The Following Message Has Been Transcribed For
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I pray that the Lord helps me to get all I intend to say today out in an intelligent order. First of all, I just want to restate that the Lord is bringing this ministry into order, and I am asking you not to be influenced or deceived by the size or the numbers here. His personal instruction to me is that we are to keep the order as if there were a thousand people here.
As I mentioned before we went on the tape, these messages from this convention that I just attended were so incredible to me because they are the same messages that I am preaching here and includes what I just said to you about order. What I said to you about order was the Lord's instruction to me and I brought it forth at the last meeting, as you would recall.
We have to start having order, and this is exactly what was preached at the convention. I knew it was God speaking to me. It is a real confirmation to me that things should be run orderly and decently. It does not matter how many people are in the congregation. This way, when the Lord brings in new people (if He brings in new people, it is fine, if He does not it is fine too), we are already established in a pattern that will set an example. God is never glorified in disorder.
As I told you last week, I am requesting that you please withhold your comments and questions until the end of the message. If you should hit a point in the message that you really cannot go forward without asking me a question, I will receive your question. However, please ask to be recognized, and please have a microphone in your hand. The Lord is calling us to order, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the numbers. It has to do with the righteousness of Christ. It does not matter who is sitting here, or how many people are sitting here, we have to be in order.
These messages at the convention were just incredible. If you recall, those of you who were here when I came back from last year's convention, I told you that they were preaching on the conception of Christ in us. This got me very excited because the Lord has been preaching that here for five years. For three years I was asking the Lord if there is anyone else anywhere that is preaching this message. There was nothing until last year at this convention I heard for the first time people preaching it.
There were two invited preachers. One preached the conception last year and this year was there again. He is a fantastic teacher. Then there was someone else, another preacher, a real Southerner. He not only talked with a Southern accent, he looked like the old Colonel himself. He got up there and preached on the birth. I hope it is on the tape. The whole congregation went crazy.
What they do at the convention is that they have a major speaker who speaks in the evenings and then someone else submits to taking the afternoons. Everyone knows that the afternoon slot is a slot lower, but it is not to demean you. Everybody has an order in Christ . There can only be one person at the top in God's order.
All three men, these two preachers and the man that hosted the convention whom these two men called an apostle, believe in spiritual manhood. I attest to the fact that the host is an apostle. Let me say this here. There are different degrees of apostleship. I do not believe the man is in full stature, but there is no doubt in my mind that he is an apostle. He has been crushed by God, and the very life of Christ is being revealed through him. There is not a doubt in my mind. I bought his biography. As soon as I read it, I will make it available to the group.
These three men believe in spiritual manhood which is what I have been teaching you here. The second preacher, a tall, real macho man was up there preaching on pregnancy. He brought forth all the Scriptures from the Old Testament, that you will see this new thing, a man with his hands on his loins as a woman in travail. He got the revelation that, that "Holy Logos of Christ" is being conceived in men and women and that men as well as women are having spiritual babies.
He has got the revelation that this abomination of abortion that is going on in this country is just a reflection of what is happening in the Spirit. He started jumping around. He said, "I have got to stand up to tell you this." He said, "No one is going to come to me with no coat hanger or no ropes and get that which God planted in me out of me." He started jumping up and down. I wish you could have seen this. Maybe they got it on video tape. If so, you may want to buy it.
He was running around the church, and he came out of the pulpit to do that. Then he walked back to the pulpit like he was pregnant. I want to tell you, I am not doing him justice; it was tremendous. These two men had never met before. The second preacher had no idea that the first preacher had preached on the conception last year, and there was a big riot last year. A third of the people left. They were so offended by the concept of spiritual sexuality, which I have been preaching here for five years.
There were seven messages. It was just incredible. They have a revelation that each of us in Christ is both male and female. They got the revelation, the reality of it, that we are to be pregnant, and that there was a birth coming. I have to say that I think that they do not have the degree of understanding that we have as to what that birth is, but they got enough for me. They got it. They got all they need. They got it.
This is what God has shown me, and I really want to convey this to you. This is really important, it is essential. This is what is happening as I see it. These people still believe in the rapture. This is incredible. God has gone into these people and God only knows who else, and He is birthing the truth of His life in them, despite their false doctrine. He is not necessarily taking away the false doctrine. For whatever His reason, He is letting them keep it, He is coming in, and He is giving them His truth.
Why? What is the factor? What is the factor here? These are men who do not know about "Sonship." What is the factor? This is the factor. The essential, crucial factor is that they love their God with an unsurpassable love. They are faithful to Him to the uttermost that they are able, and are faithful to what He has given them. They are faithful in their hearts, they are faithful in their ministry, and they are willing to lay down their life for Him. They have got the truth to a very large degree, and they have got it more than a lot of people in deep doctrine.
Why? Why? Look at what is happening. The church that has all of the deep revelations, where are they? They are not on fire for God. You should have seen what was poured out there. It was incredible. I was sorry I had to go home. I have not been under an anointing like that in a long time. This is what the church with the deep doctrines does not have. They do not have His character. I want to tell you that it is not in knowledge. It is not in knowledge. It is in His nature. It is in His nature, that is where it is. It is in righteousness. It is in integrity. It is in faithfulness. If you are moving in these realms with Him, do not worry about your doctrine. You will get the right doctrine and if you do not have it, He will take you without the doctrine.
Now, if He has called you to the doctrine, and you do not want to be bothered studying, or you think the trip is too far for you to travel, that is different. We have had all kinds of excuses from people that have been called here that have not come. I can write a book on the excuses. The truth of the matter is that in their unconscious mind they know that they have been called to the judgment throne of Christ, but their soul does not want to come, their carnal man does not want to come. If they do not have this understanding and are not in an intense submission to Christ, they never make it here. Some come for one meeting and never come back, and that is the truth of it.
What I am saying to you is this. If you are called to the deep doctrine, and you do not come, you are not going to get it anyway. Why? Because you are unfaithful, and you are disobedient. Is there anyone who does not understand what I am saying? If you are not called to this deep doctrine, but you are called to be a prayer warrior, and that is all God has called you to do, and you spend twenty hours a day on your knees, He is going to appear in you just like He is going to appear in me. All of this knowledge is not going to get me anything. It is His nature developed in me that would do it, but I have to be faithful and obedient to that which He has called me to.
If He has called you to the deep doctrine, if He has called you to the White Throne Judgment, you have got to come. If you do not come, you are not faithful, and you are not obedient. There are thousands of people in the Kingdom church who, with all of their knowledge and everything they have got, are going to be ashamed in the hour of His appearance. There is going to be an outcry that is going to be heard across the world of wailing and gnashing of teeth, because they are lifted up in pride.
Brethren, I have the deepest doctrine of anyone I know, and I am telling you, it is not doctrine. They are going to see Him appearing in little Christians that do not know anything. He is going to be appearing in people that believe in the rapture. He is going to appear in people that have never gone to Bible school, You know you cannot preach in a lot of churches unless you went to Bible school. They do not care whether or not you have got the Holy Ghost, if you did not go to Bible school, you cannot preach.
There is going to be an outcry across the whole church world of agony of His people that are Pharisees, that have missed Him. This is a very serious hour we are living in. The Scripture says, it is "A day of great darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness," but it is a day of His glory, because He is about to be unveiled.
All of us have a carnal mind, everyone of us. The question is, to what degree are we ruling it. Everyone has a carnal mind. Everyone has got sin, including me. The question is to what degree do you have it on a leash? To what degree are you doing what your carnal mind tells you to do, as opposed to what Christ tells you to do? What is the degree to which you are being deceived to think that your carnal mind is God, because she is sitting in the temple of your unconscious mind, and she is calling herself God? That is going on in every single person's mind including mine.
Except God has developed me to a point where I have got a pretty good handle on it. Most of the time, I know when it is not God. I am deceived less and less. When I hear a voice telling me it is God, I put it through the wringer. I have been through the wringer. I have been through years of deliverance, of rolling on the floor, of being humiliated in front of all kinds of people, including my own child. She used to be mortified when she saw me rolling on the floor of the church, but I knew that the best thing I could do for her was for me to get delivered.
Everything you are going through here, I have been through or something very comparable to it. It is the hour of correction. Correction to what? Correction to any deception that we have with regard to righteousness versus ungodliness in our self. I hope you listen to all of these messages, because it was such a second witness to what God has told me here.
You may recall that a couple of months ago, we had an unusual meeting with a powerful outpouring. I do not know whether the Lord told me at that meeting or the next meeting, but I know I shared it with you at that meeting. He said He had sealed the group that was here. I am not saying that anyone else coming in could not be a part of this, but at that point, the group that was here was sealed.
He told me a year ago that this is an Apostolic ministry that He is raising up here from scratch. First of all, let me define my term. What is an Apostolic ministry? We have ministries all over the country, some of them have one gift, some of them have another gift, but very rarely do they have the whole five-fold ministry in the church. Again, there are different degrees of Apostleship. An Apostolic ministry has the broad spectrum of the whole five-fold ministry. It is a ministry that is ruled by Christ. If you do not know it, I am sorry to clue you in, but most of the ministries in this country today are not ruled by Christ.
Even when you see manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the congregation, frequently they are not ruled by Christ. You say then, why are there manifestations and signs and wonders in the congregation? I will tell you why. Because it is the purpose of the Lord to save this creation, and the way He is doing it is by getting His life to start to grow inside of the people. Jesus does not throw away anybody. He takes what He has, no matter what bad shape it is in, and He fixes it. You see, He is God. He does not have to kill you, He does not have to burn you in Hell forever. He does not have to put you out of the ministry. He does not have to punish you, but a Godly correction, if necessary, is called for. Why? Because He is going to fix you. It is His love to you.
