talked about how you frequently are in between the relationships of other people. You get in between other people where you should not be there. Do you remember those conversations that we have had. This is happening again with xxxxx. You should not be where you are xxxxx.
Actually, I have been remiss, I have really had to repent before the Lord because I know that anybody who wants anything to do with this ministry must have some personal contact with this ministry, and from the very beginning I should never have permitted you to be mediating for her on any level. When you first came to me and said, xxxxx wants to transcribe, I should have told you right on that spot, which I failed to do, tell her to contact me.
See, nobody can be an intercessor between this ministry and another party. I know that I told you several years ago, if I am not mistaken you were thinking about xxxxx coming here, I told you then that whoever....I know that you have your own group, but whoever you bring into this ministry becomes a member of this ministry. They can be a member of your group when you meet, but anything that they have to do with this ministry, you are not the mediator. They now have to have a personal relationship with me and a direct connection with this ministry.
I told you that when it came to the meetings, but somehow when you told me that xxxxx wanted to transcribe, it just got past me. And this happens to me....every time the Lord has shown me, time and time again, every time a sin gets past me it just gets worse and worse and worse until I am forced to deal with it. And the truth of the matter is that I am very overburdened here, but overburdened or not it is my responsibility to stop sin at the pass every time I see it manifesting. And I am openly repenting to you and to everyone here that I did not do it.
What happened? What was the fruit of my failure? All of this trouble, what happened six months ago, and what is happening now, because I did not cover you, you see. If I had told you two years ago when you told me that xxxxx wanted to transcribe, if I had corrected you there it would have never come to this. So, I failed to cover you, you see. And what I should have said to you at the time was, if xxxxx wants to transcribe tell her to call me, but, you see, you gave xxxxx authority to transcribe for this ministry, and I did not stop it. You have no authority to tell anybody they can transcribe for this ministry. So I did not cover you, and I apologize for that. Two years this is going on until it got through my head.
Nobody has any authority to invite someone to enter into any form of ministry with this ministry. I give you the books, and if you want to give the books out, you can give the books out, but that is not the same thing as transcribing. Transcribing is participating in this ministry. It is not the same thing as getting a book and reading the book that we pass out. If you want to make a contribution of your efforts to this ministry, you are now connected to this ministry. So xxxxx, for two years, has been connected to this ministry, but there has been no communication, and she has not been following any of the rules because she probably does not even know them, and it is just out of order. It is just completely out of order.
So, what you have done, and I grant you that you did not understand that you were doing anything wrong, is that you have taken someone from your ministry and connected them to this ministry, but yet stayed in complete control over that person and blocked them from coming closer to the ministry here. That is what you have done. I grant you, xxxxx, that you did not plan it, you did not plot it, you did not try to do it, but that is what has happened.
Let me say this, who knows what God would have done if she came closer? Maybe her spiritual growth would have doubled by now if she came closer. I take full responsibility for letting this happen. Maybe her spiritual growth would have doubled if things had been in right order. How do I know what God would have done? I do not know, and the Lord just gave me a Scripture, xxxxx, and it is not going to make you happy, but I am going to tell you what the Lord told me. In the New Testament, I believe it was the deputy who stood in the gap. Not stood in the gap but stood in the way. It was either Peter or Paul who went to minister to somebody, and the deputy stood in the path. So you are in between, and you should not be there.
The interesting part of the whole thing is that it probably would never even come to this if you would have just obeyed the rules, and all that I asked you six months ago was.... I said clearly six months ago, tell her to come to your house and write the email and choose her own messages. If you had followed those simple rules, it would never have even come to this today. So you have to ask yourself, why could you not even follow those simple rules since you are in a position where you should not be? You are in a position of mediator where you have no right to be. If you had just followed those simple rules...., I guess this would have come up when the Lord finally got around to telling me, but why did not you even follow the simple rules?
You see, you cannot say that you forgot. You really have to ask the Lord to reveal your motives, and, on some level, the answer is that you just want to do it all. You want to write the email for her, you want to pick the message for her, and you want to be that mediator. And xxxxx, I have been telling you for years that you have this tendency. I have told you that I see you moving toward xxxxx in that area. I have told you, and I have told xxxxx, there are no secrets in this ministry. The only secrets, for as long as they remain a secret, is if I feel the person really could not bear hearing it right now. You were moving towards xxxxx, interceding for her when she never asked you to intercede for her, coming to me and telling me what she cannot see and cannot we help her this way and cannot we help her that way. All out of order, xxxxx.
