The Following Message Has Been Transcribed And Edited For
Clarity, Continuity Of Thought, And Punctuation By
The LEM Transcribing & Editing Team.
I came in this evening, and I just wanted to thank you for being faithful to me and faithful to the ministry. This is such a tough ministry that the Lord has given me that I am just very blessed for the people that love me and support me. I turned to Chapter 4 in the book of Galatians, because I wanted to read to you starting with Verse 13 and 14.
Verse13: "Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first." Verse14: "And my temptation which was in my flesh you despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus."
It says further down in Verse 15; "Ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me." As I started looking over Chapter 4 of the book of Galatians, I felt that the Lord was suggesting to me to preach from this Chapter, and Verse 6 caught my eye which says, "And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father."
We have all read this Scripture so many times, it is the lyrics to a song, and the Lord just quickened it to me. He said, "Here is your Scripture proving that the natural man is the female element, and that the Spirit of the Son, the Holy Spirit, has to be sent forth so that Christ could be formed in you." That is what He said to me, and I am going to expound on this starting in Verse 1. He said "That is what these verses are all about."
I am going to start with Verse 1 of Chapter 4. I told you earlier in the evening the way the Lord, very frequently, gives me revelation is that He gives it to me before I see it in the Scripture, and that He uses the Scripture to confirm the revelation that is coming forth in my heart. I personally get very excited when He shows me a Scripture that establishes something that I have been preaching for a while. I thank God for this.
I do not know how far I am going to go because this message tonight is strictly under the anointing. I do not know what God is doing, but I will read Verses 1 thru 7: "Now I say, that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be Lord of all, but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the Father. Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world. When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ."
Verse 1; "Now I say, that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be Lord of all." I am suggesting to you that what the Lord is talking about here is that the heir of God's kingdom is the natural man. We have been studying in this ministry that the natural man is what the son of God was made into when He was slain before the foundation of the earth. We have been studying that we are made out of the substance of Almighty God. The reason we are an heir is that we are made out of the substance of Almighty God.
When you look at a little boy or a small child, and you say that he is an heir to his father's fortune, why is he an heir? Because he is made out of the substance of His father. We are made out of the substance of the Son of God and even in our beggarly fallen state, no matter what our sin is, no matter how terrible we have behaved or how terrible we have performed, we are still made out of the substance of Almighty God.
Where a lot of people get into trouble is that they think that we are going to inherit in this condition. We just had a very prideful young man preach to me tonight, that he has been made into the righteousness of God. No he has not. He was a hundred percent Leviathan tonight; all pride. It is a promise for the future. Because we are made out of the substance of Almighty God, we are heirs to His fortune, and His fortune is spiritual. His fortune is the realm of God's spirit and all the authority that goes with it, but the Scripture says, "Now I say that an heir (that is us) as long as he is a child (that is us) differeth nothing from a servant, though he be Lord of all." We are Lord of all because we are made out of the substance of Almighty God, but we are a child. We have become evil because we have fallen from a higher place.
We have done a study on the word "evil" in this ministry, and there are three Greek words translated "evil." You can be inherently evil, which is the condition of Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind. Satan cannot be made good. His nature is evil. Man was good and fell from grace and became evil. He is, therefore, redeemable because he already was good. We have to be cleaned up.
The Lord calls us a child. Brethren, I declare to you that if you just examine our own children, if you saw an adult performing the behavior that some children perform, you would lock them up in jail and throw the key away. They beat on their brothers and sisters. They bite, they poke out eyes, they steal, sometimes they are rebellious and disobedient. Children are manifesting all kinds of sin, but what do we do? Do we lock them up and put them in jail? No, we pick them up, if we are Godly parents, and we paddle them and we teach them, "This is wrong and this is right."
Brethren, I declare to you that the whole human race is in a condition of childhood. We are evil because we are children; we are children. When we grow up to the full stature of the Lord Jesus Christ, we will be restored to the righteousness of our Father.
In accordance to Verse 1, the Lord says that we are spiritual children, and in the condition of spiritual children we differeth nothing from a servant or a slave even though we be Lord of all. In countries where they have kings, they bow to the child king, and call him "Your Majesty," but he does not run the affairs of state. If his father should die while he is still a child, the ministers call him "Your Majesty," and bow to him, but the ministers run the affairs of state until he is old enough and trained enough to receive and minister the authority that he inherited.
This is what the Lord is saying. We, the whole human race, are made out of the substance of God. We are to inherit the kingdom of God. We must grow up first and, as in all children, discipline is involved and learning. There is a great deal for us to learn. We must learn that which is evil, and we must learn that which is good. We must learn to prefer the good over the evil and to choose the good and reject the evil.
This is one of the promises of what a priest of God will do. There is a big controversy in some areas of the church as to whether or not Christians can drink. A lot of Christians make a religious work out of it. I have recently heard a horrendous story about some people that were really established in a church being thrown out of the church because they were seen having a glass of wine at dinner. They were thrown out of the church. This is horrendous, brethren.
I declare to you that there is a Scripture (I cannot quote it to you right now), but it says when the high priest enters into the Most Holy Place he shall not drink, because drink impairs his ability to discern good from evil. Do you desire to enter into the most holy place of God? Do you desire to discern good from evil? Do you desire the righteousness of God? If you do, you cannot drink at the same time. Choose ye this day who you will serve. I am not going to tell you not to drink as a religious work. I do not see drinking as a sin. People that want to make it legal for Christians to drink will come to you and say, "Well they drank wine all through the Old Testament." Yes they did, but not the high priest, not the Nazarites, not those that were consecrated to God.