We see ministries with the gifts in them, and they are doing very little else. Sometimes there is a great measure of unrighteousness in these ministries, but He does not care. He goes right in, past the unrighteousness, and pours out His life and whosoever He chooses, conceives His life. That which is outside is conceived on the inside. If you have conceived, if you are in that place, He now wants to see His life appear in you, not in prophesying, not in speaking in tongues, not in knowledge, not in any spiritual gifts, but in His Nature, in His righteousness, in His character, in His integrity. He wants to see His glory arise in you, and utterly destroy everything that is unrighteous in your soul. Where is your soul? It is your mind.
What is an Apostolic ministry? It is a ministry that is truly ruled by Christ. Now, I did not say it is a perfect ministry. This ministry upstate is not a perfect ministry, but there is not a doubt in my mind that this man answers to the Lord Jesus Christ and that, that church is in order. I have never seen anything like it. This is the way the Lord raises up an Apostolic ministry. He starts with one man. He makes him the head of the ministry, and He takes a hold of him and He crushes him.
Here, that man is me. I am sorry if that offends anybody, but it is me. I have been crushed, and I have been trained, and I am still being trained, but I am the one that He started with. Apparently, He got me to a place where He is now raising up the eldership. I told you this, if you can recall, that you were the eldership of this Apostolic ministry, but He is not going to give you authority until you can submit to me. Why? Because I am the head. I did not do it, He did it.
I want to put this on the board for you. This is the way it works. Christ is at the head, and there is none higher. Of course, the Father is up there, we all know that. Then He picks a man. You know, when Christ is really the head, you can take the title "pastor." Then He takes an eldership. I do not think it has to be any set number. At least if it is, at this point I am not aware of it. There are ministries that are set up underneath the pastor; no one man can do everything. This is the eldership and once God sets up a functioning eldership, He can bring any number of people into this Apostolic ministry and meet their needs.
Now, I want to tell you this. I really do not know much about what is going on in this area, but from what I have seen in this area, I have seen churches try to do this, and it has not worked. The ones with several hundred or maybe few hundred people in the church have not been able to do it successfully. The pastor knows you cannot minister to five hundred people, especially when you have a wife and a family of your own. It is impossible, even if you did not have a wife and a family. Therefore, he sets up elders and home cell groups. Is that what they call them, home cell groups? Whatever they are called, it has not worked in any church I have ever seen it in.
It has not worked because the leaders that lead the home cell groups are not anointed. I have gone into their churches, they have classes on Sunday morning before church. I have attended the classes, and there is no anointing on the teachers at all. Brethren, God must call the pastor, and he must call everyone of these elders. I know God took the anointing that was on Moses and put it on the seventy, but do not tell me that it is happening in your church when God did not do it.
You cannot do it, God has to do it. He picked me and He has picked you. I told you that a month ago, but the ministry has to come into proper order. There must be a revelation in the minds of the eldership that the power and the authority is coming from Christ, and that it is passing through me to you. There is no way He is going to put people under you before you have submitted to me. Since I am submitted to Christ, anything that is in you that is not of God is going to be revealed.
This pastor upstate has 365 elders in his church. It hums. This is the only place that I know of in this hour, including worldly businesses, that I could call up on the telephone and leave a message and know that it is going to be adequately dealt with. Any business I call where a secretary takes a message, I have no faith at all that it is going to be adequately dealt with. That is the condition of the businesses that I have seen. This upstate ministry hums.
Last week when you were here, one of you saw the block letters "SORE" in the spirit. I have a few things to say to you. This is the first thing. This is God's word to you. When He shows you a word like that in the spirit, what He wants you to do with it is to go into your concordance and look up the Scriptures associated with it, because He is talking to you. He does not always talk to you in the same way.
I am going to read these two verses in Job Chapter 5 out loud. One contains the word "sore," and I will tell you what the point is before I read it. This was His witness to you that what happened at the last meeting when a correction came forth was of Him. Would you like me to read the Scriptures or would you like to read them. Job 5:17-18, "Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth; therefore, despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty; For He maketh sore and bindeth up; He woundeth and His hands make whole."
That was His witness to you, and I heard you say to me, "Well, why has the Lord not spoken to me." Well, He did speak. What He is saying is He did speak to you, maybe in a way that you were not accustomed to, but He did speak. You did not know it at the time; it happens to all of us. I did not even know at the time that He spoke to you.
He is bringing forth an Apostolic ministry here, and there is no way that He is going to bring the people in until the eldership is in order. There is no way He was going to start to train the eldership until He got me in order, and He almost killed me getting me in order. That is the truth, as most of you know. He has crushed me, He has ground me under His heel and His life is oozing out through me. He is probably going to have to do that to you too. Everything that is not of Christ is going to have to go.
If you are called to this and you walk away, you do not lose your relationship with Him, but I hope you want to be a part of it. If you do not want to be a part of it, you are walking away from what He has called you to, and that is between you and Him. This is how He told me to put it to you. He asked me to tell you that He loves you and that I love you. I have given up my whole life for the ministry.
I had a lucrative job in the world. I have given it up to minister to God's people. You all know how I am now living from week to week. I love all of you, but if a correction is necessary, it has to be made so that you could come to this place of glory that He has for you. I want to give you some more insight into this.
All of us have a carnal mind. Do you think that any of our carnal minds wants this to come to pass? We have individual carnal minds, but the boss behind all of our carnal minds is Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind. It is one mind. She hates us. She hates what is happening here. She hates those of us that have been called to this high place in God. You know you cannot even get chastened until you are prepared for the chastening. If you are not prepared for it, you will die. The Lord chastens us unto death. Does anyone here not know that, that His chastening can be that severe? It is a great honor in this hour, where it is not happening that frequently, to be called to this.
I want to give you a little more insight into this. Basically what I am trying to say to you is, please ask God to help you get your carnal mind on a leash and work with me, because I am not against you. I love you. I want this thing to come to pass, I want to be faithful to Christ. If I make a mistake (I am not perfect), the correction comes from Him. Your privilege is to pray to the Lord, and if He does not make a correction right away, then you have to flow with it. You have to live with it, because He is the only one that can correct me.
The only time God sends a prophet to somebody to correct them is when they are just not listening to Him. He sends somebody when they are already in such rebellion that they are not listening to Him. I do not think that you have any reason here to believe that I am in that condition. Look at my life. I do not think that anyone has any reason to believe that about me. If you want to believe it, you can believe it, but go before God and ask.
If He does not give you an answer right away, the proper behavior for a disciple is to continue with the ministry that God put you in and to continue to honor and respect me. You have to go forward with what we are doing here, believing that Christ is faithful to correct me if I am wrong, and it may not be right away.
I want to explain it to you in view of the Daniel Chapter 8 series that we have been studying. There is a ram that has two horns. God is giving us deep revelation about this ram that has two horns. He has told us that these two horns are two spiritual powers. One is the power of the spiritual realm of God, of which there is no higher power, and the other power is of the soul realm. These two horns were designed to operate as one.
We will draw it as a straight line. The natural example is a husband and a wife. Marriage was created for the marital couple to be operating as one. God is not a woman hater. We are under the curse. We are a fallen creation. If you are born a woman, that is your lot in this existence, but God does not hate women.
God is fully intent on raising this creation up out of the curse, but for so long as we are under the curse, to get the benefits of Christ, these two horns (we will call that the husband and we will call that the wife) must come together as one mind. When there is a separation, when there are two minds, there is division and division leads to destruction, destruction in the lives of the husband and wife and destruction in the lives of the children.
There is a spirit of rebellion over the whole nation today. It is everywhere and it is killing us, because the way God has set things up, we must be in order to be blessed by God. If we are not in order, God cannot bless us. If this man does something horrendous, even if he does commit incest, there is a certain procedure that you have to follow to stay in the will of God. If you want the greatest benefit of God's judgment in your life, you have got to do it His way. I want to tell you, you cannot get anything from the Lord through demands.
When a wife comes out from under her husband, no matter what that man has done, God deals first with the rebellion. That is the way it is. That is the way He set it up. Whoever comes out from under an authority (it does not matter who is in authority), God puts down the rebellion first, even if the head did something wrong. He will not tolerate rebellion. Why? Because it kills. Who does it kill? It kills you. He wants you to stand up in the fullness of His life.
We have to be as one in this ministry, and you will hear this on the tapes. If you want a ministry to function, it has got to be a team work. I love you, and you have got to love me. If you cannot love me, we have got a problem. If you cannot love me, ask the Lord to help you love me. If you cannot respect me or honor me, or you do not know how, or you do not understand how, ask God to help you, because we will never enter into what God has called us to.
I am telling you, He has called us to great things. If you are here, He has called you to great things. We will never enter in, the whole church will not enter in, if we cannot pull together. I am going to tell you something. I am not threatening you, I am telling you the truth so that you can all do whatever you have to do to encourage God to bring this to pass or to convince Him that we are ready for Him to bring this to pass in our lives.
I do not know if I said this before. As soon as the eldership is ready, He has got all kinds of people out there waiting to come in. I cannot do it myself. He is raising up a ministry here, and it is never a one man show, but it is a one man head. Christ, the man and then the woman; the many-membered woman. The man has always had many wives in the Old Testament and today we call it polygamy. It is not allowed in the natural, although it was in the Old Covenant. It is a spiritual polygamy; Christ with many wives who are all bearing forth His Son.
When His Son is present in you, you are a spiritual man. You are a mighty man of God capable of doing all kinds of miracles and mighty signs and wonders. If you have cast out demons, you have not seen anything yet. You have not seen anything yet, but we have got to come into submission. He is not going to do it unless we are in the right order.
