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COMMENT: I just want to know, what does -- in the Scripture says, He -- they shall drink His blood. You know, what reference -- how does that -- how do you interpret that?
PASTOR VITALE: We know that the Scripture says, when Jesus told His disciples that they must drink His blood and eat His flesh, many turned away from Him because they heard His words with their carnal mind, and they thought He meant cannibalism. They thought He was perverse. They thought He was a cult leader, so they went away. So this is an excellent example to us how the letter killeth. Why? Because they turned away from He who is life Himself.
They turned away from the One who had the power to impart life to them because they heard with a carnal ear, and what He was saying to them was, “You must partake of My life, not the life that you were born with, not the life that you inherited from your parents, not the life that exists because of the blood that flows in our veins, in the human beings’ veins, but you must partake of My spiritual blood or My spiritual life.”
If you wish to enter in, we must become one with Him in the spirit to partake of -- to fully partake of the Kingdom of God. And His blood is not the blood that fell on the earth in Calvary when the man Jesus was crucified. His blood is the spiritual source of His spiritual life. And His blood is spirit.
So that’s what He say [sic]. See, the whole message -- this whole entire message is, we must reject the things of the flesh and start practicing to enter into the things of the Spirit. That is the whole message if I could put it in a nutshell. That is the message.
And the Lord was speaking to me before you came in tonight, and I know it was in one of the Gospels. Does anybody know where the Scripture is where Jesus says, “Or when the Spirit of truth comes, He will convict the world of sin and of righteousness”?
John 16, Verse 7. OK, I guess that was an introduction to my message.
“Nevertheless,” Jesus speaking, “I tell you the truth. It is expedient for you that I go away.” Now, this is the man Jesus. It’s expedient that the man Jesus go away, and He says, “If I don’t go away, the confidant will not come unto you. If I depart, I will send Him unto you.”
And what Jesus is speaking about here is the evolution of this man, and I mentioned it yesterday. Some people are offended at that, but I just ask you to stop and think about it. The man Jesus of Nazareth became Jesus the Christ. He definitely was the Son of God. I don’t dispute that at all, but He was the Son of God in a particular form. God in the form of the man Jesus of Nazareth, who had become Jesus the Christ, and when the Father permitted Him to be crucified and then raised Him from the dead, He did not raise Him from the dead in the same form He was in when He was crucified. He raised Him from the dead in a higher form of life.
So Jesus is saying, “It’s expedient” -- the man Jesus is saying, “I must go away from you as you know me now, so that the Spirit, which I will ascend to, can be imparted to you.” And is this not the message that we were talking about? We touched on it Sunday.
Now, the mind of man -- even the mind of the believer -- we want all of the blessings of the Kingdom, but we want to stay where we are. We want to be human. Most of us want our husbands, our children, our family, our education, our jobs, our fellowships. We don’t want anything to change. We just want eternal life right here. And this is just our human condition. It’s the human mind thinking this, and the Lord is saying, “No.” We must go away from what we are now for us to enter into the greater glory. And this is also part of the message that’s coming out in this hour.
We must change. The Scripture says, “Behold, we shall all be changed.” But for some reason, there’s a message in the church that says that this change will take place after our body dies, and we go up to heaven, but, no, we must change, and we must change here, and the change begins in the spirit. It will affect our soul. This spiritual change will affect our soul and eventually affect our body.
My personal opinion is that the physical change will not take place for at least 1500 years, so we are dealing with a change of spirit. We must exchange our spirit, and I spoke to you yesterday about seeing the -- John saw the souls of those who were beheaded for Christ. We must be beheaded. Our soul must be severed from the headship of the carnal mind, and this cannot take place until a new headship is prepared for us. Why?
Because if the Lord severs our soul from the carnal mind, we would die. We cannot live without a mind. Mind is spirit. The soul without a spirit is nothing. So in this hour, the Father is preparing a new mind. He’s planted it in our hearts, Lord willing, and He’s growing it right in our soul. And we are double-minded, as James said, we have two minds, but one mind is dominant. There was one mind, which is sustaining the existence of this flesh in this hour.
And, brethren, that mind is the carnal mind. And I tell you the truth. There was an exchange going on. The Christ which is being reproduced in you is still growing, and I assure you that the Lord will not wait a moment. He will not waste one moment. From the second the Christ in you is strong enough or mature enough to sustain the life of your flesh, He will behead you from your carnal mind. There is not a doubt in my mind. But for this season at this moment, I don’t think anyone would dispute with me that if a knife were to be plunged into our heart, we would probably die unless we got a miracle from the Lord, and He raised us from the dead. But all nat- -- under all natural circumstances, under all natural laws that we’re living under in this hour, we would die. And the reason for that is that the spirit, which is sustaining our existence in this world is not Christ. It is the carnal mind.
That is why He is our savior. Christ is saving us from our carnal mind. Does not Paul say that there are those who oppose themselves? Because we live out of our carnal mind, we think thoughts and do things, which are against our best interest. That is how we oppose ourselves.
And God’s solution to our problem is to reproduce His mind in us, and for a season, we must abide in a situation whereby we are receiving a revelation of His mind and His life and His glory, and we hear these promises and these words, and yet we hear the sin in our mind. We know. We perceive the sin of our own heart, and we know that if we were struck by a car, we might not rise again. And this is not easy. To see the glory -- to see it and to not be able to lay hold of it.
So this is the condition that we are in now. So Jesus said He must go away so that He can evolve into a higher life form. The man Jesus of Nazareth had the power to heal, to deliver, to supply food. He had the power to do creative miracles, to walk on the water. He did a great deal, but He was not in a form, which would enable Him to save the world. He had to return to pure spirit form so that He could be sprinkling on all of us. One man in Israel, what could He do for people in the -- I guess Nigeria’s closer to Israel than the United States. What could He do for the world?
He was fixed. He was inflexible. He was limited to the physical body that He was born into. So this is an excellent witness that -- an excellent backup to what the Lord has been having me to tell you. We must change, and the change begins with a new mind, but we must know that until the moment of the exchange, until the moment where we are beheaded and a new head is laid upon us, we must be constantly vigilant, knowing that sin is within our own mind, seeking to destroy that seed that has been planted in you. And the seed that’s planted in you, the Christ that is in you, is the manifestation of Christ to you that is savior.
Let me say that again. For Christ to be your savior, He must be growing in your soul. Christ growing in my soul is not your savior. The way God is saving you is by giving you a new mind. For this new mind to save you, it must be fully functioning in you. It must be sitting upon your soul ruling as Lord and sustaining the life of your soul and your body, and before Christ in you can do that, He must grow up from seed to the fullness of the stature of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He must kill your carnal mind.
And this is the truth of Armageddon. I don’t deny that we won’t see signs and wonders in the Middle East and in the world and maybe an antichrist will arise. I wouldn’t say no. I have received very little information from the Lord about physical events. The message He has given me is the spiritual change that is available to men. I don’t believe I have any firsthand information from the Lord about the physical events that are happening or that will happen.
So we must change, and we must understand that if we are to go on with God, it is not necessary to die physically, but we must be willing to lay down the thoughts of our carnal mind, and as He matures in us, He wants us to do more than lay them down. He wants us to partake of their destruction.
And it’s right here in this Scripture. Let me go on. I’ll show it to you how Jesus said it.
John 16, Verse 8. He’s speaking about the [?comforter?] now. “And when He has come -- when the [?comforter?] has come, He will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.” Now what does that mean?
Verse 9, The comforter, when He comes -- and where is He coming? He’s coming into the hearts of men. Let me remind you. “When the comforter comes, He will repro-” -- now, the -- let me back up a little. “He will reprove the world of sin.” And once again, I’m sorry. The Lord gave me this message as I was sitting here. I don’t know whether it’s the Greek word which means age, which would be aeon, or whether it’s the Greek word which means cosmos, which would mean the world system which the individual is, but either word, whichever one it is, what He’s saying is here, that He will reprove the world in you of sin.
The biggest problem with the church today is that they’re looking away from themselves. They want to convert the unbeliever. They want to correct the believer that’s not living like they think she should be living. They want this one to get married. They want that one to change their job. They’re trying to rule the world and the church, and they’re blind to the sin in their heart, and Jesus clearly said, “Stop looking at your brother, and get the beam out of your own eye.” Is that not the instruction of the Lord? Why are we not doing it? Because it’s a Pharisaical spirit in the church that says, “I have the Holy Ghost, and I’m OK now. Let’s get you.” And it’s a lie. It’s a lie.
So when the confidant comes, He will convict the world in you, and the world in you is your carnal mind. The world in you is your carnal mind. Now, there’s another Scripture. It’s either in Colossians or Ephesians where we are told that the church will teach the powers and principalities of the message of God. What does that mean? It means when Christ is formed in you to a measure of maturity where you have a revelation that you have two minds, and you start laying hold of that mind of Christ, you will instruct your carnal mind. When your carnal mind rises up, and it is trying to convince you to hate someone, you will rebuke it. If your carnal mind arises and you want to retaliate against someone, Christ in you will say, “No, I will not obey you. This vessel has two minds, but this vessel serves the Living God.”
