The Following Message Has Been Transcribed For
Clarity, Continuity Of Thought, And Punctuation By
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Brethren, don't look here and don't look there, and don't go out into the desert, and don't go out into the field, because the kingdom of God is within you. Look for the miracles within you. What kind of miracles? Divination? The ability to predict the future, the ability to prophesy? Is that what he's talking about? No. What's the miracle within you that he's talking about? The appearance of righteousness in you brethren, the appearance of righteousness in you, and what are the signs of righteousness? A rational mind, which takes dominion over destructive emotions. A rational mind, which brings peace, when chaos is raging. I'm talking about a compromised peace, I'm talking about a peace which arises out of righteousness, what does that mean? A peace where everybody concerned is granted the privilege of expressing themselves, where sin is exposed without condemnation, where confession of everybody's contribution to the problem appears, with repentance, where unforgiveness appears, where a willingness to go on appears, not a sweeping under the rug of the problem, but a true dealing of the problem through confession, not only of one's own ungodly contribution, but through confession of the reality of the spiritual problem which undergirded the whole crisis, and then the miracle, true forgiveness, and the ability to go on with the assignment that Christ Jesus has assigned to you. And what is the assignment that he has assigned to you, what is our assignment brethren? Unto the fullness, of the stature of the Lord Jesus Christ. The kingdom of God is within you, okay.
COMMENT: Is that where they get the Scripture, "Seek first the kingdom of God." Does that come like after what you're talking about now, or is that before?
PASTOR VITALE: It comes before.
COMMENT: Does that have anything to do with it?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, it does have something to do with it, and what it means is, no matter what the problem that's appearing out there, no matter what the problem appears to be war in the middle east, okay, war with your neighbor, your mother having kidney failure, your husband walking out and leaving you with three kids and no income, no matter what it looks like, the true nature of your problem has spiritual roots, unseen invisible, hidden roots that are both inside of your mind and your emotions, and inside of the mind and the emotions of everyone who is involved in this problem, hidden spiritual roots, and the answer to your problems, no matter what your problem is, is that you have a common solution, and the common solution is the Scripture that was just quoted. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God", and who is the kingdom of God? He's a person, who is he? Christ Jesus. "Seek ye first", not Christ Jesus in me, although you might be looking for a minister to help you along your pathway, which the end of which travel, or the end of which journey, will be Christ Jesus appearing in you, you need a teacher, everybody needs a teacher, but I'm just temporary. "Seek ye first", the appearance of Christ Jesus in your mind, with righteousness you see. Don't look for miracles without righteousness, because miracles without righteousness are not from Christ Jesus. They're from the devil. Don't look for miracles without righteousness. So "Seek ye first the kingdom of God", which is the very man Christ Jesus in you, and make sure, and your test as to whether or not it's Christ Jesus, and not an imposter arising in spiritual maturity in you, is that Christ Jesus arises with righteousness, you see. Look for the double witness, and know that there is such a thing as spiritual maturity, outside of Christ Jesus, he looks like the real thing, what's the difference between spiritual maturity outside of Christ Jesus, and spiritual maturity with Christ Jesus, what's the difference?
COMMENT: The fruit.
PASTOR VITALE: The fruit, yes, let me clarify that. The fruit is us brethren, what's manifesting in us, okay. So, if what appears to be spiritual maturity is an angle of light, the result of this mind operating in us will be destruction. It will be destruction to us, and what is destruction? The tearing down of righteousness. And if the spiritual man appearing in our mind, is Christ Jesus, no matter what happens in the event, if my mother dies, if your husband, if you have the whole church pray for you, your husband still leaves you with three kids, if an atom bomb is exploded in the middle east, no matter what the circumstances, if it's truly the kingdom of God appearing in you, okay, there will be a righteous residue in you. You will have righteousness, you will have peace, you will have contentment, you will remain strong. And I want to tell you brethren, to live in your emotions is a condition of weakness. The devil's playground is in your emotions. Now, don't misunderstand me, the devil wants you to think, that I'm telling you that means you can't have any emotions, or you can't have any emotional experiences, this is not true. I'm not saying that. We are emotional people, we're still very human, and we have emotional experiences. Our emotions are likened to the female element of the creation, and the part of us, which is female, and we're all both male and female. The issue is, which side of will predominate, the male or the female. And brethren if you want any peace or consistency, or reason in your life, the man, the rational mind of Christ Jesus in you, must rule over your wife, which is your emotions. You could have emotions, when they're manifesting in a godly channel, emotions need to be channeled, they need to be controlled.
A type of this is an old fashioned marriage. Women's libbers would string me up to hear me preaching this today, our whole society is radically changed traditionally speaking. I saw it on TV last night, a woman was raised in her father's house, and she went from her father to her husband, because it was acknowledged that a woman needed to be guided. Now today we have women being trained up and they have male minds, that's a whole different situation. But in the days when women were raised to be women, they went from their father to their husband. If their was no father, their brother was in charge of them. Brethren, your emotions need to be under a godly director, your emotions must be directed, and they must be protected from ungodly spiritual forces that would seduce them into a destructive path, which can be likened to a hurricane. That's why they use to name the hurricanes after women, until women's libbers rose up and now they name them after men. But passion out of control kills you. Passion under a godly direction edifies you, and they are acceptable to God. But unleashed passions having their own way, at its worse, can lead to your death.
Maybe some people would even say worse than death, is to live a life of continuous torment because one's emotions are like a turbulent sea, just tossing and turning, stealing your peace and contentment, and influencing you to the point that you cannot put your mind on anything constructive that will give you peace. They just keep you in torment continuously. I want to tell you that this is the hell that's preached about from the pulpit, continuous torment, with spiritual pitchforks, it's in your emotions. And the man must rule over the woman, or you will be in eternal torment, while you walk this earth.
How did we get on to this subject, what was I talking about? I was talking about the last days. The Scripture clearly states, don't look for the appearance or the reappearance of Christ Jesus, don't look in the desert, don't look in the fields, don't look in your minister, don't go running hither and thither, because you hear about miracles and healing, or miracles of deliverance. Behold, says our Lord, the kingdom of God is within you, and it's going to be so obvious to you when arises, it's going to be as obvious as the? Well that's not what the Scripture says, it says, "The sun arising in the east, and setting in the west." The kingdom of God is appearing in you.