He is going to bring forth instruction. I am not threatening you, but I have to tell you the truth, because the truth is going to set you free. There will be a time period, and I do not know what that time period is. He is trying the intents of your heart. He is looking at you, He is talking to you, He is putting His line and plummet to you every day. He knows what is in your heart. I do not always know what is in your heart. Sometimes He tells me, but sometimes I really do not know.
There is a time period for your heart to begin to turn towards Him. Even if your behavior does not turn right away, He knows if your heart is turned towards Him. If your heart is turned towards Him, and you are willing to submit to what He wants you to submit to, if you are willing to be changed, He will give you as long as you need to do it. If He makes a judgment that your heart has remained cold, at some point, He will remove you and bring someone else in. Why? Because it is His full intention to build His church here.
In a nutshell, this is it. We have got to pull together. I am not your enemy, I am your friend. I am not your enemy, I am here to do you a good service. Jesus said, "For what good work do you stone me?" I am here to bring forth Christ in you. That is what I am here for.
What God is doing right now is this. He is putting down the roots of this ministry. Do not be deceived by the numbers. There are tremendous spiritual things happening here, if you have spiritual eyes to see them. Right now, He is putting down the root system, and He is putting it down very deep, so that when He brings the people in, the foundation will be here. What is the foundation? Christ, and upon Christ; anybody know? Who is on top of Christ? The Apostles. What makes you an apostle? His life in you makes you an apostle. If you have the imparted anointing, you are an apostle, but there are different degrees of apostleship.
COMMENT: We are on top of Christ?
PASTOR VITALE: Well, He is the foundation. Now remember, in the realm of appearance everything is backwards. Of course, He is the head, but for our purposes, He is the foundation. He is everything. The apostles and the church rest on Him, and nothing will ever bring down a church that is built on Him. When it is in right order, nothing, nothing can bring it down. He is the foundation, the apostles on top of Him, and then the people that are coming in to be trained.
Church is not a game. I know a lot of people in this area think it is a game. They think that if they are distressed in their emotions, then they go to church. There is nothing wrong with that, but that is a sign of immaturity. I am not insulting anybody. If that is what you are thinking, just be honest with yourself. There is never any condemnation in Christ. If that is how your mind is working, if you go to church because you have distress in your emotions and you want to feel better, that is okay, but know that you are in kindergarten. Do not think that you are in college. Know who you are or where you are. How can you grow if you do not know who you are? How can you grow if you are in deception. Christ is getting ready to appear.
Someone said to me just the other day, "I do not think He is coming for another thousand years." Well, that is the carnal mind speaking, and there is no condemnation in it, but ask God to help you put your carnal mind on a leash, or He is going to kill your spiritual life. Christ is going to appear very soon. Those who are ready, those who have oil in their lamps, are going to enter in with Him. Who are the virgins that have oil in their lamps? First of all, the oil in the lamp typifies the imparted anointing. The Holy Spirit is not the oil. Christ is the oil. The oil is the substance of His life. The Son that has been conceived in you as you sat faithfully under the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, that is the oil.
The virgins are the ones that have conceived Christ. They are the ones that are submitting themselves to ministry so that He can grow and increase in them. When the door opens, He is going to stand up in them in full stature. He is not going to stand up in full stature in those that have not conceived, Why? Because He is not there. They never conceived. They are barren wombs.
He is doing a great work here. The word of the hour to the people here, the command of the Lord is, "Call upon me for strength to distinguish between your carnal mind and Christ." When you get that strength and when you see your carnal mind, kill it, but before you kill it, you have got to put it on a leash. This is the way we have been showing it (diagram on the board). Just to remind you, we are Christ, He is in our inward parts. The carnal mind is laying on top of Him. At this point, in all of us including me, the carnal mind is still exercising control. In some cases (judge yourself, I will not judge you) and in my case, Christ is exercising a lot of control over our life.
Do you think that I could be in this ministry for five years, and still be alive and still be here, if Christ did not have a lot of control over my life? In my case, it is quite a battle going on there, but the day has got to come when all of the control of the carnal mind is destroyed. It is a procedure, and it happens a step at a time. It happens a battle at a time. It happens an incident, and a thought at a time.
Brethren, you are not armed to fight this battle if you cannot recognize your carnal mind. I will give you a hint. When you are attacking somebody, it is not Christ; it is your carnal mind. Now, the problem is sometimes Christ rebukes and if you are in your carnal mind, you think it is an attack. I tell you, if you want to be right with God, you never, ever, attack the person God sets over you, never. Why? Because if you do that, the people that He puts you over, are going to attack you. You will surely reap what you sow. What am I saying? You will never be able to rule, if you cannot submit to the person He has put over you. It has nothing to do with the person; it is the office.
Let me give you a testimony about this. I have been corresponding with this man in the convention that I went to this weekend. I have thought him to be a great man of God, with great love, great compassion, and great integrity. He is an honest man who does what he says he is going to do, and a man also of great strength.
I may have told you that I had an incident over this convention. One of his associate pastors abused me. It was a horrible experience. I wrote to him about it, and I apologized if I had done anything wrong. Well, I did do something that initiated it, but it was in ignorance. I did not realize I was doing anything wrong. So I wrote and I apologized. I still believe it was a very Godly letter, and I really think I should have gotten a letter back. The man abused me, and I felt that I should have gotten a letter back. I apologized, you should apologize. I did not get a reply, and I was manifesting.
I did not want to go to the convention, but I did not listen to my carnal mind. I knew it was the wrong thing to do. I knew that to not go was a spiteful thing to do. It was a spirit of retaliation manifesting in me and it was trying to steal from me the gift that God had given to me.
I am not ashamed to tell you that I need other preachers in my life. I need men that have testimonies unto the glory of God. I need them in my life. There is really no way you could possibly know what it is like up here until you get up here. I hope that, Lord willing, you will be up here one day. I need men that have gone through it. What Satan was trying to do with me was to keep me away. You see, I found an imperfection in this man. I prayed for weeks and, in my opinion, I should have gotten an apology. It should have gone both ways. That is my opinion. If I had to handle it right here in this ministry, I would have sent out an apology.
I had two choices, you see. I could start a fight with him and ruin everything good that God has placed in him for me. As most of you know here, many ministers have rejected me for all kinds of reasons. Some because I am a woman, others because they are envious. Who knows? Only God knows what, why, who, where, when, or how.
This man has not rejected me. He has a thousand members in his congregation. He evangelizes all over Africa or India, all over the world. He has all kinds of friends. He does not need me. He has a wife and, I think, six kids and all kinds of grandchildren. He does not need me. Yet, he answers every letter I write to him. He gives me information when I need it. He invites me to his convention every year and pays for the whole thing except the transportation.
Now, he did something that hurt my feelings and I still think he was wrong. A spirit of retaliation rose up in me. Am I going to give up all the good that God has given me? Am I going to let Satan steal that from me? If I do, I am a fool. I am not insulting myself. The word is in the Scripture. The Scripture talks about fools. It talks about silly women. It talks about silliness. Let me tell you, brethren, that would be foolish.
I want to tell you something funny. After the first service, the Tuesday night service, (the members of the ministry are given a free meal), I sat down in a room, there were at least two hundred, maybe three hundred people there (I am very bad at judging numbers). Who do you think sat next to me? Guess? Yes, the one that insulted me. It was the associate pastor that made the phone call. He was sitting right next to me. We all had our meal together. I prayed about this for the whole weekend. Nothing was said, they both acted like nothing happened, which is a pet peeve of mine. I do not believe in acting like nothing happened. I believe in dealing with issues.
Things are not going my way here now, and I had two choices. I could give up everything that God has given me, because, I want to tell you, if I made a scene with this man (I am sure he would have forgiven me, he is a great man of God) I would have damaged something that God has set up, and very much so.
COMMENT: Do you think that was a test for you?
PASTOR VITALE: Oh, absolutely, and why do you think the test came up? Because it is the same thing that is happening here right now.
I want to tell you, if I did not take the victory, God would never give me the victory with the people here that are going through the same trial that He just put me through. Do you not know what I am talking about? In this hour, in an Apostolic ministry with the imparted anointing, what God is doing now is this. You cannot judge anybody (I am talking about righteous judgment), except in an area where you are proven victorious. That is the truth.
This is how I dealt with the problem. I am very impressed with this man, but very aware that he is human. I had to deal with the possibility that this apology may not have come forth. This is because, if the pastor had handled it himself, perhaps he might have handled it the same way. It is a possibility, since the man is imperfect. I decided that I do not really know how to judge eldership in a situation like this. I think I have a little more revelation than him, but I want to tell you something, revelation is not the bottom line.
This church is 26 years old. This man has traveled all over the world for Christ. He has had all kinds of experiences that I have not experienced, and my attitude is this. If he handled this problem this way, unless and until God shows me otherwise, I am going to say it was the correct way to handle it. That is my decision, and I put it before the Lord. I give him right. I want to tell you, I had a ball this weekend. I went over to the man who insulted me, I shook his hand, and I blessed him. It was a wonderful weekend. It was better than last year, and I almost did not go. I did not want to go. My pride said, "How dare you treat me like that?"
Let me give you a testimony on one of these tapes, by the first preacher. This was really interesting. This preacher has two earned doctorates. I do not know whether you know it or not, but a doctorate is the highest academic degree you can get. However, you can be awarded a doctorate without studying. It is called an Honorary Doctorate. If you have some great achievement for the benefit of humanity, they will award you an Honorary Degree.