I had an incident with a sister just a couple of days before I left. Something that was an interaction between us, and she thought in her- -- she thought that I had mistreated her, and she walked away from me. We talked about this later. That’s how I know this. And she said to me, “You know, I thought in my mind,” the sister said, “I thought in my mind, ‘I forgive Sister Sheila.’ And as soon as I thought it, I heard a voice saying, well, what would you want to forgive her for?” Because, you see, I didn’t do anything to her that was ungodly, but I did say something to her that stirred her pride in her, and the pride in her accused me of sin. This is what -- if you have not already entered into it, this is what you’re being prepared for. This is Armageddon. She was amazed. She said, “As soon as I forgave you, I heard a voice saying, what are you forgiving her for?” Two minds.
It’s very exciting once you get into it. But it’s a battle. It’s a battle because your carnal mind operates in your emotion, and it’s not just a quiet little voice saying, Hate that person. It’s a ra- -- it can be a raging passion rising up from the depth of your being saying, Retaliate against that person. Be envious of that person, and then pride moves in, and pride justifies sin. Pride will, if you yield to it, will give you a reason that says it’s all right to think evil of that sister. You see, because Jesus says that even if someone has truly wronged you, there is no justification for thinking evil of our brother. It’s very simple, but the way Christians justify this behavior is amazing, and the greatness condemnation is unto the ministry. The greatest condemnation is unto the ministry. There is no justification for hatred, for envy. We are to throw ourselves down on our faces and say, Dear, God, help me to rip this emotion and this thought out of me, and let me not sin. And this is Armageddon. This is the battle.
So when Jesus tells His disciples that the Spirit of truth is coming, He will reprove the world in you of sin. He is going to reveal your carnal mind to you, and we have a whole world and a large part of the church world thinking that they’re without sin. I don’t know if you have this doctrine in Nigeria, but we most certainly have it in the United States that now that we have the Holy Spirit, we have no sin. And I had a minister tell me just very recently, just a few months ago, “Do you mean you think you have sin?”
[UNINTELLIGIBLE] He was a very kind man. That was what he had been taught, and he was amazed when I told him, Yes, brother, everything that is not of faith is sin. Every thought that does not come forth out of the mind of Christ, no matter how harmless it appears, is sin.
Now, we must understand that if I asked Sister Margaret [SP] to turn the fan down, that that thought did come out of my carnal mind. That wasn’t Christ, but that does not make me a wicked sinner. This concept of sin means that our very nature is such that we do not think with the mind of Christ, and that is the sin. The fact that the mind which is sustaining is carnal is sin. We cannot do anything but sin. So there’s no condemnation in this message. This message is designed to enlighten you that the war has begun. And the end of this war is the beheading of your soul. The deliverance of your soul from the headship or the rulership of the carnal mind, which condition of carnality makes it impossible for you to be righteous.
Now, we find when a spirit of pride is operating and he hears this message -- and this is all enlightenment. I’m never condemning anybody. If there is a spirit of Chr- -- pride present, it will rise up and reject this message, and it will either accuse me of condemning the person for som- -- I don’t condemn you. I speak a fact. Every human being on the face of the earth is a sinner. That is why we need a savior. Isn’t that the basic message that you heard when you first came to the Lord? You’re a sinner, and you need a savior. So what happened? Somewhere along the line, as we increased in Christ, and as we studied so much, we decided we weren’t sinners anymore. Where did this teaching come from? Is -- do they teach that here? Is that message here? No, it’s not here yet. It will get here. It’ll get here.
[INAUDIBLE]
Oh, it is here? OK. Just amazes me. We are sinners. Saved by grace. And that grace is the mind of Christ in you, the hope of glory. Why is He our hope? Because our hope is that Christ in you will decapitate the carnal mind from your soul. You see, the Christ in me cannot do it for you.
If I -- if Jesus stood here right now in full stature, He could not sa- -- well, now, I don’t want to be misunderstood. If your body died, yes, He could raise you from the dead, but He could not deliver you from your servitude to the carnal mind because what you need for deliverance from your servitude to the carnal mind is a new mind. He would have to first impart to you a new mind. It wouldn’t just be a question of laying hands on somebody and say, “Be delivered.” Something must be added to us. And that which must be added to us is not an object that can just be put on our shoulders. This gift of the mind of God must be interwoven with our carnal mind. We touched on this Sunday. We’re not to be robots. It is a question of having experiences in God. The Lord wants us to know that we have two minds.
He wants us to actively choose righteousness over evil, and if we’re overcome and we do the evil, He wants it to happen with us fighting every step of the way. If your problem is alcohol, just for example, as you walk to the liquor store, He wants you crying out the whole way saying, “Jesus, I can’t help myself. Jesus, help me.” As you put the bottle on your mouth. He wants you to be crying out, “Jesus, forgive me. I cannot take the victory.” And if your heart is such as this, I don’t -- I can’t promise you how long it will take, but the victory He will give you. He wants a humble people that knows [sic] that He is the Son of God, and next to Him, we are a worm. Humanity is a worm next to Christ, and the provision that He has made for our deliverance is a new mind, which when it grows to full stature, will kill our old mind and replace Him on the throne of our soul.
So we must change to receive the gift that God -- the gift of life that God has for us. We must change, and the change begins in the spirit. And as Christ begins to mature in us, He will have a beneficial effect on our soul. Our soul is our personality. It will improve. Any harshness in it will soften. It is a growth experience. But up unto the point that we are beheaded, up until the very last second that the carnal mind is the king on the throne, we’re still sinners, and we’re still not saved. We have been reconciled. We have a relationship with God. His Spirit is upon us, and His grace is within us, but His grace has a work [sic] to do. It’s not just a gift that you put in my hand. When Jesus gives you His grace, now His grace has a job to do. When He gives you His Holy Spirit, His Holy Spirit has a job to do. That job is to cause Christ to be conceived in you. When Christ is conceived you, Christ has a job to do to wage war against and, ultimately, utterly destroying your carnal mind.
When your mind becomes Christ, your soul will receive life. All of this is an individual experience. I believe in approximately 1500 years from now, when everyone on the face of the earth has the mind of Christ and a renewed soul but still a physical body such as we’re in now, it will be one corporate act of the glorification of the creation, and we will come out of the body together. That’s my opinion. You can disagree with me. I don’t -- I can’t really show you Scripture for it, but it’s my opinion.
OK, so let’s go on with this. We must change because when the Spirit of truth comes, He is going to reprove the carnal mind in you of sin. He’s going to convince your carnal mind that it’s a sinner. We have carnal minds all over the church and all over the world that says, I’m not a sinner. And there’s nothing that you can do to help this person. They must be convicted of their sin. And I remember when the Lord first began to show me the great discrepancy between confession and repentance. I had never seen it. To me, they were very close together. You confess, and you repent. Until He brought people into my ministry that couldn’t repent, and then He showed me that the reason they couldn’t repent was that they couldn’t confess their sins, and with one person, I spent at least two years working with them to help them confess that they were doing something that was ungodly, and then the repentance didn’t come forth for a quite a while later.
See, I personally never had any problems confessing my sins, so it was a new experience for me, but everybody has their own area of weakness. So when the Spirit of truth comes into your heart, enters into your carnal mind, the first thing He’s going to do is convict your carnal mind that he’s the sinner and that Christ is righteous.
Now, we have a whole church world full of Pharisees that don’t know this. What happened? Well, maybe they don’t have the Spirit of truth, and I want to suggest to you that the Spirit of truth is not the Holy Spirit. Why do I think that the Spirit of truth is not the Holy Spirit? Because I know thousands of people that have the Holy Spirit that aren’t convicted of their sins.
Now, I remind you that there’s one Spirit, many administrations thereof. The function of the Holy Spirit -- well, let me tell you this. The Holy Spirit is the glorified Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the male seed. He comes with gifts as a man courting a woman. He comes with joy and blessings to draw you to Him, dancing and singing, and if you have financial problems, He might help you. He can bring healing to your flesh. He can cast a demon out of you. I’ve been saying for many years, the Holy Spirit is curative. He is not defensive. I have never seen Him protect anybody from getting sick. I’ve been suffering with infirmity for years. He raises me up every time. They all predicted I was going to die, and every time I didn’t die, but He never stopped me from getting sick. It’s a different administration of the Spirit that hinders infirmity. I believe Paul had it. The snake bit him, and he threw it off. The poison couldn’t touch him. It’s a different administration of God’s Spirit, and I just want to suggest to you that if the Spirit of truth were the Holy Spirit, we would have a church world that was convicted of sin.
So I’d like to suggest to you that the Spirit of truth is the Spirit that is in Christ. It is the manifestation of the Spirit of God, which is in Christ. Now, the Holy Spirit comes to you. He causes your spirit. He joins with your spirit, so that there is a conception, and Christ is conceived and starts to grow, and in Christ, there is a Spirit. Christ is the mind of God revealed through man. And it’s made up of three elements: the Father, the Spirit, the human spirit of the man and the offspring, which is Christ. And the administration of the Father that is in this threefold cord is the Spirit of truth, and it is that Spirit that will convict your carnal mind of sin. Christ is the warrior. The Holy Spirit is not a threefold cord. The Holy Spirit comes and has a relationship with you. There is no union. There is no penetration. There is no conception. It is the same manifestation of Christ that existed at the beginning of time, and this manifestation of Christ is capable of being killed by the carnal mind. Twofold cord.
It’s the anointing that was on natural Israel. Well, it was a twofold cord that was on natural Israel. It was a different manifestation of the twofold cord, but it was a twofold cord manifestation of Christ that was on natural Israel. That is how they lost the anointing.
