The Following Message Has Been Transcribed and Edited For

Clarity, Continuity Of Thought, And Punctuation By

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ZECHARIAH, CHAPTER 3:1-10

 

Zechariah, Chapter 3, Verses 1-10 

 

"And he showed me Joshua the high priest, standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him. And the Lord said unto Satan, The Lord rebuke thee O Satan, even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee. Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and stood before the angel. And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him saying, Take away the filthy garments from him, and unto him he said, Behold I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment. And I said, Let them set a fair mitre upon his head, so they set a fair mitre upon his head and clothed him with garments, and the angel of the Lord stood by. And the angel of the Lord protested unto Joshua saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, if thou wilt walk in my ways and if thou will keep my charge, then thou shalt also judge my house, and shalt also keep my courts, and I will give thee places to walk among those that stand by. Hear now O Joshua the high priest, thou and thy fellows that sit before thee, for they are men wondered at, for behold I will bring forth my servant the branch. For behold the stone that I have laid before Joshua, upon one stone shall be seven eyes, behold I will engrave the graving thereof saith the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day. In that day saith the Lord of hosts shall ye call every man his neighbor under the vine and under the fig tree.

 

Verse 1, "And he showed Joshua the high priest, standing before the angel of the Lord." Joshua, brethren, a type of Jesus, our high priest after the order of Melchizedek. We are told by Paul that the Aaronic priesthood has been replaced by a higher order of priests, a priest after the order of Melchizedek. Paul tells us in the Book of Hebrews that the Aaronic priest is imperfect, and because he is imperfect he dies, and because he dies we have to be continuously training new men for the priesthood so that the priestly line can continue.

 

I would just like to take this opportunity to use this as an example to point out to you the condition of the human race. God has a purpose for us. We are the fallen angels reserved in chains of darkness until the judgment which will restore us to righteousness. Because one day to the Lord is as a thousand years to us, it has taken all of this time for God to bring humanity to the point where it is time for the judgment.

 

We see the same principle as Paul described with regard to the Aaronic priesthood present in humanity. We must continue to reproduce, we must continue to train out children, we must continue to socialize them and to tell them about the Lord until that day that the judgment comes which will restore us to righteousness, and in that day and in that restoration to righteousness, we shall be as the angels in heaven, and there shall be no more marriage or giving in marriage.

 

As we see the Aaronic priesthood perpetuated through human death and rebirth out of the same person, the human death and birth, let me say it that way, so no one misunderstands me. Because of imperfection in the priesthood, we see this perpetuation through human reproduction until the manifestation of the perfect priesthood, that priesthood over which the high priest is our Lord Jesus Christ in the form of the mind or the unconscious mind of the men who will be the physical priests or the physical ministers after the order of Melchizedek.

 

Glory to God. Well I hear some questions in my mind, let me just make some comments about Melchizedek. Melchizedek had no beginning and has no end. That is the type of the eternal God. You know, even the life of the ages has a beginning and has an end. A lot of the times when we see the word "eternal" in the in any of the translations, not only the King James...I hope I have not sounded like I am picking on the king James. I am not. I happened to be of the opinion that it is the finest translation out of all of the translations available. It is the translation that I use. It is imperfect, but it has done a fine job until the revelation of the spirit of the word has been made available to us. I thank God for the King James and for the work of the translators. I am very grateful.

 

Melchizedek had no beginning, and he has no end. He is a manifestation of the eternal God. I was saying to you that in many translations when you see the English word "eternal," it is a mistranslation. There is a world of difference between the word eternal, and the phrase, "the life of the ages." The life of the ages had a beginning and will have an end, even that last age which is the greatest of all the ages will come to an end. How can I say that? I can stay that because the Scripture says, "And after He has put every enemy under His feet, even that last enemy which is death..." and of course the one that put everything under Him is excepted, the one that put everything under Christ is not going under Christ... "in that day, Christ shall offer up the kingdom unto the one that subjected everything to Christ."

 

This is the glorification, brethren, and it is the...what is glorification? It is the swallowing up or the absorption of the entire creation into the eternal realm of God. The life of the ages will come to an end. It is the age which is greatest of all the ages. The age of ages shall be a glorious age. We are told that we have had a taste of the age to come in experiencing the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, of the gifts of the Spirit, and we are told that this great age which has already begun, it has just begun in a very small way.

 

We have not seen anything yet, the fullness yet, that this will be a glorious age, a time of great rejoicing and ingathering. Nevertheless, the age of the ages is an inferior condition of life to the eternal life of God. Let me bring it down to earth for you a little bit. The man Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, He was God. There is no question about it, He was God, nevertheless He said, "The Father is greater than I." The father is always greater than the son. God in His pure spirit form is always greater than God appearing in man, even though that man is in full stature, and even though that man may have attained to the second stage of resurrection which is the circumcision without hands.

 

Jesus said, "I do nothing except what my Father tells me to do." Why? Because He was God manifesting through the flesh of a man in which Satan was not yet dead. Let me say it for you in another way. Jesus Christ of Nazareth who was the Christ was God, was absolutely God. He was revealed through a man in whom the enmity which He inherited from His fallen mother had not yet been slain.

 

The enmity in our flesh must be slain. Jesus of Nazareth who was the Christ had that enmity under control. That enmity was powerless to act or to do. He was not powerless to think or to speak, but the faithful mind of Christ which was in the man Jesus always kept that thought under His feet which was coming out of that enmity.

 

Jesus never agreed with it, never responded to it, never acted on it, but until such time that, that enmity was slain, Jesus said, "The Father is greater than I." Just bear with me a second, I had a thought in my mind from the Lord. Well, let me just take a minute to remind you of what we talked about last night that there is an evolution, there is a growing up, there is a maturing of God. That sounds shocking, but if you stop to think about it, there are many Scriptures that witness to it. We started as a mustard seed, the Christ mind starts as a mustard seed, it grows up into a full grown tree, it fills all the earth of the man that it is growing in, then it pierces through the covering, and in the final stage it is swallowed up in the eternal realm of God, which has no beginning and which has no end.

 

To be a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, one which has no beginning and has no end, is saying to us that a drop of eternity is dwelling within us. This is a great mystery, but the way we are being swallowed up by eternity is from the inside out. Under the old covenant the rain came down from heaven, it rose up from under the earth, and the earth was covered, but in this new covenant the way we are being absorbed into eternity is that the seed of eternity is being planted in us, and as it grows and as it increases, it will eventually swallow us up. To the carnal mind, this seed is a parasite.

 

I want to tell you that to the carnal mind's point of view, the invasion of Christ into this world system, into our minds and into our lives, can be likened to a virus invading the human bodies of men. Every spiritual antibody available to the carnal mind has been dispatched to kill this invading virus, but I want to tell you that man, to date, has not yet found a cure for any virus, and the carnal mind will not find a cure or an antidote for the invasion of Christ into this world, but we shall surely be swallowed up into the glorious eternal life of our living God. Did I complete that thought?

 

The way that we can be a priest after the order of Melchizedek is that a drop of that eternal life, hopefully more than a drop with me, is dwelling in us, manifesting in us, living through us, and originates with that eternal life. In order for us to be a priest after the order of Melchizedek, our ministry must come forth from the eternal God which is dwelling within our borders.

 

Now, brethren, there are some people in the church today in whom Christ is being formed, who ministers sometimes out of Christ and sometimes out of their carnal mind. The Melchizedek priesthood has not, to date, been perfected, and we must know for ourselves and for anyone who is ministering to us that the ministry which comes forth from Melchizedek is perfect, but in this hour it is not completely separated and isolated from the carnal mind.

 

We must be aware that it is present and it is functioning, but it is not yet perfect. What does that mean? We pray about everything, open our hearts to God and believe Him to save us and deliver us from everything that is not of Him. Do not be deceived, we have people in the United States, I do not know but it is probably here, because everything that is happening in the United States is happening here, people are the same and the carnal mind is the same everywhere. We had a group of people, a category of people, that would look at a minister who is ministering by Christ and say, "I do not have to receive anything from you because you are not in perfection yet."

 

Brethren, you deceive yourself and you rob yourself of what God has for you to take such an attitude. Just humble yourself before God, keep yourself in prayer, and tell Him that you want everything that He has for you, and that you want Him to protect you from deception, and start walking this spiritual walk. Go to meetings, listen to preaching, do not be afraid of it, fear is never of God. Do not flee from people or break relationships with people who teach something or do things that you do not believe in. You do not have to do them, you do not have to believe them, but you can try to love the person.

 

We shall come together as a body when we love everybody. It is very important, none of the gifts are worth anything. Paul clearly said that nothing is worth anything if we have not love, and he was speaking about the agape love which is in Christ.

