The subject that we’re going to be ministering on this afternoon is on the subject of life and immortality in the Holy Scriptures.
    Fundamental Christianity is plagued by the Death Syndrome, the abnormal pacifism to accept the grave as an inevitable friend, but we are taught by Scripture that death is our enemy and in Christ even the grave is not inescapable.  We must reorient our thinking about eternal life as a blissful paradise beyond the blue to the reality of a redeemed earth which is the proper hope of the Gospel.  To do this, we must expect the promise and eminence of divine intervention and that we are indeed in the last days of fatalism.  Jesus did not come to offer the world last rites, but rather He came to offer us meat for our bones.  And that’s what I want to minister to the church today – meat for our bones.
    Now the Scripture tells us in Hebrews, Chapter 2, and beginning in Verse 14, “For as much then as the children” – that is the children of God – “are partakers of flesh and blood, as much then as we God’s people have flesh and blood bodies, He also Himself” – that is, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ –“likewise took part of the same.”  Jesus came down from Heaven and clothed himself in a physical, mortal body just as we have, the Scripture says, that through death, through His physical death upon the cross, He might destroy him that have the power of death – that is the Devil – and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.  “Where verily He took not on him the nature of angels, but He took on him the seed of Abraham.”
    The reason why Jesus was manifested, the Scripture tells us, in a physical body and why He came into this world is because we have physical bodies, and Jesus came into this world to die or to pay the price of physical death that He might destroy the works of him that has the power of death – that is the Devil – and deliver us who live all our lifetime in the bondage of the subjectivity of physical death, not knowing at what time, season, or hour that the Grim Reaper – physical death – may come up on each and every one of us.  And this is why Jesus was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the Devil, and this work in primary that is being spoken of and ministered to us here in the second chapter of Hebrews is the ministry of physical death.  Jesus not only came to abolish spiritual death for the Adamic race, but He came to abolish physical death as well.
    For the Scripture reveals to us that this is the ultimate of God’s purpose, and because we are living now in the dispensation of the fullness of times, we recognize that Scripture is to be fulfilled in our time, which has never been brought to pass in other ages.  For we live in the culmination of the time of the promises of the Lord.  Jesus, the Scripture tells us in Timothy’s epistle, Jesus has already abolished death and has brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.  The Scripture tells us, furthermore, that this eternal life is to be revealed or manifested in His times and in His seasons.  And we have come to the time and season in which this great promise of total physical as well as spiritual redemption is to be administered to the children of the Lord in our time.
    Now, in our dispensation – I want to make a very bold statement – I believe that perhaps and quite probably millions of people living today will never experience physical death.  They will bypass the grave, they will never go through the grave, they will never experience physical death.  Now, that sounds like a very bold and certainly off-track statement to make, but when we realize the time and season that we’re living in, it totally changes our perspective on the Scriptures.  For, you see, if we were living in any other age, we would be, of course, subject to death, to old age death or death by accident or whatever.  But we are living in the time of the fulfillment of the promises of God, when He’s going to execute the promise that He’s already made to us to abolish death and bring life and immortality to light, which He has already revealed to us as His covenant and promise through the Scriptures.  
    For Jesus died to redeem the whole man, and that’s why the Bible tells us that our physical bodies are the temples of the living God and that our physical bodies are bought with a price, as well as our spirit.  Therefore, we are to glorify God in our bodies which are the temples of God.  Now, if God has bought our bodies through the precious blood of Jesus, as well as our spirit, it means that our bodies are ordained by God to participate in the plan of redemption, and we recognize that the full redemption for our physical bodies is dispensational, or has to do with the dispensation of fullness of times, dealing with the time of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to redeem us and to change the fashion of our vile bodies, our present mortal bodies, that they might be fashioned like unto His glorious body.  And the glorious body of the Lord Jesus Christ is not a ghost or a spirit; He is the divine epiphany.  
    His body is the resurrected and glorified substance of the godhead.  For in Jesus Christ dwells all the fullness, the Bible tells us, of the godhead bodily.  That is in the resurrected and glorified body or celestial substance of the Lord’s glorified body dwells all the fullness of the godhead.  The promise of Philippians is that Jesus is coming back to change the fashion of our present vile bodies, which are subject to physical death, that these bodies might be transformed into the image of His glorious body, or in the likeness of His glorious body, that our mortality might be changed to immortality and that we might thereby live forever perpetually in physical substance that will never corrupt or decay or see death.  Now, that’s the ultimate promise.
    In fact, as Jesus came into the world, as we were expressing in Hebrews, Chapter 2, that He came into the world and partook of a flesh and blood body in order to die, that fulfills the law.  And this is something that we need to recognize.  Jesus, the Word tells us, came into the world to fulfill the law, and His death fulfilled the Law of Redemption that through His shed blood we received redemption, not only for our spiritual man or our soul, but we have also received redemption through the covenant of the Lord’s blood for our very bodies.
    Now, I said that I believe that millions of people living in the world today will probably most likely – and I’m talking about Christians that are and Christians that are to be – that probably most likely they will never, ever taste a physical death.  I’m talking about, from now to eternity they will never taste a physical death or go through the grave because we happen to be living in a privileged age.  We live in the age of the transition from this present dying world into the transition of the kingdom age – or the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ – because we’re at hand now for the coming of the Great King, the Lord Himself, who is to take possession of the earth and who is to redeem His people from the bondage of physical death.  And so we have that glorious promise in this age that the Scripture tells us that we that are alive and remaining until the coming of the Lord shall have our mortal bodies changed and fashioned into the likeness of His glorious body, which is immortal, eternal, and undying, and thus shall we be with Him forever in an undying state.
    Now, there is a great problem in fundamental thinking today, because many Christians are still living on past ideas that it’s appointed unto all men once to die.  Now, we recognize that that was true under the curse in the Old Testament, but Jesus came to abolish the curse, to do away with our appointment with death, and He met that appointment for us so that in His times He shall manifest the immortality and full redemption from physical death which He has already purchased.  Now, if in fundamental circles, and this happens to be a contradiction in fundamental teaching today, if many teach – and I’m talking about the ministry now, many in our fundamental full gospel and spiritual circles in the ministry – teach that all people – or all men –  are appointed once to die, and after this the Judgment.  We recognize that was true under the old covenant, but it’s not true today.  If that were true today, then the very people who teach and believe this could not go out of this world in a secret rapture; they’d have to stay here and die.  Isn’t that true?  So the very doctrine and teaching that they have to die contradicts their teaching and belief that they’re going to be raptured out of the world without dying.  In other words, they have to make up their mind whether they’re appointed to die or appointed to fly, because they can’t do both.
    So Christianity needs to wake up the dialogue and understanding and doctrine that’s being taught in fundamental circles in which millions of Christians, fundamental and sincere Christians, are embracing these teachings, but they’re not even rationalizing on what they’re thinking and what they’re believing in.  You cannot both fly away in a rapture and meet an appointment with death.  You’re either appointed to die or you’re appointed to fly.
    Well, getting down to the purpose of God’s word in these times, I believe the Scripture is quite emphatic that God has a people, as the Scripture tells us in First Corinthians 15, where Paul said, speaking of the resurrection, speaking of the coming of the Lord and the dispensation in fullness of times, said, “I show you a mystery.  We shall not all sleep.”  That plainly means we shall not all sleep in the grave, we shall not all die, we shall not all go to deaths, we shall not all taste a physical death.  There is to be a people of God who shall be alive and remaining unto the coming of the Lord and who will be caught up to meet the Lord at His coming.
    Now, as far as the Rapture idea is concerned, there is differing opinion on that.  Some believe in a secret rapture, which can be a pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation rapture of the church; others believe in a post-tribulation coming of the Lord or a rapture or catching-up.  Frankly, I believe the Scripture reveals to us that what we are expecting and looking for in this day is not for God to ransom the church out of the earth or to give us an exit visa from tribulation, but to use tribulation and persecution as a means of refining, purifying, and conditioning the church for the second coming of the Lord.  Because it takes suffering for Christ, it takes persecution to refine the church.  This has always been the historical pattern of God.  He never takes His people out of the battle, He takes them through the battle.  He gives you the victory when you have something to overcome.  You can’t have the victory if you don’t go through the battle.  And that’s why, as Jesus prayed in John 17, He said, “Father, I pray not that you take them out of the world, but that you preserve them from the evil that’s in the world.”  And Jesus said, “Neither do I pray for these immediate disciples alone, but I pray for everyone that shall believe in me through their testimony.”  So Jesus was praying a universal prayer for every generation of the believers of the church, and His universal prayer was that we should not be taken out of the world, but that we as God’s people and as God’s church should be preserved in the world from the evil that’s in the world.  So to say that God intends to give the church an exit visa from trouble and to repute the church out of the world and to take them out of the fight is contradictory and diametric to the expressed prayer of Jesus in John 17, where He prayed that we should not be taken out of the world, but that we should be preserved from the evil that’s in the world.  “Therefore”, Jesus said, “pray that you be accounted worthy to escape the things which are coming upon the earth and to stand before the Son of Man at his appearing.  He that endures to the end, the same shall be saved.”
    Well, now, what kind of salvation was the Lord talking about when He said, “He that endures to the end shall be saved”?  Well, we’re already saved right now as far as our spiritual man is concerned because we have the Lord Jesus in us, we have the Holy Spirit in us, we have salvation right now for our spirit.  So what did Jesus mean when He said, “He that endures to the end shall be saved”?  What kind of salvation was He talking about in that context?  He was talking about physical salvation.  He was talking about body salvation.  If we endure unto the end, it is our bodies that shall be saved at the end, not our spirit.  Our spirit is saved now, but it’s our bodies that shall be saved at the end.  “He that endures to the end shall be saved.”  Saved in what manner?  Shall be saved physically, preserved alive, and that’s what the Lord is talking about.
    We’re living in a time and approaching a time of a great fiery trial that is going to touch the whole earth.  We call it the Great Tribulation.  We have an Old Testament pattern of what it means to be thrown in the fiery furnace.  We have heroes of the Old Testament – Shadrack, Meshach, and Abednigo – famous in Babylon, how they were cast into the fiery furnace.  And there was a fourth man walking in that furnace that was heated seven times hotter than normal.  But there was a fourth man walking with those three Hebrew children, and that fourth man was the Son of the Living God.  And He was able to preserve Shadrack, Meshach, and Abednigo in the fiery furnace, and the fire only burned the bonds off of them; it never touched them.
    And that’s the kind of hope that Jesus offers to us in this time.  He doesn’t tell us that we’re going to escape persecution; He tells us to pray that we be accounted worthy to survive or endure to the end.  That’s how He tells us to pray, concerning one another and concerning the church.  For it is God’s divine will, and it is His high purpose and holy purpose, to find a people who are so consecrated to Him and so thoroughly dedicated to His purpose that they may qualify for the kind of deliverance that He gave to men like Daniel in the lion’s den and Shadrack, Meshach, and Abednigo in the fiery furnace.  That’s the kind of God that we serve, the God who is able to deliver you from the power of death itself and to preserve you faultless unto His coming with exceeding great joy.
    I want to teach you some of the sayings of Jesus which were marvelous and little understood in His time and still little understood in our time, in which Jesus spoke about some of these great and beautiful promises unto us concerning life, bypassing the grave.  And remember that this is a dispensational message.  You couldn’t preach this to the church in just any age, but you can preach this message in this age because we’re living in the fullness of times.  We’re living in the time when Jesus is going to come back and put an end to Satan’s rule in this world, and He’s going to give life – an everlasting life and immortality – to His people in our time.  And so there is a great multitude that will be resurrected from the graves, but there’s also going to be an election according to God’s grace that will bypass the grave, never experience physical death.  They’re not going to get exit visas from this world.  They’re not going to heaven in a secret fairy tale rapture, but they are going to be preserved like Daniel in the lion’s den.  They’re going to go through the trial, but God is going to preserve them through the trial.
    Now, in John, Chapter 6, Jesus, speaking about His offering and His sacrifice, in the sixth chapter of John, Jesus said to the Jews, He said, “Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and they’re dead, they’re in their graves, but He that eats the bread that I shall give him shall not die, shall never taste of death.”  And the bread Jesus said that He was going to give was His flesh for the life of the world.
    Now, that fulfills the law, the Law of Redemption, as I mentioned earlier.  Jesus came in a physical body and gave His flesh and His blood to fulfill the Law of Redemption.  Because in the Garden of Eden, when Adam transgressed and Eve and they fell, the curse that was pronounced upon them in the garden was not, “Spirit you are and unto spirit you shall return.”  The curse that was pronounced upon them was, “Dust you are and unto dust you shall return.”  And so death entered into Adam, and through one man’s transgression, the Scripture tells us, so death passed unto all men.  What kind of death?  The death that was pronounced upon Adam in the garden, which was physical death – “Dust to dust”.  His spiritual death happened immediately, because the Holy Spirit departed from his body at the time he transgressed.  But physical death began to set in to his body in the process of degeneration.
    Adam didn’t fall over dead the minute God pronounced the curse on his physical body.  He didn’t fall over dead, but the curse came upon his body.  And where did the curse begin in his body?  Well, this is a mystery.  The Bible tells us that the life of the flesh is in the blood, that the life of all animate flesh is in the blood, that it is in and through the blood that life is transmitted to every member of the body and that that is the source – or life source – of the animate creation is the blood.  The life is in the blood.  Therefore, when the curse came upon Adam and Eve, the curse that came upon their physical bodies came upon their blood.  And their blood then began to cause the systematic degeneration and aging process to set in on their physical bodies, because the life element of the Holy Spirit had departed from their physical bodies, and that agency of life that was working in their bodies through their blood system was gone, which was the life-giving force of the Holy Spirit.
    Because when God created Adam and Eve in the garden, He created them to live perpetually.  They would still be alive today if they had not sinned against His will.  They’d still be walking around in physical, mortal – or I should say, bodies similar to our mortal bodies – yet bodies in a state of perpetual or suspended animation, not aging, but in suspended animation.  They would still be in their youth today, and we’re talking about 6,000 years ago that God created Adam, according to the Bible.  He’d still be alive today in his physical body, still be in his youth and beauty, and so would his wife Eve, had they not transgressed.  But because they transgressed, death entered into their bodies, and it entered in through the slow, eroding process of aging because the curse came upon their bloodstream.
    And have you ever wondered why the Bible says that Jesus had to come and shed His blood and give His physical life for our redemption?  How does that fulfill the requirements of the law concerning your spirit?  It does not fulfill the requirement of the law concerning your spirit, it fulfills the requirement of the law concerning your body, because the curse of sin and death was pronounced upon the bodies of Adam and Eve.  Their spirits simply died to God because the presence of the Holy Spirit departed from them.  But the curse that was upon them was physical, it was upon the blood and flesh of Adam and Eve; that’s where the curse was pronounced.
    And Jesus came and was nailed to the cross and gave His physical life and shed His life’s blood for the redemption of the sin of Adam and of all of Adam’s progeny.  And because we were in the loins of Adam when He sinned, therefore, all of Adam’s progeny which came forth after he sinned inherited the genes of death that was now in the blood and in the line of Adam and Eve.  So that all the progeny of men, as the Scripture says, that as by one man’s transgression, death entered into the world.  So it has passed from Adam unto all men, for all men are generated from Adam.  All the creation comes from Adam.  Therefore, the curse of physical death is upon all of Adam’s progeny because the transgression came before they had any children in the garden.
    Now, Jesus was manifested, the Bible tells us, in a physical body that He might taste death once for all men, that in and through Christ we have the hope of the abolition of physical death and restitution to all that was lost in Adam from the very beginning.  Jesus has bought that for us.  He’s not only bought salvation for our ethereal man, but He bought it for our spiritual man, because the life of your flesh is in your blood, and your blood is cursed with a curse which has sin, sickness, old age, senility, and death operating in your bloodstream, ministering death systematically to your bodies.  That’s why Jesus came and gave His physical life and His blood, for He came to fulfill the law which requires life for life, kind for kind, in order to redeem us from the curse.  That’s why He had to shed His blood.  That’s why He had to die physically in a mortal body, because He gave His physical substance for our physical substance, He gave His life’s blood for our blood, that He might redeem our flesh and that He might redeem our blood through the offering of His flesh and His blood.  And that fulfills the Law of Redemption kind for kind, eye for eye, hand for hand, tooth for tooth.  Jesus became the propitiation, He became the substitute for all that was lost.  And as death was pronounced upon Adam – physical death as well as spiritual death – so Jesus came and He died physically that He might redeem us from the physical curse which we have inherited from Adam.
    And now we live in the fullness of times in which the Lord Jesus Christ, who has already abolished death on the cross, He’s already paid the price, we’re living in the times now when He’s going to come back and bring full salvation to the purchased possession.  And before I get into John here, I want to revert back to Hebrews.  As I was mentioning about appointment with death and how that appointment has been met by Jesus once for all men, that’s why we don’t have to meet an appointment with death.  If God so chooses to save us from death, it is because Jesus has met that appointment for us.  In Hebrews, Chapter 9, now we recognize that God’s promises are sovereign, and they’re fulfilled in His time and they’re fulfilled in His way and they’re fulfilled to whom He chooses to fulfill them upon.  I am simply stating that we are living in the time signified by the prophets in which this promise is to be executed upon a worthy band of believers who I believe are existing and living on the earth today among the many members of the body of Christ, the Christians – universal, that is – that God has many Christians in this world today whom He is going to deliver from physical death itself through His mighty acting power because we’re living in the times of His coming when He’s going to abolish death, literally as well as by promise.
    Now, in Hebrews, Chapter 9, Verse 27, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die,” that is under the Adamic curse, but after this the Judgment, “so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation.”  Jesus is coming back, the Scripture says, the second time, not to deal with the sin question, because it was the sin question that appointed us today.  We were appointed to die because of transgression, but Christ was offered to bear the sins, to meet that appointment with death for us, to meet that appointment with judgment for us.  Christ was once offered to bear the sins of any, and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time, not to deal with the sin question, not to deal with our appointment with death – He’s already met that for us – but it says He’s coming the second time unto salvation, to administer full salvation to us.
    He that died met our appointment with death, and He’s not coming back the second time to die and meet an appointment with death.  He’s already done that for us.  He’s coming back the second time to redeem the purchased possession, which is us.  We are the purchased possession.  The salvation He’s coming back to minister to us the second time is not salvation for our soul or our spirit; we’ve already got that right now.  He’s coming back the second time, the Scripture says, to bring salvation to us who are appointed to death, that is to deliver us from that appointment with death, if we have the understanding of what His promise refers to.  And that Scripture in Hebrews 9 is a direct cross-reference from the 102nd Psalm.  And I want us to turn our bibles to the 102nd Psalm.  This is a glorious, glorious Old Testament promise of God, that as it is appointed on a man once to die under the curse and after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered.  He came to meet that appointment and He died for us.  So that when He returns the second time, He’s not coming back to deal with the sin question.  He’s already done that.  He’s coming back to bring salvation.  Not salvation to our spirit – He’s already given us that – He’s coming back the second time to give us salvation for our physical bodies.
    Now, the 102nd Psalm, beginning in Verse 11, “The Holy Spirit was upon the patriarch David, and He began to prophesy.”  And this isn’t David talking, this is the Holy Spirit speaking through David in the figure of the groanings of the sons of men.  And He said, “My days are like a shadow that declines, and I am withered like grass.”  I want you to notice how this begins.  The 102nd Psalm and Verse 11, “My days are like a shadow that declines, and I am withered like grass.”  What does that sound like?  That sounds like the aging process, doesn’t it?  Gray hairs and growing old and drawing nigh to the grave.  “But Thou, oh Lord, shall endure forever in Thy remembrance unto all generations.”  The Lord doesn’t grow old, He doesn’t get gray, He doesn’t have to worry about going into the grave because He lives forever, from generation to generation.