COMMENT: The Scripture says, "Look up, your redemption draweth night." Why would they say, "Look up"?
PASTOR VITALE: I don't believe Jesus was speaking about a physical looking up, it's the same principle, I make a joke out of this frequently, we've all been raised, we all have some measure of religious spirit in us, we say, "Oh God deliver me!", thinking that God is in this physical heaven above us, but the truth is, the kingdom of God is within us. Every once in a while when I try to make light of difficult situation, I'll go, Oh Jesus, have mercy on me!, and I look up, but he's in there, he's inside of us. So when Jesus said, "Look up", he meant look up spiritually. He didn't mean look up to the physical sky, or look down to my physical chest, he meant he's within, and you look within with your spiritual eyes, you can't look within with your natural eyes. Okay, our hope is within, "Look up, standing up", go to spirit, that's what he's saying. The answer to your problem is spirit, and it's hard to comprehend when you're a young disciple. I remember those days, I remember days of torment. I remember days of torment, I have this one image in my mind, its there almost always, I was walking down the hall of my office, saying, Lord, I'm dying of loneliness, you've taken every friend away from me. I have nothing to do, I have no place to go, I have no fellowship, I can't bear it. And the Lord, he spoke to me very clearly right in my office, and he said to me, "Come closer to me." And I almost had physical temper tantrum, I had a temper tantrum in my mind, I almost acted out but I didn't.
What do you mean come closer to you!! What do you mean come closer to you, what are you talking about!! How do I do it, I can't stand it, if I listen to one more tape, I'm going to break the tape recorder, I need a human being! He didn't answer me. So, whether you can receive it now or not, the answer to your problem, and don't tell me I don't understand your problem, don't tell me I don't know what it's like to have this kind of lifestyle, and I don't know what it's like to have that kind of lifestyle. First of all, I've had so many lifestyles that you don't even know what my life was like, I've lived five or ten lives in this one lifestyle, but even if I haven't experienced it, it doesn't matter, whether I've experienced your particular problem at this moment. The solution to your problem is the same. Put Christ Jesus first in your life, and when you serve him with unwavering servitude, he will heal every trouble in your life. Now he may not do it in the next hour, he may not do it in the next week and he may not do it in the next month. If he doesn't do it that quickly, the reason for it, is that you, let me carnal in this fellowship this morning, I hate when preachers do that, everybody repeat after me, the problem is you!!! He's not doing more quickly because your thick head is in his way, or because your stony heart is in his way, because your carnality or your stubbornness and your refusal to change, or your spiritual blindness is in his way, and if he gets your problem out of his way any more quickly, he might kill you, and he doesn't want you to die, he wants you, he intends to appear in you. And when he appears in you, you shall attain to that condition which the Hindus call Nirvana.
So you say, Pastor Sheila, What is a Christian minister doing talking about the Hindu Nirvana? I'll tell you what I'm doing talking about it, the word Nirvana, you could walk down fifth Avenue, and you know how these roving reporters stop people and they say, What's Nirvana? You'll probably get more than fifty percent of the people that you stop, knowing what Nirvana is, but I challenge you to get one out of 100 people to know what the Christian equivalent is of Nirvana.
Now I've taught it here. Does anybody remember what the Christian, we're talking about Nirvana, we're talking about a spiritual condition, a condition of mind and a condition of emotions, which is completely even, no highs, no lows, but continuous persistent contentment and godly control over one's life. What is the Christian word that describes this condition?
COMMENT: Perfect peace?
PASTOR VITALE: No, it's a Scriptural word, it's in the Bible. It's so simple, the reason you don't know what it is, is because the church has given you a false definition of it, that's what salvation is brethren, see. The church has given you an erroneous definition of salvation. Salvation is not going to heaven, it's not living on streets of gold, it's not living in a mansion, it's not meeting old relatives, it's not having lasagna dinners, it's none of these things. The word 'salvation' is speaking about the same condition that the Hindu Nirvana is speaking about, completeness, a spiritual completeness, a spiritual, mental and emotional completeness which results in a full rational godly control over your whole person. You see, right now, we're not complete and we're not joined.
Listen to me brethren, for anybody and God only knows this happens to me too, it's happening less and less, but I'm still capable of it, of losing my cool, of getting angry, of getting upset, of going off into an emotional tizzy. When this happens to you, your completeness has blown apart. When this happens to you, when you come down into your emotions, and you do and say, or even think things that are bringing destruction into your life, what has happened to you, is that the controller of your whole person has been cast down. Whether that control be the man Christ Jesus, because you're a Christian, which is true in my case, or whether you're a carnal person who is not a Christian, but is a manifestation of the good side of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, who was raised under a condition of variables which produce what the world calls a stable person. We've got a lot of people like that out there. They're just stable people, they're positive side of their tree of the knowledge of good and evil, is the controller over the negative side of that tree. They're successful people, their relationships are successful, they're financially successful, they're reasonably content. They may be nominal Christians, they may not be Christians, but they're just good manifestations of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
But this is the difference between a good manifestation of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and a human being, whose personality is truly Christ Jesus in the manner that we see demonstrated in the man, Jesus of Nazareth, who is Christ. This is the difference now. The most healthiest human being in this world, the most well adjusted, the one who has the most godly control over his mind and his emotions in his life, when pressed far enough, when physically tortured, when mentally tortured, will blow apart, you just have to find his weakness brethren, find the button that works, and he's going to blow apart. But the man who is mature, because his true personality is the man, Christ Jesus, there's nothing you can do to that man that will blow him apart. Can you hear this? That is one of the reasons why this Christian walk is so filled with pressure. This Christian walk is filled with pressure, filled with pressure on every side, pressure and conflict everywhere, and every time pressure touches you and you blow apart, the Lord Jesus Christ is there with his line and his plummet, and he's measuring you up against the Lord Jesus Christ, and he's making a declaration unto his father, the man, Christ Jesus in this vessel, has not yet arisen to the point of maturity that we call full stature.
This being said without condemnation, just a mark on the person's chart. They're doing great, and they're making progress, and every time they get stronger, we turn up the pressure, and every time we turn up the pressure, the Lord Jesus wants to know, has this person, or has the man, Christ Jesus arisen in this person yet, to the point that there is no pressure that can be applied to the physical body or to the carnal mind that will cause this personality to blow apart.