 

We see Jesus, the high priest, standing before the angels of the Lord, and Satan standing at His right hand to resist him. This Chapter 3 of the Book of Zechariah is a prophecy about the man Jesus, and I want to suggest to you that included in Jesus is His offspring, the forty-second generation, or we could say the second generation of Christ. It is a Scriptural principle to speak about a man or a forefather and have him indicate all of these progenies. The Scripture continuously speaks about Jacob and Israel and Ephraim, and we know the Lord is speaking about the many multitudes which are descendants from these men.

 

I am suggesting to you that Zechariah 3 is an account of the process which will raise up the Melchizedek priesthood.

 

Now, this is very interesting because the Scripture says that Joshua is the high priest and is standing before the angel of the Lord, but Satan is standing at His right hand to resist him. Now, this Joshua is not a priest after the Levitical order. Just the name, Joshua alone, indicates that he is speaking about the first and second generations of Christ. He is a high priest, and he is standing in front of the angel of the Lord. This expression, "in front of the angel of the Lord" means that we have done quite a bit of research on that, and we found out that it means, "the humanity standing in front of the angel." If I would put Coyote in front of me, probably you could not see me at all. To say that he was standing in front of the angel of the Lord, means that the angel of the Lord is behind him, but when we are talking about spiritual beings, the angel of the Lord being behind him means, "within him, being surrounded by him on all sides."

 

Joshua the high priest was standing in front of the angel of the Lord. We find in the man, Jesus of Nazareth, the angel of the Lord, the very Christ, but what happened in the man Jesus of Nazareth was that angel of the Lord took over His personality and became His whole person. In people who are fallen like we are, sometimes we stand in front of the angel of the Lord, and sometimes He is being revealed through us, and sometimes He is not being revealed through us. This expression, "to stand before or in front of the angel of the Lord," is referring to someone's human form which is visible and enclothing the very Christ. The angel of the Lord is Christ, the angel of the Lord is Christ.

 

Now we read about two angels. We read about Gabriel, we read about Michael, and I would like to give you my opinion. As I tell you all the time, you are free to disagree, but it is my opinion that these Scriptures are really, if you can just find the key, they are very simple, and what many of us at one time in our walk, there are many different aspects, many different angels, we would break things down into little pieces. It has become my experience that as I mature in Christ, all these little pieces are coming together, and they are becoming very simple.

 

The angel of the Lord is Christ. Now the angel of the Lord is in you, and the angel of the Lord is in you, and the angel of the Lord is in me, but it is not ten different angels. It is one angel of the Lord, His name is Christ, and He is manifesting through a multitude of people. He is a superior life form, He is a glorious spirit, He is of a higher order of existence than humanity, and if we apply the laws of humanity we will surely stumble, because He is not human. He is the angel of the Lord.

 

Glory to God. I just want to pray that specific time, that thought just went right out of my mind.

 

Prayer

 

Father, in the name of Jesus we just bless this meeting. Father, we break any curses coming against it, and we just ask that whatever you have to say to this group, that it come out of my mouth, and I just pray that you help me Father. This is the end of a long campaign, I am a little tired, we have no electricity, and it is a little bit hot, we just pray that you show yourself strong to overcome all of these factors, Father, and that you do not let the people came out to hear your word go home empty because of my human failure, and thank you, Father.

 

You may say, "Pastor Vitale, well how could you say that? The Scripture speaks about Gabriel and the Scripture speaks about Michael, there are two archangels right there." Well, the way I look at it, and I believe that the way I look at things are influenced by the Lord, and this is what I feel He has shown me, that it is just one angel of the Lord, but each function of that angel gets a different name. Now, does that sound familiar to you?

 

Over the last few meetings, I have told you that there is one spirit, but many ministrations thereof, and every time the spirit of the Lord operates in a particular function, God modifies the word spirit. He calls it the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of Truth, and the Spirit of Promise to give us a hint, to make it easy for us to identify the particular function of that word, because in the incidences that the word spirit is not modified, you may recall me telling you that we have to go back and read the whole verse or possibly the whole chapter because if there is not one word modifying the word spirit, then the whole verse or the whole chapter has to be modifying the word spirit.

 

We have to find out what function of the spirit applies in order to understand what we are reading, and I am going to suggest to you that it makes very Scriptural sense to apply this same principle to angels.

 

I want to suggest to you that Michael is a warrior angel, and we know that, that is easy. The Scripture is right there in Revelation 12, eating up the evil angel, the one evil angel appearing in the minds of the many. The evil angel is the carnal mind, and he is appearing in the mind of every human being that is on the face of the earth today. There is one evil angel, but sometimes the Scripture talks about evil angels.

 

It is just like sometimes the Scripture talks about the son of God, and then the translation will change to the word "them." It is a many-membered son of God, and there is just one evil angel, but it is a many-membered evil angel. Sometimes in the Scripture, it has different names to indicate the different functions or different points or time of His existence. What I am saying to you, if I have not made it clear, is that Gabriel is a messenger. We see Gabriel delivering a message to Mary, and that Michael is the warrior, Michael is the warrior.

 

We see Michael also in the Old Testament, we see him in the book of Daniel. Have you seen Michael in the book of Daniel? He says that he could not answer Daniel's prayers because of the prince of Persia. Brethren, I most sincerely want to suggest to you that this prince of Persia was the personal manifestation of Daniel's carnal mind. If you just get the key, it is so simple. Now I do not want to go into it now, but we have done several chapters in Daniel, a word at a time, and the fact that the nation mentioned is Persia, it is very significant. The king of Persia is different than the prince of Persia. How?

 

When the word "king" is applied, and we are dealing with this principle of trying to prove whether or not it is really the carnal mind, or whether it is Christ, or whether it is that superior life form that is dwelling inside of man, the carnal mind would be the king, the corporate carnal mind. You could say "Satan" if you want to.

 

When the Scripture refers to the carnal mind of an individual, it is the next generation. The Scripture calls him prince. Let me say that again, somebody did not understand that. We have Jesus of Nazareth who was the Christ, He is glorified, and He is now in our unconscious mind bringing forth the second generation of Christ or the forty-second generation. Everybody here should know that, I believe everybody here knows that. I am simply suggesting to you that it is the same thing that is occurring on the negative realm.

 

Satan is the unconscious mind of the fallen man, and he is bringing forth the next generation of Satan. There is a second generation of Satan called the carnal mind. You do not have to agree with me, but does anybody not know what I am talking about? They are in the second generation of Satan. Satan is the unconscious mind of the fallen man, he brings forth the next generation of the carnal mind in the individual, and in the mystery of prophecy, what just took me fifteen minutes to tell you, the Scripture says the king of Persia would be Satan, but the prince of Persia is the carnal mind in each individual that is existing right now.

 

Michael came forth in Daniel. He was a formation of Christ in the mind of that man, and he said Daniel, "Your prayer was heard from the minute it was prayed, but I could not get to you to answer you because that carnal mind was lying on top of me, and he gave me one run for my money. I could not pierce through." It took, I think it was twenty-one days, twenty- one days, and we found Scriptures in the Old Testament right in the book of Daniel, we found Scriptures in the book of Revelation indicating, and I have touched on this already, that when Christ wants to abide in you...you see, let me say it to you this way.

 

Brethren, we all have natural lives, we have wives and husbands and families and secular jobs, and we have to think about getting gas in our car or getting food on the table. Brethren, this kind of thought processes is not ministered by Christ. When you are ministering the everyday affairs of your life, this is done by your carnal mind. Christ is lying in the bottom of your ship. Most of us are not in full-time ministry, so a large part of our day our carnal mind is in control. He is on top, and Christ is down in the bottom of the ship.

 

When Christ wants to talk to you, or talk through you, or to talk to you, he has to do something to make that carnal mind go down in the bottom of the ship, because only one mind can be up on the deck at a time, and whichever mind was up on the deck, the other mind is down in the bottom of the ship. For Christ to come up, it is a warfare, and that carnal mind must be wounded. That is the only way Christ can get up, and when we looked up all these words in the Greek and Hebrew, it is consistently clear that Christ must wound that carnal mind and put it to sleep, and arise as the conscious mind of the individual that it wants to manifest.

 

We see Michael, a manifestation of Christ in His warrior role coming to Daniel, we see Michael in Revelation 12 fighting with the evil angels of the carnal mind of the whole church that is engaged in this warfare called Armageddon, and we also see Michael in the Book of Jude fighting over Moses' dead body, and some of you might recall last year in Lagos, I threw that one out at you, and I shocked everybody.