So, you have got a mechanism in you....am I telling you this to condemn you? Am I telling you this to rebuke you? No. I am telling you that there is a mechanism in you that is looking for ministry. It wants to exercise authority over people. The Lord wants to break this so that He can give you the true ministry which is in Christ Jesus. Did you want to say something to me?
COMMENT: So, in effect, what you are saying is that the ministry of helps is a ministry, and it is going against your authority?
PASTOR VITALE: What is it that you think is the ministry of helps?
COMMENT: Helping somebody to do what they are unable to do for the purpose of getting the job done.
PASTOR VITALE: That is not the ministry of helps, xxxxx.
COMMENT: I need a definition of what the ministry of helps is.
PASTOR VITALE: The ministry of helps, to the best of my understanding, is helps to the ministry. You come and you clean the toilet, you come and you take the garbage out, and you go to the post office. The ministry of helps is ministry to a ministry.
COMMENT: How does that differ than me trying to help xxxxx with something that she could not see?
PASTOR VITALE: okay, the difference is that you are not supposed to help people that do not ask for your help. It is a very aggressive spirit that goes around and says, I am going to do this for you, and I am going to do that for you, and I am going to do that for you, and maybe the people do not want you to do it.
COMMENT: I feel that consistently I am told to do something, and my hands are tied.
PASTOR VITALE: What is that, xxxxx, what are you told to do?
COMMENT: I was told to check out the pictures that xxxxx had done.
PASTOR VITALE: Right.
COMMENT: And I had said, she cannot see that, how can we help her?
PASTOR VITALE: Why were you even thinking that? Your job was to proofread the illustrations.
COMMENT: Because that is what I was doing, that is what I saw, that is what I observed. I was supposed to check them out, and that is what I saw.
PASTOR VITALE: You were supposed to check for wrong spelling. See, xxxxx, your mind is filled with wrong thinking, and I am really trying to destroy it this morning. I am trying to help xxxxx, the personality, and really burn out this wrong thinking. You take authority over people continuously, and you are convinced that it is the ministry of helps, but it is not. It is sin.
COMMENT: A few moments ago the phone rang. Ordinarily in this ministry, in the past, I turn off the message and answer the phone. If I were to question you, do I answer the phone? I would be Satan, and I would be out of order? And I would be coming against your authority, you are saying?
PASTOR VITALE: No. What you do is, you do your normal job unless I say otherwise. So you stopped the message because I have always asked you to answer the telephone. That was understandable. You were doing what I always asked you to do. That was understandable that you did that without asking me.
It has become a pattern. You know, when we look at our judicial system there is something called precedent. In other words, if there is a case before the bar, before the court system, the lawyer goes out, and he looks for other cases with similar situations, and that is a precedent. So, I have asked you so many times, for years now, that when the phone rings to answer the phone. It was very understandable that you thought that was what you should be doing, and I had no problem with that at all, but in this case I did not want you to answer it so I told you to do otherwise, but there was nothing wrong with that.
Xxxxx, I want to say this again. There is a whole network, like a spider's web, of wrong thinking in your mind, and the Lord wants to burn it up. He wants to replace it with His mechanism, with His mind, with His reasoning ability because your reasoning, in these areas anyway, your reasoning is all wrong. The truth of what you are doing is that it is your carnal mind, it is Leviathan and Satan in you, trying to give yourself a ministry and exalt yourself by giving you authority over people, and you keep on doing it because you are convinced that it is a ministry of helps or that it is of God.
So, we are here today to tell you one more time, and it seems to be coming forth with power today. That is why we do this in front of witnesses because your mind is very resistant to this. This is not the ministry of helps. The ministry of helps is in response to a requested need. You cannot go around helping whoever you want to. That happens so often in the church today. People go around beating other people over the head with a Bible saying, I know what you need, you need Christ, I know what you need, you need a husband, I know what you need, you need a wife, and I am going to give it to you whether you want it or not, and that is a spirit of witchcraft. It is a control spirit.
COMMENT: I just feel a little bit of a contradiction because you say that I do not ask the people, you say that I go against your authority even when I ask you something, that I am taking authority away. So, I am doing it whether I not ask it or whether I do ask it.