Now listen to me brethren, listen to what I just said, I'm going to say it again cause I know nobody here caught this. Listen, this is the test, is there any pressure, any pressure at all, that can be applied to your physical body or how much pressure does it take, applied to the physical body and/or the carnal mind, what is necessary to blow this person's stability apart.
And I want to tell you, that so long as the personality in that man is the carnal mind, I don't care how powerful a manifestation of good on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that this person is, there is a pressure point that will blow this stability apart, either physical torture, or mental torture, every man on the face of this earth has his breaking point. And it doesn't, you see, amongst men, it makes a difference where your breaking point is, you see. Man will tell you this is a strong man and this man is not a strong man, because this man can take so much pounds of pressure as oppose to this other man. But that's not how Jesus looks at it. Jesus looks at it this way, either you're a natural man, who has a breaking point, and it doesn't matter to him where that breaking point is, or you are a manifestation of the man, Christ Jesus, who cannot be broken, no matter what measure of pressure is applied to the physical body or the carnal mind, check this out, which are expressions of, Satan, and even more accurately, the devil, but that's correct.
Listen, to break a man, you can only break a man, if that man is living out of his devilish mind. For the man who is truly living, for the human being, for the whole person, whose personality is truly Christ Jesus, there is nothing, there is no pressure, there is no pain, there is nothing that you can do to this physical body or to that man's carnal mind, that will cause him to cause his stability to blow apart. Can you hear this? The answer to your problem, no matter what your problem is, is to get into the kingdom of God, which is the man, Christ Jesus, because in him, in the man Christ Jesus, is the spiritual and emotional strength, to hold your whole person together, no matter what pressure the devil can put upon you.
There is no pressure that the devil or the dragon can throw against you, when the man, Christ Jesus is in full spiritual manhood, as your person, and holding and the whole ball of wax together. That's the bottom line. And that's why Jesus said, it doesn't matter how strong you are. It doesn't matter how healthy you are, it doesn't matter how physically strong you are, it doesn't matter how mentally strong you are, it doesn't matter if you're retarded, it doesn't matter if you have emotional weaknesses, the answer to all of your problems is the same thing, and that answer is in the form of a person, his name is Christ Jesus, he wants to be the new man within you. And when that part of your person, which is your true reality, which is your human spirit, joins with that man Christ Jesus, and under the guidance and the influence of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has already overcome this world, grows up to full spiritual manhood and declares his dominion over your whole person and in fact brings the whole ball of wax together, and stands and rules, there is no pressure pain or torment that can be applied to your physical body, or to your emotions, because your emotions are all in your carnal mind, that are going to blow you apart. And that's the bottom line.
So the counsel of the Scripture, and my counsel to you and the counsel to myself, I'm still fighting this war myself, no matter what happens in your life, get up off the floor, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back up into Christ. Get back up into Christ, nothing's worth staying out of him, not your pride, not your rebellion, not your freedom, nothing is worth being cast down from an emotional and mental condition of Christ Jesus ruling in your person. And you will continue to be cast down, and you will be experiencing a continuous experience of being cast down and raised up, cast down and raised up, cast down and raised up, until you the day comes that Christ Jesus reaches that high place, where there is no pressure applied to your emotions or your body, that will cause him to let go of the reigns of your person. We're just waiting for him to grow up, and he grows up through overcoming experiences. And your pride will keep you down there. There has to be one primary goal in your mind to ascend into the kingdom. There's no more shame in the kingdom, there's no more humiliation in the kingdom, there's no more embarrassment in the kingdom, there's no more pain in the kingdom. And I'm going to tell you once again, I am firmly convinced that Jesus of Nazareth who was Christ, felt no physical pain on that cross, it would take the father himself to change my mind, because I don't believe it's true.
I don't believe Hindu Gurus walk on hot coals and nails and don't get hurt, and my God suffered the agonies of a natural fallen man, because they put nails through his hands and his feet, I don't believe it, you want to believe it, be my guest, I don't believe it. Yes?
COMMENT: Isn't it true though that witchcraft, some types of witchcraft have, you can have dominion over your feelings if you're walking on hot coals, hot nails and things like that?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, that's what I'm saying, if the witches can do it, don't tell me my Lord Jesus couldn't do it, that's exactly what I'm saying, that this is my reason for believing that Jesus didn't feel the pain, because there are witches that have power to not feel that pain. Are you telling me that my God was so weak that he had to feel all that pain, when witch doctors have the power to not feel it, Jesus did not feel it, that's my position.
COMMENT: Wouldn't some say that he was in the image of man though, that he had the same...? Because I was told that he was probably just like man, that he had the same feelings I had, but he had a very control of his, he had an excellent control of his emotions, to some point.
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, that's the whole point of what I'm saying, he was a man, but he had a spiritual side to him that was the controller over all of humanity. He had a mind in him and a mind in him which was the son of God, which controlled every aspect of his humanity. Now spiritually speaking, to feel pain is weakness. We're not suppose to be feeling pain, and therefore even though what would have caused pain to you, or what would have caused pain to me, was present in this man Jesus, it didn't cause pain to him, the reason being that he had mind which was God. Can you hear what I'm saying?
COMMENT: So you're saying there's a godly altered consciousness and an ungodly?
PASTOR VITALE: Exactly, altered state of consciousness. He was in an altered state of consciousness. He was, everyone down here in this world, we're in a state of consciousness, which is known as, anybody? Hell. The man Jesus of Nazareth was in an altered state of consciousness, he wasn't in hell, and because he wasn't in hell, even though his arms and legs were pierced, and he was subjected to both physical and mental duress, which would have caused torment to anybody who was in hell, he didn't feel it because his state of consciousness was altered despite all of this was happening to his body and emotions. Because he abode in the heavenlies in the form of Christ Jesus, he didn't feel the pain. I suggest to you, he had an awareness of what was happening, he knew they crucified, he knew that he nails through him. Can you imagine the emotional torment of having people pluck your beard out, and provoke you and string you up and, I mean, not only the physical pain, it must be incredible emotional pain.