 

Let me say it again, maybe you do not remember what I said. There are two Greek words that are translated body, xxxx just said right after I prayed and asked God to help me the lights went on. Thank you Jesus.

 

...Michael contending with Satan over the dead body of Moses, and there are two Greek words...well, actually the Scripture does not say "dead body." It says "over the body of Moses." There are two Greek words that are translated "body." The Greek is a very specific language, one word means dead body and the other word means live body. Brethren, if you do not have a Strong's concordance, borrow one, it is as clear as the nose on your face, that the Greek word in this account is the Greek word for live body.

 

Michael was struggling with Satan over Moses' live body. What does that mean? It means that Moses was going through what we are all going through today, will the carnal mind be revealed through us or will Christ be revealed through us? I want to tell you that for the whole time that this war is on, which is from now or from the time it begins in you until the time that Christ utterly defeats Satan and puts him down under His feet, that this war is a struggle that never stops, Christ and the carnal mind.

 

The carnal mind is a manifestation of Satan. Satan is the unconscious mind, and the carnal mind is Satan revealed through the personality, just like the Father is our unconscious mind, and He is revealed through the personality of Christ in the believer. That is what that book of Jude is all about. Moses was going through the same struggle that we are going through, but there was one essential difference. Moses was under the old covenant, and the spirit of adoption had not been poured out yet, the glorified spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ was in His mind. The Christ that was in His mind was, we could say, an immature or temporary manifestation of Christ which came into being when the spirit of Jehovah joined unto the mind of Moses.

 

It was not the glorified spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, it was not Jehovah in a form that was capable of putting deep roots down into the ground, it was not the spirit of the Father in a form that was capable of permanently joining with the human spirit of that man, penetrating it and bringing forth a permanent offspring in the form of Christ. All of this happened in the man Jesus of Nazareth, but in the man Moses it was just an immature or a temporary formation of the mind of Christ that did not result from the penetration and a birth and, therefore, Moses did not take the permanent victory. On the contrary, we find out that he hit the rock, and he did not obey God. He obeyed his carnal mind.

 

The anointing that was on Moses was the same anointing that was appearing in the creation at the beginning of time. It was a two-fold cord, it was a formation of the mind of Christ that did not result from a penetration and a birth, but merely resulted from a relationship, the measure of union that we see in relationship.

 

Brethren, you could have a relationship with many people, with your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, your uncle, but you only have that total union with your husband, between a husband and a wife. This is the difference between the two relationships, and the relationship to bring forth the provision to bring forth the three-fold cord, this provision to bring forth a manifestation of Christ that results from a penetration and a birth, and a winding together or weaving together of the mind of Christ with the carnal mind, is made available in the new covenant, the mediator of which is the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

As good as Moses could have been, there was a way he could have permanently overcome that carnal mind, but we are told in the Book of Jude that there was a formation of the mind of Christ in Moses, and that he was fighting the fight, but that manifestation of the mind of Christ which is a two-fold cord is not strong enough to defeat the carnal mind which is a three-fold cord.

 

The carnal mind came forth from seed. The carnal mind is the product of a union, a penetration, and a birth, the male seed being Satan, the female seed being humanity, the spirit in the living soul and the offspring being the carnal mind. The carnal mind is in full stature, and the Christ which is not in full stature, the Christ which is immature, is no match for him.

 

Brethren, the Christ is coming forth in full stature, and when both the Christ and the carnal mind are in full stature, they are not equal. There is no match for our Lord Jesus Christ. He is undefeatable, and He will burn that wicked city called the carnal mind with fire, and it will dissolve, the elements will melt, it will break down into component parts which is what Satan and Eve and the offspring...the offspring will die, the carnal mind will die, will break down into that part of her which is spirit, will go back to Satan and that part of her which is soul... well, that is not really true what I just said. That part of the carnal mind which is spirit goes back to Eve. Eve is the spirit.

 

I do not want to get into anything too confusing tonight, but Satan, I guess I have to say that I started it already. Satan originally is soul, Satan is the pestilence in the dust of the earth, but, at some point at the beginning, she was a female. Soul is female, she rose up and took on a male role, and made herself spirit, exalted herself to spirit. It was possible because the creation was on a high spiritual realm.

 

Having exalted herself to the role of spirit, she replaced the Father and joined with the creation and took on a male role. Does anybody want me to repeat that? When the carnal mind is burnt and the elements break apart, they will break out into spirit and soul, and that which is truly spirit is the human spirit of man, and it will be revealed in the burning that, that male spirit is an imposter and was really soul and will go back into the clay of the living soul that died. Is everybody okay?

 

I do not know how I got into that from Zechariah 3, but we were talking about what happened to Moses, we were talking about who the angel of the Lord is, and we were talking about who the evil angels are. Brethren, I am telling you when you get the key, when you get the key to this Bible, it is so simple. It is the same message no matter what Scripture you turn to. It is that simple once God brings your mind to that place.

 

Let us try and go on with Zechariah 3, Verse 1, "And he showed me Joshua the high priest..." typifying Christ in both generations, the first generation being the man Jesus of Nazareth, and the second generation of Christ being all of us in whom that mind of Christ is appearing. "And he was standing before," or that word means, "in front of the angel of the Lord," meaning that this human person was surrounding the spiritual Christ, the angel of the Lord, but Satan was also standing at his right hand to resist him.

 

Brethren, this chapter is so exciting. It is a prophetic account of what we are going through today. Brethren, the angel of the Lord is appearing in us, so we have an adversary, he stands at our right hand to oppose what God would do in our life, and he is standing there to accuse us, and to resist us, or to oppose us, and the Lord said...now not the angel of the Lord, but the Lord said unto Satan...now what is the difference between the Lord and the angel of the Lord?

 

In our case, the Lord is the glorified spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ which is our unconscious mind, and the angel of the Lord is the Christ being formed in us. Within us is the Lord, the angel of the Lord, and Satan being revealed through this carnal mind, all inside of our mind.

 

"And the Lord said unto Satan, the Lord rebuke thee O Satan." Now that sounds strange right there, why would the Lord say unto Satan, "The Lord rebuke thee?" Well, I want to suggest to you that the Lord that rebuked Satan was the Christ in this man. Why can I say this? This is a deep mystery, because the spirit, the glorified spirit, which is the Father, would never say, "The Lord rebuke you," but the Christ in you would say "The Lord rebuke you." Nothing else makes any sense. Am I losing you tonight? Are you with me? Everybody okay? This is what is going on in our minds. The Lord said to Satan, "The Lord rebuke you."

 

It is the same principle as the Psalm where David says, "And the Lord said unto my Lord, sit at my right hand," and Jesus used that Scripture to stymie the Pharisees. He used that Scripture to show the Pharisees that they were totally carnal, and that their understanding of the Scriptures would never get them into the kingdom of heaven. What am I saying? We have to get spiritual to understand this.

 

"The Lord said to my Lord, sit thou at my right hand." We see in Zechariah 3, Verse 2, that the Lord said, "The Lord rebuke you." Same principle, "The Lord rebuke you O Satan even the Lord that has chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee." Even the Lord which has chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee. Now, Jerusalem typifies the living soul in which there is a presence of God. Jerusalem is a city, and she typifies the living soul which typifies God.

 

We know that there is a Jerusalem from beneath, and that there is a Jerusalem from above. There is an old Jerusalem, and there is a new and a holy Jerusalem. It is referring to the soul, it is talking about the old man and the new man, I am talking about the inner man and the outer man. There is only one living soul. When the carnal mind is being revealed through it, it is the old man, it is the body of sin, but when Christ puts that carnal mind under foot and Christ is the mind being revealed through that very same soul, that soul becomes renewed, or we could say it becomes the new man, or the inner man which is growing inside of the carnal mind.

 

Let me remind you that the Holy Spirit enters into our heart and plants the seed of the life of Christ inside of our heart. Our heart is the carnal mind, and Christ begins to be formed within the carnal mind. That is why He is called the inner man. There is an inner man growing within, inside or within the outer man. The inner man is Christ, the outer man is the carnal mind.

 

Jerusalem typifies the living soul. When it is the old Jerusalem, it is the city of God which is revealing the carnal mind. Brethren, we have a whole church today, and this includes natural Israel, that was and are the city of God, but is nevertheless revealing the carnal mind. They are not holy they are utterly corrupt. Jerusalem was corrupt under the old covenant and the Jerusalem that exists in the church today is corrupt.

 

How do I know she is corrupt? Because all of the people die, except Jesus of Nazareth. She needs to be renewed in the spirit of her mind.