    Now this is the sigh and the cry of the patriarch David, of the Holy Spirit making intercession through him for the church.  “And thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion, for the time to favor her, yea, the set time has come.”  This is a prophetic utterance of a set time in God’s prophetic blueprint in time when He is to favor and have mercy upon Zion.  Now if we have any spiritual sense at all, we know He’s not talking about having mercy on a mountain called Mt. Zion.  Let’s wake up and realize that spiritual things answer to spiritual minds.  The Lord is speaking in the spirit to us, and He’s talking about that spiritual Mt. Zion which Paul identifies in Hebrews 12 as, “the spirit of the church.”  The church is the Mt. Zion of God.  It’s the high hill.  It represents the holy place in the Lord.  “Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion.”  That’s God’s church.  “For the time to favor her, yea, the set time is come.”  God has a set time to favor His church.
    “For Thy servants take pleasure in her stones.”  What stones?  Why, the stones of Zion are living stones.  We are the living stones of Zion.  God’s people are living stones.  He’s not talking about natural stones, He’s talking about spiritual stones.  He’s talking about people.  He’s talking about His people, the saints.  We are the stones of God.  “For Thy servants take pleasure in her stones and favor the dust thereof.”  Now, I want you to notice this prophecy.  A set time to favor the stones of Zion, a set time to favor the dust of these stones.  What’s God talking about in the spirit?  He’s speaking to us in the spirit, through the patriarch, prophesying by the Holy Ghost, projecting into the future, prophesying to the church that God has a set time to favor the dust of these old stones.  And He’s talking about the flesh of these mortal bodies that we’re walking around in.  That God has a set time to grant mercy and favor upon these dust bodies, the dust of these stones, the flesh of these mortal bodies that we’re walking around in.  God has a set time to deliver us from this bondage of death that we labor all our lifetime under, the bondage of the subjectivity of physical death.  “For Thy servants take pleasure in her stones and favor the dust thereof.”  This is the set time God is talking about to favor.
    “So the heathen shall fear the name of the Lord and all the kings of the earth Thy glory.”  When God begins to deliver His people from the bondage of physical death, that’s what He’s talking about.  “The heathen will fear the name of the Lord and all the kings of the earth His glory.”  “When the Lord shall build up Zion, He shall appear in His glory.”  The Scripture tells us here that God has a set time to favor the dust of our stones and a set time to build up Zion.  He’s got a set time to build His church, to build up His church and to make His church glorious in the earth and to remove the reproach that is upon His people.
    And let me tell you what the reproach is that is upon the church and what we bear.  We bear the marks in our bodies of the Adamic curse which is upon the sinful creation.  And we bear the same reproach of physical death working in us that the sinner bears, and therefore we are in the eyes of the sinner no different than he is.  Because as he ages, as he dies, as his body goes to corruption, so the saints age, so the saints die, and so the saints go to corruption.  And so the saints go to corruption in the grave.
    But we are living in the time when God is to lift the reproach off His church, when He is to build up Zion, and when He is to appear in His glory, when He is to favor the dust of these old mortal bodies.  By removing the curse of death that is upon us, He will regard the prayer of the destitute and not despise their prayer.  Who is the destitute that is praying here?  Sinners don’t pray, saints.  These destitute that He’s talking about are not sinners, because sinners don’t pray.  The Bible says, “He will regard the prayer of the destitute.”  That’s us.  That’s the church.  It’s the church that’s destitute.  It’s the church that must cry out to God for full redemption from this bondage of sickness, old age, senility, and death itself.  He will regard the prayer of the destitute and not despise their prayer.  This shall be written, for the generation to come and the people which shall be created shall praise the Lord.  This promise of escaping death, this promise of life, this promise of God favoring these old mortal bodies, the Scripture tells us it is written for a special generation, and it’s written for a people who will be created for this very purpose.  And we are living in the age of the fulfillment of this promise in Psalm 102.  This is the generation of the church that God will have a people in the church that will cry out unto Him and that will be delivered from this bondage.
    “For He has looked down from the height of His sanctuary.”  Now, this is the Lord.  The Lord has looked down from the height of His sanctuary.  “From Heaven did the Lord behold the earth.”  Now this is the Lord beholding the earth, and this is something that is going to happen in the earth, not up in Heaven.  “For He has looked down from the height of His sanctuary.  From Heaven did the Lord behold the earth to hear the groaning of the prisoner.”  What prisoner?  The prisoners of Hebrews, Chapter 2, that is us, we the saints who live all our lifetime in the bondage of the subjectivity and fear of physical death.  We are the prisoners, prisoners in grave clothes walking around in mortal bodies, subject to the curse of physical death.
    And yet we live in a time appointed of God, an age in which this truth is written for a generation, a generation which is living today upon the earth, that God has looked down from His sanctuary upon this generation, a people created for His praise and for this purpose.  God looking down from the height of His sanctuary, “From Heaven did the Lord behold the earth to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to loose those that are appointed to death.”  To loose them from their appointment with death.  That’s the promise to the chosen generation of the fullness of times in which this promise is to be fulfilled, and we are living in that age.  We are the generation of this promise of the 102nd Psalm.  That as it is appointed unto all men once to die under the curse, so Christ came and paid the price, and now He sits on the right-hand of the Father and makes intercession and looks down from the height of His sanctuary to hear the groaning of the prisoners, to hear the groaning of His people in these plain bodies of grave clothes, and He has signified unto His Father, through His intercession, to loose those that are appointed to death in this generation that was foreseen in His prophetic foreknowledge to come to be the heirs of this salvation in the end of the age that He is coming to bring unto His people.
    “So I declare the glorious good news unto you,” First Corinthians, 1551, where Paul said, “Behold, I show you a mystery.”  We shall not all sleep.  We’re not all going to die.  We’re not all going to go into the grave.  God is going to give us a change of raiment.  He’s going to take these grave clothes off of us.  He’s going to take these mortal bodies in their subjectivity to death from us, and He’s going to change the fashion of these bodies into the fashion of His glorious body that we might live forever.  And I’m talking about a people who will be alive and remaining for the glorious coming of the Lord, for the glorious transition of their bodies.  And I tell you that we are the most privileged age and generation of the church that has lived in the last 2,000 years, because we are the age and generation of the church upon whom these promises are to be visited.  For God has a people in our time in the body of Christ, and I’m bold enough to believe that there will be millions in our time that will escape physical death and that will be here to inherit the kingdom of God on earth when the Lord Jesus Christ comes.  And I believe that I have the entire command of the word of God to back me up on that promise.  Praise God.
    I want to get back to John now and teach from the very words of Jesus himself, in the 6th chapter of John, what Jesus came into the world for, why He had to die, why He had to give His physical life.  He gave His life for the remission of our sins, not only the sins of our spiritual man, but the sins of our body.  Because I want you to know that when Adam and Eve sinned, they didn’t only sin in spirit, they sinned physically.  They reached out with their hands and partook of the forbidden fruit.  And therefore, the curse came upon their bodies as well as their spirits.  And that’s why Jesus came and gave His body for our bodies, His blood for our blood.  That fulfills the law, life for life, kind for kind, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.  He came to redeem that which was taken away, which was physical life as well as spiritual life, from us.  Praise God.
    In John, Chapter 6, and I want to begin in Verse 48, Jesus ministering to the Jews, He said, “I am that bread of life.  Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead.”  He’s talking about physical death.  He’s talking about the generation that Moses took out of Egypt into the wilderness.  He said, “Your fathers ate manna.”  That’s angels’ bread.  God gave them angels’ bread from heaven to eat, and yet they died anyway and their bones bleached in the wilderness.  They died physically, that’s what Jesus said.  “Your fathers ate angels’ bread in the wilderness and are dead.”  They died physically.  But Jesus said, “This is the bread which comes down from Heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die.”  And He is talking in context about physical death.  He said to the Jews, “Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, “ and they’re physically dead, “but this is the bread which comes down from Heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die”, and He means physically, that a man may eat of this bread and not die physically.  And you know, when He made that statement, everybody wanted a loaf of that kind of bread.  Wouldn’t you want a slice of that kind of bread?  If you could eat a piece of bread and never die physically, you’d be looking for that loaf from now on, wouldn’t you?  Well, Jesus let us know what that bread is.  He revealed to us what that bread is, that a man may eat of this bread and never taste a physical death.  Jesus said, “I am the living bread which came down from Heaven.  If any man eat of this bread, He shall live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
    Notice He said, “I’m giving my flesh for the life of the world.”  Now that answers the requirement of the Law of Redemption which requires kind for kind, because the curse of physical death is upon the world, the Bible says Jesus gave His flesh for the life of the world, that through His physical body, physical life might be restored to the creation.  Physical perpetuity might be restored to this dying, animate creation.  That’s why Jesus said, “This is the bread that a man may eat thereof and not die physically.”  He was talking about His offering His body which was offered upon the cross, that if you can partake of that offering, if you understand what that offering is, if you’re eating of that offering, then you have the hope, my friend, not only of the resurrection if you die, but you have the hope of not dying if you happen to be alive.
    “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.”  If we do not understand that Jesus is the Lamb of God, that He is the sacrifice of sacrifices, that He came to give His flesh and blood for the flesh and blood life of the creation, then we have no hope of life.  What kind of life?  Physical life, immortality, eternal undying physical life, that’s what He’s talking about.  We have no hope of physical life operating in us.  We have no hope of the resurrection.  We have no hope of escaping death operating in us, except we are participating with understanding and knowledge of His substance.
    Why He had to die, that’s one of the great, great mysteries of Christianity today and one of the perplexing questions that sinners of the world have.  Why did God have to cause His own son to die a cruel death on the cross?  Why did He have to die physically?  Why did He have to shed His blood?  What was the reason?  The answer comes back from Christians, “Well, he had to die for the remission of our sins.”  But the sinner kind of scratches his head and says, “Well, okay, I guess that’s what it means.”  My friend, it means a whole lot more than Jesus dying for the sins of your spiritual man.  Jesus gave His flesh and blood that He might give life to your flesh and blood, that He might give life to your substance, that He might change your substance from mortal to immortal, that He might grant you life-giving resurrection power for your bodies.
    “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.”  If you don’t know why He gave His offering, if you are not eating of that and drinking of that hope, eating and drinking of that hope, that’s what it means.  Faith is what?  The evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped for.  How are we eating and drinking of the Lord’s flesh and blood today?  We are eating and drinking of it by faith in hope of the resurrection, in hope of the coming of the Lord, that if we are alive and are accounted worthy to be alive and remaining unto His coming, we shall taste of His body anew with Him in the Kingdom, and we shall not die.  And that’s exactly what He means.
    And Paul was reaffirming that in First Corinthians, 1551, when he said, “Mortal flesh and blood,” that is to say, flesh and blood – or mortal flesh and blood – “shall not inherit the kingdom of God, but I show you a mystery.  We shall not all sleep.”  God’s going to change this mortal substance and fashion it like unto His immortal substance.  Like unto His immortal substance.  That’s the blessed hope.
    What does mortality mean?  Mortality means subjectivity to physical death.  What does immortality then mean?  It means being without subjectivity to physical death.  That’s what immortality means.  Mortality is subjectivity to physical death; immortality is not subject to physical death.  And that is the hope of the Gospel, as the Scripture tells us that we are striving toward life, eternal life and immortality in Christ Jesus.  That is the hope of the promise that He has given unto us.  Not immortality for your spirit.  Your spirit goes on living whether your body does or not.  Immortality has to do with the hope and promise for your physical body.  That’s why those that have died in Christ and gone to the grave with this hope of life in immortality in them, understanding that Jesus died not only to save their spiritual man, but He died to redeem their bodies; therefore, Jesus will bring their spirits back with Him when He comes for the purpose of resurrecting and giving them a new body.  And that’s why He gave His body and why He shed His blood, to give new life to your body.
    “Who so eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”  Now, there’s two kinds of people that’s going to be raised up at the last day, and they’re both going to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air when he comes back to this world.  They’re not going out of this world, they’re being convocated to meet Him when He comes back to this world in His glorious triumph.  And there’s two kinds of people that the Lord says that He’s going to raise up on the last day:  He’s going to raise up the dead with new resurrected bodies, and He’s going to raise up those of us who are alive and remaining, hopefully if we are among them.  We that are alive and remaining are the other people that are going to be caught up on the last day, and if we happen to be privileged to be alive and remaining among those that are caught up, we will escape physical death, we will be changed from mortal to immortal, and we’ll live forever without ever going through the grave.
    And that’s a glorious mystery in this age, that I said, and I state emphatically upon the authority of God’s word, that I believe multitudes of God’s people living in this generation will never experience physical death.  It’s the promise of the Gospel.  But I want you to know that there is a death syndrome operating in Christianity today, and it is the misconception that you’ve got to die.  And that’s absolutely not scriptural, it’s absolutely not true.  We’ve got to get our perspective in line with the word of God and with the times and seasons we’re living in.
    Now, if we said to the Christians a hundred or two hundred years ago, “Well, you don’t have to die,” we’d just about be a hundred years ahead of ourselves.  But I don’t believe that for this hour.  I believe that the coming of the Lord is going to be in our time.  I believe it’s going to be in our generation, and I believe the overwhelming majority of fundamental, full Gospel, spiritfilled Christians and ministers believe that today, that we are the generation that will see the culmination of this age and the glorious coming and appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
    That’s why we can preach this truth.  It’s a message whose time has come that I can declare to the church in this hour that we have the blessed hope of bypassing the grave if we are accounted worthy.  And that’s why Jesus said in Matthew 24, “Pray that you be accounted worthy.”  Don’t presume on God.  “Pray that you be accounted worthy.”  There again is the exhortation from the Lord.  If the Lord Himself exhorts us to pray that we be worthy to escape the destruction that’s coming and to stand before the Son of Man at His appearing, then that’s His will for us, is it not?  It’s not been His will that we should perish.  It’s not His will even that we should be martyred, if you will, although I do believe that faithful servants of the Lord will indeed be martyred in these days.  But I believe that there is a place in Christ where the Lord will deliver His people from martyrdom itself.
    And I believe that the Scripture reveals to us in Revelation that that old dragon, the Devil himself, and the Antichrist that’s coming into power in our age are going to seek to destroy the Elect Woman, and I believe that that Elect Woman has to do with the overcomers in the church, and Satan is not going to be able to destroy that woman.  And I believe that woman is the Elect Church.
    And what is the Elect Church?  Well, it’s certainly not a denomination, it’s certainly not a system of men.  I believe the Elect Church is made up of people out of all walks of life, out of all forms of Christianity, if you will, who have one singular distinction together, that they love the Lord Jesus Christ with all their heart, with all their mind, and with all their strength.  And I believe that’s what makes up the Body of Christ.  I don’t believe that denominations make up the Body of Christ.  I believe the Body of Christ is made up of those who love the Lord Jesus Christ, and God searches the hearts of men and he knows His own.  And I believe that it is the desire of God, indicated through the prayers of Jesus, that we be accounted worthy or that we pray that we be accounted worthy to escape death – that’s exactly what He’s talking about – and to stand alive before Him at His coming.  Oh, praise God.
    Glorious good news.  Isn’t it amazing that we live in a generation that is facing potential genocide?  I’m talking about, the world looks at our present age – the nuclear age – as perhaps the age of the genocide of the human race.  And yet in the midst of all this gloom and darkness, there is glorious light appearing out of the Scripture, revealing to us that a thousand will fall at your side and ten-thousand at your right hand, but the destruction that waits at noonday will not touch you.  Do you realize that that’s a promise for the nuclear age?  Did you hear what I said?  I said, do you realize that the 91st Psalm is a promise for the nuclear age?  God said, “A thousand will fall at your side and ten-thousand at your right hand, but if you make the Lord your refuge, the destruction will not touch you.”  And that sounds like a miracle to me.  Doesn’t it to you?  How could ten thousand be killed on one side of you and a thousand on the other side of you, and it didn’t touch you?
    You talk about miracles, you talk about divine healing.  Let me tell you something, deliverance from death itself is the greatest miracle.  And that’s what God is promising to those who make the Lamb of God their refuge, who make the covering of His blood and the eating of His flesh their hope in this hour, that recognize that He died and gave His life for your physical life, and that fulfills the law.  Kind for kind, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.  Jesus gave His blood and His flesh for the life of your flesh and the life of your blood, and that fulfills the law.  Kind for kind.
    He is the Lamb of Sacrifice, the glorious propitiation for the creation because, you see, it’s the ultimate purpose of God to redeem the whole creation from the bondage of physical death.  And that’s what Jesus is coming back for.  He’s coming back to take over this dying world, saints, to redeem it from death, to take the curse of physical death off this creation.
    And that’s why Romans 8 tells us that even the whole creation itself is groaning for this present time of the coming of the Lord.  They don’t even know what they’re groaning for.  But Romans, Chapter 8, tells us that the whole creation is groaning.  Let us read it here.  Beginning in Verse 19 of Romans 8, “For the earnest expectation of the creature,” – that is the whole creation – “waits for the manifestation of the Sons of God.”  That manifestation of the Sons of God has to do with the redemption of the bodies of God’s people, as we shall read on.  “For the creature,” – that is the creation – “was made subject to vanity” – that is subject to the Adamic nature of sin, sickness, old age, senility, and death – “not willingly” – not because we came into this world willing to die, but being subjected to it by reason of the genes of the Adam man or the Adam nature that we inherited from our first father Adam, who had the curse of death working in his body, and therefore it works in all our bodies.  “For the creature was made subject to vanity” – that is, to death – “not willingly, but by reason of Him” – that is by reason of the Lord – “who has subjected the same creation in hope” – not in hopelessness, but in hope, for you see, God intends to redeem the creation from the fear of death itself – “because the creature itself” – the creation itself – “also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption” – that’s the bondage of physical decay and corruption in the grave – “into the glorious liberty of the children of God.  For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now.”  And if you don’t think this creation is groaning in pain, all you’ve got to do is watch your world news every night, and that’s all you’re going to see is pain and death and destruction on every hand, weeping and tears and sorrows and grief.
    And the Scripture says, “We know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now.”  And not only they but ourselves also, we the church, we the Christians, we who have the first fruits of the Holy Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, the Bible says, waiting for the adoption.  The adoption.  What adoption?  Our adoption as Sons of God, the evidence of our adoption as Sons of God.  What is to be the evidence before the creation that God has adopted us as His sons?  The evidence of that adoption which we are groaning for in our physical bodies today, the Scripture says, is, to wit, the redemption of our bodies.  That’s what we’re groaning for, that’s what the creation is groaning for.  And the Scripture says, “We are saved by hope.”  That’s the hope we are saved and we are pointed toward.
    But hope that is seen is not hope, for what a man sees, why does he yet hope for it?  We don’t see it fulfilled yet.  That’s why we lay ahold of the promise through hope.  And the Gospel and promise of God is our hope of this redemption.  But if we hope for that which we see not or that which we do not now see fulfilled, then do we with patience wait for it.  So this is what we are waiting now with patience for, even though we now suffer in our bodies, even though we now have to go through trials and afflictions.  Yet the Scripture says, we are waiting and groaning in these tabernacles of clay, in these mortal bodies, waiting for the evidence of our adoption as God’s Sons, and that evidence is going to be, to wit, the redemption of our bodies, the redemption of our body [inaudible] and the curse of physical [inaudible].  Praise God.  For this is the hope where unto we are saved and pointed toward, this [inaudible] redemption for the Adamic curse.  Praise God.
    In John 8, going back to the Gospel of John again, Chapter 8 and Verse 51, you know Jesus had a lot of hard sayings, and men couldn’t endure it, especially the religious people.  The interesting part of the Gospels is that Jesus had a lot of favor with the sinners.  They believed just about everything and anything He had to say, because He backed it up with signs following.  And there’s a time coming when signs are going to follow the word of God in our time.  But right now the word isn’t being preached to sinners, and that’s why you’re not going to see too many signs right now, because the word’s being preached to the church.