I believe he had an awareness of the whole experience, but he didn't experience it in his emotions, and he didn't experience the physical pain, I'm convinced of it, this is the definition of heaven. This is the radical point that confronting the church today, humanity is suppose to be learning about good and evil. The question is the technique by which we are learning it. Are we learning about good and evil by experiencing the pain which results from good and evil, or are we learning about good and evil from a high spiritual perspective which gives us a knowledge of it and an understanding of it without our experiencing the pain of it. God's will I declare to you is for this creation, which is his son, to learn and have a full working knowledge of good and evil without experiencing the painful consequences of being joined to, or as the Scripture says, of tasting of death. God's will is that we should have a full working knowledge of it, without tasting of it.
But there is another way to learn, and that is to taste of it, to actually commit the sin, and actually experience the fruit and the results of it, which is what happened to this creation. It was not God's will, but it is God's will that one way or another, we shall learn, and because of our ancestor's disobedience and rebellion, the way that we're learning is by experiencing the consequences of engaging in sin, but it was not, and is not the father's will, and we still have an example of this down here in hell. I told you this before, down here in hell, we have right and wrong and we have good and evil, everything is in degrees, even though we're down here in hell, our experience can be better or worse, depending upon whether or not we're in submission to God's laws, or whether or not we're in submission to our parents, if we're young people.
You tell your youngsters today, don't go out, don't become sexually active before you get married, don't go out for one night stands, don't experience homosexuality, don't do this. You can AIDS, you can get other venereal diseases, you fool around with homosexuality, you can get caught in the trap, and become a homosexual, you think you can be bisexual, I don't think there's any such thing as bisexuality, you're going to go one way or the other, one's preference is going to dominate in your life. Don't think you're a wise guy, you'll get snared by it. And if you're a wise person, if you're an obedient child, you'll avoid, you'll avoid all of these painful consequences that I'm talking to you about. You'll have a full working knowledge of it, this is how you get Aids, this is one possible way to get caught in homosexuality, or promiscuity, or whatever is going to snare you, you want to take my word for it, don't touch the unclean thing. Don't touch it, and you won't get snared. Or you can go out and touch it, and get snared and cry out to Jesus, and take twenty years of your life, or fifty, or one year of your life, getting cleaned up from this horrible condition you've fallen into. How are you going to learn, through experience or through instruction?
That's what we're all about? That's what's happening down here. Are you going to take counsel, are you going to take godly counsel? Are you going to stay away from the unclean thing? You don't want to, go and get bit. What happens if you get bit? Come on back, I'll clean your wound, the Lord will fix you up, get the poison out of your veins, set you up on your feet, but you didn't have to get bit you see, you were warned. That's the bottom line. Jesus.
COMMENT: I was watching that program on prophecy the other night, anyone watching it in the world would come away with nothing but fear. And the Lord constantly says, "Fear not".
PASTOR VITALE: The basic premises of this exhortation, is that we must learn to rule over our emotions. This is a message that's through out the whole world. It's not only in Christianity, it's all through the eastern religions, and it's all through, it's all through the world, people who are in control of their lives, and raising up their children are helping other people, giving your emotions a free reign will absolutely destroy your life. Discipline is the name of the game. You want to have the best life available to you? You must develop discipline within yourself.
Brethren we are a multifaceted creation, we have both positive and negative forces within us. If the negative forces are given their head, they will destroy us. Now there are some people in the world who are born with the gift of self discipline. An ability to be self disciplined is partially inherited and partially taught in childhood. Different people have different spiritual and emotional heritages, and physical heritages. It could physical. A lack of discipline could have physical elements in it. We're all born with different sets of variables, spiritual, emotional, physical, and the experience that we have as a child being raised up. These are the four elements of variables that make each individual what they are, it's a mixture. It's a mixture of all of these variables, and some people come up to the right of the scale as disciplined people whose life is in order, and some people come up to the left of the center of the scale as a person who just, their emotions just continuously overtake them. Every time I've ever seen this in the world, I see the people who are on the right side of the scale, whose life is in order, who are disciplined and for lack of, the world calls it successful, they have no patience or understanding for the people who are to the left side of the center, who are continuously being ripped up by their emotions.
They say, "Well why don't you get your act together, man, you know, get your act together, stop doing that, just say no." Well you just try and say no when there's a tornado raging in your emotions. Your whole problem is that you never have a tornado raging in your emotions, so you just say no. I've never had a smoking problem, I've never had a drug problem. I tried marijuana once and I didn't like it, I said no, it had no power over me. When I was in the world, I'd have a drink now and then, I said no, it had no power over me, cigarettes had no power over me. It doesn't make me any better than you, all it means is that was not my weakness, everybody has got a weakness. My weakness was in my emotions, kept getting sick, kept falling down and getting sick, because of an inability to deal with the witchcraft that was in my life at a very young age. Everybody's got a weakness.
So what we do in Christ Jesus, is to find that person's weakness so that they can be strengthened. See brethren, you can't be strengthened until your weakness, if you have a problems or problems in your life that are damaging you, in some instances ruining your life, your not going to get very far by treating the symptoms. You can treat the symptoms, there are certain forces in this world that treat symptoms, there are a lot of psychologists that treat symptoms. You go and you pay them fifty or a hundred dollars, whatever you pay them for forty five minutes, and they help you, they give you counsel, you deal with this problem this way, and you deal with that problem that way, but brethren, I'm telling you, and it's not just me, the Lord knows it, all kinds of wisdom throughout the world knows it, unless you deal with the root of the problem, every problem that you solve is just going to be replaced by another problem.
You must deal with the root in you, the spiritual root in you, that produces these problems in your life. I'm telling you brethren, there is no way to deal with the root of the problem in you, until you expose the root. So let's use a natural tree, let's use a natural example, this tree outside my window, it's sick, and the sickness is arising from a problem in the root. What do you have to do? You have to rip the tree, man, you have to expose the root! If you have a kidney problem, if you have a heart problem, if you have an intestinal problem, you have lay bare the organ which is diseased, so that you can treat it. And we do something in this fellowship that not many churches do, some do it, but not many. We expose sin here, not to destroy you, but to repair a damaged diseased root which is producing torment or trouble, on some level in your life. And we're seeking to repair that root so that you can be delivered from an unending cycle of problems which need to be healed, because we're called to peace brethren. We're called to peace, we're called to salvation, and I rebuke this false phony definition in the world, this lie as to what salvation truly is, makes it necessary for me, a Christian preacher, to choose to use the word Nirvana over the word salvation. Because if I use the word salvation, you don't know what I'm talking about.