 

Christ must appear in Jerusalem and put that carnal mind down under her feet for us to become renewed and be the holy, new Jerusalem, one living soul, one creation. Depending on which mind is revealed through it, determines whether or not it is dead or alive, new or old, holy or corrupt. "The Lord rebuke thee O Satan, even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee, is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?"

 

Brethren, every one of us that the Lord has had mercy upon is a brand, a brand meaning a piece of wood, wood typifying our humanity that has been plucked out of the fire which burns in hell. This world system is hell. There is a fire that is burning here, and it is the fire of God. Satan does not have any fire, brethren. Satan is the opposite of God. God is the sun typifying light, heat, and power. Satan is darkness, he is death, and I suggest to you he is cold, and the fire...and why do I say that? He is as far away from the sun as you can get, and he is the exact opposite of the sun. The fire that burns in hell is the wrath of God. It is God who is a consuming fire.

 

Gehenna, if you have a Strong's concordance and you study that word, Gehenna is one of the three Greek words translated "hell," and if you study it out, it was the name of a garbage dump that was outside of Jerusalem where the fire burned continuously, and people came everyday and dumped their garbage on the pile, and there was so much garbage, the fire never went out.

 

When Jesus speaks about hell and He is talking about Gehenna. The parable behind what He is saying to us is that this world system is hell. The fire of God is continuously burning because there is sin in this world system, and that fire will not go out until every last sin has been consumed. Because we are fallen, we keep producing sin with this fallen mind.

 

This condition of hell fire in our life is spiritual fire, brethren. It is spiritual fire, and it means trouble in your life, it means difficulty, it means sickness, it means emotional problems. It is the wrath of God. It is not the judgment that will teach you a lesson, it is not the Judgment Seat of Christ which lets you experience what you have done to somebody else so that you can repent and not do it anymore. It is the wrath of God, it is the judgment that is mediated by Satan. It is destruction unto death with no explanation and no opportunity given to you to realize that it is happening to you, because you have sinned and hopefully you could change, but you could not without the power of God. The wrath of God is unto destruction, it is the judgment mediated by Satan. How could it be the wrath of God?

 

Brethren, God cursed this creation, and we fell down to hell, and God is a holy God. He is a holy God, and every sin will have its just recompense, and we are down here sinning and sinning and outside of Christ unable to stop, and Satan has been appointed the prince of the power of the air, and he is having a "heyday." He can only do it to us for so long as we sin. He only has authority over us for so long as we are fallen.

 

God will never say to us, "It is alright, I forgive you, you continue in your sins." No, that is not what He has done. He has made a way of escape. He said, "Satan's down here, I have appointed a prince of the power of the air, all power and authority is appointed by God, I have appointed him, and so long as there is sin, unconfessed sin in your life, you are his."

 

Car accidents, sickness, disease, torment, premature death, this is the work of Satan who is mediating the wrath of God upon the cursed creation, but a loving Father has made a way of escape, the Judgment Seat of Christ, the judgment which has the mercy to come to us and say, "Look, this is why the sickness, the death, the car accidents, the witchcraft, this is why it is happening to you, family line curses. This is what you have done that is bringing it upon you, repent and I will cleanse you and Satan will have no authority over you."

 

Deliverance from this world system, deliverance from hell, deliverance from Satan is in confession of sin, repentance and spiritual cleansing, as rapidly as we could bear it. Sometimes it takes a while. Throwing yourself on the mercy of God is the only way to get away from Satan. He has authority over you if you are sinning willfully.

 

We see that Joshua is a brand plucked out of the fire, he is a human being that is part of a continuous burning which is going on this garbage dump, which is called hell, a spiritual garbage dump and a spiritual fire. You see, the fire of God never goes out, but it has different manifestations. Just like the spirit of God, just like the angel of God, it is burning as wrath for as long as there is sin.

 

When there is no more sin, the fire of God will still exist, but it will not be burning in that manifestation, but you better believe that if at any time (I do not believe it is going to happen, this is just an example), sin were to appear like that, the spirit of God, the fire of God, would be burning as the wrath of God to consume the spiritual garbage.

 

It is not very flattering to find out the spiritual truth about ourselves, but the truth will set you free, the truth will set you free, and He, our Lord and Savior, fully intends to glorify us, to bring us up where He is. Do not let your pride keep you locked down here in Gehenna, where the fire burneth and the worm is not consumed.

 

I can hear your question on...I am going off on all kinds of tangents tonight, the worm that is not consumed, if you look that up in the Greek...okay, it was you, you asked the question, I see it on your face. The worm that is not consumed is... you look up that Greek word translated worm, what it is really talking about is this existence. It is a Greek word that means, "this existence," and that is what Jesus meant when he said that this existence will never come to an end for any reason other than the complete cleaning up of sin. Now I used to preach that this world is about to self destruct, I preached it. If you listen to my old tapes, you will hear it on the tapes.

 

Well, I made a mistake. This world will never self-destruct, this world is eternal torment. You see, Satan has no original ideas, he just messes everything up. There is reality to eternal torment. God is not doing it to us, Satan is doing it to us. It is not in some hole underneath the ground after you die. This is it right here, this world will never self destruct, and there is a spiritual man, a many-membered spiritual man who is existing down here in hell where the worm dieth not, where this world system will never cease to exist, where the fire continues to burn as long as there is sin.

 

There is one spiritual man, he is a many- membered man, and he is trapped down here, and God is going to deliver him by pardoning his sin, by pardoning his iniquity, by sending the ransom which is Jesus Christ to join Himself forever to that man who is down here. Now listen to this, he is down here because he cannot stop sinning, so God is sending righteousness to him.

 

He is trapped down here, because he cannot stop sinning. God is sending righteousness to him, and He is going to join that righteousness to him. In one place, it says He is sewing it to us, he is sewing the righteousness to us like a garment. In another place, it says He is joining us through crucifixion to our righteousness. He is giving us the ability to stop sinning. This is the grace of God, the ability to stop sinning in the form of Christ Jesus and then, when we stop sinning, the fire will stop burning, because there will not be any sin for it to consume. This world system which was hell shall be converted into heaven.

 

Remember what I said, one soul. When the mind in it is death, it is corrupt, and it is dead, and when the mind in it is Christ, it is renewed and it is holy. One soul, brethren, one world system. When the mind that it is revealing is the carnal mind, it is hell, and when the mind that it is revealing is Christ, it is heaven. There is just one place, one soul, one world. Depending on the mind ruling in it, it is either heaven or hell, righteous or unrighteous, corruptible or incorruptible, heaven or hell, death or life.

 

It is so simple. Can you hear this, do you at least know what I am talking about? Everyone in whom Christ is beginning to appear is a brand, a piece of wood plucked out of the fire of this continuous, never-ending, age-abiding burning.

 

Verse 3, "Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and he stood before the angel." Joshua stood before the angel, a human man, filthy garments, a corrupt body and a corrupt soul; nevertheless, he stood before the angel. The angel of Christ was appearing in a fallen man or a many-membered company of fallen men. I do not know about you, but when I first came to the Lord, I used to hear a lot of Christians say to me, "A Christian cannot have a demon because the Holy Ghost will not live in the same place with a demon."

 

Brethren, when the Holy Ghost penetrates your heart, you are filled with demons. If He would not agree to live in the same place with the demons, He would never enter into your heart. We are dirty. I am not here to condemn you, but how can you get clean if you do not acknowledge that you are dirty? We are dirty but, despite that, Christ is being formed in us. Is that incredible? While we were yet sinners, He died for us.

 

Verse 4, "He answered and spake unto those that stood before him saying, Take away the filthy garments from him..." Now all of a sudden it is "those," plural, that stood before him, so we see we are getting into the second generation of Christ here. "And the angel said, Take away the filthy garments..." or the man with the measure of wine in his hand said, "Take away the filthy garments from him, and unto him he said, Behold I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with a change of raiment."

 

Now check out the sequence. First, his filthy garments must be taken away from him. That is the cleansing of the soul and physical body, and then He says, "Now that I have changed your garment, your iniquity has passed from me, and I will clothe thee with a change of raiment, I will give you my righteousness, I will give you a renewed soul, and I will give you a glorified body. The way I am going to do it is by giving you a new mind because it is the mind that controls the condition of the soul, the body, and the world system."

 

Verse 5, "I said, Let them set a fair mitre upon his head, so they set a fair mitre upon his head and clothed him with garments and the angel of the Lord stood by." I want to suggest to you that, that fair mitre is referring to the crownlets that we read about in the Book of Revelation, and it is the crownlets which results from the weaving together of the carnal mind to the Christ mind. It is the imparted anointing, it is the Christ which is a three-fold cord.