The threefold cord, which is a manifestation of Christ, can never be destroyed because, if you have a Christ in you, that is a threefold cord. It is this experience, this condition existing in you, means that Christ in you has been raised from the dead. Christ has been raised from the dead in you, and Christ being raised from the dead dieth [sic] no more.
A manifestation of Christ, which exists because of a relationship or because of reconciliation with the Father, is not a resurrection of the dead. Or let me put it this way. It’s a temporary resurrection of the dead, and the carnal mind keeps killing Him. Christ has been standing up in this world ever since the fall. In a twofold cord manifestation. And the carnal mind in some man, maybe some man or some group of men, rises up and kills Him. But this is about to change. We saw one man in whom Christ was raised from the dead. We are about to see a firstfruits company, and when Christ is raised from the dead and, therefore, incapable of being killed again, and this situation is about to spread across the world, and the ultimate end of it is the ultimate defeat and beheading of the carnal mind from the entire creation because the carnal mind is a robber, and he has stolen God’s creation. And he’s sitting on the throne, which is God’s, and he’s sitting in the temple of God calling himself God, and he must be exposed by the light and the burning and the fire, which is Christ in you. And as soon as he’s exposed, the Christ in you will destroy that wicked one.
It must be an individual experience. The only thing I or any other preacher can do for you is to impart spirit and wisdom that will result in a conception in you. [?Then?] I can add to you and give you nourishment, but your salvation is in the Christ, which is growing in you. And I remind you, only God giveth the [?increase?]. One can mortar. One can sow. One can plant, but only God giveth [?increase ?], so if any man be puffed up in pride and think that he’s about to steal this gift of God, he will surely be ashamed. Pride will never enter into the Kingdom, won’t get in.
OK. So when Christ begins to be formed in you and is mature enough to start functioning, the first thing He’s going to do is expose to your world that there’s sin in you, and the next thing He’s going to do is reveal righteousness. He will convict of righteousness. This is a twof- -- the second side of the twofold coin. When Christ is revealed in you, He will expose the sin in your heart, and He will reveal to you the righteousness of God, and you will see that you are just a sinner, helpless.
And we have a church world filled with people that think that they have power, and they don’t remember the Scripture that says, Jesus, that I did nothing but what my [?father?Father?] told me to do. There is no righteousness in the fallen man. There is no righteousness in us. We must seek God for every action that we take, and we see a spirit of pride in many instances overtaking the church world. They think they know what’s best for you. They think they know what’s best for me. They think they have the answers to everybody’s problems, and then they go forth, and they try to bring their answer to pass. This is a spirit of pride, and when the Spirit of truth comes, God will clearly distinguish between this error of the carnally minded Christian and the Christian in whom the mind of Christ is functioning actively, revealing righteousness.
So what we have in the church today are two orders of Christian, and I hope [?you understand?youins?], I’m not against anybody. We’ve got to have this information. You’ve got to have it. God loves everybody. He’s going to convict everybody. He’s going to do it for everybody, but the way that it’s happening is that a church world has been raised because He has imparted His Spirit to us. We have the church as we know it, and one by one, like an early tomato on a tomato plant, the fruit of God is appearing in a believer, and when that believer starts to manifest, he is of a different spirit. He is of the Spirit of Christ, and the rest of the church is a carnal man who has received the gift of the Holy Ghost, and their thinking is as opposite when it comes to spiritual matters as the flesh, which lusted against the Spirit.
Now, remember, I said, when it comes to spiritual things your thinking is contrary, one to the other, and frequently, the carnally minded Christian, no matter how well-meaning he is, perceives the spiritual Christian to be out of order, and almost invariably, the spiritual Christian is persecuted.
But Jesus said, “They persecuted Me, and they will surely persecute you. Happy are ye if ye are persecuted for righteousness sake.” So we see a church today which has begun to bring forth the fruit of Christ, and we see the persecution coming forth from within the church.
And as I told you yesterday, it will come forth from your own household. This is a battle which you will only win by cleaving unto Christ, praying without ceasing and believing God to send you godly counselors and wisdom from within yourself, knowing that if He has called you, that He is surely able to perform or to complete the work that He has begun in you, and fear is never of God, but we must know this truth, that there are Pharisees in the church today whose mind is carnal, and therefore, diametrically opposed to the thinking of the spiritual man. We are not to harm him. We are not to try to change him. We are not to come against him. We are not to do anything that our Father does not tell us to do, and in this hour, the major thrust of the move of God, if you are spiritual, is to bring Christ in you to maturity.
Now, this is a big trial for many people that have been actively engaged in praying healing and praying deliverance, evangelizing, giving out tracts, ministering, and God brings them into this kind of a ministry, and He says to them, “Well, you could stop doing all that now. I want you to lend yourself to study and spiritual ministry, and I want you to start examining your own heart, and I want you to seek me about your personal program for the exchange of minds that will take place in you, and there may not be any prayer for the sick or for the infirm for a season because you’re human and you’re restricted, and there’s only 24 hours in the day, and you have wives and husbands and children and jobs, and I want every spare second that you have because I expect this firstfruits company to appear on this earth as rapidly as possible.”
And if pride is manifesting in you, examine yourself. If pride is examining -- is manifesting in you, you will -- this is what He will be saying to you. This can’t be God. Christians are called to pray for the sick. Christians are called to spiritual warfare. Christians are called to deliverance. What do you mean? Come to a meeting where you just learn and examine yourself and wage a warfare in yourself. How selfish.
This is the carnal mind of man manifesting pride. When I tell you, God is raising up an army, and He’s not sending that army forth until you’re fully prepared and armed, and if you’re putting all of your attention outside of you, you are not being prepared.
So when Christ begins to appear in your mind, first, He exposes sin. He reveals the truth about your carnal mind. The second thing He does is convince the world of righteousness. He convinces your carnal mind that Christ is righteous, and another way of expressing this is that you will be able to distinguish between your carnal mind and Christ. When Christ begins to be formed in you and begins His work in you, the result of it is that you shall achieve an ability to bring every thought into captivity, to lay hold of every high imagination, to examine it and accurately determine what spirit has produced this thought, and therefore, you can decide what to do with it. If it’s carnal, you kill it, or you cry out to God to help you to kill it. And, of course, the third thing that will happen when the Spirit of truth comes to you is that the prince of this world will be judged. So when Christ in you can fully discern the sin in you and starts to attack it, that is the judgment of the Prince of this world that is in your mind.
So when the Spirit of truth comes to you, the end of it is that you go -- you will be beheaded so that Christ can sit on the throne which is rightfully His. This is called the White Throne Judgment, and it’s really not all that terrible except that if we have pride, it becomes painful. Some -- for some people it’s easier than others. So just keep your mind on the glory that God is promising you. That in -- through submission to the death of your own desires and wants, He will pour great glory through you, but there is a period of training where you cannot see it.
So the Lord says, “He will convince the world of judgment because the Prince of this world is judged.” That means you and everybody who has an opportunity to interact with you and has any ability to discern at all that there is something different about you, that you do not react like other people react. This is an indication that the Prince of this world is under judgment, and what does the word judgment mean? It means restriction. It means a warfare that results in his being caged and restricted and restrained. We must take our carnal mind captive. Paul says take every thought captive. Well, I don’t think that’s really clear. We don’t really understand what that means. We must take our carnal mind captive. He must be utterly restrained.
I had a dream one many years ago before I had any idea that I would be a teacher. I was sitting in a room, and there were many people all sitting on chairs, and there was this terrible noise. I was trying to teach, and there was this racket going on. And I cou- -- I started looking for it, and finally all the way at the end of the row of chairs, there was this -- I think it was a man, and he was yelling on the top of his lungs, obviously trying to drown out what I had to say, and I laid hold of him, and I opened the door, and I throw him out, and I slam the door. Brethren, that’s the carnal mind. He ma- -- puts up a smoke screen. He makes every kind of noise that he can so that you cannot hear Christ in you because, you see, Christ doesn’t shout.
If you have an inclination because of pride or because of not having heard this word to respond to your carnal mind instead of Christ, He will let you follow your own path until you receive a revelation that something must surely be wrong, and when you cry out to God, asking Him what is wrong, where did I take a wrong turn? He’ll tell you, “Do you remember?” It could be back five years ago. “Do you remember a voice told you to do something? Or I sent a believer to you to tell you to do something? And you made a judgment that this was not God speaking through this believer. Do you remember when that happened? Guess what? It was me, and you made the wrong choice, but it’s not too late. Confess your sin, repent, and I’ll restore you.”
See, God won’t fight with you. Your own sin will correct you. The results of your wrong choice will bring you to correction. We must understand the mind of God. He has come down to our level, only to a certain measure, and He will come down no further. We must now begin to ascend unto Him and unto His ways. We cannot force Him to relate to us in a way that we are comfortable with. You see, His ways are not our ways. He is Spirit. We are soul. If we want to receive of Him, we must make changes to receive of the way He operates. We must learn as much of His ways as we can, and one of the lessons is that He will not fight with your carnal mind.
I have such a strong revelation of this that when I have to make a decision, I pray as thoroughly as I can. I go before that Lord, and I say, Father, let my carnal mind be paralyzed. What is Your will? Let me hear Your instruction. Let me hear Your truth. Let the enemy be destroyed. And I will go pray along these lines, and my final words to the Lord is, Father, I have done all that I know how to do. I’m just dust. I truly desire righteousness and Your will in my life. From this point forward, the responsibility for me hearing Your truth is now in Your hands.