We're called to evenness, brethren, calmness, peace, victory over every problem appearing in this external world, and you're not going to be delivered from a condition of ceaseless unending problems which cause pain, either in your emotions or your physical body, until the spiritual root, not only that allows these problems in to your life, but actually sets you up for these problems, is laid bare and dealt with. And the Scripture clearly tells us in the book of Leviticus, that houses, houses can have leprosy in the walls. Does anybody not know that this is in the Levitical law? That if leprosy appears on the wall of somebody's house, they call the priest, and the priest looks at it, and he makes a judgment as to whether or not it is truly leprosy, and if it is truly leprosy, he attempts to contain that small area, it's not his desire to tear the house down. The house was made from a series of bricks or blocks made out of mud or clay, they remove that one block from the house. And no one is allowed to live in the house, and the priest comes back after a set amount of time, I don't recall how much it is, and he sees if leprosy is appearing on the other blocks of the house.
Brethren, isn't this what we do in surgery? If you have cancer in your intestines, they cut out a section of your intestines, and then every year you have to go, and they do test to see if the cancer is appearing in another part of your body, it's in the Bible. There's a whole ritual, and it appears in the Bible that the priest goes through, to test and see if it's possible to cut that leprosy out of that house. And I think there's two or three different criteria that they have to meet, or two or three times that the priest goes back, and if the leprosy continues to spread, they burn the house down. And why do they burn the house down? To prevent it from going to the next house brethren.
I'm telling you that the house in the Scripture is a type of men, and the Lord will work with you and the Lord will work with you and the Lord will work with you, so long as he believes that there is a chance of saving this house. Now I want to tell you, now it's in my Bible that there comes a time, that the Lord says, I have made a judgment, that I have removed cancer from you, and I have removed cancer from you, and I have removed cancer from you, and I've sent my priest back, and after all I've done it's still spreading, and I pronounce death upon you, because you are not going to contaminate the man next to you, and you are not contaminate the man next to you, and you are not going to contaminate the man next to you, and I cast you from my house, and my Bible says, "Don't pray for that man, for I've sent destruction upon him, don't try to pray his disease away, don't try to pray him back into the church, because if you pray, you're praying against me."
Let the dead bury their dead, and don't waste your energy praying for the one that I have rejected. But this is the new covenant Sheila, everyone is salvageable, everyone is salvageable, all things are possible with God, don't dispute that, but if the Lord Jesus Christ makes a judgment, I'm not going to suffer with this man any longer, if the Lord Jesus Christ says, "I'm finished with him, you cannot keep him alive. Listen brethren, you're not God, every man is salvageable, all things are possible in Christ, human beings, me, you, we don't give up on anybody ever, because all things are possible with Christ, but God, he can give up on you. Can you not hear the difference. When the Lord gives up on you, when the Lord gives up on a man, and the men down here won't give up, brethren, the Lord just zigged and you zagged. You better give up on the one that the Lord gives up on, or the two of you are going into the ditch.
You're raising your head up against God, you don't like his judgment? Well then you partake of the judgment too. If you don't praise him, he'll raise up these rocks to praise him. He doesn't need you, you need him. He does not have to line up with you, you have to line up with him. And he will not line up with you, and if you don't line up with him, you're the one that's out, not him. Brethren, the basic principle that I started out with in this message, is that we are a creation which has both negative and positive forces in it, the negative forces are typified by the raging sea. She must be controlled by the forces that are positive. The raging sea is unstable, what does instability mean? It means she has no permanent form. She has no permanent form. The permanent form of the man who is in the image of Christ Jesus must rule her, must define her, must control her, must keep her in the godly parameters of the mind Christ, or she will destroy you, as surely as your ears are hearing this message this morning.
We're called to reason brethren, we're called to be rational human beings, of sound mind. Now I taped yesterday's episode of the highlander. At this moment I don't perceive it to have any, did anyone see it? Okay. I don't perceive it to have any deep profound message, you know, if we watch it today, I don't expect to have any extensive comments on it, but I'm definitely going to make it available to you because there is one major principle behind it, that man is suppose to be maturing from the condition where he ruled by his passions into a condition where he is ruled by his rational mind, and it is interesting, I will play it, I will put it on at 6:30, so whoever wants to be here. As I said, I don't have many comments on it, but it's basically the story of a young man, not being able to accept the fact that a young lady that he is interested in does not want the same thing out of life that he wants. But what even goes deeper than that, is that McCleod, who is the hero of the series has a couple of flashbacks of his immaturity, his life times which were immature, in which his emotions got out of hand. And he recalls an experience that he had, where he fell madly in love with a woman, and found out that this woman had deceived him, that she was a married woman. He had plans, it shows you on the TV, he asked her to marry him, and her answer was, "We'll just live for today", or some such romantic thing, she was dishonest with him, he didn't know she was married, and when he came up against her husband, the way he found out that she was married was that her husband who she was separated from, came into town looking for her. And all this man did was state that he was looking for his wife, and McCleod beat his face into bloody pulp and almost killed the guy. And the guy didn't even know what hit him, he just came looking for his wife. He almost killed the man, and after he almost killed him, he went out to their farm, and was trying in every way he could to encourage this woman to leave her husband and come with him, which would have not been the right thing to do.
So the whole point of this, is that there was a time in McCleod's life, when he was so caught in his emotions, that his behavior was one hundred percent destructive, he almost killed an innocent man, who did absolutely nothing to him. And then when he couldn't do that, he almost destroyed an innocent man's marriage, a man who had, you know he had been an honest man. He took this woman, he married her, he made a commitment to her, he was running this farm. He may not have been the most loving romantic man in the world, but that was his wife, and she married him. So we have an episode showing this powerful McCleod at a time when he was not so powerful. And it's very clear if you have eyes to see it, that in the time of his weakness, it was a time that he fell down to his emotions. The time of McCleod's weakness was when he fell down into his emotions. He lost all reason, he lost all reason.
And I want to declare to you, although it didn't show it in this episode, if that woman had left her husband, you see, she had the presence of mind to know that it was wrong to leave her husband. Of course it was wrong to commit adultery and deceive this man, but she had a presence of mind that there was no way she was leaving her husband, that no good could come out of this relationship with McCleod, if it was founded on such an ungodly act, and she wouldn't go.