PASTOR VITALE: No, no. If you want to help, xxxxx, and I told you this on Friday, if you want to help somebody you go to them and say, is there anything I can help you with? And you do whatever they ask you. But to identify a problem in somebody, and go over and offer to help is being aggressive towards that person. Maybe they do not want your help, maybe they do not even want to talk about that problem; maybe it is a sensitive issue in them. That is crossing over their personal space. Maybe they do not want to admit, this is not true of xxxxx, but maybe she was vain, maybe she did not want to admit that she could not see, but, aside from all that, you did not go to xxxxx, you came to me. You put yourself between xxxxx and me, the minister who gave her the assignment.
COMMENT: It only happened that xxxxx was not here, I would not have hesitated in a moment if she was right there.
PASTOR VITALE: It would have been the same thing even if she was here. Even if it was in a situation like this, you put yourself as a mediator between the head of the ministry and the other member of the congregation, and that is taking authority. Mediators have authority.
So, we see that there are several issues here, all crossing over. The issue of taking an ungodly authority, the issue of speaking for another party, the issue of making yourself a mediator. That is three different subjects right here under the one heading of desiring ministry. So you have a very aggressive spirit that is really going out there pretty much doing whatever it wants to do, and it is this very same spirit that does not want to obey the rules.
You see, it is this same spirit that is making decisions for all these other people that says, no, I am not going to send Sheila a copy of that email because she has too much to do. But it is witchcraft to make decisions for people, and, even more so, when you know that the person's particular wish is, in my case I wanted the email, and for you to say, no I am not going to do it because it is too much for her, that is pretty heavy.
This is not a personal thing. I am not mad at you. This is not a personal issue at all. I am really trying to help you to burn up this network that Satan has erected in your mind. You know, you have been talking to me for years and to the whole group about this bondage that is in your mind, and that sometimes you have trouble remembering and sometimes you have trouble understanding, and you have been indicating for years that there is bondage in your mind. xxxxx, this is the root of the bondage in your mind. Satan has gotten in there and woven a web that has crippled you in many areas.
Did you ever look in one of the trees in the summer time and you see where the hornets or some kind of pestilence has come in and woven their web, and it looks like puffed candy in the trees? Satan has come in, and your whole mind is in a big cobweb. You know that the spider signifies the carnal mind. When she catches some other insect in her web, she paralyzes them before she consumes them. In these particular areas, your mind is paralyzed, and Christ Jesus loves you and wants to set you free, and it is the truth that will set us free. I am telling you the truth, that you have got a very controlling spirit, and that there is a mechanism in you that fosters dependency.
COMMENT: As much as I have difficulty understanding a lot of the things you say, and the manner in which you do it, I can remember the Lord telling me about having a controlling spirit, means the same thing as a domineering spirit....
PASTOR VITALE: Yes.
COMMENT: ....years and years ago because I was thrown into that responsibility in my family. They were alcoholics, they were not doing it so I started doing it. That was not the role I wanted, but I took it on because it was necessary, but just last night the Lord....I feel He has been dealing with me about what is counterfeit and what is not, and I feel that I am going to have to really pray about some of the things that you are saying. In find them hurtful because my carnal mind thought it was the very thing I was supposed to do in Christ. There was this thing on TV about diamonds, and they have these diamonds on the market that even the gemologists have difficulty determining if it is real or not because the man-made diamonds or so genuine. In fact, they are superior to diamonds in some areas, but the fact is that they are not diamonds. I saw something on the Joy of the Pig, and it is the female who rules over the tribe of the pigs, and even the bees it is the female mind that rules over it. So you are making me think of these things because if the Lord put these things in my path....
PASTOR VITALE: I am not making you think, that is the Spirit of Christ in you witnessing to you what I am saying.
COMMENT: So from now on, I am not going to do nothing for nobody no how, no how, and I am doing that in Christ, and it is going to be very different than how I do things ordinarily, but the grace of God is going to happen.
PASTOR VITALE: But do you understand, xxxxx, that you can offer to help? In other words, if you see someone carrying a heavy package you can offer to help. okay? See, you do not really understand that there are ways that you can offer to help, you can help assist somebody in what they are doing, but....I guess we will just take it a step at a time, you know.
COMMENT: Xxxxx had the patch over her eye. I knew she had just gone through the operation. It was obvious that she needed help, but that is different you are saying?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes.
COMMENT: I have not got that figured out.