And He has been so faithful to me. Once or twice I have made a wrong decision, and He has come back and told me again, a very quiet voice, very -- right back here, because He knows that my heart is really towards Him. But He won’t fight with believers going down the wrong path. We will learn from our experiences. Our motive is a very important factor in taking wrong turns, and if you don’t -- if you cannot discern your own motives, ask the Lord to help you. If your motive is selfish, there’s a 99 and 99 and 100th percent chance that God didn’t tell you to do it.
I know we have a lot of believers thinking that -- do they say your King’s kids here in Nigeria? Did you ever hear that? [?Got?] your King’s kids, and I have one woman. She’s a dear woman. I love her, and she’s not doing what God has told her to do, and she comes by every once in a while, and she says to me, “Oh, the Lord understands me. He knows what I need. He knows why I’m doing what I’m doing.” And I just look at her, and not too long ago, she came to me and said, “You know, I had a strange dream.” And in short, the interpretation of the dream was, you are about to be left behind, and I interpreted the dream for her, and she received the interpretation that God said to her in a dream, “You are about to be left behind.” So I went a little further. I said, Sister, you know the Lord is at the bottom of your list of priorities. And she said, “I don’t think so.” And I said, Well, that’s why we’re having this conversation. You don’t think so, but He does. And after this whole conversation, she’s still not doing what He told her to do.
So our motive is most important. Why are we doing things? We must check out our motive, and if we’re telling ourself [sic] that God told us to do it and He didn’t, we are the loser because God will only take so much, and if you think that He’s babying you, like this precious sister, you are about to find out that He’s not babying you anymore.
How we will convince her of that, I don’t know, but I know I had an experience with God many years ago. He wanted me to do something that I didn’t want to do. I cannot even remember what it was that I wanted -- that I didn’t want to do. But He came to me, and He said, “If you don’t do it.” There was some kind of a battle. Most Christians don’t like confrontation. He says, “If you don’t do it, I will leave you for carrying on the banks of the Jordan.” And I said, You didn’t say that to me, Lord. I’m your beloved. You said that to me. I was really shaken up, and you know, He never answered me. He said what He had to say and that was it. And I got up and I ran to do what He wanted me to do.
He may baby you for a season, but the time of winking is over. He will have His church without spot and without wrinkle, and He will have His people in not only obedience but in an attitude of obedience, listening for His voice. Not saying, I heard two voices, and one was louder, and I thought it was You. Or, God always speaks first. Satan comes second. Try the spirits, brethren, because every spirit is not of God. But have a pure heart to do the will of God.
So if you are in an attitude of thinking of God is here to bless you, your motive is totally wrong, and almost every decision you make will be in error. God is not here to bless you. We are here to serve God. God has need of us. He has made a judgment that He will appear in His -- in man, in His creation. He wants to appear in us. And He will do it. And He’s bringing a firstfruits company right now, and after they stand up, severe judgment will fall on the remainder of the church.
And in Revelation, Chapter 15, where it says, “And there stood the angels with the seven last plagues filled with vials holding the seven vials holding the seven last plagues, seven vials filled up with the seven last plagues of God.” When we studied that translation in the Greek, what it’s really saying is, “There are the seven angels themselves filled up with the wrath of God, such a powerful manifestation of Christ in them that it was flowing out of them, and wherever the power of God contacts sin, judgment takes place.”
So He’s winking at the church world, and they think they’re safe, but they’re not safe, so let’s be a member of the firstfruits company. Let’s be faithful to God and recognize that He is first and that we are second, that He is wise and that without Him, we are fools, that He is everything, without Him, we are nothing, and that He is not here, like some lesser god, to bless us and to back us up with spiritual power so that we can perform whatever our carnal mind decides we would like to perform.
Thank God the Lord is not a man. We insult Him greatly. Jesus is merciful.
So, after the Spirit of truth convicts us of sin and of righteousness, He will judge the Prince of this world in our mind, and Jesus says, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” Why could they not bear them at this point, and why would they be able to bear them later on? Why did Jesus say unto Peter, “You will betray Me three times, but at a future time, you” -- I’m not quoting these [?exact?] to [?you’ll?] be stronger. Because the disciples that Jesus is speaking to did not have Christ being formed in them.
The spirit of adoption had not yet been poured out. The provision for Christ to be formed in the individual was not available or was not made available to men until after the ascension. It is the glorified spirit of Jesus Christ that enables Christ to be reproduced in the heart of the individual, and when He is reproduced in our heart, we receive spiritual strength, which is like unto God’s.
So if you -- if there’s something that the Lord exposes you to that you cannot bear now, maybe you’ll be able to bear a year from now. Maybe He will start to be reproduced in you and lend His strength to you. You have to have Christ in you to hear the words of God. The carnal mind will always reject the words of God. Only Christ in you can discern Christ in me.
In one place, some believers accused Paul of not being in the faith, of not manifesting God to them, and He said, “You better examine yourself, brethren, and find out if you’re not reprobate.” Becau- -- what he was saying to them was, if you can’t recognize God in me, maybe Christ isn’t in you.
And the angel told Daniel -- I think it’s in Chapter 10 maybe. I may be wrong. I think it’s Daniel, Chapter 10, “That only the Spirit of truth in a man will recognize the Spirit of truth.” You’ll never believe the words of God if His life isn’t in you. All you have is the Holy Spirit. You’ll never receive this message. That’s what He’s saying. You’re incapable of it, but in accordance with the parable of the sower, your ground is not good ground, and further to that parable, it would indicate to me that there are some people who have the Holy Spirit or maybe don’t even have the Holy Spirit. You know, this is a very intellectual message. There are some people that don’t even have a born again spirit who are attracted to it because knowledge [?puffeth?] up. And then there are some people who do have the Holy Spirit, but who have not conceived Christ. A seed might fall on bad ground, and it might even sprout, but then Jesus tells us, when the Son arises, when Christ starts to grow in your soul, you won’t be able to bear it. When the persecution that comes against you because Christ is in you comes against you, you won’t be able to stand because there’s no root in you. That means the Christ that’s being formed in you isn’t really joined to your spirit. It’s the same manifestation that was in Israel and that was at the beginning of time. It’s a Christ in you that is a twofold cord that when the carnal mind comes against you to persecute you, the carnal mind is strong enough to destroy. That’s what Jesus is say- -- is telling you. The immature, twofold cord anointing of Christ will not defeat the carnal mind. Maybe he’ll have one -- a victory in one battle. I can’t tell you that that wouldn’t happen, but the overall war -- in overall war, in outright war between the carnal mind and the manifestation of Christ, which is a twofold cord, will find victory with the carnal mind. It’s already happened twice. When the creation fell and with Israel.
So, for the truth to be in you, you must have the good ground to be saved. You must have the good ground. You must have Christ to receive the mature blessings of God. I don’t deny that God blesses people who have received the male seed but who have not yet conceived, but it’s the blessing of the carnal man. There is more. I don’t put that down. I don’t dispute it. I don’t deny it, but don’t you want more? Well, if you want more, you have to follow God’s requirements. You cannot tell God, I want more, but I want You to do it my way because He’s just going to pass over you.
And I want to tell you, speaking about Passover, that the angel of death is about to appear on the earth. The spiritual fulfillment of the Passover that took place in Egypt is about to take place in our lifetimes, without a doubt in my mind, and God is saying unto, “Slay the Passover lamb and put the blood on the door.” What does this mean? The sacrifice, brethren, is our own carnal mind. Let Christ be exalted in you. Slay your carnal mind, and let Christ, the blood of the life of Christ be showing on your person. Because in the near future, the angel of death is passing over the earth, and he is about to slay the carnal minds of men because Christ will be enthroned in the earth. He will be exalted in the heart of every man on the face of the earth, and He will put down His enemy and utterly destroy Him, and if the mind of Christ has not been developed in you and is not ready to sit on the throne of your heart, it will result in the end of your life. Don’t let me frighten you. It’s not my intention to frighten you. I’m telling you of things to come. God has promised us eternal life. He has said unto us that He is going to destroy our enemy. Our enemy is a mind that thinks sin, and the judgment for sin is death, and the Lord is about to destroy this mind so that a righteous mind can take its place, which will impart life to us.
Be ye prepared for the exchange of minds lest ye live out the rest of your natural life and cease to exist. I’m not talking about torture or hellfire and damnation. Eternal life is being provided to man in this hour. So the Scripture says, if you blaspheme the Holy Ghost, you will not be forgiven in this age or in the next. Does that mean that God is a vindictive, merciless, punitive God that will punish you forever for rejecting Him? No, brethren, God is saying to you, The Holy Ghost is the provision, which will bring forth the blood of the Lamb in you that will cause the angel of death to pass over you. I offer it to you. If you won’t take it, you have separated yourself from me in this age and in the next.
Brethren, it is our sin which separates us from God. He desires all man. It is our pride, which rejects God, which separates us from Him. God is not a punitive God. He is a righteous God. He does execute judgment against His enemy, and His enemy is the carnal minds of men. His enemy is not a nation. His enemy is not a race. His enemy is not a sex. His enemy is not an individual. His enemy is spiritual. And that spiritual enemy is the mind of fallen man. Wherever He’s appearing, He will do the same thing. In the United States, in Nigeria, in China, anywhere you go where Christ is appearing, the carnal-minded man will be hating Him, persecuting Him and trying to destroy Him. Jesus said it. Why? Because on some basic, instinctive level, the carnal mind knows that if that Christ gets on you, it’s his death -- gets on the man that he’s in, it’s the end of him.