 

It is the mind of Christ which does not make us a channel for a spirit who expresses himself through us without us having any understanding at all, but it is a mitre that gives us the wisdom and the understanding of a son. It is a mitre which is our sign of friendship with God, that we know everything that the Father would tell us from the beginning of time, all of the secrets of God, knowledge, wisdom, understanding, counsel, access to glory, access to glory through our mind.

 

Verse 6, "And the angel of the Lord protested unto Joshua saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, if thou wilt walk in my ways and if thou wilt keep my charge or keep my instruction, then thou shalt also judge my house." If you walk in my ways, and if you keep my instructions, you shall also judge my house. Now, to walk in God's ways and to keep His instructions, you must judge your own carnal mind. There is no way that you could walk in the ways of God and keep His instructions. Number 1, if Christ is not being formed in you there is no way you could do it. If Christ is being formed in you, you are not going to do it without a warfare. There is no way you are going to do it without wounding your carnal mind. He is not going to let you do it.

 

"If you succeed in doing this, if Christ is being formed in you and you are successfully judging your own mind, I am going to let you judge other people." Jesus said, "I judge no man, but yet if I judge, I judge righteous judgment." Did you ever wonder what the difference was between judging before the time and judging righteous judgment? Brethren, judging before the time or before the age, judging before the age of Christ coming into your mind is a sin. Judging your brother with the carnal mind condemns him and is a sin unto you.

 

Jesus said, "I judge no man," but the Scripture says, "If you are fighting this war, and you are winning it to the point that you are judging your own carnal mind every time you see sin arising in it, in your mind, you are wounding it, you are cursing it, you are killing it, and you are resisting it unto death."

 

The Scripture says that when you do that, God is going to give you the opportunities to judge righteous judgment on your brother. Why? Because if you are winning this battle with your carnal mind, and if your Christ mind that you are living through most of the time when you judge your brother, it will be with righteous judgment which comes from Christ.

 

Now why would you want to judge your brother? Well, let us remember what judgment is. The judgments of God are merciful, they are unto correction, they are unto redemption, they are unto life.

 

Do you remember what I said a few minutes ago that the wrath of God which is mediated by Satan gives you no opportunity to find out what you or your ancestors sowed that is making you reap this travail, this pain. There is no information, there is no way of escape. The judgment of the church, brethren, is the impartation of the knowledge that they need to get out of this vicious circle that we are in, this eternal torment.

 

The judgment of the church is the revelation of sin, the exposure of their carnal mind, and if they are not strong enough to rise up and wound their carnal mind themselves, the wounding of another person's carnal mind... but let me warn you that if you take my words and you go out and you start doing this and it is not Christ in you, the Lord will chasten you. If it is not Christ in you, it is witchcraft.

 

There was a time that I did not want to preach this, but the Lord told me that I had to preach it. I cannot do anymore than I am doing, I am telling you the truth and I am warning you. If your pride gets a hold of this message and you exalt yourself in your mind to be some high level apostle or son of God, and you run around hurting your brother, because if you do this out of your carnal mind you are going to be hurting your brother, the Lord will have to bring a correction upon you, which may or may not be too pleasant.

 

He is not going to kill you, but what do you need the grief for? Not only will you receive a correction, but it is going to hinder your own spiritual growth. Until God brings the correction, all that time could go by, and time is very short, brethren. Beware of pride, it will destroy you. It is not worth it, it is not worth it, do not go and judge somebody unless you have prayed, and you are really sure that it is God.

 

I cannot warn you anymore stronger than that. For that group of people, and that is a good way of testing yourself, are you waging this warfare, are you fighting your own carnal mind? I doubt very much that God will send you to somebody if you have not been waging this warfare with your own carnal mind for quite a while. Are you taking the victory most of the time? Are you in continuous condition of confession and repentance? Test yourself, you would not want to do this if it is your carnal mind deceiving you, and using you to hurt one of these little ones that are going through this travail.

 

There is a reality to this, they are called the two-witness company. You see, this company of people who are having a fair measure of victory over their own carnal minds who can distinguish between Christ and their carnal mind, who can tell when God is sending them, and when their carnal mind is trying to send them, and these people who are faithfully going to their brother, in the love of Christ, telling them their sins, they are called the two-witness company when they are not in full stature. When they ascend to full stature, their name changes to the sons of God.

 

Now sometimes God will send you to someone who will receive the correction, and you will see deliverance in the person's life, but most of the time the person will not receive the correction, even if it is just a temporary resistance, and you have to know how to deal with them in the love of God. You cannot beat them up because they insult you, or because they hurt you, or because they wound you.

 

There is a training process that will prepare you for dealing with your brother. That is not easy to tell somebody their sins, and if you do not do it in the love of God it is going to be done to you. Whatever you do to them, it is going to be done to you, and you would not want someone to hurt you that way. You see, if God tells you, "Now is the time to reveal somebody's sin, I prepared their heart, they are ready for it, if you go now I am going to be there with you and no matter what happens the result, the long range result of it will be deliverance for that person."

 

Well, then you go and even if they get mad at you, the Scripture says, "Do not be afraid of their faces. If I send you to them, and you will not go, and you will not tell them their sins and they die, their blood is on your hands." Do not go if God has not sent you, because if God is not sending you that Scripture does not apply to you.

 

This is what we are coming up to. Imperfect people who are having some measure of success over their own carnal mind, God is sending them right out because He has a whole world full of people that are moaning and groaning day and night asking God for deliverance, and as soon as you are showing any measure of faithfulness towards God, He is sending you.

 

There is a whole world full of people waiting for your ministry, as soon as you are ready to do it, even though you are not perfect, and you go believing that the spirit of God is going with you, and that you are going to do a pretty good job, but even if you make a mistake, that if you can, you have to be able to confess that you make a mistake. If you cannot confess that you made a mistake, God is not sending you. I am telling you this right now, and you must be able to go to the person and apologize and tell them that you were doing the best that you could for them, you thought that God told you to say such and such a thing, but you made an error, and this is what God had for you, or if you cannot do that, God is not sending you.

 

If you cannot admit that you made a mistake, know right now God is not sending you, because when you go to a person and you show them their sins, you are really making them vulnerable before you. You can really be a vessel to bring tremendous deliverance to them, or you can break their heart, you can be a big catalyst that would... I do not believe that any person could cause another person to backslide, but would you want to be the factor that pushed them over the line?

 

What am I saying to you? This is such a hard ministry because I am not giving you clear-cut instructions, I am giving you principles, I am giving you information, your clear-cut instructions come from the Lord. I am here to give you information, and if ever you are having a situation that you would like me to help you try the spirit on, I would be here with my counsel but, by and large, each one of us has to get into such an intimacy with Christ that He is teaching us personally, and your greatest weapon is continuous prayer, prayer without ceasing, continuous confession of sin and repentance, and humility before God, a readiness and a willingness to admit a mistake if you made it, and turn around. You have to be able to do that.

 

Verse 7, "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, if you will walk in my ways and if you will keep my instructions..." What are His instructions? What are His instructions? Take vengeance on Satan and the carnal mind, that is the instructions of the Lord, kill them, have no mercy, have no pity, destroy him. If you are following the Lord's instructions, if you are able to follow them, and if you are following them, then "I will send you to judge my house, and you shall also keep my courts..." That is the outer court, "And I will give you places to walk among those that stand by." That means that there is ministry for you on every level. The ones who God sends you to judge are the brethren in whom Christ is being formed, but there is also ministry for you, for the church in whom Christ is not being formed, for the church that has the Holy Spirit, and even for the heathen.

 

If you are brought to such a place of obedience in Christ that you have authority over your carnal mind that God can send you, believing that you are going to faithfully execute the ministry in Christ and that your carnal mind is not going to get in there and kill these people, He has got all the work for you that you can physically bear up to.

 

Now when I came to Nigeria, a couple of people were surprised that I was going to carnal churches. I have been to several carnal churches here in Nigeria. This is the Lord's instruction to me, brethren. He has given me a very high intellectual word for you, but I have not preached this word everywhere that I have gone, and it is not just for you, it is for everybody.

 

You see, it is the spirit that He has put in me. When He sends me to a carnal church, He has given me an ability. It is a miracle. I do not know even how I did it, that I ground this message down to baby food, but this anointing was going out on them. The Lord Jesus Christ was sowing His seed on the hearts of the people who have the Holy Ghost, and they love him.

 

Christ has to be seeded in them for them to start to receive this deep word. I want to tell you God put His spirit out in these other churches, the people are moaning and groaning and crying, "Jesus where are you?" We must know that we are not just sent to those who can receive this high intellectual word.