   In order to know what God’s plan is for His church, for His people.  And the Lord says in James 5, Verse 7, He says “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.  Behold, the husbandman and waits for the precious fruit of the earth, and He has long patience for it, until He receive the early and latter rain.”  Praise God.
    Of course, this is the quotation from Joel’s prophecy, in the second chapter of the Book of Joel, where the Prophet Joel prophesied of two great visitations of the Holy Ghost, of the power of the spirit of God, and would be poured out upon God’s church, and they were spiritually called the former rain and the latter rain, and former rain was the outpouring of the Holy Ghost that fell on the day of Pentecost some 2,000 years ago, that power that manifested the early church and brought it forth with power doing the works of Jesus and His mighty supernatural acts.  This is the early church that possessed a measure of the anointing of the mind of Christ so that they were able to speak and write and do the works of Jesus and this tremendous ministry that turned the Roman world upside down 2,000 years ago.
    Then we see that there came a long period of the dark ages of the church in which the true power of God was not in the earth, but now we have come to the dispensation of the fullness of time, signified by the prophets, in which the Lord is to revisit His church and to restore His glory and power and that faith which was once delivered to the saints.
    We are in the times of refreshing, right now.  We are in the time of preparation because the Lord is getting ready to restore His Shekinah, or manifested power to His church, and in Joel, Chapter 2, where Joel speaks of these things which James was referring to concerning the prophecies of God’s church and the restoring of the power, in verse 23, He says, “Be glad then, you children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God:  for He has given you the former rain moderately...”  
    Now, that was talking about the anointing that came on the day of Pentecost that birthed the early church, and yet the Lord says that He gave that rain moderately.  That outpouring of the Holy Ghost that was given them was not in effect the fullness of the power of God because He poured it out moderately.  In 2nd Corinthians 5, the Scripture tells us that God has given unto us -– that is, unto His church – the earnest of His spirit.
    Well, the earnest is the measure, just like pouring out the rain moderately is a measure of God’s power.  But it does not contain within the fullness of all the omnipotent powers resident in the Holy Spirit or in our Lord, Jesus Christ.  
    This anointing of the fullness of the spirit He has reserved for the dispensation of the fullness of times in which we are now living, and this will be the unlimited power of God which He is going to visit His church with in our times in order to raise up the body of Christ in order to bring forth a church that will fulfill the divine commission in the Book of Ephesians, where the Lord says that He is coming back for a glorious church, a church that is going to be without spot, wrinkle, blemish, or any such thing.  A church that is going to be like him.  And this is the ministry that He is going to anoint and raise up in the latter days, a five-fold ministry of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, that will be able to bring God’s church to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, according to what the Scripture tells us in Ephesians.
    The church has never been able to produce – in any generation of the church age, it has never been able to produce a people who have been able to come into the fullness of what Christ is.  We have not had a church upon the earth that has been able to come into the measure of the stature or the fullness of Christ.  The early church was pressing for that prize.  Paul said that “I have not yet attained or not yet apprehended that for which I have been apprehended,” but he was pressing for the prize of the mark of the high calling in Christ.
    Now, all those holy fathers of old died in faith, not having received the fullness of these promises or having come into them in their time, but they saw these things afar off and they prophesied of our times and of the joy and of the glory that should be bestowed upon God’s church in the fullness of times.
    And so this prophecy of Joel has been fulfilled only in part.
    As Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost and he said, “This is that which the prophet Joel spoke of, Praise God,” and it was fulfilled in part because the former rain was poured out upon that early church.  But as the Scripture tells us, they received it in moderation.  That is, in limitation.  God did not exhaust Heaven when He gave to the early church that measure of the Holy Ghost which they had, neither has He exhausted Heaven in our times with the portion that the Spirit has been poured forth in our times with the portion that we have.  But what God is reserving us for is this second great visitation of His Shekinah or manifest power, and when this glory is restored and when it is poured forth, then the Lord is going to raise up a supernatural ministry and a supernatural army of sons that will carry the everlasting gospel to every nation, kindred and tongue with power, and then shall the end come.
    And the word of God tells us that these things must be fulfilled in God’s church.  This is why it is important to know God’s blueprint in this hour, because the word tells us here that He has given us the former rain moderately, but He will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month, or a double portion, as it were, of that power.  Just as Elisah followed Elijah, and he desired a double portion of that power that rested upon Elijah, so also that was a figure and a type of what God is to pour out upon His end-time church.
    The prophet Haggai says the glory of the latter house – that is, of God’s end-time church, His end-time temple, or His end-time body – shall be greater than that of the former house.  Praise God.  Greater than that of the apostolic age.  
    We have seen nothing, even in our times of the Pentecostal Revival, Full Gospel, and now Charismatic moves and revivals – yet we have seen nothing that compares or even fulfills the glory that was brought about through the Book of Acts, when the early church was manifested and even the power that they did, and let me tell you something:  Jesus said that we would do His works and greater works, Praise God.
    And the church has never as a body of people been able to bring forth greater works than Jesus did.  
    But!  We are in the time when the Lord is going to give to His church the unlimited fullness of the power of the Holy Ghost that rested on and in Jesus and in Jesus only, in His time.  Because in John’s gospel it tells us that God gave not the spirit to him by measure, but Jesus possessed the fullness, the unlimited power of God.  And this unlimited power, this faith of God is that which He is going to pour forth in His end-time church when He restores the Shekinah or the manifest presence of His glory to His church, Praise God.
    And this is the power that spoke to the wind and the waves.  It spoke to the dead.  And all things obeyed the voice of God and there were no failures because it was not dependent upon man’s faith in God, as we have today.  We believe in God for miracles.  We believe in God for healings.  We believe in God for all these things, but it still takes faith in God to get these things to happen, and then they only happen through God’s divine purposes, if He purposes to do it.  Praise God.  We can’t make God do, but we can believe in God and if it pleases Him to do it, he’ll do it, and nothing will stop him.
    But that’s not the kind of faith that Jesus had.  Jesus did not have faith in God, Jesus possessed the faith of God.  And there’s a tremendous difference.  That’s the faith that spoke the worlds into existence, that created substance out of nothing.  He spoke the word and it formed, and it came into being, creating substance, matter, creating the universe.
    It says that the worlds were made.  By the faith of God, that by His faith God spoke the worlds into existence.  By faith when Jesus was in the world, He spoke to the dead and they rose on command.  This was resident manifest power.  And that was the power that was in Jesus.  And He says that this is the glory that He is going to restore to His church, and He is going to take Ichabod off the doorpost.  Ichabod means the glory has departed.  
    The Prophet Hosea, speaking of that glory that rested upon the early church prophesied and said that the early dew would go away.  Praise God.  That was the anointing that rested in that age, and the Prophet said the glory of that age would go away and a great dark age would come upon God’s church in the times in which great Babylon would rule during the vacuum or during the void of that period between the former rain and the latter rain.  But referring again to Jame’s prophecy, God has long patience until He receive the former and the latter, Praise God.
    We are in the time now, the fullness of times when Lord is to restore the glory; only, it is going to be a far greater glory than even the early church possessed.  Praise God.
    And He says the floors shall be full of wheat and the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.  That’s the great harvest of souls that is going to be brought in through anointing that God is going to restore to His church.  And He says, “I will restore to you the years that the years that the locust has eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.”  The Lord is going to restore the years that the systems of Babylon have devoured.  He is going to restore the years that Babylonian has devoured, and this is what is represented by the cankerworm and the caterpillar and the palmerworm and the locust, you see?  What the palmerworm left, the caterpillar ate, and what the caterpillar ate, the locust ate and so forth.  
    It is a type of that great Babylonian system that took God’s heritage into captivity and has held God’s heritage into captivity until the times of restitution.  And the Scripture tells us that the Heavens must retain Jesus until the times of restitution, until all things are restored which the Lord has signified through the law and the prophets, until all these things are restored back to God’s church, until the glory is restored, because the Lord is going to raise up His church and he’s going to make His church a glory and a praise in the earth.
    This is the glorious church that He is coming back for, a church that is going to be like him, that is going to be in the measure of the stature of His fullness.  And it is important for us to know that until God fulfills His word, He is not coming back for His church, and there are false concepts in the traditions of men that tell us that Jesus could come back any minute.  
    No, He can’t come back any minute, by His own word.  He says that He has exalted His word above all His name.  The Scripture says He has exalted His word above all His name.  So that God is bound by an immutable oath to fulfill what He has spoken to His people, to His church.  
    And the word says the heavens must retain Jesus until the times of restitution, until the glory be restored and until He raise up a church that is going to be in the measure of the stature of His fullness of Christ.
    You know, the traditions of men are something that we have to realize where they come from.  The Word of God says that there is a people that have a form of Godliness, but they deny the power of God, and He says from such turn away.  
    God wants us to know the truth, and so it is important for us to know that God has no intention of taking His church out of the world that He intends through the Word to perfect His church in the world, and Jesus is coming back to rule and to reign with the saints here, and the Word tells us in Matthew 5 that the meek shall inherit the earth, not Heaven!  
    Heaven is only a temporary place where the spirits of dead saints go, that’s all.  It’s a temporary place where the spirits of dead saints go.  It is not the permanent home of God’s people.  And yet people of God bring forth their songs and they sing, oh, when we get to our heavenly home and our everlasting home in Heaven, we’re going to spend forever in Heaven with Jesus.
    This is not what the Holy Bible teaches.  We have to get back to God’s word and get out of the traditions deny the power of God and begin to let the Holy Ghost get us back into the Word and get back to the God that Paul taught.  And Peter taught and the Apostles taught.  
    We have to know God’s blueprint, because if we don't know what God is doing in this hour, we’re going to be like that multitude of religious people on the day of Pentecost when God poured out that former rain – here were all those religious leaders in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost, and they came and congregated and said “What is this?”  They didn’t even know what God was doing!  And these were the teachers!  These were the teachers of the people, the religious leaders.  These were religious leaders who were congregated there, and they had no idea what God was going.
    The Word says, to the law and to the testament, if we speak not according to this Word, it’s because there is no light in us.  How did Jesus pray for His church in the 17th chapter of John?  Jesus prayed for His church, and He said “Father, I pray not that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil that’s in the world.”  
    The Lord is getting ready to pour out His power and raise up a church in glory and give her power to do the works of Jesus.  And greater works, as He says, and that’s not been fulfilled, and it has to be fulfilled because Jesus said it would be done.  
    But in John 17 and verse 15, He says, “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.”  And was He just praying for those disciples alone?  No.  Right down in verse 20, continuing in the same prayer, He says, “Neither pray I for these alone,” – that is He wasn’t just praying for those disciples – “but for them also which shall believe on me through their word,” and that takes in all of us, all down through the ages.  Because every single believer in Jesus Christ believes on Him through the Word and through the testimony of these holy men of old.  Though the words that they spoke and wrote to us.  
    And the universal prayer of Jesus all down through the ages for His church is that we should not be taken out of the world but preserved from the evil in the world.  The Bible says that our Lord is coming back for a church that is full of over-comers.  To him that overcomes will I cause to rule and reign, to sit with me, He says, upon my throne and to share me in the glory.  
    People think that the glory of God is something He hands out?  No, there’s a price to pay, it’s a pearl of great price.  Paul said forgetting the things which are behind.  I press for something.  Wait a minute.  Paul already had salvation.  What was he pressing for then?  He was pressing for something that you had to pay a price for.  Salvation is the grace of God.  That’s a free gift. If you believe in the blood of Jesus your soul is saved through the blood of Jesus.  But to receive a crown, to receive a reward, to receive the fullness of Christ, that’s something you’ve got to press for.  And if you’re going to press for it, you’ve got to be willing to give up everything to go after it.  
    The Lord says, if any man loves father or mother or brothers or sisters, if any man even loves himself more than Me, He is not worthy of Me.  If any man puts his hand to the plow and looks back, He is not fit for the kingdom.  You see, God is getting ready to raise up an army.  He’s getting ready to raise up warriors in the spirit, a militant church.  He wants the people who will press for that prize of the mark of the high calling.