You see, a lot of Christians take this walk very lightly, but this walk is not light. We are living in very serious days. The carnal mind is about to be wiped off the face of the earth. This age is coming to an end. What does that mean? Will the world be destroyed? The physical world, will it be destroyed? No. The government of this age is about to be displaced. The spiritual government. Every physical government that exists in this age has been established by God. Sometimes that’s hard to believe, but that’s what the Bible says. God has permitted it, no matter how competent or incompetent. For His purposes, He has permitted it, and there is much corrupt government everywhere all over the world, because the age is corrupt, but when the new age comes in -- and what is the new age? It is the mind of Christ. All governments will be righteous, and eventually, there will be no political government. When every man on the face of the earth is totally governed by an internalized Christ, there will be no need for government. We will all do righteousness. Can you imagine driving down a road with everyone doing righteousness? It’s amazing. The ultimate government is Christ in you, the hope of glory. The ultimate of everything is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
So when this mind that was in Christ Jesus, when it’s in you, these things shall come to pass. OK, going over Verse 13: “Howbeit when He the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all truth, for He shall not speak of Himself, that’s of His own carnal mind, but whatsoever He shall hear -- hear from the Father, shall He speak, and He will show you things to come.”
The true Spirit of truth does not bring forth doctrine or wisdom or any form of knowledge out of the carnal mind of man. The Spirit of truth is coming out of the mind of God.
How can we have so many diverse doctrines in the church today? How can this be? Many people stay away from the Christian church because of this issue. They say, You’re divided. This makes no sense at all. What is the doctrine of your God?
Well, the answer is, we have many doctrines coming out of the carnal minds of men today, and they write books and they preach and they teach, but when the Spirit of truth starts to come forth in you, you will recognize truth wherever it’s manifesting, not only in a preacher, in a brother, in a sister, in another individual. It doesn’t have to be doctrine.
Sometimes God will send somebody to you to say to something to you. You may be crying out to God over a problem in your life. He can send a heathen, a nonbeliever to you. And this also is not taught commonly. This is an important thing to know. If you are crying out to God for some form of technical knowledge, you’re having a problem in your life, you need advice, you don’t know where to get it, God can send a nonbeliever who has this knowledge to you to give it to you.
If you feel that God can only bless you through believers, that is -- I ask you to pray about that because it is not a true thought. I knew a man who was preaching that once. Choose the Christian lawyer. Don’t choose anyone for competency. Just choose the Christian. God will speak to him. Well, brethren, God speaks to unbelievers also. God spoke to Pharaoh. God spoke to Cyrus. God spoke to [?Articirses?]. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t restrict yourself like that. God is not restricted. If you have a legal problem, if you have a medical problem or if you have an economic problem, seek God and go wherever He directs you for your counsel.
It was a disaster in this church with this Christian lawyer. It was a disaster. Amongst other things, one young married couple purchased a home, and one year later found out, they didn’t own it. They put all of their savings into it, and they were bankrupt. They had to give up the house. It wasn’t theirs.
God has not called us to be fools. He has called us to be intelligent, educated, informed and humble before Him, open to hearing His voice wherever it comes from, and another thing you might be interested to know is the Lord has shown me, He will frequently speak through a natural authority depending on what your question is. If you have a question of God about your family life that you really don’t know the answer, He may speak to you through an unsaved father. When it comes to the natural family, He will definitely speak through an unsaved husband. This is his family. When it comes to your children, He will definitely speak through an unsaved husband.
He moves through natural authority. We have to know these things. We have to be able to hear His voice wherever It’s speaking. Otherwise we go before Him and say, how could this happen to me? Why didn’t God save me from this? Well, God spoke. You didn’t hear Him.
Had someone call me up just the other week. Eight months she’s been out of a church. Eight months. She finally made the decision to come to our meetings, and she said, “But you know, for eight months, I’m praying and praying and praying and praying, and God didn’t tell me to come to your meetings, but since He hasn’t spoken to me, and I miss church, I decided to come.” I said, Sister, He told you to come here. I knew He told you to come here, but you had to know it. There was nothing for me to do until you know it. I said, You just didn’t hear the -- He spoke in a way that you did not expect Him to speak, and you were only listening for your preconceived idea of how He would speak to you, and He didn’t speak that way, so you didn’t hear Him.
I had a dream once that there was a group of people standing at a bus stop. Everybody was waiting for the bus, or that was waiting for Jesus to come on the bus, and He drove up in a car, and nobody recognized Him.
Our own mind is our worst enemy. Isn’t that what happened to the Jews? Is that not why they failed to recognize Messiah? The major reason the Jews rejected Jesus was they -- was that they were expecting a warrior.
Do you want to put that on? You could put it on low. It’s very hot in here.
They expected a warrior who would wage a physical warfare against Rome and deliver natural Israel out of their physical subservience to Rome, and Jesus didn’t come as a warrior, and they rejected Him and lost the blessings. Jesus does come in two stages. I mentioned it earlier. First, He comes as the gift giver. He woos you, as a man would woo a young woman that he wanted to marry, but when He starts growing in your heart, He comes forth as the warrior, and He wages war against your carnal mind, and when you come to a sper- -- certain degree of maturity, He will start waging war out of you towards other reprobate minds. Now, don’t listen to what I’m saying and lay hold of it and use it as an opportunity to go try and take an ungodly authority over people, but there is authority in Christ. We’re told in the Book of Jeremiah, God sent the prophet. He said, “You go tell this man about his sins, and whether he’d [?hear?] or whether he [?forebear?], if you tell him, his blood is off of your hands. If you won’t tell him, you’re responsible for whatever happens to him.”
And again, I don’t know if it’s happening in Nigeria, but in the United States, we hear people saying, Don’t talk to him. Don’t talk to him. Go in your prayer closet and pray. Well, you go in your prayer closet and play and -- you go in your prayer closet and pray, and God either sends you or somebody else to tell the person the truth. God is spirit. He ultimately manifests through a man. The problem is that people are carnal, and God speaks out of the realm of the Spirit, and we don’t hear him, most of us. That’s why He sends a prophet. That’s why He has a preacher. People need to be told in plain English. Sometimes you talk to them in plain English, and they still don’t understand what you’re talking about. Why? Because their carnal mind is interfering with God’s attempt to communicate with them.
But God said, “If you tell them when I tell you to tell them, from that point forward the responsibility is mine.” Why? Because when you speak the words, it goes into their mind like a seed, and God can call it forth five years later. I knew a woman once that was preparing to marry a man, and I was convinced this marriage was not of God, and the Lord let me tell her, and she said, “I’m going to marry him anyway.” I said, OK, sister. And there was something -- there were events happenings that were so distressing me. I was in the wedding party, and I cried out to God. I said, Lord, [?won’t?] -- she didn’t hear. She didn’t hear. Won’t you tell her one more time?
Now, the night before the wedding, the Lord spoke. It was a very prophetic word, and she closed her ears, and five years later she was in a hospital bed in great distress over something that was happening in this marriage, and she called me up, and she said, “You know, Sheila, I was crying out to God, and He brought back to me what you said to me two weeks before the wedding, and I realized that it was God who said that.” So, if I hadn’t told her, I would have been [?chastened?] of the Lord. Whatever that would have been, I don’t know.
But you see, we are bought with a price. What does that mean? The Lord saves your life, and by virtue of the fact that He has saved your life, He’s brought blessings into your life. He’s helped you. If you’ve been sick, maybe He’s healed you. If you’ve had financial difficulties, maybe He’s raised you up. Whatever your human problem was, He’s blessed you, but now that He’s blessed you, He wants to get inside of you in a more mature manifestation, and once He does that -- and we’ve been talking about this all night, that it’s Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Once He does that, He wants to be the Lord of your person, and He wants to speak through you. He wants to think through you. He wants to walk and talk through you, and when He’s mature enough to do that, He wants you to stop holding back what His Spirit wants to speak. The problem with this is when Christ becomes mature in us and He starts to speaking through us, He speaks righteousness, and He speaks righteousness to sinful people, and they usually don’t like it.
So when we find people that have a mature manifestation of Christ in them, we find that confrontation is a way of life. Just make sure it’s Christ in you because if you have a lot of confrontation in your life and it’s not Christ in you, you will eventually find out because God will come to chasing you. There is a training. He will go very slowly. He will witness everything to you. He will send you to people. This is the ministry of the Son. He will send you to people that He knows will stumble over you. They will wrong you. They will lie about you. They will accuse you. They will mistreat you. And He will challenge you to do them no harm.
And I don’t know where the Scripture is. I -- the Lord was giving it to me just before I started preaching tonight. I -- He gave me the Scrip- -- I guess He was preparing me for this whole message.
When you do that -- when you do not retaliate in any ungodly way, this is the conviction of sin. The spiritual court, if you would like to call it that, which is in heaven, now says that this human being has proved themselves [sic] to have an evil heart. They have done wickedly, and you have done righteously and hopefully bless them and prayed for them and asked God to forgive them and have mercy on them, and this is the switch or the signal that sends God to deal with this believer whose heart is not righteous. God will have a people which will reveal his righteousness.