 

Jonah was one of those preachers. He did not want to go where God sent him. He said, "Why are you bothering with those people Lord?" Let us not be modern day Jonahs. We must know that the mercy of God is for every human being alive, and you go only to the one that God sends you. If He sends you to a deep group like this, you go. If he sends you to a heathen on the street you go, and just say, "Lord what in the world do you want me to say to this person?"

 

You know, when God first sent me to Nigeria last year, I had a severe anxiety attack because I was told that they still believe in the rapture, and I was restricted to fifteen minutes, and I went into a severe anxiety attack. You know, in New York, it is not unusual for me to preach for four or five hours. It is not at all unusual. I said, "Lord what in the world am I going to say to these people?" Not only that, but I am used to a casual situation like this, where I call the meeting to order. I could start it, I could stop it, but when the Lord sent me to Nigeria last year, I was on a crusade and there was a man standing up on the platform with the microphone saying, "Well, here she is, sister Sheila from New York," and I had to go up on command and preach on command for fifteen minutes to people that do not know the first thing at all about what I preach.

 

I am honest with you, I was having a severe anxiety attack until the Lord had one of the...I was traveling with a company, an evangelist, and someone in that company the Lord raised them up to say, they were not saying it to me I just heard it, that when you preach in a certain circumstances like this, it is like prophesying. I have prophesied in the church, and it just gave me a peace, and it had to be God because that was exactly what happened. I got up there, and the anointing hit me, and it was like a prophecy, it just came out of me.

 

I had said to the man who was hosting the crusade, "If I am still talking after twenty minutes, please wave at me because I lose track of the time," and I stopped preaching in about sixteen minutes. The anointing just stopped, God just did everything. What is my point? This message is not just for the elite, it is for the whole world, brethren. Let us not be Pharisees. Be very careful, let us not be Pharisees. Those of you who can hear this message on this level, you are being trained for ministry, you are being trained, not to keep it for yourself but as soon as you are ready, He is sending you out. God is saving this whole world.

 

We are still in Verse 7, "If you walk in my ways and you keep my charge, you are going to judge my house." That is the people in this category, you only judge the people in whom Christ is being formed. "...and you also keep my courts..." That is the outer courts. "You are going to minister to the people in whom Christ is not being formed, and I will give you places to walk among those that stand by." I have not studied this in the Hebrew, but that is probably... well, the outer courts, that is probably the people that do not have the Holy Ghost, and those that stand by must be those that have the Holy Ghost. I am sure that I am close, I may not have the exact words.

 

Verse 8, "Hear now O Joshua the high priest, thou and thy fellows that sit before thee..." Joshua the high priest, the glorified spirit is the Lord Jesus Christ and all of us, "For they are men wondered at..." That is us, we are men wondered at. Why? "Because behold, I will bring forth my servant, the branch." We shall do wonders, signs and wonders in Israel for one reason only, and that reason is that Christ will be appearing in us.

 

I am repeating, and I will continue to repeat it, your pride will kill you. We are nothing, but that Christ has chosen to reveal Himself through us. We are nothing of ourselves. There is no inherent power in us. Jesus of Nazareth the Christ said, "I do nothing except what my Father tells me to do," and we have a whole church full of people demanding things to come to pass. I want to tell you, I was at a church service several years ago. I did not have this ministry yet, so I was, as far as the pastor was concerned, I was just some peon in the congregation, and he had a visiting minister, a woman, and her testimony was that her grandson had been in a wheelchair.

 

I do not remember what the disease was, but he had been in a wheelchair for years, and the Lord had just, he had recovered and he came out of the wheelchair, and within one week after the boy came out of the wheelchair, the mother, this minister's daughter was waitressing, and she walked out of the kitchen and slipped on a wet floor and fell down and damaged her spine, and was laid up in the hospital and was told that she was in danger of paralysis. The next week would tell the difference, they had her lying flat, she could not move, and there was better than a 50% chance that she would be paralyzed.

 

The pastor of this church said, "Well now we are all going to pray for this sister, and we are going to demand that she be healed by tomorrow morning," and I was there visiting with a couple of people. I did not say anything to anybody because I looked around, none of the three of us was praying, I could not, that is witchcraft, I do not pray prayers like that, and after the whole thing was over, the Lord said to me, "Go up there and tell that woman that she better go home to her home state and break that curse of paralysis on her daughter and on her family line or that woman is going to be paralyzed." I said, "Lord, you do not really... that cannot be you Lord, you do not really want me to go tell this woman who I know thinks that I am a peon that there is a curse of paralysis on her family line. The Lord said, "Yes I said it, and you better do it."

 

I am afraid of God, I have a fear of God, brethren. I walked up to the front of the church and she came over, a woman minister with a beautiful smile on her face. She probably thought I was coming up to kiss her or something, and I said, "Sister, the Lord wants you to know there is a family line curse of paralysis, and you should go home and break it over your daughter." She looked at me as I said it to her, there was no verbal response, but the smile drained from her face, and she just turned around and walked away.

 

I said, Well Lord, her blood is off of my hands, and I went back to my seat, and I saw her talking to the pastor of the church and they were laughing, and I just knew they were laughing about what I said. Well this story has a sad end brethren, I do not know what happened to the woman's daughter, but about three years later the Lord sent me back to the same church, and this same woman minister was ministering there, and she had just come out of a nine-month stay in the hospital. She had cancer, she had, had parts of her body removed, she was mutilated, and she was going back into the hospital for a spinal problem, and the doctors were prophesying paralysis on her.

 

At this point, there were other ministers, I do not know if they were telling her it was a curse, but I know the pastor whose church she was in, it was the same church, he was telling her it was a demon, and she would not believe it was a demon. She had some kind of a religious spirit, you know, a very anointed woman of God, cannot deny the anointing on her, stood there in the midst of the congregation and said, "If my God wants me to suffer like this for His glory, who am I to say I will not do it?"

 

Brethren, God does not put that kind of suffering on you. The suffering for the kingdom is the persecution when you go to the brother that God sends you to and you say, "Brother, that is pride in your mind," and he says, "Get out of my life, because no friend of mine would say that to me." That is how you suffer for Christ.

 

When you go to the brother that God sends you to, and you tell him, "Brother this thing that you are doing, this ministry that you have started, God told me to tell you it is not of God," and he turns around and he says, "You are jealous of me, get out of my life." That is the persecution and the suffering that you experience when you are serving God. God does not mutilate your body, God does not put you in the hospital, God does not give you paralysis, God does not give you cancer, God does not give you car accidents, God does not give you divorce, God does not give you financial disaster. All of these things I just named are things that happened to us because there is sin in our life, and the fact that we do not know that, that sin is there does not make any difference.

 

If you see any such problems, anything along the lines that I am talking to you about tonight, you have got to get before God and ask him what to do. You have to ask him what kind of a family line curse it is, you have to confess the sins of your ancestors, you have to confess your own sins, and you have to petition the Lord to make a way of escape by having that curse broken and that demon cast out of you, after you confess the sin and repent.

 

Brethren, if you think that God is doing this to you, that is what the Catholics teach. That is that martyr spirit where they used to take a whip and whip themselves. God is not glorified in that! How is that producing Christ in you, how is being paralyzed producing Christ in you?

 

Brethren, when you go to your brother and you tell him, "God said do not do that," and he hates you and accuses you of having an evil motive towards him, and you continue to love him, that is building Christ in you, but being paralyzed is not building Christ in you. That is a religious spirit, and it is building death in you. You have to know this. Jesus.

 

Well then, it is the thoughts of the carnal mind. You cannot go on with this ministry until you learn to recognize your own motives. It is a basic tool that you have to learn to recognize your own motives, and a lot of people really do not know what their own motives are. A lot of people are in denial, in automatic denial, which is a defense mechanism. It is the way we live our life, you know, but it is not the way we live our life in Christ. There is a big conversion that is necessary, a whole way of dealing with life, a whole new way of dealing with life and dealing with problems.

 

You do not go confessing your sins to a heathen that could hurt you, or to the church gossip, or to some carnal Christian that is going to go do whatever they are going to do with it. You confess your sins to the Lord, confess your sins to the Lord, and as he sends you to a minister, a faithful minister that you have reasonable reason to believe you could trust, and if you feel the Lord has directed you to that person, it does not have to be someone in the ministry, it could be a friend, it could be a relative, but do not be naive.

 

Do not think because somebody is a Christian that they are going to judge righteous judgment, or do not think because you are doing the right thing and taking your daughter to do the righteous thing that, that heathen is going to appreciate it, because I want to tell you that a lot of heathens get very upset when you do a righteous thing. It makes them nervous. They do not like righteousness.