    The Epistles were not written to lazy Christians.  The Epistles were written to Christians who had a desire to come to know Jesus as He is.  And let me tell you something, we don't know Jesus with one trip to the altar.  You know, they’ll tell you, “Do you know Jesus?  Have you had a salvation experience?”  We just got introduced to Jesus when we confessed our sins and came to him.  But to really know Him is to grow up in the knowledge of the Lord.  
    The Word tells that God’s people are going to grow up like calves of the stall.  That are going to be fed on the fat heritage of Jacob, and that’s another thing:  everything that God promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob He has promised to His church, to the church, because we are the heirs of all things that God promised to the patriarchs of old.  Paul teaches us that God’s church is the Israel of God, the new creation in Christ.  It is that spiritual invisible Israel, the feet of Abraham and the heir all that he has covenanted from Genisis to Revelation, and that’s an important truth to understand, because God is not going back to the natural Jews, and it’s important to understand that.
    Paul teaches us that the natural Jew is going to get saved just the same as everybody else, and that is that out of Zion is going to come forth the deliverer, that’s what Paul teaches us about the salvation of the natural Jews.
    Yes, we are looking for the coming of our Lord.  He is coming literally in the clouds, and every eye is going to see him, and Jesus is coming back, but He is not coming down on a yo-yo to go right back up.  He’s coming down here to rule and reign with us.  
    The reason why God’s people are going to be caught up to meet Him in the air is because when He comes at that time, God’s army is going to be on all sides of the earth preaching the everlasting gospel as a witness and then the end shall come.  That’s what Jesus said in Matthew 24, and the reason why that God’s people are going to be caught up to meet Him is because it’s going to be a great convocation.  The Lord is going to gather up His saints from the four sides of the earth to meet Him in the air when He comes, and Jesus is going to rule and to reign with Him right here, upon the earth.  All nations, the Bible says, shall serve and obey him.  We’re nations, he’s talking about the earth!  
    The Lord says that “As I live, the whole earth shall be filled with my glory.”  
    Even as the waters cover the seas, so also the Lord says that His glory shall be seen in the earth.  Moreover the Lord says that His glory shall rest upon His church.  And the glory of the Lord shall be seen upon you,  If we follow on to know the Lord.  If we know the times and seasons appointed of God, and there are only two great dispensations of the visitation of His Shekinah power, and that was what the early church had, and that is what is to be restored very shortly to us in these end times.  We are only in a preparation stage for that glory right now.  
    But nobody today – and I’m talking about God’s church – God’s church today does not possess the resident power that was in Jesus.  I’m talking about the fullness.  Not a measure of the Holy Ghost, not the earnest of the spirit – I’m talking about what Jesus had.  The church does not possess what He had, but that glory is to be poured out, and when it’s poured out, the church is going to do what Jesus did.  
    Jesus walked up to the grave of a man that was four days’ dead and already beginning to stink, as the Scripture says, and He cried with a loud voice and He said, “Lazarus, come forth,” and nothing could resist that Word.  Because that is the Word that created the world.  And when that faith is resident in God’s church, we will do those works.  
    I want to give you a Scripture in Matthew that is used by some out there to tell God’s people they’re going to fly away to Heaven.  We’re going to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, but we’re not flying away to Heaven. No way is God going to take His people out of the world.  
    Jesus said, “I pray not that you should take them out of the world, but that you should preserve them from the evil.”
    Well, God’s got to circumcise this old mind up here, doesn’t he?  He’s got to chisel out the cobwebs of our tradition.  Praise God.  It is by the renewing of the mind that God is able to bring us into this purposes, because if we don’t have that veil lifted off of us, we are just as blind as the Jews were.  Because we are following the same thing they followed, and that’s the tradition of the elders.  That’s what blinded them.  They were married to their denomination.  They were married to the Pharisees, to the Sadducees, to the scribes.  He says if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God!  The Bible says you go to the source of living.  
    You don’t need any medium but Jesus Christ.  The Bible says you go to Jesus and you ask the Lord for wisdom, and if you ask Him for bread, He won’t give you a stone.  The Word says if you ask Him for a fish, will He give you a snake?  What are you afraid of?  In other words, the Lord is telling us, what are we afraid of?  
    In order to progress, it requires change.  The capacity to change, to take off these old tattered garments and let the Lord put a new garment on.  That’s what he’s getting ready to do for His church, if we will let Him do it.  And if we won’t let Him do it, then he’s going to find a people who will!  Because His Word says he’s going to have a glorious church, and he’s coming back for a people who will be in the measure of the fullness of His stature, right here.  
    That’s where the five-fold ministry is that’s going to bring the church to perfection.  It’s not up in Heaven.  God set that ministry up on the earth.  
    What defied the camp of Israel?  Why wouldn’t God go up and fight with Joshua and his armies?  Ah, because He said “There is defilement in the camp of Israel, I’ll not go up with you.”  He said, “Do away with the accursed thing and I’ll go up with you.”  And they searched out the camp of Israel and they found a man who had defiled himself, and his name was Akin, and do you know what they found in his tent?  They found a Babylonian garment and a wedge of gold.
    What tent is God talking about?  This is the tent he’s talking about.  This is where He dwells.  This is His tabernacle, this is His tent.  God says “I’m going to search Jerusalem with candles.”  This is what he’s going to search with candles, right in here.  This is the city where He lives.  He’s not living in a city out here someplace, this is the city where He lives.  Praise God.
    The Lord says, “I will live in them and I will walk in them, and they shall be my people.”  This is the city.  
    Akin knew he was doing wrong but he was trying to take something out of the old, and you don’t take out of the old and marry it to the new.  No.  You see, because if you sew an old piece of garment as He says on something new, a piece of cloth, an old piece on the new, it causes a rent.  It won’t agree.  
    The Lord says that new wine cannot be contained in old bottles.  
    But here in Matthew 24 – and I’m going to minister this here for the benefit of those who have not heard this expounded, on the days of Noah, where Jesus was talking about the times of the end time that we’re living in and we all know we’re living in the end times, any fool walking the street knows that, praise God.  Bless the Lord.  Because of the things that are coming upon the earth.  The Bible says even the fool and the way-faring man can see that.
    In verse 27 of Matthew 24, “But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.  For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark.”  Now notice this.  He said these evil days are going to be just like they were in the days of Noah.  Well, we’re certainly living in wicked days.  
    The Bible says that the wicked “were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark.”  They were carrying on with their commerce, their way of life, just carrying on like they are until the day Noah entered into the ark, and they knew not, it says, “until the flood came and took them all away.”  The Lord came on that generation like a thief.  That’s how he’s coming.
    The Bible says the Lord is coming like a thief in an hour in which they know not, and let me tell you something, He’s coming in a way they don't know.
    Let me tell you something, the sleepwalkers in Zion don't know how he’s coming.  
    God wants us to wake up!  And know what our God is doing.  He came upon the wicked like a thief.  At an hour in which they knew not and He cut them asunder through destruction.  Oh, but He made a difference with the righteous.  He spared the righteous.
    And let me tell you something:  that day didn’t come on Noah like a thief.  Noah knew.
    Did you know that the Bible says Noah knew the day it was going to rain, but the wicked didn’t know it.  God showed Noah the day that His judgment was going to fall.  And Noah, being moved by the fear of God, prepared an Ark.  And God is revealing in this hour to those that have an ear to hear, that His judgments are about to come.  And those who will get into the Ark of safety will be spared, and that Ark of safety is Jesus.  
    But the wicked knew not until the flood came and took them all away.  They were swept away by the flood of God’s judgment.  So shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
    Now, this is not talking about His second coming here, like we think of Him as coming through the clouds.  This is talking about Him coming in the spirit of judgment like a thief upon a wicked generation that is not looking for it.  That is busy with their commerce.  Busy eating and drinking.  Busy carrying on the wicked ways of the world, until the judgment sweeps upon them, at an hour when they’re not ready for it.
    Then, He says, shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.  Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.  Watch therefore: for you know not what hour your Lord does come.”  You know not what hour His judgment will fall, that’s what He’s talking about, because when it falls upon the wicked, it will be like the ays of Noah – they will no not.  But the judgment will overtake them.  
    Then He says it’s going to be like the days of Noah.  As the flood came and took away the wicked and left the righteous.  
    Let me tell you something:  the one taken here was taken by the flood, and the one left was the righteous.  That’s what He’s talking about.  Just as it was in the days of Noah, the flood came and took them all away.  Who did it take away?  It took away the wicked.  And who did it leave?  It left the righteous.  And it left the righteous to replenish the earth.  
    And that’s what God purposes to do in our times, although the Bible says he’s not going to destroy all flesh.  God is not going to destroy all flesh, but His judgments are coming and they are going to sweep across this world, and yet only those who have their anchor in Jesus are going to be delivered by divine intervention, and they’re not going to be taken out of the world but they’re going to be preserved through the promise.  
    Because we are following the God of Shadrack, Michack and Abednego who is able to deliver through the furnace.  The Lord isn’t going to take us out of the fight, he’s going to take us through the battle.  He says the victory is to the overcomer!  How can we overcome if we fly away and miss the battle?  What do you overcome?
    No, if we are going to attain to something worthwhile in Jesus, we’ve got to pay a price for it.  What did Jesus say?  He said fly away and forget it?  No, He said take up your cross and follow Me.  If any man will live Godly in Christ Jesus, He shall suffer persecution, not run away or fly away from it.  But he’ll have to go through it and stand like a good soldier.  
    And the Bible says to put on the full armor of God that you might be able to stand in the evil day.  Not sit back and think that God is going to bail us out of everything but start putting one the armor, that’s what the Word says.  Put on that armor!  
    Well, we begin to put on the armor of God when we begin to put on the faith and we begin to put on this word, and we begin to equip ourselves and to make ourselves ready against the day.  Because if you are prepared in your heart and mind for what’s coming you’ll not be overwhelmed by it.  But if you don't know what’s coming, you will be overwhelmed.  
    And let me tell you that many of God’s people who have been led to believe a lie are going to be overthrown not many days hence, because they have been taught to trust in a lie, in a false hope, in a tradition of man, and not in the covenant of God’s true promise, because the Lord is telling us to entreat Him for power!  That He might give us the power to grow up into Him and to become His sons and to be witnesses for Him to the uttermost ends of the earth.  And then shall the end come, Praise God.
    I’m going to bring out a Scripture to you and then I’m winding down on this.  In Thessalonians.  I think those of you that have heard me know I’m long winded so... but in Thessalonians, first Thessalonians, chapter 4.  
    Some take this Scripture in first Thessalonians 4 out of its context and they teach that this Scripture is referring to an instantaneous rapture of God’s church that could take place any time, that God can rapture His church up to Heaven, and they say that this Scripture is dealing with God’s church being taken out of the world and raptured to Heaven
    And let me give you another guideline to sound doctrine.  The Epistles mean what they say.  They mean what they say.  They’re not types and shadows of anything.  They mean literally what they say and they are a guideline to sound doctrine so that even the very unskilled babe in the Lord is not going to err if he follows the plain teachings of the Epistles.  You are not going to err.  But where false teachings and false ministries get God’s people into error is by going into the method of allegorizing the Epistles, and allegorizing means to make figures of speech out of these sayings.  To change the meaning of them.  In other words, to try to spiritualize some other meaning into it than what is literally said.
    But the Epistles mean literally what they say.  When the Lord talks about coming in the clouds and the dead rising, He means literally that.  And there are some who use the pseudo or false method of interpretation, and it is a cleaver method but if you use it, it’ll lead you into every avenue of false concepts, because it is a false principle of interpretation and if you use it, the Devil will begin to trail you off into all kinds of wildfires, and that is by taking these things and changing the meaning of what they say.
    Let us begin here.  In Verse 13, where Paul begins to expound on the coming of the Lord, and of course he means literally what he says here, he’s not talking in parables, that’s what I’m trying to tell you – the Epistles are not Parables, they mean what they say.  Verse 13:  “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brother, concerning them which are asleep.”  He’s talking about the dead now, just like he said, my friend Lazarus sleeps and the disciples, they thought  he was talking about Lazarus taking a nap, going to bed.  And he said, No!  He says, “I mean, he’s dead!”  
    And that’s what he’s talking about here.  That’s what Paul’s talking about.  He says, “I would not have you to be ignorant, brother, concerning them which are asleep,” he’s talking about those who have died in Jesus that are sleeping in faith, that are in the graves.  
“That you sorrow not even as others which have no hope, for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.”
He’s going to bring back the dead saints with him.
    Okay, the question comes in, when is He going to do this?  
    Some say He’s going to come back any minute and bring these dead saints any minute.  And then they’re going to fly away to Heaven with Him, along with us, and we’re all going to fly away with Him, to Heaven.  
    All right, let’s follow on down.  