PASTOR VITALE: When it comes to...., if she had a patch over her eye and you offered to go cook for her or buy her food or clean her house, that is the ministry of helps, but, okay, the Lord just told me. What you do, xxxxx, and in this particular instance, is that you solve people's problems for them without them even....see, it is wrong to solve people's problems for them even if they ask you to do it, but to solve someone's problem when you have not even discussed it with them, when they have not even asked you to do it, this is that control spirit.
COMMENT: What do you mean "when they ask you?"
PASTOR VITALE: Sometimes I ask, for example, and I would say I am pretty much the most mature person here spiritually, but when it comes to household things sometimes I am very lacking. As a matter of fact, I wanted to ask all of you with regard to my broken door here. When it comes to things about the house or decorating or sewing or things like that, I will go to you and say "what do you think, can you give me any information on this, and what would you do if you were in my place?" Then, I could think about it and decide if I want to do it. So you can ask for people's opinions, but to look at somebody and draw a conclusion that they have a problem, which may very well be true, and then to go forward to solve that problem without even talking to them about it, and to go talk to someone in authority on their behalf without them even knowing about it, that is a control spirit, xxxxx.
COMMENT: You just mentioned the door. The other day, if I had had the means I would have automatically screwed that bolt in there. I would have been out of order doing that?
PASTOR VITALE: You should have said, "Sheila, I know how to fix this, do you want me to fix it?" I would have said, "please xxxxx, fix it." I would have really appreciated that. See, you are still going to the authority and saying, I know how to do that, can I help you, and I will say, oh year, I do not know how to do it, you know how to do it, thank you.
COMMENT: I think, basically, it is communication, the whole heart of it, you know. Everything that we do has to be communication. If you see something, communicate, just communicate, and you will get the feedback, and then you go ahead and do what you feel you wanted to do in the first place. I know with me, it is communication because I go ahead and do these things in the office, and in this one incident that I said was only one of many that I have done. I just right ahead and went over the authority and proceeded to do it because I thought, oh this is my position, and I should do it, but the communication was not there. If the communication was there, I would not have gone over her head.
PASTOR VITALE: Xxxxx could not tell the line. You see, xxxxx has a lot of authority in the office. There is a lot of things that she can do without asking me, but there is a line, and this is true in any organization, in any corporate structure. Everybody has authority in their own area. In the Army you have to know where the ceiling is, and if you need something beyond your authority you have to ask. That is a spirit of pride. That is pride in you, xxxxx, that does not want to say....what it is really doing is asking for permission to help me. This would be asking for permission to help me, and it is the spirit of pride that would say, why should I ask for permission to help somebody. But the truth is that if we do something that affects another person, even if it is going to help them, we are not supposed to be doing it without their permission.
COMMENT: I can understand that.
PASTOR VITALE: I think this is turning out very positive
COMMENT: I am looking up at your board, and it says "unlimited, visible world has no boundaries." Restricted heaven. We will be out of these boundaries?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, that is what the Lord is inviting you to, and this is what He is trying to accomplish, and, apparently, accomplishing here because this victory that you are taking is breaking down the mud walls. The walls are all mud. Leviathan is hardened mud, and I was also reading that in our On-Line transcript, The Straight Gate, that the penetration of the carnal mind, the Spirit of Christ wants to penetrate the carnal mind, but the opening between the warp and the woof threads are all clogged up with mud, and the Spirit of Christ cannot get through. So, this kind of discussion today is collapsing and crumbling that mud so that the Spirit of Christ can get inside and blow your whole carnal mind apart. Wrong thinking, wrong thinking. Praise the Lord.
I do have to tell you though, xxxxx, that I would like xxxxx's address, and I will write to her, and tell her that if she wants to transcribe she will have to deal directly with the ministry, and she can always put her transcript on a disc and mail it to xxxxx. Normally, under other circumstances, I would say, you can transmit it for her, you can help her out that way, but because the situation is what it is, I believe the Lord is telling me that He really wants to just break it up completely, and she is going to have to deal directly with the ministry. I will write her a letter. I will work it all out, I know I cannot expect her to make a long-distance phone call, but I will see if maybe she can call xxxxx on Mondays or whatever. It should not require that many phone calls, and she could do it by mail. It takes her 6 months to do one transcript so, surely, she can write a post card and say, I am requesting to transcribe such and such a message, and pop the floppy disc in the mail twice a year. She should be able to do that. This is what the Lord has told me to do. Praise the Lord.