 

We have to be wise, brethren. You have to be wise as serpents, and sometimes the children of light are much simpler than the children of darkness. We have to start growing up. If we cannot, if we are not grown up enough, you really have to be under some kind of authority, really. Now this woman was a widow. I do not know what her husband would have said if he was alive, I really do not know, but if you have to evaluate yourself, if you really cannot deal with life in a way that I am describing to you, you should be under an authority. If you are a woman, and you cannot relate to any of this, you should not be doing any life-changing action without consulting your husband.

 

If you are a man and, you know, sometimes men do not know how to handle themselves either. Well then, you should be in a ministry where there are some elders. Ideally, you should be in a ministry. It does not have to be in ministry as long as God sends you to someone who is a good friend that you can trust. If you are a man, you cannot stay that way, you are supposed to be learning how to be wise in this world.

 

If you are a woman, and you are married, and your husband is taking care of all of these things, and you are content to stay in that condition of mind, there is no sin in it, but if you are a woman that is called to spiritual manhood, and you want to start to enter into a training that will give you a rational mind that will know how to deal with people and in all kinds of circumstances, well then you have to start to learn.

 

If you cannot do it at this time in your life, ask God to show you who you are supposed to be going to for counsel, and do not take any serious steps without seeking counsel. This world is not a safe place, and the hard cold truth is that, yes there is a God in heaven, and yes He loves us, and yes He is keeping us, but if we just go walking all the way out of the way without praying, without asking for counsel, without taking some protection, He is going to let us stub our toe, and I tell you the truth.

 

Well, this woman that I just told you about was a Christian, in church four nights a week casting out demons, dedicated woman, so how did that happen? How does God let that happen? The carnal mind turns around and blames God. God never told her to do that, and I do not know for sure, but she probably never asked, you see. There was probably a spirit of self-righteousness or some such thing. You do not take any such step without seriously praying about it and getting counsel. It is time for the church to grow up.

 

To answer your question, the thoughts of Christ are righteous, they are true, they are merciful, they are compassionate, they are honest, and the thoughts of the carnal mind are desperately wicked, accusing, covetous, envious, and you have to ask God to help you to see the truth of your own heart. Why? So that Christ can rise up in you and start to kill these things.

 

I am going to say it again. That is the reason that there is no more condemnation in Christ Jesus, because the weapon to kill these things has been placed in your hands. What purpose is there in condemning you? What good can come out of condemnation. Arise and kill the thing. That is the message of the hour.

 

I hope I answered your question. Let me look at this note again. The thoughts of God and the evil thought and how they express themselves in us. They start as a thought in the mind, and they eventually will become behavior, so what we are trying to do as we enter into this walk is catch this evil thought before it becomes behavior. We had someone here last night speaking about anger. If you can feel yourself getting angry, if you can see it coming and pray, and you could stop it before it comes out of your mouth, you have taken a victory.

 

As you wage this warfare, you will find out that eventually whatever your ungodly qualities are that God has you working on at this time in your life, because He is not showing you everything at once. You could not bear it, but whatever ungodly quality He is showing you now, the first thing you are trying to do is recognize it as it arises as a thought in your mind, and you are trying to catch it before it becomes behavior.

 

Once you start taking the victory in that area, and what does that mean? It means that you see it coming, and you rebuke it soon enough and with enough strength so that it does not become behavior, and you are pretty consistently taking that victory. The next step is to see it coming soon enough to catch it before it becomes sin in your mind. You see, the thought will arise, and it is not sin until you say amen.

 

A thought of envy arises, let me give you an example. A thought of envy arises, and all of a sudden you find this envy spreading through your whole mind. It is sin, you have agreed with the thought and it is sin. Now you have to confess it and repent and ask God if there has been an iniquity formed to cast it out of you, but you will come to the point...I experience this a lot. I see it arising in my mind, and I am out of agreement with it from the second it appears on the horizon of my mind.

 

I have a lot of victory in this area, not a hundred percent. If I had a hundred percent, I would be in full stature and I am not, but a lot of the time God has brought me to the place where I see that thought, I see it afar off, and I just curse it right at its root, and I turn around and I pray for that person, whether it is a thought of envy, a thought of anger, whether it is pride, whatever it is, when I see it coming, I curse it before it finds any place in my mind.

 

If it has anything to do with another person, I will turn right around and I will bless them. I will bless them going in, and I will bless them coming out, and if there is something that I have that they want, if there is a conflict going on here because they are envious of me, or there is something, anything to do with me, I will tell the Lord that if it is His will as far as I am concerned, they can have it.

 

I am not going to give you my possessions as a religious work because you are envious of me, but if God tells me to give it to you, you could have it, and that is my prayer, because the most important thing to me is that I should be found without sin, and if God says that He is giving it to somebody, well take it, because if He is giving it to them, I could not hold on to it anyway. This is how I deal with people having ungodly thoughts towards me, this is how I deal with it without retaliation. I bless them and I say, "If God wants to give it to you, it is yours." It works, it works, it really works. I am not mad at the person, a compassion arises in me, a mercy arises in me, the love of God arises in me, you see.

 

I touched on this last night. I think we will go on five more minutes, and then we will stop. I touched on this last night, as soon as you start to take dominion over sin in your own mind, Satan is sending your neighbor who has the same sin to come to you to seduce the potential for sin in your mind.

 

You see, you have got control over it. Now, all of a sudden, your best friend is there tempting you to gossip, tempting you to be envious, tempting you to do whatever your temptation is. You had control over your carnal mind, but your carnal mind and your friend's carnal mind is too much for you, and you find that the sin arises in your mind. For us to get into full stature, it is a progressive overcoming of our own carnal mind, our family's carnal mind, our friend's carnal mind, our church's carnal mind, our employer's carnal mind, and the carnal mind of all the people in our life, and I believe when Jesus of Nazareth was tested by Satan, I think the pressure must have been incredible. It must have been the corporate carnal minds of the whole of humanity coming against Him.

 

As I told you, it is really glorious. Once you get into this battle, and you start seeing the victory, it is absolutely glorious. I have been in situations where I have known as many as ten people raging at me at once, and I am taking the victory through the whole thing. I am not mad at them, I am praying for them, I am blessing them, and I am walking in such a high realm of the spirit because when you do that, God catches you up to a very high place. It is very exciting, very exciting. I would have never believed that.

 

You know, the first time I thought that I was supposed to be joyful because I was persecuted, I said, "This is...I mean what kind of a thing is that to say?" I could see that you are going to be persecuted but to be happy while you are persecuted, I could not even comprehend it, but there is a joy that is in Christ when you see the Christ in you prevailing over the evil of the carnal minds.

 

They are raging at you, and they do not even know why, you know, and you see that you are taking this victory in Christ, it is glorious, it is just really exciting.

 

At the beginning sometimes, you take a few lumps. You know sometimes, you get hurt here and there until you start learning how to use your weapons. You know, you have to learn how to function. It is just like if you are going to the army, and you are completely green, and you come out of basic training and you are a good soldier, you know, but it is only....any lump that you take is going to produce righteousness if you deal with it properly. If you forgive them and do all the things I have been suggesting to you, it is just going to build Christ in you, everything will work for your good, if you love the Lord and if you are desiring this, this ministry.

 

It is now. I am going to tell you that it is available now, that everything that I have been talking to you about, I move in, with one exception and that is full stature, but I move in the aspects of the two-witness company. I point people's sins out to them, I have seen tremendous deliverance come forth as God sets up the circumstances, prepares their hearts, and anoints me to move. It is absolutely glorious, and there are people that are just dying for lack of this knowledge, for lack of this information.

 

Only this last year, God has revealed to me how many people there are in the church that would not hesitate to sit down, they want deliverance. God sent a man to us from out of state, came from the other side of the country, looking for deliverance and he said, "Boy, I want deliverance, I cannot go on like this anymore." He was not a young, young man, and so we sat him down and we said, "Well do you repent of this, and do you repent of that?" He said, "Oh yeah, I repent of everything, repent of pride, repent of witchcraft, repent of mind control," he had no problem, he just ticked them right off like that.

 

We prayed for him, and there was no move of the spirit until the Lord revealed to me that this man was making a general repentance which in no way was relating to his thought patterns or his behavior, and when the Lord had me tell him that a specific behavior that he had acted out towards me was sin, he became very upset and very angry, and it was one of the sins that he had repented of.

 

You see, it is very easy to make this high intellectual repentance, but when you find out that, that thought in your mind was witchcraft, or that thought in your mind was really envy no matter how you justify it, it was really envy. It is not so easy to repent, and it is just the grace of God who grants us repentance, because the pride of man will rise up and block the repentance. Any questions before we close?

 

COMMENT: Comments incomprehensible.