Now, this preacher has two earned doctorates. In the world that is an incredible achievement. He has a Bible School, and he has this deep doctrine. He does not even know what he is preaching, how deep it is. All three of them, every once in a while, will talk about the rapture and I just sit there amazed. They have got the whole message of the hour, but they have not connected it to the fact that it is not their body going up, that it is Christ arising in them. They have not got the final ingredient, but all God has to do is add that, and they got the whole thing.
God put this man with two earned doctorates on the program with an uneducated man. It was so funny. God bless that man. He got up there and he tried some words (some people say I have big words, but to me it was not a big word). He could not get it out of his mouth. He said, "Oh, I cannot be bothered with these big words," and he said it some other way. He had no education, and he never went to Bible School, but I want to tell you, he knows his God. It is in the relationship. It is not in your knowledge. It is in the relationship that you have with Christ, and this man has got it.
He almost died for Christ. He is a die-hard Southerner that confessed in front of a congregation that included several black delegates from Africa that he was prejudiced. He grew up in the South, and in the days when preachers did not preach to black people (he is 61 years old, this incident happened, maybe, 40 years ago, I do not know), God told him to preach to the black people, and he said he would not do it. He lost his anointing. He said he wept, and he moaned, and he groaned and said, "I will do anything, just do not leave me."
The Lord gave him his anointing back, so he preached to the black people in the South. Shortly thereafter, he was having a meeting and he was standing behind the pulpit when someone, a big rough tough guy, came up and handed him a piece of paper and walked away. He opened the piece of paper and it said, "Look up, you will see a truck across the street. In the truck there is a man with a machine gun, and it is aimed right at your head and if you preach to these (whatever they called them, he did not say) we are going to kill you." The meeting was in a tent. He looked up and there was a truck. He turned around to his assistant and showed him the note and he said, "Do not say anything, but if they shoot me, pick up the mike and keep on preaching."
I want to tell you that it is not in Bible School, and it is not in your knowledge. It is in your relationship, and when God brings you into a ministry (if God brings you in), it is never, ever to just learn doctrine. You cannot say, "The revelation is great, but I do not like her." You cannot say that. If God puts you some place, it is to get everything that the minister has. God wants you to have it. Everything I have got, He wants it in you. Not that I am giving you what I have, but He wants it borne in you and through you, in your own personal expression of it.
He wants you to witness my relationship to Him. He wants you to be able to interpret dreams, like I interpret dreams. He wants you to be able to understand like I understand. I am here as an example unto you, how I run the ministry. Brethren, Bible School is not of God. I am not saying you cannot work in a Bible School. I am not saying that He never sends anyone to Bible School. What do I know? I know that God does not need a Bible School that costs thousands of dollars, because, look at what He did to me. He wants to do the same thing for you. I am not your enemy. Work with me. I am here to give you glory as He gives it to me. We are called to a very high calling. The new move of God is coming and we are going to be a part of it.
It was an incredible, incredible, incredible three days.
I want to address another issue that has come to my ears, and that issue is "the breaking up of the ministry." Those are the words, the expression that was used. I want to tell you, brethren, that the only irreplaceable person in this ministry is me. Now, you must learn to discern between pride and truth. Truth cannot be pride. This is how God works. I went over it before. When He starts a ministry, He picks one man. You will hear it on the tapes. It is the second witness to everything that is going on here. He gets in a real tight relationship with that man. He builds the ministry through that man. This man can hear from Christ in a measure that these elders cannot.
I want to tell you that if the day comes that one of these elders can hear from Christ the way this man can hear from Christ, that person is going to have their own church. I am telling you the truth. I am not prophesying to you that you are going to have your own church. What I said is, should God bring you to that place, the chances are excellent that He will give you your own church. Why? Because there are millions of people out there that need a place to go to, but you will never get your own church if you cannot work from down here.
The only irreplaceable person in any given ministry is this man, the head. The only one that can take this man down is Christ. If every single person in the ministry leaves, God will raise up another group, and it has happened here. Not that I do not want you here, I am not saying it that way, but if you should all go away, this ministry will not be broken up. Why? Because the ministry has two parts, Christ and me. If God should decide to take me down for any reason, He will not put someone in my place. If God should decide to take me down He will close down Living Epistles Ministries, and He will go to another man, and make a covenant with that other man, and start up another ministry with another name.
I am Living Epistle Ministries, and the only thing that can break up Living Epistles Ministries is if Christ should separate from me. If you think that is pride, or you think it is lording it over you, you are mistaken, you are mistaken. This is a glorious thing. You are being invited to a training ground. He has glorious things for you. There is no breaking up of the ministry other than Christ separating from me. So long as He is with me, brethren, this ministry goes on at full speed. What is full speed? It is the fullest speed that I can operate at, without it killing me.
This ministry is not broken up because one person has chosen to go away in the most ungodly manner. Even if someone had left in a Godly manner, the ministry is not broken up unless Christ separates from me. Everyone is replaceable, including me. No one is irreplaceable. The only integral part of the ministry is Christ. He is the pillar of the church. After Him comes me and not somebody else that thinks that they are very important. If you are thinking that I think that I am important, I do not think that I am important, but He has made me important. As long as He is in a covenant relationship with me, I am very important. Alleluia. Glory to God, He is wonderful. I love Him.
We have to be one ram in this ministry. Both horns have to work together, the God-ordained head and the eldership. We have to be of one mind and one accord, or this ministry will never stand. Either we are going to come into one mind and one accord, or He is going to go to someone else. If He does not see some sign (I am not trying to scare you) that your heart is moving toward that, that He can work with you, He will replace you. If that were to happen to me, He would replace me, but as long as I am in right relationship with the Lord, if you cannot come into right relationship with me, He will replace you. He will replace whoever cannot come into right relationship with me.
It is very hard being a woman in the ministry, and some ministers are very religious. They are very threatened by you if you are a woman. I have a double problem, because I am still attractive, and they just do not know what to do with me. They are afraid to kiss me, they are afraid to hug me, they are afraid to talk to me. When I went to the convention last year, I did not have this understanding, and I was very put off by their coldness to me. I did not have a Godly attitude toward them.
You know, I pray all the time for God to let me think with His mind, and I find that I am a much happier person when I pray that. It worked out for me last year, and I was very blessed to be there, because I went with another lady, and he did give us some fellowship, but by and large, we were severely rejected. It was not my imagination because I said to her, "Is it just me. We are sitting here at these big long tables, and nobody is even looking at us." I said to her, "Can you see me?" They were not even looking in our direction, and I did not understand it, but there was such a blessed anointing and etcetera, etcetera.
He did give us one couple to talk to us, so it worked out, but this year it was very different. I have asked the Lord, but He has not answered me yet or if He has answered me, I have not heard Him. I do not know whether the people changed because they recognized me for the second year, or whether I changed, or whether God just did a miracle, I do not know, because things were much better this year. At least, if I sat down next to somebody, they said, "Good evening" to me. Last year, not only did the men not talk to me, their wives did not talk to me as well. It was like I had leprosy.
This year, a lot of people, not a lot of people, but at least a few people talked to me, and I know that I was a little more open when I came down into the lobby of the hotel. If there were groups of men sitting down, I made sure to say good morning. It is a very fine line that you have to walk. Everybody is going to have to learn how to handle themselves amongst ministers. It is part of your training here. I just want to tell you what I did, so maybe if ever you find yourself in the same position, you would know what to do, because I know God told me to do it.
I came down this morning, and it is such a macho environment. You know, I was not raised in the church, I do not know about any of you. A lot of people are raised in the Pentecostal church. I was not raised in the church. It is like a super macho club, and most of the men at these conventions are Assemblies of God and some of them are Church of God, and they are very religious, they have a strong religious spirit. They are very macho, and they come up to each other, and put their arms around each other, and pat each other on the back, and they go up to the altar and they pray together, and they say, "Praise God." It is very macho, but it is all a religious spirit, but to them it is their reality. That is what they have right now. To me it is a religious spirit, but it is what they have got, and God is blessing it.
You see, all you have to do is live to the uttermost of what He has given you, and He will bless it. That is why we cannot compare ourselves to other people. He can bless one person that has a very small understanding more than a person that has much greater revelation, but has not made a deep commitment. We can never fully understand the mind of God, but we can get some insight into it. The more insight into it we get, the more blessed we are going to be in our life.
Let me tell you what I did. I came down this morning, and there was a group of these real macho men, and they have all of these deep voices, and I have this little voice. They cannot even deal with me being a preacher. There were a couple of women preachers there that looked like grandmothers, and they could not even talk to them. They absolutely cannot deal with me. There was a whole group of these men sitting around, and I walked right over and I said, "Good morning," and they all said, "Good morning."
I would not sit down next to them unless I was invited, and no one invited me so I went and sat down on the other side of the lobby. I sat there by myself with my cup of coffee until a woman came down. The woman came down, and she sat there with me, and she started talking to me, and they must have relaxed. You see, they are very nervous. They are very nervous. I found out something that I did not even know, that it is an Assemblies of God rule that you cannot hug a woman. You cannot touch a woman that is not your wife. I did not even know that.
They are very up tight. They are afraid of their own emotions. They are afraid they might experience lust. They just do not know what to do, so they say, "Get her away from me." That is what they are saying in their mind. I put them at ease. I walked to the other side of the room, and I sat there in a modest spirit drinking my coffee, and a woman came down, and I started talking to her. Then they all got up and they came over, first to the older woman, and then they looked at me and they said, "God bless you sister, nice seeing you," and they shook my hand.
This year, you know I attended the convention with the Nigerian evangelist. His wife was supposed to go with us too, but she was pregnant and she had not been feeling well, so she did not go. When I heard that we were in different motels, at first I got upset, because I figured I would like to fellowship with them after the meetings. Thank God we were not in the same motel.