    For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord that we which area live and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

    Now, notice, this is “unto the coming of the Lord” not “comings of the Lord.”  “unto the coming of the Lord,” singular, one coming.  If there were more than one coming, he would say “unto the comings of the Lord,” because God has people alive and remaining you see.  But he says “unto the coming of the Lord.”  There’s no such thing as two second comings.  There’s only one second coming.
    Now, when does that take place?  Well, we’re going to find out here.  This Scripture is definitely dealing with the resurrection of the righteous, isn’t it?  And he says,

    For this we say unto you by the Word of the Lord that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep, for the Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with a voice of the archangel.  

    It means literally what it says.  
    “And with the trump of God and the dead in Christ, that’s the literal dead – “shall rise, shall rise first.  Then we which are alive and remain” – that is, talking about the saints that will be alive and remaining at the time Jesus comes – “and we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with Him in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air,” and it doesn’t say anything about going back to Heaven with him.  It says “to meet Him in the air” at his coming.  “So shall we ever be with the Lord.”  
    “Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”
    Now, this Scripture plainly speaks of the resurrection of the righteous.  Now, what we want to know is, when does this resurrection take place?  When does this coming of the Lord take place?  Is it a rapture that’s going to take place now?  Is it going to take place before the tribulation, in the middle of the tribulation, or is this coming of the Lord going to take place at the end of the tribulation?  And did you know the Bible says that we don't know the day and hour of Jesus’s coming back, but we do know the time that He’s coming back because the Scripture tell us the dispensational times and seasons.
    In Revelation Chapter 20, John says,

And I saw an angel come down from Heaven having the key of the Bottomless Pit and a great chain in his hand, and he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent which is the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.

And it says that he was bound for a thousand years and the angel cast him into the Bottomless Pit and shut him up and set a seal upon him that he should deceive the nations no more until the thousand years should be fulfilled, and after that he must be loosed a little season.  
    Notice, all this is going on down here on the earth, right down here.  He’s going to be bound, cast into the Bottomless Pit down here, he will be prevented from going out among the nations during that period.  
    And he says, “And I saw a throne” – that’s the thrones of the overcomers, that’s the thrones of the righteous – “and they sat upon them and judgment was given until them as the Word says the saints will judge the word, and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus” – this talking about saints who have paid a price with their lives.  “And for the Word of God, and which have not worshiped the beast.  Neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads or in their hands.  And they lived in reign with Christ a thousand years.”  
    This is people who will come out of great tribulation, but they will rule and reign with Christ for a thousand years.  But the rest of the dead live not again until the thousand years were finished.  Praise God.
    This is the first resurrection.  Now, let me tell you something here.  God makes the difference between the living and the dead here because He’s going to have a people that’s going to come through this trial and that’s going to be alive and remaining, and that’s talking about a greater-works ministry.  But there is a great multitude also that will come out of great tribulation, and that there will be martyrs, many of them.  But they will be resurrected and they will live and reign with Christ for a thousand years, and it says but the rest of the dead – that is, the rest of humanity – live not again until the thousand years were finished.  This is the first resurrection.  Blessed and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection on such the second death the second death has no power but they shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with Him a thousand years, and when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison and shall go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog together then together, and so forth, at the close of that millennial period.  All of this transpiring down on the earth.
    Now, when does this resurrection take place?  The Scripture tells us that this resurrection of the righteous begins their thousand-year reign with Christ, so they are resurrected at the beginning of the millennial period.  Praise God.  And this resurrection is called the First Resurrection.  
    All right.  Back in 1st Thessalonians 4, we saw the coming of the Lord and the resurrection of the righteous.  When does it take place?  The Scripture reveals to us very plainly here in chronological order that it initiates the thousand-year reign of the saints with Jesus Christ and it is called the First Resurrection and that resurrection comes at the end of this tribulation period when Jesus shall come to raise the dead and reign with them for a thousand years.  That’s when it takes place.  That’s when the First Resurrection takes place.
    Now, if the rapture theory were true, then there would have to be a first resurrection before the First Resurrection, and their can’t be a first resurrection before the First Resurrection.  And the Scripture plainly tells us this First Resurrection takes place to initiate the millennial period of the reign of Christ and His saints.  It’s called plainly in the word the First Resurrection. That’s why we know 1st Thessalonians 4 is talking about this resurrection, because there could be no resurrection before this resurrection because this is called the First Resurrection.
    And all of it lines up perfectly with God’s Word, and it lines up with what Jesus said, that His church was going to overcome in the world, not be taken out.  
    One of the disciples turned around and asked Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, and he said, “Where, Lord?  Where are they taken?”  And the Lord said, “Where the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”  In other words, the Word tells us in Revelation 19 that when the judgments of God come in the earth, it says in Verse 17:

“And I saw an angel standing in the sun and he cried with a loud voice saying to all the fouls that fly in the midst of Heaven, come and gather yourselves together under the supper of the great God.”  This is a supper of wrath that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains and the flesh of mighty men and the flesh of horses and of them that sit on them and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great, and I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gather together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army and the beast was taken and with him the false prophet that want miracles before him and with which he had deceived them that had received the mark of the beast and them that worshiped his image and these both were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone and the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth and all fowls were filled with their flesh.

And that’s what Jesus meant when he answered the question of His disciple, and He said when the Lord said that they would be swept away, one should be taken and the other left, and he said, where are they taken to, Lord?  And the Lord said, where the body is, there will eagles be gathered together.  There will the fowls be that suck up the blood of the dead.  In the judgment of God.
    But the righteous, he says, shall be left.  The righteous shall be preserved as it was in the days of Noah.
    Does it mean something to go on with God in these days?  Let me tell you something, it means something.  If you value your life, it means something.  If you value the lives of your children, if you value the lives of your loved ones, if you value the lives of your brothers and sisters in the Lord it means something.  
    And let me tell you something, God has no pleasure in the death of His people.  That’s what the Word says.  He says, “Why will you die, oh Israel?  Turn from your ways and live!”  Why was Israel cut off?  Because they turned from the precepts of God to follow the doctrines of Balem.  And what are we doing any different than the children of Israel if we turned from the precepts of God and follow the doctrines of men, we are walking in the same error as Israel.  
    Oh, the Lord says, my people, not the sinner out here.  But he says, “My people are destroyed for the lack of knowledge!”  Like sheep led astray by blind guides, blind shepherds.  If the blind lead the blind, they all fall in the same ditch together, and that ditch is the six-foot pit, it’s the grave!  The blind ministry leads the blind sheep and they all fall in the same ditch together which is the grave.  God is not willing that his people shall perish, he’s willing that we should live because He’s preparing a church that’s going to go through the furnace, just like he spared Daniel out of the lion’s den, and like He spared Shadrack, Michack and Abednego out of Babylon’s fiery furnace, so God is going to take His elect through the furnace and bring them out of the lion’s den and the Devil is going about as a roaring lion.  But God’s going to bring his righteous out of the den.  Praise God.
    Jesus said, “except these days would be shortened, there be no flesh saved or left alive on the earth.  But for the elect’s sake, they will be shortened.”  Because God intends to preserve his elect, and He intends to give them the heritage of the earth.
    The Word tells us the meek will inherit the earth, no Heaven.  And indeed the Word tells us that even the saints that are in Heaven are waiting to come back here to inherit the earth with us.
    This has been a lesson in hermeneutics, the basic methods of interpretation of God’s Word.  It’s important to understand the blueprint of God’s purposes for his church.  If we don't know, we’re going to be like those blind people on the day of Pentecost that came out when God’s power was poured out and said, “What is this?”  This wasn’t in their traditions.
    God had a people who knew what he was doing, but He said, “Father, I thank You because You have hid these things from the wise and prudent of this world and have showed them unto babes, for so it pleased You to do.”
    Let me tell you something:  God isn’t graduating His apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers out of the Sanhedron Seminaries.  He’s not graduating them out of these ecclesiastical institutions, where empty hands are laid on empty heads and they are sent out.  But let me tell you something, God chooses the things of this world that are of no account in the eyes of men.  He took ignorant fishermen.  He took men of no understanding, of no skill in letters and he anointed them, and even on the day of Pentecost those wise doctors and lawyers who understood the world – see, they were doctors of divinity.  They were lawyers.  That word “lawyer” means they were doctors of the law  They knew the law.  They knew Moses and the Prophets.  They could quote it off the top of their head.  Have you ever seen preachers who could just rattle off Scripture?  Well, those people knew the Word, but they had the letter but not the skills of the Word.  And this is a coded book, not to be understood without the Revelation of the Holy Ghost.  Praise God.
    But when the scales went off Paul’s eyes, he saw a whole new book than what the Pharisees had taught.  Praise God.  And when the scales go off our eyes, we’re going to see a whole new book.  Because we’re going to see it through the eyes of the Spirit of God, Who reveals it to whom He will.
    Jesus said no man can come to me but he that the Father brought.  
    You can’t give people eyes to see and ears to understand, only God can do that.  But I’ll tell you one thing:  if God puts that hunger for truth in you, you’ll never be satisfied until you get the truth.  And God’ll stir up your soul.  His Word is a fire that burns in my bones all the day long, that’s what Jeremiah said.  
    There’s a fire God kindles in you to know His Word.  Because the Lord wants messengers who have the word of the kingdom to take to His hungry sheep, and we don’t want to be like that messenger who came running to David, and when he got there to King David, he had no message.  And David said, What are the tidings?  And he had no message.  And he said, Stand aside.  And he saw another messenger coming running, and when he came, he had the tidings.  
    Blessed are the feet of them who bring the glad tidings.  On the mountains.  Don’t run without the tidings.  God wants his people to have the message of what He’s doing and to have that message to take to his hungry sheep to feed his sheep.  And when we get there to have that truth to feed them with.  And the Lord wants us to have more than milk because the milk of the Word is good for babes, but there comes a time when you just can’t live on milk any longer, you’ve got to have some meat for your bones.  And you know it’s a wonderful thing to hear salvation messages about Jesus and the blood and the in-filling of the Holy Ghost and all this, but you can’t live on that type of a message for twenty and thirty years.  It’s all right to teach it to babes, but what are you going to grow up on?  
    God’s church has got to have meat.  We’ve got to go on into the deep truths of God’s Word, to grow up in the meat of Jesus, to come to learn of our Lord and to know of His weightier purposes and the glory that He has promised for us.
    Don’t run without the tidings.  God wants His people to have the message of what He’s doing and to have that message to take to His hungry sheep to feed his sheep.  And when we get there, to have that truth to feed them with.  And the Lord wants us to have more than milk, because the milk of the Word is good for babes, but there comes a time when you just can’t live on milk any longer, you’ve got to have some meat for your bones.  
    Lord, say unto you my people, behold it is written, sayeth the Lord, that he shall see the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied.  Behold, sayeth the Lord, unto thee, my people, I have prepared a seed.  I have prepared a seed of righteousness.  I have purchased this for you this whole salvation, sayeth the Lord.  Behold I am making up my jewels in this hour, and they that do know me, say the Lord, even they shall speak one to another, and I shall write it in a book and keep it in a place of remembrance, sayeth the Lord, that I shall reward them that fear me in these days, sayeth the Lord.  Call upon me while I am near.  Draw nigh unto me, sayeth the Lord, and see if I will not open up unto the windows of Heaven, and pour forth unto thee a blessing that thou cants not contain, sayth the Lord, for I say unto thee that not many days hence and though shalt surely see the visitation of My power, even as this world has not seen, sayeth the Lord God.  And as I live, sayth the Lord, I shall surely be glorified in the eyes of all fleshes.

   Praise the Lord.  I’m going to minister on the subject this morning of the Lord directs on the True Tabernacle of God.  I want us to open with a Scripture in 1st Chronicles, chapter 17, where the great patriarch, David, the King of Israel, perhaps in the antiquities of the Jewish people their most famous hero.  
    He was the anointed King of Israel in the days when that kingdom was at it’s greatest.  David sat in his great house, his great mansion that was built for him for his pleasure and for the esteem of his glory, and as he looked at the beauty of the house that he lived in, he began to realize that God’s Ark of the Covenant, which was the most holy piece of furniture in the Old Testament, was dwelling out in the open, just under a curtain, in a make-shift kind of curtain tent.  
    David thought that this is not equal that man should dwell in a beautiful house but God’s Holy Ark should just be sitting out in the open with no more glory or fanfare about it than just a common tent that it was sitting under.  So David conceived a thought that he desired to put the Ark of God and the Holy Furniture of the Lord into a great, beautiful temple, a great, beautiful house and a great, beautiful cathedral that he would build in honor of Jehovah the God of all creation.
    In 1st Chronicles 17, the beginning of verse 1, we take up with the passion of David here:  

Now it came to pass as David sat in his house that David said to Nathan the Prophet, “Lo, I dwell in a house of cedars, [a very beautiful, expensive mansion] but the ark of the covenant of the LORD remains under curtains [that is, out in the open].