Does anybody have anything to say before we close this meeting?
You really should not say anything to her until she gets my letter. Are you willing to give me her address? Did you want to say something else? Do you understand that you are fostering dependency on her, and that you are doing every little thing for her, and that it is not acceptable, and that there has been a pattern of this? There are two sides to it. It is not healthy for the other person who could become totally dependent on you in this area, but it is also not good for you because there is a root in you that is being fed by babying people like this, which root is stopping Christ Jesus from coming forth in you in the power that He would like to come forth.
So the Lord wants to rip out this root in you. In your case, you are holding on to it because, on some level, it is satisfying you, but, from His point of view, He cannot get in there. He wants to satisfy you.
See, it is almost like a baby with a pacifier, you know. He is been trying and trying, and you have not let go, you are sucking on this pacifier. So the time has come. He is getting ready to just rip it out of your mouth. He wants to satisfy you. You have to stop sucking your thumb. Maybe pacifier is not the right word. It is time to stop sucking your thumb.
The time is very close, and the Lord has so many people that He wants to minister to, and He needs ambassadors to minister through. We are called to be ambassadors for Christ, but we cannot be His ambassadors if the carnal mind is ministering through us. So once again, this is what this whole message is all about. It is a solicitation message. The Lord is recruiting all of you. This message was focused mostly on xxxxx who has been very brave about this whole thing, but this message is Christ Jesus recruiting you to come into His Army.
Just like when you go into the United States Army, you have to give up all of your civilian clothes, they shave your hair off, and you give up all of your independent ideas, and you do whatever the Sergeant tells you to do. He is not forcing you to come into His Army, but He is recruiting you. He is actively recruiting you, challenging you to turn away from the mind of this world and to submit yourself to training in Christ Jesus which will make you an ambassador for Him which means that He will speak through you, and He will minister through you, and, even more than that, He will arrange the ministry for you. He will bring the people in to your life, He will speak through you, He will do through you, and many, many people will be helped. That is what this message is all about.
He loves us, He is for us. Satan hates us. Satan is the one who is against us, and because of some crazy situation, which appears crazy to us at this point, we are in large submission to our carnal mind which is the worship of Satan. And she is actively and viciously threatening to deprive us of what Christ Jesus is offering us if she can just get us to cleave to her thoughts. She is doing that, and she will succeed if she can just get us to cleave to her thoughts.
So we have to be very brave. It is a very brave person that is going to accept this ministry of reconciliation. We, the personality, have to stand up and say, Satan I am just going to believe everything that I get the two witnesses, Christ Jesus in the teacher and the Spirit of Christ in yourself. If it is witnessed that it is true, I am going to give you up, and I am going to turn on you, and I am going to burn you with fire, and I am going on with God. The world is waiting for us, the church is waiting for us, the world is waiting for us. We are limited. We are in this lower world here with the two heavens. We are limited by the earth. It is all around us. We are limited as to how many people we can help or what we can do. That is why the Lord needs many of us at this time. He wants to minister through us. He is not depriving us of ministry, He is not depriving us to satisfaction. It is just a question of who satisfies us, and whose ministry it is.
Every day I find out more and more, to my amazement, how completely forgiving the Lord is. It is unimaginable to me, I came out of a very violent background to see anyone this loving, this forgiving, does not take anything personally, does not hold anything against you. No matter how wicked your act is, all He thinks about is how He is going to deliver you from yourself, and how He is going to help you so that this would not happen to you again.
It is unimaginable to me because you do not find it in a human being, and when you see Him and how He really is, when you really see what the love of God is you will flee from your present husband, but it is very hard to see Him. No matter what you are lacking, no matter what you do wrong He is there to teach you, to explain to you, to help you to understand, to strengthen you, and help you to change and walk right so that you overcome that weakness. That is all He wants from us. Is that amazing?
He does not need anything that we have. He does not need us for anything, but He does not tolerate sin. We have to change. So praise the Lord.
If nobody has anything to say, we are going to close the meeting. Let me just pray.