The others were freaking out with all of that talk going on about how we are of one blood, the blacks and the whites, and they did not know what was going on between this black evangelist and me. I did not tell them, I did not tell them. They were flipping out. I think a lot of them thought we were married. I was under a severe attack the whole three days and I know, if that was not the whole thing, it was at least part of it. They were talking until their jaws hurt them.
There was one man, a big macho guy. I had introduced him to the Nigerian evangelist. Everybody knew the Nigerian man and I were together. We sat together through the whole convention. The next morning, when I came out of my room, this macho guy was coming out of his room at the same time, and I really believe God told me.... I had told this macho man that the Nigerian was married to an American woman, and he was trying to get started in New York, but you know people's minds. You know, people's minds. I knew when I walked out of my bedroom the next morning, and he was coming from the other end of the hall, I knew that God did it; he needed to see that I was alone. I just thank God that the Nigerian evangelist and I were not in the same motel. I thank God for it.
People were flipping out and then one of the nights (maybe it is not like this in Nigeria, I do not know), he had saved a seat for me, and I walked up and he was talking to a man (more of them spoke to him than to me). As I walked up, there was an empty seat next to him and he patted the seat, indicating it was for me and he went like that (demonstrates) and the guy he was talking to went, "Huh!" Oh, they were talking their heads off.
COMMENT: Was he in Nigerian dress?
PASTOR VITALE: Just the first night, the night that happened.
It was a big trial for me because when the evangelist's wife told me she was not going, the minute she told me, I got all upset. On some level, I just knew, I just knew it was not going to be easy. I just thank God for putting us in separate motels. I cannot tell you how I thanked God, because they were offended. The looks on their faces indicated they were really offended. I think a lot of them thought we were married, they were really offended.
All that talk about accepting our black brother needs to become a reality in our lives. We all need deep deliverance. We all need deep deliverance. I got to love this man, and to me he was just who he was. He was so good to me over in Nigeria, and once in a while I looked at his face and I saw he is not only black, he is Negroid.
You know the psychologist that have done studies say that the white people do not have as much trouble with black people that are Caucasian, like the Indians. The Nigerian has the Negroid features, the big nose and the thick lips. When you go to India the people have features like we have, but their skin is dark. They are much more acceptable than the people with their Negroid features.
The Lord was talking to me today about this and I had heard it on TV. I think it is true that the real route of prejudice is fear. The white people are afraid of them. To me, he is just who he is. To me it was nothing. He really needed me there, because there is a lot he does not know. You know, he really does not have a grip on his life. He found out he did not have any toothpaste so he went down to the clerk in the hotel. He said to her, "Where can I buy toothpaste?" The clerk says, "Two blocks over." Now in British slang (they were a British Colony) two blocks means two buildings, so he walked down two buildings, and there was a pornographic store there. He did not know what it was, and he walked in and he asked for "Close-up." (Laughter). He said, "In Nigeria, they put you in jail for that."
He really needed me there. I was not aware how much he was going to need me until we got there. He did not know the right words for the food, like he called the salad dressing, the cream. I happen to be very sensitive in those areas, when people use wrong.... well, not wrong words, but it is not the current slang. I usually know what they are talking about, but a lot of people do not know what you are talking about. He really needed me there. We sat together in every service, and it was obvious that there was an intimacy of friendship between us. We were talking, we were putting our heads together.
It was obvious that we were not total strangers, and I am telling you there was talk going on and it was clawing at me. I went back to my room after the afternoon service and said, "God, what was going on in my heart." I did not want to believe it, but I knew it was true. Nobody looked at their faces. Nobody said a word. It was a real test for me.
I remember a black preacher came into a tent meeting once at the church I went to, and he stood up there, and he gave an exhortation to that effect, and it was not in an ungodly spirit. Do you remember that? Now remember, you can say the same words and one person can say it in a spirit of rejection or resentment, and in another person it is just the truth and truth is not sin.
This black preacher stood up there and said something like this, "You all are fellowshipping with me under the tent but the acid test is, are you going to go out for the evening with me? Are you going to walk down the street with me?" I know when he said it, it pricked my heart but I want to tell you, I just got the slightest taste of what it must be like for them. It has nothing to do with what kind of a person they are. Just by the way they look, people hate them. It is really a horrible, horrible thing.
I do not know what your backgrounds have been in churches, but a lot of churches will invite an evangelist to speak for many different reasons. They like his face, they think it is going to bring bigger crowds in, and then the people will come back for the next meeting after the evangelist will have gone. Who knows why they invite an evangelist in the carnal church.
We are spiritual, brethren. We are the body of Christ. We are the church of the Living God. We are not perfect. We are still being formed, and the purpose of ministry is to bring forth His nature in us. In every spiritual meeting that you go to, the purpose of it is to bring forth His nature in us. It is much greater than to comfort you for the moment. God wants to comfort you, but His purpose is way beyond that.
If the Lord speaks to a minister and says, "Invite an evangelist," that means God has something to tell you through that man. Let me tell you this also. The Lord said to me, "Invite that Nigerian evangelist for Friday night." (I guess he is coming next Friday night.) I thought it meant tonight, and when I found out that he had an engagement for tonight, I said, "Oh, but the Lord said Friday." I did not say, "Lord, which Friday?" Now, I talked to you about this before. When the Lord gives you a time period, when He says in a few days, you have to say, "Lord...." What do you say, who remembers? "A few days from when?"
If the Lord says three days, three months or three years, you have to say, "Lord, when do I start counting. Three days, three years, three months, from when?" If He says the 13th, you say, "Lord of which month?" Do not assume it is of that month, For whatever reason (and I do not have the answer for you right now), when the Lord speaks to us, it is not in details.
He will give you one word like he gave one of the brethren, "sore," (it is probably due to our inability to receive His whole message). Well, what in the world does that mean? Now we have to do our homework, and you have to look it up in the concordance and I have to say, "Lord, which Friday?" That is the way it is. We have to work at relating to the Lord, because He is a superior mind. He is so much greater than us that we cannot even comprehend Him.
Our natural example is a six-month-old infant lying on its back going "Goo, goo," and daddy comes over and says, "Do you love daddy?" and baby goes, "What did he say?" I am making a joke, but that is what it is like. All you heard was "sore." I am sure He must have given you a whole sentence. All I heard was "Friday." I am sure He must have said, in whatever language He was speaking in, "Next Friday." All I heard was "Friday". We have to check out everything that we hear if we want to understand what He is saying to us. Do you not want to understand what He is saying to you? You have to work at it. Glory to God.
Back to the ram. He had two horns, minister and elders. We must come together as one. If we can come together as one, the Lord will do everything that He has promised to do. Now, you might say to me, "Well, He did not tell me He is building an Apostolic Church here," but He told me and I told you; that is my job. That is the way it goes. The anointing goes this way, from the head out.
It is not that He will never tell you anything. For instance, I forgot about the Nigerian evangelist, and He told me through one of the brethren, but there is a discerning of spirits I have to exercise. If I stand up here and I say that, "That is not God," you pray in your mind and you say, "Father if she is wrong correct her," but if He does not correct me, you have to go with me if you want to be a part of this thing.
Of course, if I tell you to commit suicide, you run, but if I am standing here telling you that God is building an Apostolic Church here, and you say, "God is not telling me," I want tell you, God is not going to tell you. This is because there are certain pieces of information that only comes down from the head, and as you submit to the word that He is building through me, He will give you your witnesses. Maybe He will and maybe He will not.
That is the message of the hour. He wants you to join with me. We are all fallen men. The relationship that a minister has with both the elders and the congregation is as a human being to another human being, and we are equal before Christ, so long as we are of one mind and of one accord. We can fellowship, we can love one another, we can go places together, we can have coffee and tea together, and we relate as human beings, as women, whoever we are, so long as we are in one mind and one accord. As soon as there is a disagreement, this order changes. Equality shifts, and the minister exercises the authority that God has placed in him.
Now, I am talking of a disagreement about spiritual things. If you want to go when the light says green, and I want to go when the light is red, that is different. I am not talking about that. I hope everybody understands that. If I like herb tea and you like Lipton tea, well, have your Lipton tea. I am talking about things relating to the church, spiritual things. As soon as there is a disagreement, as soon as there is a division of mind, between the minister and one or more members of the congregation, the order changes.
You can disagree in your own heart, but the church must function. If the Captain disagrees with the General, he still does what the General says. This church must come into order. The Lord is bringing His whole church into order, not just here. We will never manifest the power of Christ until we are in order. He will not give it to us. He will not give it to us.
When we have a little dispute, the congregation prays, the elders pray, and Christ speaks through the minister. Now, this can go two ways. The congregation and the elders can pray for the minister. They can love him, and ask God to help him, and ask God to strengthen him, and ask God to give him truth. They can pray for the whole local ministry, and they can pray for the ministry of Christ. On the other hand, they can rise up against the minister. When you do that, Jesus says that you kill Him.
When you do it the first way, you build the ministry and when you do it the second way, you tear down what God is doing here. God wants us to function as one, as long as we can. If there is a difference of opinion and when there is a difference in mind, equality shifts and the minister does what? The minister exercises the authority that God has placed in him.
Now, I want to tell you, unless it is something that is severe, such as me telling you to take poison, or have sex, (I have heard of ministries telling people to have sex), unless it is something that breaks the law of God, you are supposed to be holding my hands up. You are supposed to be loving me. You are supposed to be supporting me. You are supposed to be one so that together we can deal with all the problems of running a ministry.