But in any event, all destruction for humanity arises from emotion. You have to live out of your rational mind, if you can't live out of your rational mind, you have to confess it as sin, it's sin brethren, all weakness is sin. Raging passions are sin. And then it shows you McCleod in another scene, now apparently this experience that he had took place a year prior to this episode, and in this episode he was dealing with the pain in a completely different way. We see a hundred years ago with the flashback, he was dealing with the pain by beating the woman's husband to the point of almost killing him, or by coming out to the farm and begging her to leave this man, which was an outright immoral thing to do, which in fact the man shot him for, except that he rose from the dead. And now we see him one hundred years later, dealing with the pain in a mature way, and the way he's dealing with the pain, well of course I don't recommend that here, this is a worldly program, the way he's dealing with the pain is by doing his exercises.
I don't know what the name of that discipline is, what he does on the program, does anybody know what it's called? Well it looks like a combination of Karate, but he uses the legs, I don't know whether it's called kick boxing or whatever it's called, I don't know. He fights with both his hands and his feet, is that what it's called, kick boxing? Okay. And there are exercises, eastern type exercises that prepare him for this kind of battle. And it shows you now, one hundred years later, he's dealing with the same emotions, because when he tries to help this young couple, where the young man is insisting on a relationship, and the woman, in this episode, the woman really cared for him, but felt that she could not share this life, she didn't want it, and he wouldn't let her go, and there was a conflict between them. And this brought back to McCleod his memory of when he wanted this woman so badly, and he just couldn't have her. And a hundred years ago he fell down into his emotions, he was violent, and actually got himself killed, except that he got up and he walked away, and now one hundred years later, he's dealing with it through these eastern exercises, he's discharging the anger in a constructive way.
Please anybody listening to this tape, I'm not for this kind of eastern religion or anything like that, I'm giving you a principle. He was dealing with the emotion in a manner that was not destructive, and one of the lines that he says while he's doing these exercises, he's thinking to himself and he's saying, "My God, I can't believe the pain is so real", one hundred years later, the pain is so real, one hundred years later, I still want this woman so bad, one hundred years later, I could still taste her, I can't believe it, but one hundred years later he's dealing with the pain in a way that's not hurting himself, that's not hurting the woman, and that's not hurting the woman's family.
So we're talking about maturity here. And it's a very interesting episode, I'll be running it at 6:30, if you'd like to see it. And one other point that I would point out to you, is that the man is so determined to have this woman, even though she doesn't want him, and again it's not a personal rejection, she just can't deal with his lifestyle, and even if it is a personal rejection, it takes two people to make a relationship, you need two people in agreement to have a relationship. And McCleod is called upon to mediate because he's an elder in this program, and his agreement to do what he can, brings up this old memory of when he experienced a similar thing. So when things come to a crisis and he stand between the man and the woman, at the woman's request, McCleod stands between the man and the woman, the young man turns on McCleod, and accuses him of having ungodly motives for intervening between the two of them, and challenges him to a sword dual. McCleod downs the young man and he's in a position where he can cut his head off, but refuses to do it, and remember McCleod is our type of righteousness in this episode, and I think the series is very clear, that the reason McCleod couldn't or wouldn't take his head is that he makes a judgment that this young man is not inherently evil, he is not evil in his fiber, he is just immature, and he is expressing a measure of immaturity that McCleod himself has experienced, and therefore feels there's hope that this young man will mature out this condition. There's no reason to take his head, there's no reason to burn down his house, there's no reason to wipe him out, it's not an evil that's going stay evil, it's an immaturity.
Does anybody not know what I'm talking about? It's not an unredeemable evil, you see. Satan is an unredeemable evil, he is totally incapable of being subjected to the law of God. Therefore he must die to all power that he has and come under the dominion of Christ. That's one form of evil, incapable of becoming good. But this young man, he was capable of becoming good, we're just dealing an immaturity here, he just has to rise up and grow up out of it, and McCleod refused to kill him. He just sent him back out into the world, to have more experiences until he matured enough to deal with situations like this.
COMMENT: Isn't this program like new age teaching and a type of ascended master?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, very much so. It most certainly is a new age program, just as Star Trek is a new age program, but since we don't have any such movies or episodes or books, written out of Christ, that's all we've got, and what you've got is me showing you the spiritual truth in it, and rejecting that part of it which is occult. And now what the church has is this tape, although the other episodes that we watch, we really haven't been recording. The church has no such examples in Christ, so what the Lord has been doing with me for years, is allowing me to watch these new age programs and showing me, what is real and what to reject. And that's what we've been doing, we've watched several of these episodes, and I had hoped that I had made it clear, that the teaching on these episodes on immortality and eternal life, that there are not all correct. You didn't understand that on those other episodes that we watched, that I showed you clearly those parts of the program which line up with the doctrine that we're teaching here, and the parts of the program which didn't line up with the teaching here. You had no awareness of that at all?
COMMENT: My concern wasn't in that area, it was that things getting in our subconscious mind, like certain things that may be in there, that bypass our carnal mind, and go into the unconscious mind.
PASTOR VITALE: So what are you saying, that you don't think we should be having these discussions, tell me what you're saying so I could deal with it.
COMMENT: No, I'm not against these discussions at all, I'm concerned about any of these subliminal cuts getting into our subconscious mind.
PASTOR VITALE: I feel that what you said is incomplete, I don't know how anyone else responds to what you said, but your comment to me, okay, the way I hear it, is a criticism of even using this program for an example, so if that's not true I would like you to clarify that to the group, and I would like any response in the congregation to what she said, I want to know if anyone disagrees with me, I want to know if anyone took it differently, I want to know if anybody took it the way I did. But I just took it, and if it's incorrect, I want to be corrected, I just took what you just said, as a comment which would say, "You shouldn't be doing this."
COMMENT: No, I can see there's good teaching to it and see the benefits of it, but like you said, like even when we sleep, that when we have these teachings, that they go into our spirit. I was concerned about anything going into our spirit. That was my question.
PASTOR VITALE: So you were questioning whether or not we should be studying this episode, is that not true?
COMMENT: Not necessarily that, but maybe praying protection.
PASTOR VITALE: Praying a protection.
COMMENT: That and just really being aware of it.