Then Nathan said unto David, “Do all that is in your heart; for God is with you.”

And it came to pass the same night, that the word of God came to Nathan, saying, “Go and tell David my servant,

‘Thus saith the LORD, Thou shalt not build me an house to dwell in, for I have not dwelt in an house since the day that I brought up Israel unto this day, but have gone from tent to tent, and from one tabernacle to another.  Wheresoever I have walked with all Israel, spake I a word to any of the judges of Israel, whom I commanded to feed my people, saying, Why have you not built me an house of cedars?  Now therefore thus shalt thou say unto my servant David, ‘Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I took thee from the sheepcote, even from following the sheep, that thou should be ruler over my people Israel:  And I have been with thee whithersoever you have walked, and have cut off all your enemies from before you, and have made you a name like the name of the great men that are in the Earth.  Also I will ordain a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, and they shall dwell in their place, and shall be moved no more; neither shall the children of wickedness waste them any more, as at the beginning, and since the time that I commanded judges to be over my people Israel.  Moreover I will subdue all your enemies, and furthermore I tell you that the LORD will build you an house.”

    Praise God.  And, you know, this is the theme of what God is speaking to all of his people from the very beginning to the very end, that God does not desire us to labor to build a house for him.  But rather, his desire is to build us a house, to build us a habitation, to build us a habitation for Himself.  You see, David desired to build a great cathedral, a great temple, a great edifice that God might dwell in that temple, that His presence might dwell forever in that great temple, and of course God allowed Solomon to build a great temple.  That temple became a snare in time to the people even as the Tower of Babel became a snare in the beginning of the Creation after the Flood.  
    There is something in the spirit of man that is inspired by the Evil One, and I say that because we see that this works in nature.  There is a spirit of religion that works in men which is a desire to honor God.  Whether they’re Pagan, whether they’re Christian, whatever it is, they want to build their great mosques, their great cathedrals, their great temples, and they want to honor their Gods, whoever their Gods are, by building great edifices.
    Now, this is in the desire of man, that man might create a work for God that God would be pleased to dwell in, so he builds a house for God.  Temple builders are everywhere, aren’t they?  Christianity is known by its great cathedrals of Europe, by it’s great edifices, and the Moslem religion by its great mosques, and the Hindu religion by its great temples, and the Buddhist temples and so forth and Shinto temples.  So all the great religions of the world are known by the monuments and shrines they build unto the image of God or Gods that they worship.  All of this is an attempt to cage God and to make a prisoner of Him according to the ideas of men.  
    In the very beginning, when men began to build the Tower of Babel after the flood, the thought and the reason for it was, lest we be scattered one from another over the face of the Earth.  So the desire of building a temple essential is to cage God within the works of men and then to cage people within the works of men.  So temples are built as shrines that people get their eyes on these temples.
    Well, we are told in the New Testament that behold, the Temple of God is your body and mine.  Your physical body and my physical body.  These bodies that we have, these are the Temples of God.  God is not interested in us building something for Him, but He has already given us a building, and it is this body that he has created for us that we now tabernacle in.  And it is in this body that He desires to walk and talk and live and move and have His abiding presence in, for He will not abide in the presence of any temple made of material goods by the hand of man, but he will abide in that body, in that temple, in that tabernacle that we now have if we will open up the doors of this temple, which is the door of our heart, and let Him come in to dwell with us.
    Behold, the Lord says, “I knock at the door.  If any man will open unto me, I will come in unto him and I will sup with him,” and the door of that temple, the door of that tabernacle that He’s knocking on is not a cathedral made with human hands, it is our body, it is our heart, it is our conscious, it is our spirit, it is our mind, it is our whole entity and being that God desires to fellowship with and co-habitat with.
    But we are the doorkeepers.  We’re the keepers of the gate, and God will not violate our will in this matter.  Therefore he woos us as in a romance, desiring us to open up to Him and allow Him to come in and create a romantic, marital relationship with us whereby the ultimate result will be that we become a part of His eternal, many-membered bride, that the father desires to give him, which is that bride of Christ, that elect church, that true corporal body of many sons and daughters of God, made up in the mind of God before the foundation of the world to become the corporate church, that invisible Israel, that invisible church, that church that you cannot point to and say “Lo, this church” or “that church is where God dwells,” for God does not dwell in any church created by man and given and titles and names by men, but He dwells in the hearts and minds of everyone of those who love Him and who seek Him with a true and a full heart and a full conscious, and that is without respect of persons, whether you’re male, female, no matter what race or origin you come from, God searches the heart and He desires to dwell in those that desire His presence in their lives.  
    And so the knowledge of the Gospel is spread abroad as a man pans for gold, that in sifting through many souls, like many rocks, God may find a few precious bits of gold and silver coming down the stream of humanity, and that’s what He harvests for His treasury.  Amen.
    So our desire is that God would cover us over with some of His precious gold, that as He pans through humanity He might see us in the stream and pick us out and set us apart for His treasury, and you know what gold represents to your nature is the divine quality, that God might cover us with a divine nature and the lightness of His spirit, that we might be salt and savor in the Earth to those who hunger and thirst with an appetite for God.
    In Isaiah Chapter 66, Verse 1,

Thus saith the LORD, “The heaven is my throne, and the Earth is my footstool:  where is the house that you build unto me?” [where is the cathedral or where is the church that you can build unto me?] and where is the place of my rest?

    Now, God answers His own question in the next verse when he says “where is the house that you will build for Me and where is the place that I will rest?”

“For all those things” [these material things] “has my hand made, and all those things have been,” says the LORD:  but to this man” [or this person] “will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit”

that’s not talking about being just poor in worldly goods.  To be poor in spirit is to recognize that you need something, your spirit needs something.  Your spirit needs something from God.
    That is who the Lord is looking for.  He’s looking for those who recognize the poverty of their spirit, that they have need of God.  Those who are of a contrite spirit.  Contrite means submissive, not proud, not high minded, not haughty, not pursuers of gain for their own sake, but those who are of a contrite spirit, easy to be entreated, and “that trembles at my word”.
    That’s the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, because wisdom is the conclusion that Solomon finally came to out of everything that he apprehended.  Though God gave him the gift of wisdom, I don’t think he ever really arrived at it, or I don’t think it ever really matured in him until he had gone through his life, wasting that wisdom on folly.  And wasting your wisdom on folly means having the ability or the intellectual capacity to discern how to make the moves in life, and there are people who are wise, there are people who are shrewd, there are people who are crafty, there are people who seem to have a sixth sense for making the moves in life that the world would call successful.  But the end of that success was all of sorrow and finally death and the facing in misery in the fact that all that you have pursued you cannot take with you and now you must come naked before God as a naked spirit and God does not look for the wisdom that has heaped unto itself great wealth or great material gain – which the world will praise you for – but the naked spirit standing before God has nothing to offer to God but the condition of that spirit.  
    That is where Solomon finally came to the true wisdom when he said, “The sum of all things is that vanity of vanities, all is vanity that a man pursues in this world, in this life.”  Bread to each, a house, a covering from the storm, bread to eat, clothing upon his back, and what is more than that, vanity of vanities, and pursuit of the wind and the chasing of something that he cannot ever take with him or ever present before God as merit for reward.  But in the end he faces God as a naked spirit, disembodied after he dies, and must give account for the nature of that spirit which is standing before God.  What does this spirit have to offer to God?
    If this spirit has not been enriched by the divine nature, then it answers “nothing” to God because it has no relationship to Him.
    So then Solomon’s final conclusion of wisdom was, this is the sum of the whole matter:  fear God, and keep his commandment, for there is no greater achievement that man can gain under the sun, when he must finally face God in eternity and in his destiny.  Praise God.  
    So these are the rich things of God and wisdom of it all is to learn and profit by the experience of those who have gone before us, because the Scripture says that the experiences of these men in the Bible and of these events in the Bible were set forth to us as an example that we might profit therein, escaping both the error of those who erred in their times, and profiting by the wisdom of those who feared God and who walked according to the counsel of His Will in their lifetimes.
    Now, as touching the tabernacle of the Lord, we are admonished in the Scripture that God is not interested in our material works, that He is interested in building a house for us, and that house is His habitation within us.  We are his house, this body, and we are His habitation, and what he desires to build in us is our spirit.  He desires to build our spirit and to conform it to His will and to His nature, and to do this, He must find us of a contrite disposition toward Him, and that is the opposite of pride, it is the opposite of ambition, because ambition is what drives man to compete with his neighbor and to compete for gain and to compete for access and for prominence and for preeminence and for the recognition and praise of his peers, and that is of course the deal of Satan that overthrew him in the beginning, the desire of the worship and adoration of the creature for himself rather than the desire to worship and adore the creator.
    That instinct is in all mankind by nature and is highly competitive is the reason why that many despair because they cannot attain these things and others rejoice in a false sense of accomplishment who seem to gain the praises of men through the access of material success.
    Now, coming to the folly of all this early in life is a reward from God.  Believe me, coming to the recognition of the folly of all of this early in life is a blessing and a gift from God, and therefore the Lord would have us to learn early and quick by the experience of others lest we go around that mountain waste many years through experiential failures and finally arrive at the same conclusion.
    So Praise God, therefore the word is set before us that we might learn by the experience of others and profit quickly in life to set forth our lives in the footsteps of Jesus that he may lead us in the way that is eternal, because the way that is eternal follows this life, because we are not laboring for present things which pass away with the use, but we are laboring for eternal things which cannot be taken away, and that kingdom which Christ has died to purchase for us, which is the nature and fullness of himself, is the kingdom that is eternal, whose reward cannot be taken away.  Neither can thieves break in and steal it but it is eternal and it is a treasure reserved in Heaven ready to be revealed in the last time and to every worthy seeker who has been setting their hearts and minds aside for the consecration and purpose of God’s will upon such lives.  
    Recognizing this makes everything else fall into its proper perspective as we live from day to day in God, knowing that today if you hear His voice, today if you hear His word, harden not your heart, but open up your heart to the Lord and recognize that all things He does for the counsel of our good, though at the present time our own greed, our own ambition, our own covetishness, the failings of our own nature are constantly reaching and grabbing for things that we think we have to have or we think we must have, and these things are always perishable after they’re attained.  They are never held, they are always perishable and leave a trail of sorrows behind them in wasted effort and wasted time which has no compensation in God.
    In Hebrews Chapter 8, beginning in Verse 1, speaking of the Tabernacle of the Lord,

Now of the things which we have spoken unto you, this is the sum:  

And this is in the context of what the author had been exhorting in the 7th chapter, on the Melchisedec priesthood, the weightier promises of God and how these things pertain to a greater covenant than God made with the Jews.  The problem with the Jews and the problem with the Mosaic understanding they had was that they were always looking for God to enhance them materially.  You see, the Jewish people, according to their tradition, have always believed – and they believed in those days and still do today, that is the Orthodox Religious Jews – that God singled them out as the chosen people above all peoples of the Earth, that they might be peculiar to a destiny to rule over all nations, and the zealous Jews still believe that, and that God intended them to inherit a piece of real estate over in Palestine, and that there were to set up a material kingdom and from that city of Jerusalem they would rule the entire world, inevitably.  The author of Hebrews, who was undoubtedly a Hebrew himself and was ministering to them concerning the covenants of God, was relating to them that all these things of the Old Testament, the Mosaic Tabernacle, the promised land of Canaan, the promise of a kingdom that would rule all the world – that all these things promised to the Jews were what but types and shadows of a heavenly kingdom.  Types and shadows of a kingdom that pertained to heavenly principles and not Earthly principles.  
    Now, the problem is, they never understood the covenant that God made with their fathers from the beginning because they were a carnally-minded people – as we all are by nature.  You see, the Jews are no different, the Jews are human beings just like we are, and we are all carnal by nature, so that when we think that God promises a kingdom and a dominion, we think of smashing our neighbor and ruling over him if we don't know God’s ways.
    But the Lord says, “You shall not do as the lords of this world do.  If I give you authority and I set you in a position of prominence and I make an apostle or a governor or a ruler of you over men, I do that that you may be their servant.”  And so Jesus took the cloth from around his waste and he took a bowl of water and washed the feet of his disciples and he said, “As you have seen me do, so do.”  Because he was teaching us that the principle of excelling in God, of rising into prominence with the Lord and of being placed in high positions of authority and rulership with the Lord means to be placed in a higher position of service to the least of your brothers, and to the least of men.
    You see, Jesus didn’t come to present a kingdom that was going to trample men down and make them serve and lick your boot.  He came to set the example to us that God’s Kingdom is a kingdom of rehabilitation.  It’s a kingdom of blessing.  It’s a kingdom of lifting up the dog out of the dust, of redeeming us from our lost condition, and His desire is to give us power and strength and dominion over the principalities of Satan, over the powers of darkness.  That’s the treading down that He desires to give us.  That we may tread underfoot demons, that we may tread underfoot the powers of Satan, the powers of darkness, that he may put those powers under our feet that we may used by God to deliver the dying humanity out here from it’s enslavement to these spirits.
    When we get that into perspective we will understand why the Jews failed God and why we are failing God when we do not understand these principles, because this is why God so loved the world, that He sent His only begotten son into the world to die for the sins of the world, not that the world should perish but that the world through him might receive life.  And therefore God has apprehended us as a kind of first fruits after his passion that we should go before the face of the Lord being prepared and filled with the Holy Ghost that we might become ministers of the administration of His justice, of His mercy, and of His everlasting compassion for the creation, which labors in vain, bound by a nature that they cannot deliver themselves from, groaning for deliverance from that nature, passing laws to govern one another, even as dogs must be restrained by leashes, so we pass laws to restrain our own unruly behavior because we are a fallen creation, is that not true?  If that were not true, we would have no prisons, but we have prisons.  We would have no deaths and executions, but we have deaths and executions.  Because all these things are testimony to the human race, that they fall far short of the majesty of God’s righteousness.  They cannot achieve it by laws which they pass to govern one another, but laws are passed because of the lawless, and therefore man must pass laws to control his own kind because his own kind is lawless.  Lawless to what?  Lawless to the principles of God.
    “Thou shalt not kill” “Thou shalt not steal”.  These laws did not originate from man, they originated from God, and the Holy Spirit is in the world to convict the world of sin, and that’s why man recognizes all the time that he falls short of his own standards, whether he knows them to be God’s standards or not.
    So therefore it is not in the hope or power of man to deliver himself, but he is always struggling in darkness to try to rise above the ashes of what he is.
    Nevertheless, God has set for an eternal plan for the cause of which he has apprehended us, that he might prepare us most especially in these last days, that we should be a kind of forerunner in the spirit of John the Baptist, that he might infill our spirits, inhabit our tabernacles and dwell in us, in the brightness of His glory, which He shall shortly give to us, that is to say, a re-visitation of power from on high, as the Apostolic Church possessed, that we might be more than mouth pieces, that we might be a testament in power to this creation, restoring them from the bondages of Satan.  That is to say, all who fear among mankind will he bring to the brightness of the light of the rising of his spirit and glory in and upon you if you can believe the testament of the prophets who have so declared it to your generation of ages past in the Holy Writ.  Praise God.
    Now, in Hebrews Chapter 8,

Now of the things which we have spoken unto you, this is the sum:  

This is the sum total, he says, of the things which we have spoken:

We have such an high priest, [That is, Jesus Christ.]
who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens;

That is, Jesus sits on the right hand of God the Father.  He is

A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.