There are problems in running a ministry. It is very hard. They say that the stress factor for pastors is greater than for doctors and lawyers. Why? Because everyone's carnal mind is trying to kill you, except for those few people that have their carnal mind on a leash.
I know I wanted to talk about that too. I said at the last meeting that all your carnal minds are trying to kill me. There is no condemnation in that; that is the truth. If you have your carnal mind on a leash, you know it is not true of you. If you had your carnal mind on a leash in that incident, you know it is not true of you, but that is the truth. When anyone in whom Christ is being revealed brings forth a correction, the carnal mind in any person that is letting him do it, is trying to kill him. It could be your husband, it could be your mother, it could be your best friend or your closest associates.
I have one friend that I have known for years, who has been with me every step of the way, no matter what happened. I love this woman. I told her some hard things. I have to tell you the story. She was having a personal problem, and I really did not want to say anything to her. I did not want to get involved. She was saying things that would open the door for me to say something, and I would not say anything. Finally, she said to me, "You know, I am asking you for your opinion." I said to her, "Are you sure you want my opinion." She said, "Yes," and I said, "Okay, sister, you are a wimp. You are a wimp."
She said to me, "Thank you." She went back and stood up in her marriage. I will just tell you this. Her husband was telling her to get out. He was cheating, he was in adultery, and he was telling her to pack up and leave. I said, "What do you mean, you pack up and leave? Let him pack up and leave. What are you doing it for? You are a wimp!" She stood up and that marriage got put back together again.
It was really funny. I said to her, "You are a wimp." She said, "Thank you." I love this woman, she is one of my greatest supporters. I got a call from her not too long ago. She was really down. She had real serious problems, and her carnal mind manifested to me. She said something and it hurt me. I did not say anything to her because I knew she was having a lot of problems.
What God said to me was that every single person can potentially manifest the carnal mind to you, except Christ, except someone in full stature. You love your friends, but you must know what is of Christ and what is not of Christ. Now when you find out that it is not of Christ, you do not condemn them, but you deal with it. You do not do what they tell you, you do not take their advice. God is the only one that is infallible. He is the one that we are to cleave unto.
Yes, we need human beings in our life, but again our family life is our example. You are intimate with your husband, and then you go out and you socialize with friends and have casual fellowship, but your intimacy is with your husband. At least that is the way it is supposed to be. Some people do not have it that way, but that does not mean that it is right.
The way God set it up was that you need the intimacy to satisfy you in your relationship with your husband and in your relationship with your children, especially your young children. A lot of women that are moving in spiritual womanhood need a great deal more intimacy than men, so maybe they nurse their babies; they have that child close to their breast. That is where intimacy is in the family. Then you go out and you have friendships.
Well, our intimacy is in Christ. It is with the Father and in the Son that He has placed within us. That is where you go with every problem. That is where you go with every trouble. That is where you go with every need. I want to tell you, He hears you, and if He decides that you need a human being to comfort you, He will send someone to you that will manifest Christ to you.
You know, before I came to this place (I have been through hell), I use to go through very bad times where I would be very upset, and I would want a person to comfort me. I would call up people on the telephone, and they would talk to me out of their carnal mind and they would wound me deeper, and it would hurt me more. Why? They did not mean me any harm, but they failed to manifest Christ to me and I was bleeding.
They made me worse, and it took me a long time to realize I had to turn in to God for my comfort. God was telling me for years, "Turn in, turn in, stop going to fallen people in the hour of your calamity. Come into the house of the Lord," but it took me a long time to be able to do it. I could not do it. I heard His voice, but I could not do it. Then finally, He gave me the strength to do it.
Now sometimes, He sends someone to call me and sometimes He does not, but I will say, "Lord comfort me, there are fifteen thousand knives and arrows stuck in my heart, comfort me." Should it be one of those times that He sends a person, they manifest Christ to me. They make me better, they do not make me worse.
Now, the people that make me feel worse do not hate me, but because of their own fallibility they could not give me what I needed. They could not understand what I was going through. Why? Because they never went through it. Sometimes I cry out and I say, "God comfort me," and the comfort comes twenty four-hours later, so I hang onto the horns of the altar. It does not always come through a person. It comes in all different ways.
When there is that terrible feeling inside of you, a horrible feeling, whatever you want to call it, cry out to God and hang on to the horns of the altar. Deliverance will surely come. When you try to deliver yourself, if you do get relief, it is just going to be temporary. The answer to your every problem is the emergence of Christ in your mind. There is nothing external that can comfort you continuously.
Again our example is sexual intercourse; that comforts most people. Well, how long does it last? You have to get up, get out of bed and go to work or take care of your kids. It comforts you till the next time, but when Christ appears in you, the Scripture says it is going to be like a perpetual sexual orgasm. That is what it says. God said it, not me. Total peace and contentment, continuously.
Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, hang on to the horns of the altar until His life is built in you, but put everything you have got into doing what He is requiring of you, so that He can build His Son in you. Work towards the day that, that peace and contentment will be within. When that is within you, all your enemies will be at peace with you. Why? Because no matter what they do to you, you are going to have the ability to love them. I want to tell you, that, that kind of love is irresistible. You will win every enemy over to you eventually. It may not happen right away.
Now, back to the issue of order. As soon as the problem is dealt with and there is one mind and one accord, everything is reversed, the minister and the congregation relate on an equal basis. It goes back and forth. There is continual fluctuation. The more mature the elders and the congregation are, the more the relationship can stay in this fellowship in this casual relationship.
I told you many times that with regard to the rules that I just laid down about not speaking while I am preaching, I do not like giving you rules. I hate doing that. Those of you that have been coming here for a while know that I hate rules and regulations, but, you see, we have a problem, we are fallen. If everybody sitting here was under the total control of the Holy Ghost, you would not need any rules. We are not, and God cannot do anything if we do not have order here. God works in order, so I have to put down a few rules. I have a minimum of rules.
Just one other thing I feel the Lord wants me to mention to you. This is the about the first preacher's testimony at the convention. You will hear it on one of these tapes. It was an incredible testimony; he did not give us the details. He comes from another state... (End of Tape 1)
Tape 2
...so it must have been public knowledge, but I do not run in those circles, so I do not know what happened to him. Apparently someone did a terrible thing to him, and it looked like he was ruined financially. This was his testimony. I started to tell you, but I did not get to it. He said, "I have two earned doctorates." The man should be worth all kinds of money in the world, and he said, "I was afraid I was going to starve to death." He said, "Do you believe that? I had two earned doctorates and I was afraid I was going to starve to death," so it had to be a financial thing.
He was funny. I really like that man, I like that man. God bless that man.... (Testimony lost). He says the two men died. He said, "I am not telling you God did it as a form of punishment, I am not telling you that, but I am telling you that they died." Now, what I am suggesting to you is this. It is not that God is a wrathful God, but this is how I see it. We are all being tested. You are not entering into the Kingdom untested and unproven. You are entering into the Kingdom through the appearance of Christ in you.
No fornicator or wicked person will enter in. We are the fornicators, our carnal minds. We are the wicked ones. Only Christ is entering in. We shall be continuously tested to see how we respond in moments of great stress. Why? In order that it can be revealed to us whose nature is being manifested through us. The Scripture says, "If you see that man's bone, mark it until it is time to get it cast out of you," or swallowed up if it is your carnal mind.
I suggest to you that those two men's function in life was to be Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, to this man. When he took the victory, there was no longer any reason for them to be around, and they died. They fulfilled their purpose. They were vessels of dishonor; they were raised up to test the son of God. I want to suggest to you that when the day comes that you have passed every test to the degree that you have entered into the fullness of the stature of the Lord Jesus Christ, the test will stop, but they will not stop until that time. If you fail the test, you have to take it over again.
You listen to the tapes. It is fascinating. There are three messages by this preacher where he talks about getting to Zion and what you have to go through to get to Zion. The first thing that you have to do is attach yourself to someone that God has raised up to train you. What we have in the church today is the spirit of rebellion. It is across the whole country, it is across the church, and it is perpetrating a lie that every man can hear from God for himself. Well, you can hear from God for yourself, but everybody has to come under training. I was under training. You see, God has an order. He is not raising up individual sons.
He is raising up one man here and there, and then He is putting men under them to be trained. That is what He is doing. That is His order. That is how He is doing it. In this hour, a lot of people are stumbling because they think that God is going to train them up individually. For so many years now since God called many people out of the carnal churches, there really has not been an apostolic church available to them. They have been listening to tapes and getting newsletters from other ministries, and a lot of these people in this hour are stumbling because they think that God is going to train them up individually.
There was a lapse in time from when He called them out of the carnal churches until the time that He is going to make the apostolic church available to them. A lot of them cannot enter in when they are called to an apostolic church because they simply do not understand what God is doing. They really believe that He is going to train everyone individually, but He is not. He is going to raise up a Captain. He is not training everyone individually. He is training them in groups, and the group is going to exist in an order. That group is called a church. That is how He is doing it. You have been called to one of the first groups to be raised up, and that is the size of it.
I went on a ferry ride, and I met these people. We talked and talked. They were very nice people. I gave them one of my tape lists. I do not know what God is going to do. You know, they are mainline denominational Christians, protestant or probably Lutheran, or something like that. Now, when people hear that you are a minister, and they want to communicate with you, they sometimes think anything religious is going to make you pleased, so they told me about this priest in their home town.
They said that whenever he approaches a statue of Mary, she cries. The priest went up to this statue of Mary and she cried. Then he went down the block and he went to another statue of Mary and she cried too. The woman had said, "Well maybe it is a miracle." Now, I do not believe in battering people, but I prayed and I said, "Lord, what do you want me to say?" He said to me, "Answer them." I said to them, "Oh, well, to me miracles glorify God, so I do not see how a statue crying could be a miracle. When I look in the Bible, I see Jesus making food appear, and healing people, and casting demons out of them. I see Him healing the blind and the deaf. I do not see how a statue crying could give glory to God."