PASTOR VITALE: Okay, does anybody else have a comment, I would like to know how you heard that comment. Anyone?
COMMENT: I thought that I perceived a questioning of it and of whether we should be seeing it or not because of the subliminal things that are coming in, and that maybe it was fear that this could be happening to her, and others here.
PASTOR VITALE: Okay, so did you take it as a negative or a positive comment, was it a comment that would encourage people to listen to these evaluations or a comment that would discourage people. Was it negative, I took it as a negative.
COMMENT: I didn't take it as discouragement, but I did pick up something negative, you know, and what I picked up was a questioning and behind it I thought it was something wrong and there was also maybe fear.
PASTOR VITALE: Okay, I'd like to hear what everyone else has to say, does anyone else want to comment?
COMMENT: I feel there was a little bit of fear in there also. I felt that we have to take everything that we hear and discern it and judge it.
PASTOR VITALE: Hold it, you're not even hearing what she's saying. Yes, let's start this again.
COMMENT: I thought that there was a little bit of fear in it, and I felt that the fear was of the subliminal messages, not being able to overcome it, you know, with the Christ mind, but to take everything and discern for what it is, and work that way.
PASTOR VITALE: Okay, did you have a comment? Okay, this sister had a comment to me, I perceived it as a comment coming from the congregation that was saying, "We shouldn't be doing this." And I perceive it to be a negative move against the teaching here, okay, and I want to know how everybody took it. Well then you need to know, that if that was not what you meant, it came out as a message saying, "You shouldn't be doing this here. Aren't you scared that if you're doing this here, that people..." Now sister listen, you need to know how other people here what you say, okay. And now we have two other witnesses. This other sister, do you have a comment to make? We have three witnesses that are saying that the way you verbalized this, would have turned people away from this kind of teaching, you need to know that this is the effect that you have on people, and if you didn't mean that, then you need to know that the way you verbalized it, put negative doubts in the people listening. So I'd like to hear what this sister has to say and then we'll talk about, if you'd like to talk, you can go next. What was her comment? Well yes, because I want your comment too. Her comment was a question. Well let's hear what this sister over here has to say and then we'll role it back and you can hear it.
COMMENT: I can agree that I sense that she had a fear, but when she was saying it, I said, Well we have somebody in our ministry that the others don't have, that can explain to us so that we shouldn't have any fear.
PASTOR VITALE: Okay, roll it back and let him hear your comments. Okay, want to try it again?
COMMENT: I just said, doesn't this program have new age teaching and typify a type of an ascended master. And I was concerned about subliminal cuts coming through, but I did see it as a positive thing, and as a teaching thing, just like in a school, you know, you see where they would tell you what to avoid, and yet at the same time, they're telling you how to do it.
PASTOR VITALE: Well okay, now that's fine, so if this was truly what you were thinking, I would like to call to your attention, that you only gave half a message, and if there was somebody sitting in this congregation, who wasn't as spiritually mature as you, or as the people here, okay, that which you said, which was half of what you were thinking, would have entered into their mind and put fear in them, and turn them away from listening to this kind of teaching. But if you completed your thought as you just did, that would have been fine.
COMMENT: But I did say I thought was more positive as a teaching thing, I just saw...
PASTOR VITALE: Okay, well let's hear it, let's roll it back.
COMMENT: I think what I was really asking you, is there a possibility of subliminal thoughts coming through?
PASTOR VITALE: Okay, well I praise God that we got that straightened out, just to the listeners of the tape, we did role it back, and we listened to the whole thing again, and we found out that this sister although very well meaning, only spoke half of what was in her mind, and I pointed out to her that a young disciple could have been damaged by that, and I know that this would be the last thing in this sister's mind to want to damage anybody. So I continue to, now a couple of you here, I've talked to you about this, a couple of you here, that you only say half of what's on your mind, very common in this congregation, and I just would like this to be an example to everyone, which is most of you here, that I've spoken to you about this, half a message can do damage, you've got to speak the whole thought out, okay. And now we're going to take it a little further, you wanted to know if there was any, what did you just say, if there was any danger of it? Okay, this is what I have to say to you, If you abide in fear, you stagnate, and you die. God is using these examples for us up until Star Trek, and more recently, it's been the highlander, with a control. I am the control, I am standing here saying, this is valid, this is not valid, this is the chicken part, and this is the bones part. I'm saying this is what I believe appears in the Scripture, this is what I believe is the new age part of it, and I'm contrasting the two for you, and the fruit of such a teaching, is to build in everyone listening to this, an ability to watch a program like this, and divide the light from the darkness, and recognize what's truth and what's error, and what's of God and what's not of God, and I remind you that God is raising up a son, he's not raising up robots. And we're suppose to be able to go out with fear of nothing. How are we going to minister to new age people, if we're afraid to hear there doctrine?
So in answer to your question, there shouldn't be any danger of it, if you're watching the program under the authority of Christ Jesus, who is appearing in me, okay. And if there's knowledge in me as your teacher, and you're truly listening and Christ Jesus is in you, there shouldn't be any danger in it. How, this is a fear that's throughout the church, how do you expect to minister to anybody if you don't know what they believe, you see. That's what the church world does, it's unreasonable, to go to a Hindu or a Buddhist, or a new ager, an intelligent rational human being, that has a doctrine that they believe in, you're not going to someone that's roaming the streets, you're going to someone who has a doctrine that they believe in, and you're saying to them, your doctrine is wrong, you should believe what I believe in. Well why? Sorry I'm not allowed to discuss it with you, if you don't believe what I tell you, you're going to hell. That's what the church world does, and the whole, one of the major themes in this whole ministry, is that we are being trained to be sons with some knowledge of what other people believe, so that we can give them, the Scriptural answer to their error. And by giving them the Scriptural answer to their error, we now give them a choice. We say, I acknowledge what you believe, I'm not telling you that you're bad, I'm not telling you that you're stupid, I'm not telling you, you don't know what you're talking about, I acknowledge what you believe, I respect what you believe, but I disagree with you on a few points, and these are the points I disagree with you on, and this is why. Now you think about it, and if you want to continue to believe what you believe, we could still be friends, I'm not threatening you with hell.
This is the ministry of the son, sister, and we must be very careful to cast down fear when it's appearing in us, and we must be very careful to not be guilty of putting fear in other people, okay. So you have another question for me?