Father, in the name of Jesus we thank you, Father, we thank You for your love, and I just thank You that You are God, that it is a lie that Satan is God, that cruelty and vengeance and punishment are the characteristics of the creator. I thank You that You exist. I thank You that You are real. I thank You that You have never given us on us, Lord, and that You never will. I thank You that You stick closer than a brother, Lord, ready, willing and able to help us as soon as we request it. I thank You for safety, for Life, for health, for good, for shelter, for warmth in this cold weather, and we pray, Father, for everyone in this whole world that does not know You, that this great gift should be given to them also, Lord, and we forgive the sins, Lord, of everyone here. We forgive the sins of the church, we forgive the sins of the world. Let the regeneration begin, Oh God. May the carnal mind be overthrown, may Satan be boiled and Leviathan cooked and consumed, may the Fiery Serpent be subdued and married and covered by her true husband, Christ Jesus, and may the whole of humanity migrate back to the left side of the heart center, Lord, and may the visible world be projected from that high place, up here, and may everything that You have planned for this creation come to pass because You have said it, and it can be no other way, but for it to come to pass may the rebellion be put down, and may the adultery between Satan and Leviathan and the personalities of humanity which are the spiritual woman, may that adultery cease. May all things be restored to right order, Lord, that You might be glorified in all. We thank You, Father, for everything that we have. We thank You for Your mind, for Your mercy, for Your grace, for this wonderful knowledge and wisdom that You are imparting to us, and we pray, Father, that we should be harmless, Lord, that we should not hurt anyone Father, but that we should be vessels which impart Life. May Your plan go forth Lord, and may Your nature be seen in this earth once again. In the Name of Jesus, we pray that. Amen.
I forgot to deal with a couple of issues, but what xxxxx just said off the message was that she is afraid to let me near xxxxx, so you have to ask yourself why you think you have the authority to let me near her or not let me near her? Did you hear what you just said? So you are still mediating there. Can you hear that? You are still mediating, that you are afraid on xxxxx's behalf. Can you hear it? You were mediating on xxxxx's behalf, still trying to protect her from whatever maybe God...maybe...I do not know what is going to happen, maybe she will get my letter, and she will not want to transcribe. She can transcribe if she wants, but if she wants it up on the web page she has to have a relationship with the ministry. What you just said put yourself between her and whatever God has for her in this ministry. Can you hear it?
COMMENT: I expressed my feelings. I did not say I was going to do anything, which I had no intention of doing.
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, but there is a difference between thinking and doing. I believe you are not going to do it, but your mind was thinking. You were thinking on her behalf. Can you just see that? That you were thinking on her behalf?
COMMENT: I thought I was thinking on my behalf.
PASTOR VITALE: You were....now you see, this now becomes xxxxx's problem. Let us say I am a terror or whatever I am, this becomes xxxxx's problem. So you were thinking for xxxxx, and saying, wow I do not know if xxxxx can handle this, but we should not be thinking for other people, you see? Maybe xxxxx cannot handle it, but God is going to strengthen her. I do not know what He has for her, but do you understand that you put yourself between xxxxx and whatever God has for her.
COMMENT: By having my own ideas and my own opinion and not doing nothing, is doing that?
PASTOR VITALE: Did you want to say something? Please use the microphone.
COMMENT: I agree that she had fear there and was still a protective spirit.
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, see these things are so subtle xxxxx. If the truth is that you were saying, wow....and before xxxxx said that, I was even thinking, maybe it was just the way you said it. So if you said, is this not going to be interesting to see what happens with xxxxx and Sheila? That would be an opinion, but you had a concern and xxxxx perceived it as fear. You had a protective concern for her. That is what is ungodly.
COMMENT: And that is very true.
PASTOR VITALE: That is an ungodly soul tie.
COMMENT: Also now, xxxxx just does not have the ability with words and things like that, and she gives me her transcripts to go over. Now what do I do in that instance?
PASTOR VITALE: If you want to edit it for her I do not see any problem with that. But did you hear that that is an ungodly soul tie? And that it is sin. An ungodly soul tie is sin. In your prayer time now, you have to start breaking that ungodly soul tie and asking the Lord to rebuilt it into something godly. See, to worry over somebody who is an adult with a husband and children, you may worry over your dependent children that they are going to go out and get hit by a car, God forbid, or something like that, but to worry about someone is an ungodly soul tie. Can you hear that?
COMMENT: Xxxxx is like a daughter to me. I knew her before she was even born, her mother-in-law.
PASTOR VITALE: okay, I could see that. So there are two things I forgot to talk to you about. When we had this discussion on Friday, you said two things that the Lord wanted me to address. I am not sure exactly what I was asking you, I think it was about the emails that I wanted, a copy of every email concerning ministry business, and you said, is that not control? Do you remember saying that to me? Is that not control?