They got all upset because everyone wants to be liberal, you know. See, the spirit that you say these things in is very important. The spirit that I said it in was conversational. "You bought up the subject, your wife said that maybe it is a miracle, and I told you what I thought." The whole ferry boat was listening. He then said, "Oh well, you know people believe whatever they need to," and I said, "Oh yes, I know that," and I released the conversation. Do not try to punch your way through it.
Believe me, it probably was not even that these people needed to hear that but someone else sitting there. As soon as they hear agitation in your voice, they will reject what you are saying. As soon as they perceive an attack, they close up. It could be the most holy truth, but as soon as they perceive you are saying it in a spirit of attack, you have failed in your mission. What is your mission? The Father spoke a word from your unconscious mind into your conscious mind, and you failed to speak it out of your mouth in a spirit that, that person would receive it.
Now, of course, you are not condemned to hell forever if you fail. We are here to learn. It is to be said in a gentle way that it goes into their mind and roots there and starts to grow. There was a time that I had Mormons in my house, and the man was giving me this big exhortation on family life in heaven. He was a very nice man. I very calmly said to him, "Oh, but what about the Scripture that says there is no marriage or giving in marriage in heaven?" He said to me, "What Scripture is that?" I said, "Oh, I am not a letter man. I have to go look it up in my Concordance, I will get you the Scripture." I ran inside, looked it up, wrote it down on a piece of paper and gave it to him. When he left, I shook his hand, and he said, "I am going to check that out."
Brethren, God does not want to kill them. He wants His life to get inside of them. When you say it in an argumentative spirit, their defenses go up. It does not get into their mind. It stops right there, and they shoot back at you, but when you speak it in a spirit of peace, they listen to it. When they think about it, they have had sex with the Word of God. Now, is it not preached that when your carnal mind puts a thought in your mind and you agree with it, you have committed adultery. Have we not taught that here? Well, if the Word of God is spoken from your mouth, and the person says, "Now is that not interesting, I am going to think about that," they have had sex with the son of God.
Very few people are going to submit to rape. The Lord wants the word to go in. You do not have to talk for an hour. I mean, when we get to a more mature point, you cannot get enough of the word, but when the Lord is wooing somebody new, one word, one sentence, may be all that they need to hear. They have to consider what you have said, and the moment that they consider what you said, the seed has entered into them. It may not sprout for a couple of years, but that does not matter.
Our job is to sow the seed. Only God can give the increase. It is very exciting. This is the End-Time Ministry of Christ. This is the Greater Works Ministry, sowing the seed. I want to tell you something. There is a whole country of people out there that are going to receive this seed without deliverance, because everybody's mind is not messed up. My mind was very messed up. I would have never received this seed without deliverance.
There is a whole country of people out there that are just "every day" people. They have happy marriages, their children are well adjusted, and their grandchildren are well adjusted. They have worked hard all their life, and they have enough money to live on. They are enjoying their retirement. They are not reprobate. This man was a very kind man. He told me a couple of stories about the maid in the hotel room where he was, and how he did not want to get her in trouble. He is a kind man.
There is a whole country of people out there that do not need the kind of deliverance that I needed. They do not need the kind of deliverance that people that have spiritual problems need. There is a whole country of "average Joe" people who were raised up in a church: the Methodist Church, the Lutheran Church, the Episcopalian Church. They went to church every Sunday, and they have read their Bible, and they are just "average Joe" people trying to survive. When you speak a word to them in the right spirit, the seeds can go right in there. That is the greater works that Jesus spoke about.
You cannot do it by beating them over the head. You cannot do it by scaring them. Just talk to them. If it is Christ talking through you, your words are Spirit and your words are Life. Just talk to them, on the ferry or in the convention, anywhere He sends you. Just talk to them, but it has got to be the Son in you. The Holy Spirit does not have the strength. The Holy Spirit does not have this strength. See, the Holy Spirit can fertilize you, but for the Holy Spirit to fertilize you, you have to be baptized in Him. You have to be immersed in Him. Sometimes you have to sit in a service many, many, times, sometimes for a year, with that Spirit pouring over you for it to break through and penetrate your heart.
When it is the Son in you, you just speak the word. You have much more spiritual authority in the Son than in the Holy Spirit. The Son has strength that the Holy Spirit does not have, and that is why the people that are in main or middle America, as they say, may never get fertilized with the Holy Spirit because they will never submit themselves to service after service, after service, after service. When you have the Son, it is a more efficient way of sowing the seed. It is done in just simple conversation, and it could be done with one sentence or one word. The Spirit of the Son has the strength to pierce right in. You do not have to be baptized in it.
COMMENT: When you say He has not got the strength, you simply mean He has not got the office, am I right?
PASTOR VITALE: Well, I guess you could say it that way. He does not have the spiritual strength. That is not the function of the Holy Spirit. Is that what you mean by He does not have the office? Yes, it is a different administration of the Father that is not designed to do that. Yes.
COMMENT: When I was taken to the hospital yesterday, you know, I wanted the Lord to use me. I was in terrible pain, and was about three hours in the waiting room. An elderly Nun (it was a Catholic hospital) came over to each person. She did not ask me what religion I belonged to, but she was talking about all different things: about your pain, and about different people she knew. I kept saying, "Lord, when are you going to use me?" I did not feel like I succeeded in sowing any seed, but I did say, "Well, praise God." When I got home, I said, "Lord what did I even have to go to the hospital for." I felt I was not of any benefit to anybody. So I felt I failed.
PASTOR VITALE: Resist that condemnation. I want you to resist it right now. I want you to rebuke it right now. Okay. You see, you cannot fail if God has not given you anything to do. Maybe He did not give you anything to do.
COMMENT: Usually words would come up, but this time I got nothing.
PASTOR VITALE: That is good. That is wonderful. Do you realize what is happening? You are starting to stand still. You see, because a lot of the words that you used to say, (I do not mean to hurt your feelings) was your carnal mind. A lot of what you said was true, but it was your carnal mind. The carnal mind speaks the word of God. You know that, right? You are having trouble distinguishing between your carnal mind and Christ. What do you do when you are having trouble? You stand still.
That means Christ in you is coming forth, and He is strengthening you. He is starting to paralyze your carnal mind, right? The locust, that is likened to a scorpion, is coming forth in you. That is in Revelation 9, and He is starting to sting your carnal mind. He is starting to paralyze him. You will go through a period where nothing will come out of you. "He taketh away the first, so that He can establish the second." You should be very encouraged, very, very, encouraged.
COMMENT: Everywhere I would go in the past, I always felt I had something to say, and I did feel that I was doing something for the Lord.
PASTOR VITALE: He wants us to speak only when it is Him. You know, I am in a place now where I am crying out to God. I was in prayer quite a bit over these past few days. I can hardly pray for anybody, I cannot get it out of my mouth, and I know that I cannot do anything for anybody. It has got to be Christ in me. I do not know whether you were aware of it or not, when we prayed for a member at the last meeting, everybody had gathered around and was praying in tongues and I was going, "Yata, yata."
Now, people that do not understand this say, "What is wrong with that woman? Why is she not praying like everybody else?" Then after everybody else finished (I do not know whether you discerned it or not), the Christ in me rose up and came out with a very powerful tongue. It was very short, and I saw the sword go in and God did something. You got a miracle. I do not know how it is going to manifest, but you got a miracle.
Well, He cannot rise up and do His work while we are yakking and yakking in tongues that the carnal mind is bringing forth. I do not mean to insult anybody. Even if it is the Holy Spirit bringing forth the tongues, the Holy Spirit is not the Son. I think I may have said it wrong before. I am not saying that it is not God. We can be praying for people out of the Holy Spirit, but we are praying for them out of an immature manifestation of Christ.
When the Son is conceived in you, and He starts to come forth, we, our natural person, must die. When the mature manifestation of Christ is ready to come forth in you, the immature manifestation must die. It is the immature manifestation of Christ that will keep you on your knees for hours, and there is nothing wrong with it. If that is what God has called you to, please do it. God is using it, but when you come to this place in Christ, you do not have to pray on your knees for hours. It will be 5 minutes, and He will come through with such power. Boom, and it will be done. How are we ever going to be able to pray for thousands of people, if we have to intercede for hours for one person. It cannot be.
Let me give you an example. You know, I do not give this testimony very often, because somebody's carnal mind is going to accuse me of pride, but God is telling me to give it to you. I am telling you again, truth is not pride. This is what happened to me. I was at a meeting, and a woman that used to go to the same church that I went to, came in. I had not seen her in years. She did not go there regularly, and I did not go there regularly as I had this ministry at the time. She came in with news that a man that I knew from this church that I used to go to was desperately ill, and that he was dying.
He was so weak that he went to a relative's house for dinner, and he had to be carried into the house. His wife, and I think he had four or five children, were forced to live with his brother because they could not afford to live on the Social Security that he was on. He had an incurable disease. He got so heavy on my heart, and I went home from that meeting saying, "Lord, I want to know why." Now, let me make it clear to you that Jesus put this burden on my heart. I am telling you that I cannot do anything of myself. I cannot even ask questions if it is not the Christ in me.