 

PASTOR VITALE: With regard to the first one, I want you to know that this gift that I have did not come easily, and I have fought many a battle to sit before these books, and I work with a computer for fifteen hours. When I first started doing this, I would come under a severe attack and in those days, which was about five years ago, I thought that the devil was outside of me, and that it was some witch's coven persecuting me as I sat there.

 

In those days I had a secular job, I would be working all day, I would come home at 7:30 at night and start studying. I sometimes would be up until 2:00, 3:00 in the morning studying because I was preaching the next day, and I would be severely persecuted, torment in my mind, ungodly thoughts, evil thoughts, anxiety, stress, and I had a couple of people that I would call to pray for me, and they would break the curses and it got me through, but I really struggled for several years until I reached a point where I pierced through. That is the only way I could describe it.

 

There was intense mental and emotional torment placed on me as soon as I sat down at my desk to study, but they could not get me to stop. No matter what kind of agony I was in, I was crying out to God the whole time, rebuking what I thought were curses from other people, and calling other people for help, and it took a while, it took a few years, and I pierced through, and I passed through to the other side.

 

Now the exact opposite is true in my life. When I am having some anxiety in my normal life, I am having a problem, the thing that gives me peace is to go and study, because I pierced through into another realm. What I found out was that all this torment in my mind, it was not someone out there praying against me. It is my own carnal mind that was torturing me because it just could not bear what I was doing, and it wanted me to stop what Christ called me to study, and I sat there and I did what I knew He wanted me to do, and it took about three years of doing this two times a week.

 

I preached twice a week when I had a secular job, and I studied in those days on the average of six hours for each meeting, and I was in torment, and I just would not give up and I said, "Devil you cannot do this to me."

 

Now, it is the greatest peace of my life. I wish I had more time to study. I am all involved in the carnal aspect of the ministry, I am much more involved in it than I would like to be, but that is just the way it is right now. Do you understand what I am saying? I could not say that God called me to this gift, because it was a battle that I waged for three years. I cannot even describe to you what I went through, that I would sit in front of this computer and these wicked thoughts that would go through my mind, and I just did it, I guess it was the grace of God that I just would not give up, I said, "Devil you just cannot do this to me," and I guess God gave me the strength.

 

My whole point to you is it is not accurate to say that God gave me a gift so everything is going to be easy. That is not accurate. God gives you a gift, and then it is very hard until you enter into it, but I want to encourage you by telling you that as hard as it is, there is a point that you pierce through. Another way of saying it is if you are flying in a plane, there is something that they call a point of no return. Once you are past that point, it does not pay to go back, because it is a shorter distance to go forward. You know what I am talking about?

 

No matter how difficult something seems, if God has called you to it, and you just hang in there and do what God tells you, no matter what your carnal mind is doing to you, there is a point that you take the victory over that carnal mind. He cannot punish you anymore, and then you enter into a realm of glory, a measure of glory.

 

Nothing is easy. Your carnal mind is not going to let you do something for Christ without a fight. You see, your carnal mind will use two basic weapons to stop you from obeying the Lord. The first weapon is pleasure. Now most people that are where this group is tonight, you have some handle on this pleasure thing, you know. You have given up a lot of pleasures of this world, and the carnal mind just knows it. When he cannot get you to disobey Christ by tempting you with pleasure, he will use pain, he will use pain, to get you to disobey God.

 

Let me give you an example. I am going to give you the testimony about xxxx, I did know her but I had not seen her in five years, five, ten years, I had not seen her in a long time, ten years, and the Lord brought someone in to my life who was a good friend of xxxx's and it was a set up. To make it short, I was invited to lunch at xxxx's house, because this friend was visiting from out of state, and the Lord has set the whole thing up that she had promised to see me. She was a casual friend. God told me to strike up a relationship with her. I did not even want to, but I struck up the relationship out of obedience. She came from another state, promised to visit with me and found she had no time.

 

xxxx who knew her for years had invited her for lunch, and this woman said, xxxx, would you please invite Pastor Vitale to your lunch also, because if you cannot do that for me, I will have to break my word and not visit with her before I go back home. That is how I got invited to this lunch. Well, I did not want to go. I was in torment in my emotions, every emotion that my carnal mind could put on me, fear, anxiety, hatred, aggression, pride, everything was manifesting. I did not want to go, I was not sure why, but I knew one thing, that God told me to go.

 

You see, there was nothing...I say this all the time, believing that my God is keeping me, the carnal mind has to kill me to stop me, he has to kill me, put me in a car accident, break my legs. I am so trained that when I know that God told me to do something, I go. Unless the carnal mind can physically stop my body, I go. There is no emotional pain, or mental pain, or anxiety that will stop me from doing something that I know God has told me to do. This is the point the Lord has brought me to.

 

I went to this luncheon, and two or three people were brought into this end time ministry, and now these people are studying with us, and they are really moving. xxxx is getting a tremendous measure of deliverance that she had been crying out for, for years. Is that not true? For years, but it is coming forth because of the ministry that the Lord has put here. It was what she needed to get her deliverance, and if the carnal mind could have kept me away from that luncheon, she would never be here, and neither would the couple of other people who came in.

 

Do you hear that? He will use pain to control you. That is not such an unusual concept. We hear about torture being used to control in government, in countries where the government is criminal, and they take their people, and they torture them. It is going on all over South America now. I do not know what you hear about it here, but I am told it is going on all over South America. You know, they just arrest their citizens, and they want them to give the information or whatever and they torture them. It is spiritual, mental, and emotional torture of the carnal mind to control you.

 

When you get so strong in Christ that no matter what is raging through your mind that you are doing what God tells you to do, you pierce through to a realm of power in God that is glorious, so this is another aspect of the war. I hope I answered your question. The fact that you do not feel called to do it, or that it is a problem does not mean God did not call you to do it.

 

The other question that you asked is, no you are not saved by doctrine, but we are told to study to show ourselves approved. We have to learn the Scriptures, we have to go on, we have to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, and when I say to you that you are not saved by doctrine, I do not mean that you should not study. What I mean is that you should expose yourself to all forms of study that at least appear to be Christian, you know, believing God to let you eat the chicken and spit out the bones as we say in New York, eat the chicken and you spit out the bones. You take what is good for you, and what is not spiritually healthy, you spit out. You cannot grow if you do not study.

 

I hope nobody was taking what I said, you had that revelation in the car going home last night that some people might be taking it that way. No, you have to study to show yourself approved. You should definitely be in fellowship, you should not forsake the gathering of the saints, you need this kind of instruction, you need interaction with other believers because people are always hurting each other's feelings. How are you going to know that you are reacting in Christ if nobody is hurting your feelings, that if you are not in a fellowship, who is going to be hurting your feelings?

 

You have to go out and live life, brethren, you have to live life, and when someone hurts your feelings, you have to deal with it in Christ, and if you make a mistake you have to deal with it in Christ. You have to walk this walk. If you isolate yourself, you are not experiencing it. You see, we have Christians that are all over the church that are just home listening to tapes because they think the only important thing is doctrine, and that is not true. Doctrine is very important, but our relationships with each other is just an important, if not more important, because the doctrine helps us to live together. The most important thing is how we relate to one another, and the doctrine is the instruction that helps us live righteously, but the most important thing is our relationships.

 

If you are sitting home in your room just listening to the messages, how is Christ in you being developed? Do you understand what I am saying? The most important thing of the Christian walk is the development of the character, and integrity, and righteousness of Christ as our personality, and the study of the Scripture is just a tool to having Christ formed in us, and when Christ is formed in us, He must be tested. He is tested every step of the way, and you may recall me telling you that at the time of the fall, Adam fell because God put him out to be tested and he failed to take the victory over unrighteousness in his own mind.

 

We, too, in this hour now that Christ has been imparted to us, we are being tested every step of the way, and every time we fail the test, well God will deal with us and help us, but every time we pass the test, Christ is being joined to our carnal mind, bound together, knitted together, woven together, and the end result of that weaving together is full stature.

 

You see, you do not attain to full stature by studying doctrine. You attain to full stature by having interactions with other human beings, and we are grating against one another because we are fallen. There is always going to be problems, and when every time we take the victory, it is weaving our carnal mind together with Christ. Full stature is a result of overcoming personal and interpersonal problems.

 

All of these Christians that are sitting home just listening to the messages, you are deceived, you are deceived, you will never attain to full stature by isolating yourself listening to the messages. You are deceived, and you have received a lie.

 

Human relationships, that is where it is at. I think everybody, I do not want anyone to get mad at me, it is ten after ten, I think xxxxx has to go home. Well, God bless you all, it has been a blessing. I hope the Lord brings me back again. Praise God.

 

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