I just wanted to make the point that there is a godly control, and there is an ungodly control, and there definitely is a lot of control in authority. Authority is control. The policemen out here have control. They have that gun on their belt. That is control, you better believe that is control. So there is a godly control, and there is an ungodly control. And yes, that is controlling to say that I want a copy of every email concerning ministry business, but it is a godly control. And for me to do the job that the Lord has given me, I have to know what is going on. So that is a godly control.
The other thing that you said was when I said, let xxxxx....you said xxxxx does not have any email service. I said, let her come and just type me a one sentence email, and you said, but is not that making her a puppet? The Lord did want me to talk to you about that. I would like to know what you think a puppet is? What is your definition of a puppet?
COMMENT: The only thing that I can think of what I meant by that is that she is just sitting there, she does not know what to do, and I just tell her what buttons to press. Beyond that, I do not know what else to say?
PASTOR VITALE: Then, you did not understand what I said. Were you thinking that you were going to tell her what to type? That I request such and such a message, and you were going to have to dictate it to her what she should type.
COMMENT: I would have to tell her. Everything is done line by line, step by step. I would have to give her everything, every letter to do.
PASTOR VITALE: Do not you think that she is capable of writing a one sentence email, I request permission to transcribe....
COMMENT: There is a certain protocol that has to be followed, and it is done very, every jot and jiddle so to speak, and I would have to tell her now to do it.
PASTOR VITALE: What protocol is that?
COMMENT: The message on one line, the name of the message, the number on one line, everything like that in order to keep everything from getting confused.
PASTOR VITALE: You are talking about actually transcribing the transcript? I am talking about sending an email.
COMMENT: I am talking about sending an email too with an attachment to it. Are you just talking about a regular email?
PASTOR VITALE: Just an email requesting permission to transcribe a particular message.
COMMENT: Okay.
PASTOR VITALE: Or even an email saying, I have completed this message, and then you just attach the file for her. So how is that being a puppet? I guess in your mind you thought that she would sit down, and you would tell her all the buttons to press. That was not what I meant. I meant that I want her to communicate, New Testament necessarily with me, but with the ministry. That it is ungodly for you to be in this mediator position, that she should at least be able to write a simple email requesting. Do you feel that I am very controlling?
COMMENT: Yes, I do see that you are very controlling, but I can see where there has to be a head and there has to be a chain of command, an authority, and I am not in disagreement with that.
PASTOR VITALE: So you see it as a godly control?
COMMENT: For the most part, yes. Some things I still have not worked out yet.
PASTOR VITALE: Do you understand that I do not control your personal lives? That it just has to do with the ministry? Do you understand that?
COMMENT: I guess in a (illegible words).
PASTOR VITALE: okay, I do sometimes comment on the way you relate to one another if I see you relating to one another in an ungodly manner, but yes I do exercise a strong hand over this ministry which I believe is in Christ Jesus so that we can go forward. And I am asking everybody to obey the rules.
I will end this message by making a comment. I am not interested in knowing who did this, but all mail goes in the inbox. Please do not leave the mail on the kitchen table. Whoever did it, do not tell me. I am just reminding you. I have been asking you for two years, please put the mail in the inbox. So if you want to break this rebellion in yourself, whoever you are, find out what the rules are and obey them, and it will break Satan's back, pull out that root, and we are all going to go through. I believe we are all going through.
God bless you all.
We started to talk about ministry off the message so we put the recording back on. I was saying that ministry, a desire to minister that causes us to seek out other people to minister to, is never Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus always waits for the people to come to Him. We must see ourselves as a very valuable commodity, filled with faith and power, and really able to help people. We really have something to offer people in prayer and spirit and in wisdom and in doctrine. But we cannot help anybody unless they are in the right frame of mind. We do not put them in the right frame of mind by pursuing them.
First of all, it is never Christ that pursues. It is always the carnal mind, and second of all, people get their defenses up. They do not want to be pursued. You say, what if they are too stubborn and too proud to come to me? The truth is that we pray for them. Some people we pray for, some people will come without us praying for them, but the Spirit of Christ must draw them. The Spirit of Christ must draw them to us. They have to be in the right mind set or there is absolutely nothing we can do for them, and our time is too precious to waste on people whose mind is not prepared to receive the word.