It was very strong, and I said, "Lord, I want to know why. This man blessed me. I did not know him intimately, but to the best of my knowledge, he loved You. He was doing the best he could for You. He poured out his life for You and made sacrifices for You. I want to know why he is dying whilst still in his thirties. I want to know why You have not healed him. I want to know why. "
This was one of the longest intercessions I have ever entered into. Usually, it is very quick with me, sometimes less than 60 seconds. This time it went on for two or three hours. I could not get him off my heart. I said, "I want to know why, and I am not going to let go of You until You tell me why." Then the Lord said to me, "It is pride." I said, "Well then, I want to know why You did not tell him that it is pride. I want to know why You did not go to him and tell him in outright English, 'If you repent of pride, I will heal you.' I want to know why You did not do it for him." This went on for a couple of hours.
I do not remember the details. Maybe I prayed, "Send somebody." I do not really know, but a peace came over me, a very heavy anointing. Then in one week, I heard he was healed. Now your carnal mind might want to tell me that I had nothing to do with it, but the man had been chronically ill for years, five years, and within one week, he was healed after I went through that. I give all the glory to God. He laid it on my heart. Do you understand? I could not have talked to God like that if it was not Christ in me. He was healed, and he is preaching again. The man is preaching again.
Now this is the ministry of the Sons. When you try to do it yourself, even if you are speaking in tongues, even if it is the Holy Ghost, sometimes God responds to your prayer and sometimes He does not. Does anybody not know that? Not everyone you pray for gets healed. Not everyone you pray for has the demon cast out of them. If you do not know that, you are mistaken, and you better get before God. That is the ministry of the Holy Ghost, but in the ministry of the Son, there is no failure.
Why is there no failure? Because you do not pray unless He puts the prayer in your heart, and He does not put the prayer in your heart unless He intends to do it. It is His intention to live through men. It is His intention to manifest, heal, and minister through men. He is not a free-floating Spirit. He is in His church, and He is the mind of the faithful in His church.
His mind will manifest in a faithful person. Maybe that did not sound right. We can only be as faithful as we are committed to be at that moment, but His mind will manifest in a person that is spiritually developed to that degree. He brings forth the healing with His mind, and through the spoken word. That is what He wants to do through you. We have all got to shut up, no offense meant. If you want this ministry, you have got to stop doing your works. You have got to stop doing the works of your flesh. If you want this ministry, He is offering it to you.
He wants to be revealed through you. The ministry of the Holy Ghost is a ministry of the natural man laying hold of the Spirit of God and using it, but the ministry of the Son is the Son laying hold of you and using you. You cannot be doing both at the same time. If you want this glory to be revealed through you, work with Him as He withdraws the ministry of the Holy Ghost from you.
If you listen to the early tapes here, there is a prophesy on almost every tape. There is no more prophesy coming through here. Why? Because He has developed me to such a point, that every word out of my mouth is a prophesy. Every word that I preach is a prophesy. It is the Son of God speaking through me. That is why there is Life on the tapes. It is not a man preaching under the anointing of the Holy Ghost. It is the Son preaching through me.
"When that which is in full is come (is that the Scripture?), that which was in part shall pass away." Why are the gifts passing away? Because the fullness has come. Now I am not saying that I am in full stature, but apparently the Lord has developed me spiritually to such a point that there is so much that He could speak through me in a normal preaching, frequently in a normal conversation, that there is no longer any need for me to prophesy.
Now, what is the difference? Well, let me tell you this. What you are listening to today, what you hear when you come here, is the true prophesy. The gift of prophesy is what you hear in the early tapes. The gift of prophesy is a prophesy that comes forth, and the vessel that is being used does not have to have any understanding of what is being said. True prophesy is a meeting together of the mind of Christ and the mind of the man, coming through the mouth of the man with understanding.
That is the true prophesy. As long as Christ can say what He wants to say through my mouth, as long as I am developed enough to express what He is putting into my mind, there will be no more gift of prophesy and very little of any tongues. Every once in a while it still happens. What does that mean? It means, that there is something He wants to say through me that I have not experienced, or I do not have the understanding to bring it through, so it will come forth as a gift of prophesy or as tongues. It happens very, very, rarely to me, but it still does happen. That is why the gifts are passing away, because the reality has come. Okay?
Please hold your question, I am preaching. Thank you Jesus. Remember the rule is that you ask only if you cannot go on. Do you have a question that you would not be able to go on if you do not hear the answer to it? Okay, please put it down. Thank you. Everything that you see here, I am an example unto you. He wants to give it to you. He wants to give it to the whole human race.
Demon spirits will speak through someone, they call it channeling, or whatever they call it today. There are those who yield to demon spirits. There was a demon that dictated a whole series of books through a woman. The Seth series it is called, if you have heard of it. Demons dictate, they dictate through puppets. The person goes into a trance, and the demon speaks through them.
Well, that is what the Holy Spirit does in the gift of prophesy. Do not shut off the tape. It is true. It is true. Is it not true? That is not Jesus' best. Jesus has promised to give us crownlets, and if you have studied the early series of the Book of Revelation, it is revealed that the crownlets that Jesus wants to give us, are not the gold crownlets that you see in the European aristocracy, but it is the woven crownlets that we see in Greece. It is crownlets that are woven from different branches and that typifies His Mind being woven together with our human mind.
That is the crownlets we are getting, the two woven together and becoming one. In Christ, everything He does through us, He does with us and we do it with Him, with full understanding. We are not puppets. When the gifts of the Holy Ghost flow through you, you are a puppet. I do not say this with disdain. I am telling you the truth, When you speak in tongues, you do not know what you are saying. When you prophesy, you have nothing to do with what is coming out of your mouth. When you dance around the church, your body is being used by the Holy Ghost. There is something better, and He wants to give it to you.
Humble yourselves before the Lord and recognize where you are, and learn, and receive of His Glory. He has great things for you. If I correct you and you feel wounded, rebuke it, rebuke it, and start fighting the battle. I am not your enemy, no man is your enemy, the carnal mind which is ruled by Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, is your enemy. As you will hear on these tapes, there is no demon in hell, and there is no person that can steal your crownlets from you or from me. The only one that can cause you to lose your crownlets is your own self.
This is a battle with an unseen enemy. It is very, very, difficult because that enemy is in your mind and in your emotions, but we must separate from him. This is the true sanctification. I have been listening for years to people saying, "I am born again, washed in the blood, saved and sanctified." No you are not. No lie ever saved you. Sanctification is the ability to distinguish between your carnal mind and Christ. It is a separation of the two.
When the enemy attacks any one of us, or the ministry in general, immediately pray, say, "Lord, let me manifest Your Mind. Give me dominion over my carnal mind. Show it to me, do not let me be ashamed." Now, the shame does not condemn. There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus, but do not be ashamed after the battle is over and the smoke clears, that the Lord is going to come to you and you are going to have to say, "Yes, Lord, I yielded to my carnal mind, I repent, I am going to try again." Ask Him right at the onset of it, saying, "Do not let it happen to me."
Pray before the battle comes. That is something else they have on these tapes. When the battle comes, when the onslaught comes, it is too late to pray. You have to be praying these prayers before the battle comes. Why? Because there is absolutely no warning. Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, comes out of the left field, WHACK, and you fall down the steps. You get a phone call, WHACK, no warning. The expression, "You have got to be prayed up," has never been more real to me. It cannot be in any one instance. You have to have an attitude towards the Lord at all times. "Father, I want Your Mind, do not let me be ashamed."
Why? Because when you agree with your carnal mind, you have committed adultery and you are ashamed of it. You do not feel condemnation, not condemnation, but shame. You have to confess it and go on. Do not let your body and your mind be used like this. Your mind is the temple of God. Your carnal mind is the temple of God. Christ dwells within the carnal mind. We must rule from Christ, and He will give us the strength to do it. Just hear the word and pray. He wants to do it. He is not here to condemn you, or to hurt you, or to hurt your feelings. Do not baby your hurt feelings, rebuke it, rebuke it. He has great things for you. Oh God, thank you Jesus.
COMMENT: It is amazing, because when that Nun came over, I felt God gave me such a love that I do not remember receiving for someone I never saw before. She just kept going on, and as she was talking, my husband was sitting right next to me on a chair, waiting for the doctors to come back. She talked, and every once in a while she put her hand on my leg, like recognizing me, and it was just amazing. What I want to know is, was that the love of God? Would she, even though I spoke nothing really, would she sense that love later? Or was that just my carnal mind saying that God was giving me this love for her?
PASTOR VITALE: Well, I will tell you this. That is a very good question. I think there are people that need to hear that question. I did have one experience. I would not go into the whole thing because I just feel it is time for the music to be played, but I did have an experience with one woman. The Lord just put me in a conversation with her. She was an elderly, Jewish woman who lived alone, and she had broken her arm and had some unhappy experiences, and apparently there was no one to take care of her.
I just talked to her and the Lord said to me, "Ask her what she needs," and when I asked her that, she thought I was crazy. Obviously, she had money. It was not money that she needed. I said, "What do you need?" and she did not respond. The Lord said, "Ask her again," and I said, "What do you need?" Her mouth was opened for a while, then she told me that she had two real needs; she had a court case, and she had broken her arm.
Some how it came out that I was a Christian. I did not, what would be called, "witness" to her at all, but I must have mentioned that I was a Christian. After the whole conversation was over, she said to me, "Well, answer me one question? Why would God help you and not me?" It was a spirit of deep hurt, it came as an attack at me, but it was hurt.
Here we were in the middle of 42nd Street and Madison Avenue. God sent His Son to her personally, and she is saying to me, "Why would God help you and not me?" I walked away from her, and I cried, and I said, "Lord, I did not even witness to her. She would not let me pray for her." The Lord said to me, "I have healed her through the soul tie. In your compassion for her, in the soul tie that was erected through the compassion that you felt for her, I moved." Can you relate that to what you just said? Okay.
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