Today we have a people, which frequently tells the world that God is some maniac. Burning people in hell forever? Taking vengeance as man knows vengeance. I know the Scripture says vengeance, but God’s vengeance is not man’s vengeance. The vengeance of God is against spiritual wickedness in high places. God loves people. But He will correct you if you are a person who thinks and does evil. And don’t be deceived because of the mystery of inequity whereby the chastening of the Lord does not come quickly. Don’t be deceived because of the wicked people in the world that continue in their wickedness, that have great riches, that have many children, that have all the good things of this world, and they’re selling drugs and stealing and cheating in business and doing all forms of evil. God’s arm is not short, but the truth of this mystery is that God does not bring correction until you come into a submission to Him. This is the truth.
Every -- if you are a wicked person that is called into the Kingdom, all of the wickedness you have been doing for 20, 30 or 40 years, you will start to find it falling on you. As soon as you say, “Jesus, I repent. Be my savior,” and many people think when they say that, that everything they did in the past -- is that not what we’re taught? Everything you did in the past is wiped out? It’s not true. It’s not true. This is what happens.
There are two forms of judgment in this world. There is reaping and sowing judgment, which is mediated by Satan, and that judgment is unto destruction. You kill. You shall be killed. If you don’t reap it in your lifetime, your child will reap it. David killed Bathsheba’s husband. His firstborn died. You will surely reap what you have sown. Every sin will have its just recompense if not in your life, in your children’s life, and this judgment of reaping what you sow is unto destruction. It will eventually wipe out family lines. Did you ever know a family where there are no grandchildren? It reaches a certain generation, and everybody’s sick, everybody’s dying. No grandchildren, the line is just wiped out. God has wiped them out through the mediatory justice of Satan. They have been turned over to the prince of the power of this world for judgment. There are spiritual laws in this world, spiritual policemen. Men become confused because the justice is mediated over many years and sometimes generations, so men who don’t understand spiritual things think that God is not just. God is just. We just don’t understand His ways.
When a sinner comes to the Lord and says, “Father, I repent of all this wickedness that I have done and of all this wickedness on my family line.” Brethren, the reaping and sowing does not stop, but there is a change made. The mediator of the judgment is no longer Satan. It becomes Christ, and every recompense that comes upon your life, Jesus will lay hold of it, instruct you, empower you, give you an overcoming victory and make good out of it. It will result in a cleansing of your soul from the family line. Curse and whatever spiritual filth is in your heart because of your ancestors or your own sin, and when He cleanses you, after that, He will then send you to people with the same kind of problems to let them do to you what you did to others when you were a sinner, and when you forgive them, you save their life.
But you will still reap what you have sown, but it will not destroy you. It will be used for your good. It will cleanse you, and then you will be sent as a savior to others who are lost in sin, who cannot stop sinning, who cannot stop hating, who cannot stop practicing witchcraft, who cannot stop hurting people, robbing, stealing, lying, cheating.
So when God saves us, and He cleans us up, it’s for His use. And the use that He has for us is to send us out to save the world. You just save the one person that He sends you to. If He sends you to two, He sends you to two. Does not the Scripture say, if you’re faithful, He’ll put you in charge of one city, and as your faith increases, He’ll put you in charge of 10 cities? Brethren, we are cities. Human beings are cities. God will attach people to you, and as you mature in Christ, He will attach people to you for training, for ministry, to love the unlovable, to love the spiritual leper that the world has rejected, that the church has rejected. That His life might be found in them also. He has not saved you to be a rich King’s kid with a Cadillac. It’s not true.
He has saved you to send you back to the hopeless, but there is a training. There is a purification, and there must be an exchange of minds. We must be beheaded from the carnal mind and receive Christ, and of course, as I was telling you yesterday, this is a process, so you go through a period, and you walk with the Lord. Well, you have two minds, and because the carnal mind is the mind that is sustaining the existence of your physical existence in this world, to think with the mind of Christ, to act out of the mind of Christ, to implement the mind of Christ, one must wage a warfare, and the way the Scripture expresses it is that the carnal mind must be wounded. When Christ wants to arise in you to think through you, to give you instruction, He must wound the carnal mind. We found it in several of the Chapters of the Book of Daniel, and we just found it in Revelation Chapter 21. When Christ wanted to speak to John, He wounded his carnal mind, and the mind of Christ arose in him, and he saw the vision of the new Jerusalem.
So every time Christ does something through you, whether you are aware of it or not, He has wounded your carnal mind. Why? Because your carnal mind will never let Him think or speak or act through you.
And when the angel came to see Daniel, and he said to him, “Daniel, oh beloved of God, your prayer was heard the moment that you spoke it, but the Prince of Persia detained me and kept me from answering you.”
Well, what does that mean? It means that the Christ, which was a twofold cord in the prophet of the Old Testament, Daniel, was only mature enough to break through the carnal mind after 21 days. Can you hear that? Carnal -- Daniel’s carnal mind, in that instant, was so strong that he succeeded in suppressing the communication of God to the prophet for 21 days.
Did you ever wonder while you’re fasting and praying, why it takes God all that time to answer you? The answer is, it doesn’t take God all that time to answer you. The answer is, you can’t hear Him when He first answers you. God is perfect. Every problem is resident in us. God is perfect. Why would He make us labor for weeks trying to find an answer from God? He doesn’t. Sometimes we have a thought in our mind, and we cannot believe His answer. We cannot believe that God said that to us. We can’t believe it’s God because we’re carnal. All weakness is in us. His warfare is against the mind that we were born with, and when His warfare is accomplished, you will be an obedient servant to the Lord, and you will do whatever He wants you to do.
Let me -- I think the Lord wants me to give you this test. It’s an example which is a testimony, so you might have some idea what to expect if this hasn’t started in you yet. If what hasn’t started in you? A new mind flickering in you. It just flickers like a flame. It comes into your mind as a casual thought. God does speak in an audible voice, but contrary to what most believers think: the hearing of an audible voice from God does not indicate spiritual maturity. The more spiritually mature you are, the less likely God is to speak in an audible voice. He will speak through impressions. He will speak through symbols. He will speak through visions and dreams. He will just put His thought in your mind, and as you first enter into this training, you will not realize that it’s a thought that came from another mind, so I’d like to give you this testimony. When I first -- about when I first started to experience this.
I was visiting my parents actually, and I had already eaten. It was the end of the day, and I had this overwhelming urge to go to a local restaurant. We call them diners. It’s a particular category of restaurant. And I said to myself, Why should I want to go to this restaurant? I’m not even hungry. This makes no sense at all, but something in the back of my mind said, It may be God. Why don’t you go? So I drove to the restaurant, and it was Sunday night, and it was packed. It was only one empty seat in the whole restaurant. At the counter, not at a table, but we -- it’s like an elongated counter with many seats, so you’re sitting next to strangers. There was only one seat, and the man that I would be sitting next was totally drunk, and as soon as I saw this, I knew that God had sent me, but the thought that came into my mind in no way indicated that it was God. And the man was drunk, and he was making a ruckus, and the whole restaurant looked to me and said, now, why is she sitting next to that drunk man? What is she up to? And the whole -- all the eyes of the restaurant were looking at me. But God had something to say to that man, so I sat there until the word of the Lord came forth, and what is problem was, he was a young man. He had been in Vietnam, and he had been forced with a decision to either kill seven children that were carrying bombs, which if he didn’t kill the children, would have killed his company of soldiers -- that was his choice. Either kill the children or let his company of soldiers die, and he killed children, and he had been a drunk ever since. And God had something to say to that man.
This is what you’re being trained for. This is the deep ministry of Christ, but before you can partake of it, you must be able to recognize His thought. Now, if I had been a little less mature in Christ, I would have said, this thought is ridiculous. Why would I go to the diner? I’m not hungry. There’s no reason to be there. I have things to do at home. I’m not going. So this is one positive aspect of bringing every thought into captivity, and even if it doesn’t make sense to our mind, when we recognize or should we recognize that it’s Christ, we must obey because He doesn’t give us details. He just says, “Do it.” And then when you get there, you find out what it is that He wants you to do.
And another testimony along the same line, again it was a weekend evening, and it was late. It was late enough to stay home for the rest of the evening, and I felt an overwhelming urge for a certain kind of food. And I said, this is ridiculous. I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I shouldn’t have it. But this feeling was so strong on me, I said, well, let me go, and I rose up, and I drove to this restaurant 20 minutes away, and there was a young man there who was contemplating suicide.
Now what I want to stick with you is that God never told me, “Sheila, I have ministry for you.” He never told me this, someone that needs help. All He said -- well, He didn’t say anything. I got a thought in my mind that I wanted to go to this restaurant. And by the time -- you see, God said to me, “Go to this restaurant.” But to get this instruction to me, it had to pass through my carnal mind, and my carnal mind said, well, if you go to this restaurant, there’s food there. You must be desiring food. But I wasn’t desiring food. I was hearing from God, and I didn’t even know it.
We must lay hold of every thought and say, God, do you want me to do it? Because He is a commander, and we are the soldiers, and He does not give us explanations. He just says, “Do it,” and if we don’t do it, He sends somebody else to do it. And that’s not a good feeling to know that we were chosen and we didn’t go.