So, when we pick the time and the place, and when we pick the aspect of ministry, it is really wasted. Take that time and turn inward. Everybody here has a ministry. The Lord has everybody in some form of ministry. Your transcribing is a powerful, powerful ministry. I am not talking about the ministry of helps. I thank you, and I thank God that you are here with all of the helps that you give, but I am talking about ministry for you. Everybody here has spiritual ministry, and some of you have more than one. You have the music, you must get something from when you do the art work, the drawing of spiritual principles, and xxxxx has some ministry to other people. Everybody has at least two aspects of ministry here.
So turn in, turn to God to meet your needs, and He will rise up in you, and He will bring the people to you. And you need to know that when the people come to you because they are drawn by the Spirit of Christ, you do not have to go on and on for an hour, it could be one sentence, it could be one word, and you will help them doctrinally and wisdom wise, but even more than that, remember that when a person's heart is open and the Spirit of Christ draws them to you, you have virile seed within you to impart to them, and that is the most important thing, that they receive the seed.
From what I can see at this time, it could take several years for that seed to start to sprout. So, on the one hand you meet their immediate need, but on the other hand you are imparting the seed of eternal life to them. And that is the most important thing. So we all have needs. We are all human. We all have needs. It is just how you direct those needs. We are all lacking, all of mortal humanity is lacking. We all need to be satisfied, but the carnal mind tells us, go out and try to force yourself on other people, that is how you are going to be satisfied, but that is not Christ. When you yield to that kind of behavior, you are strengthening the carnal mind in yourself.
So take those needs that you have. Needs of loneliness, needs of being unsatisfied, needs of unhappiness, whatever is manifesting in you, because everybody is manifesting something. Nobody is completely fulfilled in this world unless they are in Christ. Turn inward. Turn to yourself, I do not mean personally to yourself, to the ministry that Christ Jesus has placed in you because that ministry is going to cause Christ Jesus in you to mature.
See, the church has got it completely backwards. Their primary goal is to reach all of these unsaved people, but our primary goal is to minister to the Christ child within us so that He can grow up in us, and when He grows up He ascends, and we ascend with Him, and then from that high place we will help thousands and millions at one time. Do not worry about the ministry down here. Now that is not a selfish word. If God sends you to somebody, you help them.
As far as food ministries and those kinds of outreaches, those outreaches are for people who do not have Christ formed in them. That is the activities of the female church. Once Christ is formed in you, you really have to give that up and start taking care of your child, and that is a shift that is hard to make. But you have to make it if you want to be saved in child bearing. You have to bear that child. You have to take care of Him, He has to grow, so He can grow up and save you. He is the Savior in the midst of you. All of this takes a long time.
I tell you this as an example unto you. Nobody can change overnight. So just do the best you can and ask Jesus to help you, and we are all going to go up. We are going up to the top of that mountain, Lord willing. And I do believe that ministry is coming, very exciting ministry is coming, but it is only out of Christ. You have to lay down those carnal needs. He is got a lot of work for us to do. It is coming from underneath. It is not coming over the top. It is coming from the spirit.
This is the third time I have tried to end this meeting. Does anybody else have anything to say? okay, we try it again. Bye, bye.
We had ended this message, and I was talking about ministry off the message, and I said something about a valuable commodity. I will just say it for your xxxxx. And xxxxx said, now that should be on the message. So I said, okay put the message back on. And xxxxx says to me, why was that okay? Why was that not out of order? These lines are so fine. I will try to explain it to you. The reason it was not out of order was that is was probably Christ in you saying it. It is really hard to explain, but I know that the spirit was okay, that it was your opinion. It was your opinion. okay, it was your opinion. You were not telling me what to do. You did not say to me, you should put that on the message. You were saying, that should be on the message. That was your opinion, and it was a good opinion, and I said, okay. It is a very fine line. All I can do is keep answering your questions. It has to break through sooner or later. Did you understand that? The difference?
The spirit was different. That is the bottom line. The spirit was different. It is no so much the words. You were not trying to dominate me, but you were expressing a sincere desire to have this on the message so that you could hear it the next time you listened to the message, and that is okay. It really was a request. Even though the words may not have sounded that way I knew in my spirit that it was a request, and that was okay.
For your information, we have continued the spiritual or the doctrinal side of this message after dinner tonight, but we decided to name the message with a different name. This message is a study in rebellion, and the spiritual and doctrinal side of the message using the same diagram that was referred to earlier in this message can be heard on Message #508, called The Tower of Babel.