Now, in this he declares unto us our hope of deliverance from the bondage of subjectivity of death itself, because we know that Death entered into the world through the transgression of Adam and his wife, and God allowed Death to come into the world, that He might through the fall of man bring out of man a new creation.  A new creation – tested, tried and proven before angels of men, worthy of thrones, dominions, glories and powers which even angels desire to look into, a kind of first fruits of His Creation, never before revealed, world without end in past ages.  But now is to be made manifest through the revelation of Jesus Christ and the fullness of that salvation which is to be revealed in these last times as Peter and the holy prophets and apostles have declared from the foundation of the world.  
    And the sum of all these things is that we have a minister of this sanctuary and of the True Tabernacle which the Lord pitched and not man.  Now, that tabernacle which Moses pitched in the wilderness, and the Jews set their hearts upon, was only a type and a shadow of the tabernacle to come, which is a heavenly tabernacle.  A tabernacle not pitched by man but a tabernacle pitched by God.  
    Now we translate the promise of God into a revelation of his redemption from the power and bondage of physical death itself, because I suppose that the desire of all creation is that they might escape the ravages of sin, which is sickness, senility, old age and physical death itself.  Is this not true?  Do you know what the greatest single expense in the industrial world today?  The preservation of life.  The single greatest expense in the industrial, civilized world today is the preservation of life.  I’m talking about the healthcare industry.  It has been said that the healthcare industry – healthcare and health-related care – now absorbs one out of every eight dollars that is produced in the economy of the United States.  All of this has to do with man’s struggle against sickness, old age, senility, and death.  Trying to prolong his days and trying to live in better health with a longer life, and that’s the best expectancy he can get out of all of this tremendous expense.  As this expense is escalating, it’s estimated that in less than ten years, it will be one out of every five dollars earned by everyone working, and every profession person in this country will be going toward that expense.
    What that is telling you is that the highest single priority that we have is life and health, isn’t that true?  Well, did you know that’s God’s priority and He has the final solution for it?  What the final solution for it is not medicine, it’s not health foods – though all these things are necessary, don’t get me wrong, they’re all necessary – but the final solution is to deliver the creature from his bondage or subjectivity to the things that are killing him.  Man struggles in science to try to overcome the causes of cancer, heart disease, and all these things, if happily man might be able to be prolonged in his lifespan.
    I suppose that if God would allow the mischief of man to go on long enough – call it mischief because the dabbling of science always has a two-fold outcome:  the more man increases in the knowledge of what I shall call “good science”, which is the preservation of life, the more also the satanic nature of his man develops more devious and hideous means of quicker annihilation and genocide for the whole race as a whole.  So while man has the capacity and some limitation to lengthen his life through scientific and medical developments, he has far out-passed that with his ability to genocide the creation by his inventions, isn’t that true?  Whereas man struggles through his medicine to keep a few people alive a little longer in better health, Satan has given manmade science the ability to destroy populations in the flash of a few seconds, isn’t that true?  
    So ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of God is the problem with man, and his inventions, while they seem to be doing good always wind up bringing only more trouble and more evil.  So the solution is that the struggle of man to overcome his subjectivity to the reward of his sin, which is death and decay in the grave, leads him into a constant circle that always brings him back to nowhere.  And the solution is that God has set forth for us an example in the pattern of things which He did in the Old Testament which points to a full and complete deliverance for the creation.  For this reason, God is giving us the good news of the Gospel.
    Did you know that the Gospel is the Old English word that means “the good news of Jesus Christ”?  And that good news is that we are approaching the time of the abolition of all these curses and plagues – not by the wisdom and science of man, but by the divine intervention of God Himself.  For except these days that you and I are living in, except these days be shortened, there was no flesh, no humanity, no beast, no living green thing or whatever would be left alive on the face of the Earth.  No animal, vegetable or human being would be left alive on the face of the Earth except God shortened these days because he knows what Satan has planned for this generation, and it is total destruction.  Total destruction.  
    Left to his own devices, Stan will achieve that in this generation because he’s given wicked men the wisdom to do it.  I tell you, Satan has given wicked men the wisdom, science, technology and ability to destroy every living thing on this planet.  And they’re so confused now with the pollution that they have dumped into this world that they don’t really know what to do about it.  
    I’m talking about waste, and nuclear waste that they are proliferating in the Earth today and how they’re destroying the ozone with fluorocarbons and kinds of synthesized materials that science has been mass producing in the last 50 years, and the oceans becoming polluted, that it’s only a matter of time.  But far more deadly weapons exist in this world today that can bring a much quicker dissolving of every living thing.
    Now, God’s answer is to shorten these days, and what does He mean by that?  He means that He’s going to cut short the mischief of man, He’s going to bring divine intervention, and he has an instrument for preserving humanity, for delivering humanity, and that instrument is the witness of the Gospel of the Kingdom because God has his sheep in this world and because of His elect he will shorten the days because He’s not going to allow the God-fearing, he’s not going to allow those who have the stamp of the love of God in their hearts, He’s not going to allow for their sakes the world to be destroyed.  Neither is He going to allow the great masses of people who are basically innocent, who can’t discern their right hand or their left hand to be destroyed by the diabolical mischief of Satanic-filled men who are greedily competing with one another for control of the world.
    If you think that competition ended with the Soviet Union, you’ve got a lot to learn.  The most deadly forces yet are still alive in this world, and they’re generating their power rapidly in the Far East.  
    These are the conclusive promises of things to come, but I want to bring to your attention today that God is preparing a tabernacle for us, a habitation of God, a tabernacle not pitched by man but pitched by God, reserved in the heavens and ready to be revealed in the last time unto us.  Jesus Christ is the minister of this sanctuary, he’s the minister of this true tabernacle which God has pitched and not man.
    What am I talking about?  I identified to you that the Tabernacle of God, the Temple or Habitation of the Lord is your physical body.  Is that not true?  Is that not the teaching of the New Testament Scripture, where Paul said “your body is the temple of God”?  He doesn’t need a cathedral, he doesn’t inhabit a cathedral.  He inhabits your body or He is isn’t in the place.  He’s either in you or He isn’t in the place, isn’t that true?  That’s God’s word.
    Now, the tabernacle that you now dwell in, did God pitch this tabernacle or did man pitch it?  I’m talking about the present body that we dwell in, the mortal body that we dwell in.  Who pitched this body?  Did you pitch it?  No.  You had no say-so in coming into this world, you were born into this world.  So then who pitched this body?  No, God didn’t pitch this body, that’s what it says here.  He didn’t pitch this tabernacle.  See, the Mosaic tabernacle in the wilderness was a type and a shadow of something that was pitched by man.  Men made the tabernacle.  Who made the tabernacle of Moses?  God or men?  Men did it, didn’t they?  But God told them to do it, didn’t He?  He said, “Make me a tabernacle, and I’ll dwell in it.”  That was the Old Testament commandment, so men did what?  They went and they took wood and various elements, and from that wood they built a tabernacle for the Lord, and that was an example and a type and a shadow, and the Lord said, “I’ll dwell in it,” and He did, didn’t he?
    Now, that tabernacle was a temporal tabernacle, but God was using it as a forerunner of a better tabernacle to come, isn’t that true?  That’s what the word says.  Now, that tabernacle was made by the commandment of God, but it was pitched by man.  Now, what did God say to Adam and Eve in the beginning?  He said, “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth.”  Now, how did Adam and Eve begin to multiply?  How did they multiply?  They multiplied by coming together as natural husbands and wives come together and bearing children.  Those children were birthed into the world – in whose image were they birthed?  In the image of God or the image of Adam and Eve?  They were birthed in the image of Adam and Eve, and so it has been all down through the generations of the Adamic race.
    Now, when you came out of your mother’s womb, in whose image and likeness were you?  I’m talking about your body.  In whose image and likeness was your body when you came out of your mother’s womb?  This body we now have.  Well, you look like your dad and mom or your grandma or your grandpa, you inherited their genes, you inherited their looks, isn’t that true?  In one form or another you’re a kind of mixture of your relatives.  You’ve got a little bit of daddy’s looks, a little bit of momma’s looks.  Hopefully you’ve got the better half’s looks or whatever, praise the Lord.
    But you were born in the image and likeness of your natural parents, so then who pitched that tabernacle that you now have?  God didn’t pitch it or you’d look like God.  Does your body look like God?  Do we look like God?  We are in the image, in this tabernacle, of what our mother’s and father’s pitched.  They pitched it because they had the ability, given from God, to do it.  He said “be fruitful and multiply,” so the way this came into being, God didn’t speak a word and your physical body came into being, he didn’t make your body out of the dust of the Earth.  He made your body out of your parents.  Your body was pitched from your parents.  This tabernacle we dwell in was pitched by man.  And if your mother and father hadn’t gotten together, you wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t be here, isn’t that true?  It was pitched by man.  
    This body, this tabernacle was pitched by man, just as the tabernacle in the wilderness was pitched by man, but it pleased God to dwell in that tabernacle, so this body we dwell in was pitched by man, but it has pleased God to dwell in this tabernacle, has it not?  Does he not dwell in this tabernacle?  Did He make this body?  No, your mother and father made it.  God gave them the ability to do it, but they did it, right?  They did it.  They pitched it when they came together though the natural courses of nature, and conception was given to this body and it was brought into this world, but is the body to be?  Is this the tabernacle of promise?  
    So this is what He’s telling us, that Jesus Christ came into the world and became a high priest and unto our salvation that God might make him a minister of the sanctuary, that is, the sanctuary to come of the true tabernacle to come, which the Lord has pitched for us and not man.
    Now, what is that telling us?  This is not the body that shall be, that’s what He’s telling you.  But God has made a body for you, reserved in the heavens and ready to be revealed in the last time when that full salvation, which Jesus Christ has purchased for us, shall be given unto us, and that full salvation to be given unto us is redemption from the power of death itself, and that’s what the whole creation is struggling against:  the bondage of corruption, the wages of sin.  And man is a sinner not by desire but he’s a sinner by heredity.  He inherited the nature, whether he wanted to or whether he didn’t want to, he had no say-so, right?  He was born in sin and shaped in iniquity and inherited the infirmity both in body and in spirit of his hedonic forefathers.  True?
    All right.  Then the sentence of death has been on this body as it was on Adam and his posterity because of the nature of sin that is in us, and we inherited it, and therefore because we struggle under this nature, that is unacceptable to God, Jesus came into the world, the Son of God, the holy and righteous one, that being pure and without sin he took on the form of man that he might die for the sins of man that in the fullness of time Jesus Christ might redeem us from the power of sin and the wages of sin, which is death, physical death.
    That was the wages of sin in the Garden of Eden – dust thou art to dust thou shalt return, and so we’ve grown in this present tabernacle, we’ve grown in this present tabernacle.
    In Second Corinthians, Chapter 5.  The eternal plan of God is not that we should inhabit Heaven as disembodied spirits for eternity, the plan of God is that we might receive the redemption of these physical bodies from the bondage of physical death that in the new Earth and that in the age to come we might receive immortality.  That is, undying, never-aging, perpetual and eternal physical bodies.  That is, not the same kind of body that we possess today, which is the image of our natural fathers and mothers, but that we might receive that tabernacle which is reserved for us in the heavens and eternal-substance body which is sanctioned after the image and likeness of God Himself.  Jesus Christ is not a ghost and he’s not a spirit, and he said “handle me and see, a spirit has not flesh and bone as you see me have.”  Jesus was raised from the dead, ascended to Heaven, glorified and dwells in his celestial, physical substance and Jesus is the only visible, physical, material, substance image of the invisible father.  And he is the only eternal tabernacle that God the Father dwells in and in and through Jesus he cohabitats the creation.  
    But Jesus Christ is the embodiment of the godhead, as the Scripture says, for in him dwells all the fullness of the godhead bodily, in the body of Jesus – not in the natural body that came into the world to die with, but in his resurrected and glorified body is the substance which is called the celestial body.  Not a ghost, not a spirit.  It is that celestial substance that he intends to transubstantiate the present body into that substance, which is eternal undying and indestructible, and in those bodies we are to reign with Christ in a physical creation that is to be renewed after a perpetual manner, for the fashion and manner of this present substance, this present Earth shall be changed, and all that is dying, all that is temporal, all that is passing away shall be transformed from a decaying material substance to an eternal material substance that will not decay, not wither, and not pass away, and all forms of death, bacterial and otherwise, biological and otherwise, are to pass away, and the creation is to be rejuvenated after a perpetual passion in which all things will live in an undying state.  Isn’t that the marvelous promise of God?
    Did you know that’s not understood by Christianity in general?  I said, that’s the promise of the Gospel and it is almost grossly misunderstood and not understood by Christianity in general.  The basic concept of Christianity is that we live in this world, hopefully we are received by God when we die, our spirit goes to Heaven, and there we’re going to dwell forever in Heaven as disembodied spirits, wandering around, looking for our dead relatives to co-habitat up in Heaven somewhere for eternity as spirits.  Now, that’s the general concept of almost all Christians and Christian churches, isn’t that true?  So much so that the sinners of the world have the same concept which they have gotten from the church people, that hopefully when they die they’ll go to Heaven.  Ask the sinner and he’ll tell you the same thing:  “Well, I hope I’ll go to Heaven,” because that concept comes from the church and the church gets that concept by tradition but not by the revelation of God’s word.
    See, the problem with the church world today is, it is laboring in tradition, but it is not laboring in the revelation of God’s Holy Word.  It is the revelation of God’s Holy Word that we be delivered totally and completely from all the effects of the Adamic curse, and that is from all the effects of sin, which are sickness, senility, old age and death, and that’s the curse that was pronounced in the garden.  He didn’t say “spirits you are and to spirits you shall return”, he said “dust you are and to dust you shall return,” you are made out of the dust, you will go back to the dust.  And he’s talking about physical death.  For that cause, Christ was manifested, came into the world, and died physically in a physical body that through is physical death he might pay the penalty for our sins committed in these physical bodies, that we might be ransomed from the curse of sin, which is physical death, that in the fullness of time Christ himself might come and transsubstantiate or resurrect these bodies and fashioning them not like after the bodies that we came into this world with, cursed with mortality, but that they might be fashioned like unto his eternal body which is immortal, indestructible, and destined to abide a world without end.
    Isn’t that marvelous?
    And you and I couldn’t have this or any hope of it if Jesus had not come and died as the perfect, sinless lamb of God paying the penalty for sin, and the penalty is physical death.  The penalty for sin is not going to Hell, Hell is a temporary abode for disembodied spirits, just like Heaven is a temporary abode for disembodied spirits.  But the resurrection is what is coming.  Did you know the resurrection is going to be for the good and for the evil alike?
    The Bible tell us both the righteous and the wicked will be resurrected in physical bodies.  That’s the word.  Both the righteous and the wicked will be resurrected.  The righteous will be resurrected to live forever.  The wicked will be resurrected in physical bodies to give account in the day of judgment for the sins committed in those bodies, and if they have not repented of those sins during their probation in Hell, they will be cast into the Lake of Fire and destroyed forever, and that’s called the second death because it’s a physical death.  They died once physically and they will die the second time physically, and that second death is eternal.  They’ll never be resurrected out of that.
    Now that’s the word, that’s the Gospel, and that’s what it’s talking about.  Praise God.
    Now, in Second Corinthians, Chapter 5, in Verse 1, “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle”, that is, this present mortal body, if it “were dissolved,” if it were to die and go back to death, “we have a building of God,” that is, another tabernacle, “a house not made with hands, ” not a house made with hands, like Moses’s tabernacle out in the wilderness made by human hands, that is, nothing formed or brought into existence by humanity, but this house is “eternal in the heavens.”  That is to say this house is reserved for us in the heavens.  “For in this we groan, ” And he’s talking about a new body. “For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house” Our tabernacle or our body “which is from Heaven, if so be that being clothed” with this new body that he’s talking about, “we shall not be found naked ” or subject to mortality as we are now.
    “For we that are in this tabernacle” In this present mortal body “do groan, being burdened: ” Isn’t that true?  Does anybody throw a party at a grave?  At a funeral?  No.  When a loved one dies, everybody is burdened, right?  I mean, you don’t throw a party at a funeral, you’re grieving over the loss of a loved one, you’re grieving over the loss of a friend, “For we that are in this tabernacle groan being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed,” That is, still subject to mortality and death “but clothed upon, ” That is, clothed upon with our new tabernacle or our eternal body from Heaven, “that mortality” Or subjectivity to physical death “might be swallowed up of life.”
    “Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, ” God wrought us, that is to say, he apprehended us for this very purpose, that we might be clothed upon with a new body that is eternal, immortal, undying and indestructible.  And that’s what we’re groaning for in this tabernacle.  And not only we are groaning for it, it tells us in Romans 8, but the whole creation out here is groaning to be delivered from this bondage of corruption, which is the bondage of old age, sickness, senility and death itself.  
    And this is the news the world is waiting to hear.  This is the news I’m talking about that the God fearing are waiting to hear.  Those in whom God has put the spirit of saints.  Now, he that wrought us to the selfsame thing is God

...who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Holy Spirit.