COMMENT: On a conscious level, I can easily understand that, I was talking about the unconscious level, especially that we're seeing men of God who have been used of God mightily for twenty and forty years, and they're being deceived by this. A Scripture says, In the last days, even the very elect will be deceived. That's where I was coming from.
PASTOR VITALE: I see, well you're talking about men who probably don't have Christ Jesus, they probably just have the Holy Ghost.
And this is again, another major theme of what we're teaching here, that there is a radical difference between the gifts and the calling of God, which are without repentance, and where the Holy Ghost is present, and because they're just the professing church, they're not the true church, and the Holy Spirit cannot defend against subliminal cuts, you're right, but we don't have the Holy Spirit here, we have Christ Jesus here, and he has to defend against subliminal cuts, and if for any reason he doesn't, if somebody in a class like this would receive a subliminal cut and would receive a seed of false doctrine in them, it would have to be a learning experience for them. The Lord would use it in a learning experience, he would probably speak to them and tell them they've received a false seed. If they didn't hear it, he would send me, most likely, or maybe someone in the congregation first in your fellowship, and say, "No, that's a false seed." If that didn't work he'd probably send me, either through preaching or through a personal conversation, to say, No, you've received a false seed, and if they still didn't believe it, the Lord would let them go out and bear the fruit of their error, because at that point, it would be sin. If that person heard it from the Lord, heard it from the congregation, heard it from my preaching, and heard it from me personally, you have received a false seed, and they did not at least say, "Father, if I have received a false seed, please burn it out of my mind, okay, if they've prayed that prayer, the Lord is going to show them the truth, but if they haven't prayed that prayer, then they're guilty of the sin of pride, and they're going to have to go out and bear the fruit of their error.
So that's the whole bottom line, I'm here as a godly control. If you pick up a false doctrine, the Lord is going to expose it in this congregation or to me personally, and I'm here to be a controlling force. If you can say what I just said, "Father if it's true, deliver me from it before it gets any worse," he'll save you from it. If you manifest the sin of pride or if you're in rebellion against me and you think you know more than me, he's going to let you go out and do your thing man, and wherever that false seed leads you, that's where it will lead you. So you see there's no danger in Christ Jesus, there's only the exposure of sin, which results in the maturation of the son, we're growing up from a little seed, we're maturing into the fullness of the stature of the Lord Jesus Christ, through learning experiences and there is no place for fear in this education, I curse it, any fear that came into this congregation, any fear that's in this sister, or any fear that was imparted to anybody here, or any fear that was imparted to anyone listening to the tape, I burn up your seed, and I renounce it in the name of Jesus, and I speak peace and light and fearlessness. They're suppose to be terrified, do you remember that Scripture? The heathen are going to be terrified when they see our fearlessness, because of our faith in Christ Jesus. And anything that's fearful, I burn it up and I cast it into the lake of fire in the name of Jesus. You have another question?
COMMENT: That was a very good point you made about the Holy Spirit.
PASTOR VITALE: The Holy Spirit is not qualified to defend against false doctrine, he's not. Why? Does anybody know, that's an excellent point, why is the Holy Spirit not qualified to defend against false doctrine?
COMMENT: It's not his job, it's not his manifestation?
PASTOR VITALE: Well that's true, but even deeper than that, what's the really logical answer to that, can anybody see that? Well that's true, but I just rebuke this rebellion here this morning, use microphones, all of you. Consider yourself rebuked, okay, this sister just said, because he's a cure all. That's true, did you have an answer to this?
COMMENT: I just wanted to say that I think that he would lead us to Christ, that Christ Jesus is the teacher on that.
PASTOR VITALE: Exactly, but let me make it clearer, the Holy Ghost doesn't have doctrine. Listen brethren, you can only defend, what is the defense against false doctrine? No, give me one word, what is the? Truth. Truth is our defense against the lie, and the Spirit of truth is not in the Holy Ghost. The Spirit of Truth is in Christ Jesus. The Holy Ghost doesn't have doctrine or, let me correct that before someone jumps all over me on that one. The Holy Ghost does not have the doctrine of Christ. The Holy Ghost does have the gospel of the cross, the Holy Ghost will teach you about faith, the Holy Ghost will teach you about laying on of hands, the Holy Ghost will teach you about water baptism, the Holy Ghost is good.
All you devils out there waiting to crucify me, the Holy Ghost is good, but he's limited as to what he can teach you, and the doctrine of Christ is not in the Holy Ghost. The Spirit of Truth is not in the Holy Ghost. The doctrine of Christ and the Spirit of Truth is in the man, Christ Jesus. So therefore the only one qualified to defend against false doctrine is the one who has the truth, okay.
COMMENT: So the Scripture says the Holy Spirit will lead us into truth, which is Christ Jesus being formed in us, is that what you're saying?
PASTOR VITALE: Exactly, the Holy Ghost leads us into truth, the Holy Ghost is not the truth, the Spirit of Truth is a mature manifestation of the glorified man, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost is not there, you can not become twenty one years, how old do you have to be to vote, is it twenty one? Eighteen? Well you cannot become, you cannot arrive at voting age, whether it's eighteen or twenty one until you complete your sixteenth and seventeenth years. The Holy Ghost is the young Spirit of Christ. He is the manifestation of the glorified man, Jesus of Nazareth, who leads us to or who matures us into the Spirit of Truth, at which point, we become a different creature.
What is our natural example? You're seventeen years old, you're sixteen years old, you're sixteen and seventeen year experiences mature you into the mature man, which you arrive at, at eighteen years of age, when the Lord says you're old enough to vote. But at seventeen you're not old enough to vote, but you need your seventeenth year to become a eighteen. Can you hear that? Amen. Now that was excellent, thank you Jesus. Well this was an excellent end to an excellent, excellent exhortation. Brethren, this is the manifestation of the body of Christ, there should be no question that you cannot ask. If it turns out that a question is asked by a wrong spirit, on a rare occasion we had this in Nigeria, the young man, he didn't even know what, that he was being possessed of an ungodly spirit, but I had to ask him to be silent, cause he kept opposing me, and didn't really even understand what he was doing wrong. So I had no choice but to ask him to sit down. But even that, you have every right to ask any question you want to ask, you're entitled to an answer to every question you have, if I have it.