Another testimony where I did -- where I failed to take the victory is that I was with a church at the time that ministered in an area where there was a lot of witchcraft being da- -- being practiced, and there were a lot of people from areas where witchcraft was very common, and they knew that this Christian ministry was coming in, so we walked into the church, and the Lor- -- I knew it was God. He drew my eyes to the top of the piano, and there was a glass jar that was filled with beans, and it was the kind of a jar that had a long neck on it, and the neck was pointing to right where the pastor would be preaching, and I looked at the jar, and I knew God was drawing my eyes to it, and I just didn’t know what it meant, and I walked away, and He drew me back three times, and you see, there was no failure in not recognizing that it was witchcraft. That was not my failure. My failure was that I didn’t say, Lord, why are you showing me this jar? Because I knew it was God that drew my eyes there, and I never asked the question, and when I walked away for the third time, He spoke to somebody else, and she went over and looked at the jar and recognized it as witchcraft. And they took the jar, and they put it in a brown paper bag, and they smashed it and disposed of it.
So you see, God’s requirement of us is to stay in constant communication with Him. He doesn’t expect anything of us that we’re not capable of. He is fully well able to teach us. He’s willing to teach us, but He has a rule that I noticed. It’s not likely that He’ll teach if you don’t ask. He wants you to ask. He wants you to be in that constant communication with Him, that constant attitude of being open to His word because we can’t see Him. He’s invisible, and we’re so busy with the things of this world, and sometimes we’re so busy with our church services that we don’t even listen to Him. When I first started to preach, one of my first messages that I ever preached, He poured out this heavy anointing, which should have meant either cancel the message or cancel it until He was finished with what He was doing, and all I could think about was I’ve been up until all hours of the morning studying for this message, and I’m going to give this message, even though the Spirit of God was saying that He had something to do, and He had to convict me of that. We must be in constant communication with Him, that His Spirit rules. His Spirit rules. He can cancel a message. He can cancel a service. He can do anything. I could come in, and He could say to me, “Sheila, you’re not preaching tonight. [?Marvin’s?] preaching tonight.” I would have to sit down. He is the Lord of this meeting. His Spirit rules.
Now, you have to be able to recognize the Spirit because sometimes people come into my meetings and say, God told me to preach. And I say, No, He didn’t. Sit down. But there has -- I have experience there, where He told me to turn over the microphone, and I did do it.
So we’re back to square one again. We must achieve an ability to distinguish between the carnal mind and Christ in our own mind. How can you expect to discern it in someone else if you can’t discern it in yourself? So this is the message of the hour to His chosen people. He wants to appear in you. He wants to be your personal savior, truly your personal savior, right here, that you don’t have to run to your pastor for prayer. I’m not against prayer. I’m not against prayer. I’m not against fellowship. I’m not against any of these things, but, brethren, if God forbid this planet, if there’s an atom bomb dropped on this planet, and it touches this geographical location where you are, you better be able to touch God without your pastor. You better be able to get a hold of Him and hear what His instruction is for your survival. Or you’re going to die.
And we have a whole church world today sick and dying because they cannot discern the body of Christ. Which body of Christ is this? They cannot discern the body of Christ in [?here?]. I know you never heard that before. You pray about it.
Christ is your new man. He’s your inner man, and He has a body, and He’s right in [?here?]. They cannot recognize His instruction. The church is consistently rejecting the council and the wisdom of God because they do not perceive it to be that, and therefore, they are sick, and many die.
We did Daniel 12. We’ve done a lot of work in Daniel recently, and the message in Daniel 12 specifically is very fascinating study. This is the whole message of Daniel 12. This age is winding down. The whole planet, all of humanity is entering into a spiritual age. Excuse me. And you know, even the heathen know this. I’ve heard unsaved -- I don’t even know what they are. I’ve just heard them on the TV saying -- or quoted in magazines -- that we’re entering into a spiritual age starting with the year 2000. Well, when we did Daniel 12, we found that the hidden message of that Scripture is that all of humanity is increasing spiritually, and the way the Lord described it is that they -- humanity is coming into puberty.
Now remember, at the beginning Adam was the -- the creation was a soul, and at the end or in his maturity, he will be a quickening spirit. This creation is growing up. We’re growing up. Just like all little children grow up from infant to adult, although it’s not obvious because it’s spanning so many generations, and you would need a spiritual mind to see that despite the fact that people die after 50, 60, 70, 80 or 90 years, the creation as a whole is spiritually maturing, and we’re about to enter into puberty, and what that me- -- the truth that came forth in that teaching was that humanity is becoming spiritually active, and they’re becoming spiritually active without much education. It is going to be like handing a 9-year-old child a gun without any instruction, and you know, the Scripture says, first the natural and then the spiritual.
Well, I’m sure it’s no secret to you that we’re having some problems with lawlessness in the United States, and we see this happening. I was speaking to a man just recently who lives in an area which is troubled in this way, and he said the black marketeers [sic] are coming in with guns. They will sell to anybody who will buy, and 9 year olds are coming out. I don’t know. I have no idea what it costs, you know, but then they have the money. OK? And the 9 year olds are coming out and purchasing these guns, and this man was a policeman, and he said, “You know, when you come up against a criminal with a gun, at least you’re up against a man who knows that if he shoots you, he might get caught, and he could either be executed or spend the rest of his life in jail. So he’ll think twice, hopefully, before he shoots at you.” But he says, “These are 9-year-old children. They have no concept whatsoever of the possible results of their behavior, and they’re just going around shooting people.” I wanted to know what -- we had one guy on TV. I wanted to know what it felt like -- what it would feel like to kill somebody. Well, there’s a spiritual application of this.
The creation, human beings are about to and are already experiencing a spiritual maturation that is going to leave them in a condition of walking around with a loaded gun in their hands if they haven’t received instruction as to how to deal with it, and I want to tell you that most of the church is not qualified to deal with illegal or legal spiritual activity. The training isn’t there. I’m not against anybody. You’ve got to hear this. They’re not being trained. You cannot respond to whatever thought arises in your mind. You must only obey Christ and actively, willfully and aggressively resist every thought that is not of God. Do not obey the commands of your carnal mind.
This is Armageddon. This is the warfare. So as the creation comes into spiritual maturity, who will you be an expression of? Which spiritual power will you express? And don’t tell me that you speak in tongues and therefore it must be God because if you believe that, you are deceived. Don’t wait to find out that I’m right.
We have thousands of people that call themselves Christians that are lovely, well-meaning people, but they’re deceived. They speak in tongues, and they dance in the Spirit, and they prophesy, and they go home, and they commit every sin is common to man. Because they’re obeying the thoughts of their fallen mind. Does anybody not know this is true? It’s true.
So as we see the creation moving into spiritual maturity, and we see people with minds that can kill, how are we going to deal with it if we’re not trained to do so? You see, here in Africa, it’s not too difficult to discern which [?crypt-?] -- it’s obvious here. You’ve had it for generations, but there is a high level of witchcraft coming forth. I touched on it yesterday. It’s not obvious. You see, if you have a witchdoctor here, he’s not going to tell you that he’s not a witchdoctor. He will tell you that he’s a witchdoctor. He’ll -- he won’t deny it to you. This is what he does, but we see coming in through the minds of man, a manifestation of witchcraft that is hidden, not only from the victims of it, but from the man who is practicing it. It is the same spirit that has empowered the witchdoctor that is now hiding in the minds of men. Why? Because to be a witchdoctor isn’t socially acceptable these days, especially -- well, especially not in the church. I guess that was God saying that it’s not acceptable to be a witchdoctor in the church. But we see spirits of witchcraft. We have it in the United States. Well, we have the practice of witchcraft there too in the United States. You can seek out a witch to have someone cast a spell for you or obtain whatever you’re trying to obtain. It is available. It used to be punishable by the law. It used to illegal. It’s no longer illegal to practice witchcraft in the United States, which is incredible, but it’s no longer illegal, and practice -- practitioners of witchcraft have the benefit of the protection of our legal establishment because it has been classified as a valid religion. God help us.
But this is not what I’m talking about. We find almost, almost everyone, almost every man has a hidden potential for witchcraft. Why? Because witchcraft is the name of the spiritual power of the carnal mind, so everybody who has a carnal mind has a potential to think a thought generated by a spiritual power that can have effects on other people. Depending on the measure of your power, which is largely inherited and then somewhat developed on top of your heritage, the thought of the mind can harass, can cause sickness, can kill, can lose jobs, can cause financial disaster. You all know that witchcraft can do that, but what we don’t know is that the evil of our mind can do this. It’s a higher level of witchcraft, which does not require the chanting of incantations. It does not require the letting of blood. It does not require the rituals of the dancing or the shaking of the instruments. It comes out of the unconscious mind, and the person who’s yielding to it has no idea that they’re doing damage. The person who’s yielding to it says, Well, I’m not going to act on it. I’m not -- I hate that woman. She married a man that I for the 10 years expected to marry him, and now this woman married him, and I really hate her for what she did, but I’m not going to poison her children, and I’m not going to say anything. I’m going to keep the thought to myself. Therefore, I’m clean, and I have no -- God has no argument with me.
But I’m here today to tell you that if you believe this, you are deceived because if you do not take authority over that thought in Christ, it is going out into the realm of the Spirit, and it is bringing disaster into that mar- -- into that couple’s life. And we see it happening. Already you mentioned it to me today that you saw some result of it, that somebody wanted Edith to do something, and he willed her to such [?agree?] that she did it, and she didn’t even know why she was doing it. Now, brethren, we must resist this. If we are trained to this point, and we hear this thought in our mind -- I must do this, I must do this, we must say, who’s telling me to do this? After you’ve heard a message like this, you’ll say, who’s telling me to do this? And if it’s not God, I rebuke it. It’s a whole aspect of spiritual warfare that you’ve never heard of before, and we’re going to see an army of human beings raised up in the very near future with spiritual power in the hidden thoughts of their mind and no idea whatsoever how dangerous they are, and therefore, with no restraint on their thoughts at all.