We have a foretaste of this glory in us now, not by manifest evidence but by eternal promise, so that he believes God to him it’s imputed to him for righteousness, having no evidence of this promise, he embraces it by faith, taking God at His word, it’s imputed to him for righteousness, and think of it God makes a contract with us that we become heirs of these things by faith.  
    By believing, having no other evidence than that we take God at His word, we are called his friends, isn’t that true?  We are called a friend of God because we don’t have to have collateral on his promise, we take Him at His word.  If you’ve got to have collateral on His promise, if you have to have some visible evidence of this before you believe it, you can’t please God, even as you can’t have a friend if you have to bring collateral into the situation, isn’t that true?  Do you know why the banker wants collateral?  Because he’s not your friend, and you’re not his friend.  He wants collateral before he loans you any money.
    Well, the friend of God doesn’t need any collateral from God.  He knows that God is true, that He’ll keep his word and that’s good enough for him, right?  And this is God’s word, do you believe it?  Is it good enough or you?  Can you take him at his word, or do you have to have the dead raised in front of you before you’ll believe it?  Well, Jesus said, “If I raise the dead in front of you, you still wouldn’t believe, you’d think I was running tricks of some kind on your mind.”  The Devil will tell you everything but the truth.
    So God is talking about a people who will believe him, take him at his word, and his word is His testimony.  Since he could swear by none higher, he swore by himself, and he said, “Don’t you swear by Heaven and Earth because you can’t make anything come to pass.  But what I swear is eternal, immutable, unchangeable, and Heaven and Earth will pass away before one jot or tiddle of what I say fails,” that’s what God says.  Amen.
    So as far as I am concerned, God helping me, His word is good enough for me, but only his word is good enough for me.  Praise the Lord.  And this is that hope of that eternal Second Tabernacle of which Moses’s tabernacle was but a foretaste and a shadow.  
    As we conclude here, I want to move over into Chapter 9, concerning this True Tabernacle which the Lord is pitching for us, and how that the Old Testament tabernacle of Moses was divided into two compartments having specific measurements, and, by the way, in the 8th chapter, you remember that Moses’s tabernacle served for an example in Verse 5 of Chapter 8 here first,

That all these things have served unto the example and shadow of Heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God

You see, heavenly things doesn’t talk about going to Heaven.  Heavenly things means spirits, it means things promised in a heavenly dimension, in a spiritual dimension here.  You have to have a mind that thinks in heavenly realms, not in natural, carnal realms.  If we think in natural, carnal realms, we don’t perceive spiritual mysteries.  These are spiritual mysteries.  So heavenly things doesn’t mean being up in Heaven.  Heavenly things means spiritual things, spiritual mysteries.  And all of these natural things, like the tabernacle and the furniture and the candle stick and all of that, these were just natural types and shadows or allegories of spiritual things to come.  Things promised in a spiritual nature, or allegorical when God presents them to us in a material way.
    These things serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things as Moses was warned of God when he was about to make the tabernacle in the wilderness, “for see,” says the Lord, “that you make all things according to the pattern showed to you in the Mount,” that is, on the mountain where the Lord appeared unto him and gave him the pattern for the building of that tabernacle, and he was to make the tabernacle precisely according to the pattern that was revealed to him because it was a shadow of things to come, not of a natural tabernacle but of a heavenly tabernacle that God was going to give to us.  
    What I just read?  That’s Chapter 8, Verse 5.  Hebrews.  Serving under the example of the shadow of heavenly things.  Praise God.  
    Verse 6 should be added to that also, “But now has he obtained a more excellent ministry,” that is, Jesus, “by how much also he is the mediator or intercessor of a better covenant which was established upon better promises, and that better covenant established upon better promises was rehearsed to us in Chapter 7, which I didn’t read, and that had to do with all of those things, the promises of the Old Testament being not based on better promises, because those priests always had to be replaced by reason of death because they lived three score and ten years and then by reason of old age they died off and had to be replaced by another priest.  I’m talking about the Iranic, Levitical priesthood of the Jews always had to be replaced because the priest died and had to be replaced.  That’s still true today, isn’t it?
    I mean, any priest of God, any minister of the Lord, if he serves God faithfully he lives, what?  Three score and ten or eight years if by reason of strength, and then he dies, and he’s got to be replaced by another minister, right?  I mean, the people that ministered the Gospel a hundred years ago are dead, right?  So there’s different people ministering the Gospel today, true?  Well, that’s the way it was in the Old Testament.  There was one generation of priests, they ministered, they died, and a younger generation had to replace them in the priesthood.  True?
    Okay, that was the fallacy of the old covenant, the fallacy of the old covenant, he says in chapter 7, that those priests couldn’t continue by reason of death, they had to be replaced by younger priests, but this man, Jesus Christ, because he rose from the dead and he now lives forever and he never dies and the tabernacle of glory that he dwells in and the body he dwells in never dies, so he has promised an undying priesthood, that he will bring forth an undying priesthood and that undying priesthood is that priesthood based on better promises than Aaron and Moses had concerning the Levitical priesthood.  
    What better promises?  Because as those man died and had to be replaced, so this priesthood that Christ is going to bring forth will not die and will not have to be replaced by reason of death because these priests will abide forever because he ever lives to make intercession for that priesthood which is to be manifested after the Order of Melchisedec, which is to be a priesthood without natural father, without natural mother, a tent or a tabernacle not pitched by natural intercourse but a new priesthood fashioned after the image and likeness of the Son of God himself abiding a priest continually, forever, after the Order of Melchisedec.  And made like unto the Son of God.  Abiding continually, because they don’t have to be changed because the curse of physical death is not gonna be on their body, because they won’t be in this body, they’ll be in the likeness of His body, transubstantiated.  
    This is the true hope of the Gospel you’re hearing today.
    Now, in the description of this tabernacle in Hebrews 9, on the short time I have left here, I’m not going to go into all the detail, only briefly to tell you this:  that it was an example of things to come, and that tabernacle was divided into two rooms called the First Tabernacle, or the first room, and the Second Tabernacle, or the second room.  The first place was called the Holy Place, the second place The Holy of Holies.  In the first room of that tabernacle, the priest ministered and there was the candlestick and the show bread and all of those things which testified to us the age in which we have lived for the last two thousand years because that room was made up of cubical measures, ten cubits wide by ten cubits high x twenty cubits deep, which multiplies to two thousand cubits.  That was the room of two thousand cubits, and that tells us that this is the church age.  The room of two thousand is the church age wherein was the golden candlestick with the seven lamps afire.  That candlestick is God’s church.  We are the light of God in the Earth.  Is that not true?  
    In the church age, the candlestick or the church is the light of the world.  Jesus said, “When I was in the world, I was the light of the world, but now I’m going back to my father and I’m leaving you in the world, and you are the light.”  He says, “Now you are the light of the world.”  In other words, my light is to shine through you to the world.”  So the candlestick represented the church and the candlestick was the only light that was in the room of two thousand cubits.  The only light that has been in the earth in the last two thousand years of the church age has been the church.  The only light.  True?
    And by the church, I don’t mean an ecclesiastical organization.  I mean the individuals whom God has called out of the world and put his Holy Spirit and the knowledge of His truth into that they should be the testimony of God in the Earth, a living testimony.  Amen?  Of whom hopefully we are.  
    And that is the room of two thousand cubits.  
    Now, the second compartment of that tabernacle was composed of another room, which was called the Most Holy Place, and the measurements there were ten cubits wide by ten cubits high by ten cubits deep, where it multiplies out to ten by ten by ten, which is 2,000 cubits.  That’s the room of one thousand cubits.  
    The difference between that room and the first room, which represents the church age of the last two thousand years, which we are now coming to the conclusion of, is that this second room, or this age of a thousand years that we are about to pass into, is not lit up by the light of the church but it’s lite up by the glory of God!  The Shekinah glory of God lit up that room.  That’s the light we are approaching.  The light we have now is dim by comparison as the moon is dim by comparison with the sun, so the light that we have today is dim by comparison of the glory of the room we are about to enter, we are about to pass into a new age.
    We are about to end the age of two thousand years, the room of two thousand years, we are about to pass into the room of a thousand years, and that’s the room of the age of the glory of God that will cover the Earth as the waters cover the sea.  
    Are we in the end of the world?  We are in the end of the world.
    Are we in the destruction of the world?  No!  There will be destruction, but the world will survive that destruction and Jesus Christ will come to cut it short, lest humanity be destroyed, and he’s going to rejuvenate the Earth, he’s going to bring back the state of Eden to the Earth.  He’s going to take away industrial corruption and pollution and he’s going to restore this world back to what it was in the days of the Garden of Eden.  An Edenic paradise.  The world will become a natural paradise, and the lives of human beings will be probated unto them according to their submission and obedience to Christ.  They’re not going to have glorified bodies, I’m talking about the nations of the world.  But their lives will be probated unto them and their lives will be lengthened as it was in the days that were before the flood, when mankind lived to be over 900 years of age.  So God is going to rejuvenate those of the nations, the sheep nations that fear him, he’s going to rejuvenate their bodies.  He’s not going to give them glorified bodies, he’s going to rejuvenate their bodies.
    But the hope you and I have in Christ is that he has apprehended us in the age before the age to come, that we might be a first fruit sent to him to bring the good news of this Gospel and having the hope of the tabernacle to come that we might be translated into the glory of that Second Tabernacle, which is the lightness of his eternal body that we reigning with Christ on the earth in those indestructible, eternal bodies might be ministers of the healing of God to the nations.  God using us as medicine, as the leaves of the tree of life himself who is Christ can minister rejuvenation to the dying creation, to all those that are in a repentful stage and submission to God.  
    Now isn’t that a work?  Isn’t that something to live for?  Isn’t that something to desire?  If you have ever groaned over the suffering, if you’ve ever seen the suffering of people, if you’ve ever been in a situation where you couldn’t do a thing about it, look at what’s going on in the world today.  People are dying of starvation.  Even the world goes over there and they’re a burden for us.  We’re even talking about sending soldiers over there to rescue people that are starving to death, because there are decent people in this world who do groan over the condition of those who suffer, needlessly suffer.  
    And all this suffering will go on and on until Satan is destroyed out of this world, because he’s the author of all of this.  Not God, the Devil is, and the Devil’s time is about over, and the reason why the Devil has control is because he has control over men.  The Devil doesn’t go out here and kill anybody.  He kills and he destroys through people.  People destroy people, and the reason why people destroy people by neglect or by violence is because the devil is in them, and people don’t even know the Devil is in them, driving them to do this.  Because the conviction of God has not reached their ears and touched their hearts.
    How do we know who will repent, that we should condemn any man?  Until he has had opportunity to hear the truth of the Gospel?  That God might deal with his conscious?  So we ought not to curse the darkness but to pray that God’s light through us should shine into the hearts of the darkness of men, that they that have done such evil things might happily repent of these things in destroying their neighbors.  Amen?
    Nevertheless we know that the wicked will be wicked and the filthy will be filthy until the judgment of God comes to this world, but we are in this world, as the light of the world, to declare the witness of the Gospel and the good news that divine intervention is close at hand and God is about to bring it all to an end, and he’s looking for forerunners in this hour, people that can impart and embody His light, glory and knowledge and purity, because all that we are worthy or worth of value in this world to God for is as His witnesses, did you know that?  We are His witnesses, and to be His witnesses we must know His ways, we must have His counsel and we must have the wisdom and hope of God in us to give it unto mankind as God anoints us and places us so to do.  Amen.
    So then we have a great vision to be zealous of, that we should get our minds off ourselves, off our temporal encampments and off our temporal ambitions and see the far vision and burden for which Christ came into the world through the acknowledge and working of the father that he through Christ might bring redemption to the whole creation, for God so loved the world, not just us, he so loved the world.
    The Lord is not interested in forgiving sinners so that they can go on living in sin; He’s interested in forgiving sinners that they might come to the knowledge of God and repent, that the blessings of God and the deliverance of God might come upon the creation.
    And we are responsible for that truth which is in us to be led of God.  Amen.  God bless you.
    Yea, sayeth the Lord God unto thee my people, behold I have spoken unto you that whom I did foreknow I did predestinate to be conformed unto the image of my son, therefore I have singled your lives out from the lives of humanity.  I have apprehended you not for your purpose, sayeth the Lord, but for my high and holy purpose, for I have placed in your heart the instrument of faith by which you may respond unto my will if you are willing to do so, for I have set before you a calling and election in this hour, that you might be unto me a peculiar treasure in the Earth above all people.  Yea, submissive to my will and lead by my spirit that I might make you a blessing unto this creation, a blessing unto all that fear me but do not know me, sayeth the Lord, for I have my people in the world, and I have called you to be my light unto them, that you should not go forth in your own strength or in the heat of your own spirit nor testify after your own passion, sayeth the Lord, but that you might gird up and be gird up by me, sayeth the Lord, that I might gird you up with my spirit and lead you forth with my wisdom and open the doors of opportunity for you as you shall so speak me, sayeth the Lord, that you may be a light, even a light without words that men may see my character in your light, sayeth the Lord, and come unto you for counsel from me, knowing that you acknowledge me, sayeth the Lord.  
    So let your light shine, whethersoever I have placed you, whether it be in the schools or on the jobs or wherever I have placed at temporal dispositions, so let your light shine.  Do not speak with words but let your light shine through your deeds, that men may see my nature in you, knowing that you are Christians and in that hour, sayeth the Lord, they among the sinners that fear me will come to you, sayeth the Lord, and they will ask counsel of you concerning me.  
    Therefore let your light shine by your deeds, sayeth the Lord, and if any man ask you a reason for the hope that lies in you, be wise, understand and know and let my word be written on the table of your heart that you may teach them to the good news and the hope of the Gospel, sayeth the Lord, that their weary hearts might be lifted up with an eternal hope, sayeth the Lord.