I have experienced this in a measure. I have experienced spiritual bullets being shot at me. I’ve been in this training for a long time. How does this happen? Usually, you’re in a convers- -- it’s usually some- -- it has to really be somebody that you know, and Christ rises up in you and says something that offends their carnal mind. Now, they think they’re just annoyed at you, but if they’re a person that’s moving in this spiritual authority, and if you’re a sensitive person, and Christ -- I’m not, you know -- I’m not even a hundred percent sure how it works. I’m just giving it to you how God gives it to me, but I know it’s happened to me, and it’s come right out of the realm of the Spirit. And all the sudden, I’m covered with fear. Severe distress in my emotions. And God let this affliction come upon me for years until I got down before Him, and I said, Lord, this isn’t right. And when I started seeking Him on it, He gave me this teaching. We must be aware that people’s minds are opposed to Christ wherever He’s manifesting, and if Christ is manifesting in you, you can receive spiritual missiles from people who are looking at you with the most lovely [sic] smile on your face, and with their mouth telling you how much they love you. And they may be aware of what they’re doing, but most often they are not aware of what is coming out of their mind. They don’t even know it, and if they know they’re envious of you, they say, well, I’ll just repress it. But it’s still go -- the warhead’s still going forward. And the problem is we cannot see the enemy.
It’s very exciting. We saw it last night, didn’t we? It’s very exciting. Don’t be -- if you’re afraid, it’s not God. Don’t be afraid. It’s very exciting. You can’t -- you know, God will let you get hit a couple of times. The reason He lets you get hit is that you have to learn to recognize the attack. You can’t see it with your natural eyes. The only way I know I’d been hit is the way it affects my emotions. Although I’m at a point now when I’m in a conscious confrontation, if I know that I’ve delivered a word to them that God has told me to deliver, and I know that they’re distressed at what I said, I’m watching for it, and as soon as I perceive it, I’m right there. It can be stopped. It can be stopped, but it takes an active spiritual rebuff to stop it. If you don’t come back at it, it just enters into your heart, and it will torment you, you know, through emotional distress for as long as you let it. Yeah.
COMMENT: I still want to ask this question as regards the condemnation, and OK, you know, for example, by the time you start examining yourself, and you cry unto the Lord for help, and you find out you’re still not to the Lord’s standards. The next thing is that you [?few condent?feel condemned?]. To avoid this, what can one do?
PASTOR VITALE: That’s a very good question. Knowledge, knowledge will help us, and this is the truth. We are incapable in this hour of being up to the Lord’s standard. He knows this. We cannot not sin because our heart is fallen, OK? So when you are under conviction, and you repent of that sin, God blesses you for it, and He will keep you, and there’s no condemnation in it. We must understand that that thought lives with us, but it cannot control us. If it is controlling you, you continue to cry out to God to give you dominion over it, but even after you -- do you know what I mean by dominion? If you don’t do what it tells you to do, it doesn’t mean the thought will go away. I experience evil thoughts every day, and I am at war with them every day. I say, that thought, that’s not of Christ. I curse you. And then the person who was -- who the thought was about, I bless them, and I pray for them, and I go to them, and I do any good thing that I can do to help them. I will not accept it, but of course, we would like the thoughts to go away, but they’re not going away until the battle’s ov- -- they’re not going away until you’re beheaded, so you must learn to live with them, and if you feel this condemnation, you must rebuke the condemnation because it’s never of God. And ask God -- just continue to ask God to help you and say, Condemnation, I will not be condemned. The thoughts in my mind, but I recognize it as sin, I confess it as sin, I repent of it as sin, I will not obey it, and you -- neither will you condemn me. I’m a child of God. And if it does overtake you, and you do something or say something ungodly, well, you just confess it and repent, and you start all over again because this is an overcoming. He who overcometh will inherit all things, and that which you’re overcoming is your carnal mind, so it’s a battle. And condemnation must be resisted by you. It’s not of God. God will convict you of sin. He’ll say, “Daughter, that’s wrong,” and as soon as you say, “Amen,” He has nothing more to say to you. Do you understand what I’m saying?
So that’s your battle right now because if a spirit of condemnation can lay hold of you, what it’s doing to you is -- well, let me say that another way. A spirit of condemnation is not out of the mind of Christ. It’s out of your carnal mind, so if he can fixate your mind with the thought of condemnation, the carnal mind is ruling in your mind. Can you hear that? And there must be something in your background. We all have had our own -- our experiences in our life, so there must be something in your background that makes you perhaps a little susceptible to being condemned, and he’s laid hold of that susceptibility, and he’s using it to occupy your mind, and when the carnal mind is occupying your mind, Christ is not occupying your mind.
And remember that there’s a battle going on between Christ and the carnal mind for the possession of your mind. So if you are a person who loves to do evil, you love to envy, he will use envy to get you to let him in your mind, but if you’re rejecting the envy, but you’re susceptible to condemnation, he’ll use the condemnation to -- he’ll give you anything he wants. He’s like a [?prais-?crazy?] -- a prostitute. He’ll give you anything you want. He just wants to possess your mind. Any thought that you’re likely to open up to, that’s when he’ll give it to you. So we must come to a place where we reject every thought that is not of God. Ask Christ to arise in your mind.
I pray like that frequently, and I’ve gone through periods of warfare where my carnal mind has been prevailing in my mind, and I cry out to God because I know that deliverance is only in the arising of Christ, and I have no power to call Him out like a spiritualist can call up a spirit. I have no power to do this. He arises when He wills to do so, and He descends when He wills to do so. So just recently I’ve gone through several periods of, for me, long duration -- days, weeks. -- where He was sleeping in the bottom of my ship, and my carnal mind was raging every wicked thought. You can imagine. I was weary from the warfare, but I fought as valiantly as I could, crying the whole time. Arise, oh, God. Scatter my enemies. Where are you? Because I know that the only true deliverance is in the arising of Christ that He will cover over my carnal mind and put down this insurrection. It’s an insurrection. That’s what it is, and the reason He let this come upon me is that He was testing me to see what I would do when He wasn’t there crushing my sin. How hard would I fight? Would I fight? And I fought until I was exhausted, and eventually He arose, and His Spirit arose in me, and I received peace.
And every time we go through something like that, it strengthens Christ in us, and all of these trials and all of these experiences have one end, and the end is the beheading of our soul. So it’s not for naught. It’s for a very important process. For very important reason, this is strengthening you in Christ because your nature is being changed. Your nature is being changed from that nature that you received from your natural parents into the strong nature of Christ, so we must be strengthened, and I said earlier -- as I said earlier, He’s not just handing it to us. The gift is the power of His Christ plus training that the presence of His Christ enables us to receive.
Did I say that clearly? It’s a training that wouldn’t do us any good if we didn’t have Christ in us. So He gives us Christ, which is the power source, and then He gives us the training, and the end result is the intertwining of the Christ and the -- of the two minds, of the Christ and the carnal mind. Because of the twain, He will make one new [?man?], and that’s what’s happening to you.
It’s the threefold manifestation of Christ that He is building into you through experiences and through this act of your will. Your willingness to engage in this warfare. He’s giving you a crown of gold, the wreath crown. The Greek word in the Book of Revelation which is translated crown is not the European crown of solid gold, but it’s the Greek crown of interwoven twigs, I think it was. So that’s what’s happening to you, and that’s why He lets the trials come upon us.
I hear people say to me, God wouldn’t do this to me. He wouldn’t let this trial come upon me. Brethren, you can’t stay an infant forever. The church has got to get a revelation that it’s time to grow up, and you’re in the army. You’re in the army. And we’re about to see spiritual power. We’re walking down -- they’re going to be walking down the streets, and their carnal mind is going to perceive that it’s Christ in you. Wam. And the only warning that you’re going to have is the Christ in you. There will be no outward visible sign.
It’s very exciting. God’s raising up an army. There are going to be many Christians who will be overcome, and they will lose their faith in God because they have this incorrect belief that He will protect us as a father protects an infant, and it’s not true. We’re to be -- we’re to grow up to the fullness of the stature of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are to become mature spiritual men. Can’t stay babies forever. That’s what the Catholic Church is trying to tell you. Jesus is not an infant in Mary’s arms, and neither are you an infant in the arms of your Lord. You’ve got to become a spiritual man. Amen.
Any other questions? It’s exciting. It was [?an exciting word?exciting work?] today. Yeah?
COMMENT: [INAUDIBLE] Why is it necessary to Him -- for Him to weave the carnal mind? Why does it have to be woven? Can’t He just crush it and kill it and just be straight?
PASTOR VITALE: Just rip it out?
COMMENT: Yeah.
PASTOR VITALE: Well, that’s the whole principle of the threefold manifestation of Christ. He is binding up the carnal mind, and eventually He will kill it in a manner that it can never arise again. I can’t get into the -- I think everybody wants to go home. They -- these people work. I can’t get into the whole teaching, but I know you’ve heard it. If you just recall, you know, how the wh- -- the fall came to pass was that Satan got loose, and the reason that Satan got loose was that he wasn’t a part of an intertwined unit. He was just being suppressed, and he got out, and that’s why our minds are being woven together. He will never get out again. Did I answer your question?
08/21/14 – Transcribed by VerbalFusion
09/09/14 – 1st Edit CAS/BP