Brethren, if you have received the anointing of Almighty God you are now kings and priests. You are called to the priesthood. You are called to a life of consecration. You are called to judge the church. You must discern or learn how to discern between good and evil, and you cannot drink strong drink and do these things. Choose ye this day. Do you want to move into your priesthood, or do you prefer to sell your inheritance for a bowl of pottage. You can have your glass of wine. You are not going to burn in hell forever, but do not think that God is going to move you into the two-witness company while you are drinking, because He is not.
Do not think God is going to give you authority to execute judgment upon sin when you habitually even have a glass of wine for dinner. It is not a sin. Please understand what I am saying. It does impair your ability to discern good from evil and do not think that God is going to give you the kind of spiritual authority that executes judgment on sin when you habitually put yourself in a position where your ability to make that discernment can be impaired. Why? Because if you make a mistake, you could make a mistake that will really harm a human being and God will not risk it. I hope I made this clear. The church is so hung up on wine, and they are so hung up on sexual sin, and their pride is so disgusting. There is a stench coming out of the whole church, and nobody is talking about pride.
If you want to drink, you drink, but you are compromising your position in God. If you want to be a carnal Christian, if you are happy going to church and dancing and singing and going home and living a carnal life for the rest of the week, you have your wine. You are not damned to hell forever, and it is no grounds to throw anybody out of the church, in my opinion.
Know the facts, make an educated choice, be an educated person. Pray about this, if you cannot receive the word. You shall not enter into a position of authority in the realm of the Spirit of God when you, from time to time, do something to your body that can impair that judgment. The Lord will not tolerate it. It is so simple, and the church makes this big religious work out of it.
I know a man that has been a believer for years. He and his wife took me out to dinner one night. He looked me right in the eye and he said "I am going to have a glass of wine. Do you object?" I said "Not at all." In this hour, that man has severely backslided to the point that he cannot even discern the anointing. This man has moved in the deep realm of the Spirit of God in mighty power. I have seen him move in mighty power.
It is your choice. There is no condemnation in this word. I am telling you the truth, brethren, I am just telling you the truth. You are not going to move into a position of authority without being totally qualified. I sat in a church for five years, and that preacher said, "Do not think that you could come in here and get what God is giving out when you are not doing what is right. Do not think that you could sit in this service four or five nights a week hating the pastor or doing whatever you are not suppose to be doing." This particular preacher was referring to tithing. There is some truth in that, you know.
It is between you and God, but you have to do something, if you are getting all this teaching. I do not want to emphasize that at all. This particular preacher was talking about tithing. Do not think that because you sit in a service four or five nights a week that you are going to receive the ministry that is being poured out, because God does not work like that. It is a spiritual ministry, brethren. Let me tell you something, you cannot get it unless God says you can get it. You have got to be right with God in whatever He is telling you to do. If your problem is rebellion, pride, whatever your problem is, my whole point is do not think that because you put your body in a place four or five nights a week you are going to get it. Those that get it are those that the Lord Jesus Christ has ordained to get it.
When the Lord Jesus Christ ordains that you are going to get it, then you have to put your body there for three, four, or five nights a week. If the Lord Jesus Christ says you are one of those that I pick to get it, and you refuse to submit to the teaching, you are not going to get it. Why? Because you are in rebellion. Do you hear me? You cannot get it just because you let the teaching flow over you. It is a spiritual work that is totally controlled by the Lord Jesus Christ. Alleluia! This is the case. As far as I am concerned, you are free to drink, but you are compromising your walk with the Lord. I hope I made that clear.
I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, that is us, we are in a childish state. That is what I believe the Scripture is teaching. We are in an immature state. What kind of a state is a child in? It is in a temporary state. It is in a transient state. They do not stay that small, they do not stay that evil, they do not stay that vulnerable. They grow up. The human race, in the condition that it is in now is in a temporal or a transient condition. We shall not remain this evil forever. We shall not remain this corruptible forever. We shall not remain this vulnerable to adults that are more powerful than us, otherwise known as spirits, forever.
We shall grow up to the full stature of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we shall be righteous, and we shall be incorruptible, and we shall live for the life of the ages. This is a temporal condition that you see man in. The problem that man has with understanding this is the carnality of his mind. He sees that it has been going on for thousands of years, and the carnal mind of man cannot comprehend that this is spiritual childhood. Brethren, this is spiritual childhood. This is what it is.
We are going to change, we are going to change. We are going to change in our spirit, we are going to change in our soul, and we are going to change in our bodies. I declare to you that human children change in their spirit, their spirit being their conscience. They have no conscience when they are children. Do you know that children have no conscience? They have no conscience at all. They would steal, and they would hurt to get what they want. They are totally selfish. Children have no conscience, and they shall be changed in their conscience. They shall have the conscience of their parents imparted to them. They shall change in their soul, Lord willing.
Sometimes we have problems growing up. A child is totally selfish. Totally. They do not want to share, they do not want to give, and they want everything. Children are hoarders. They will take everything. They will fill up their room with all the toys and not even play with it and not let the other children play with it. Is that not true? Children are terrible. They are terrible, that is what they are. It just so happens that we love them. Right?
We see a child kicking his parents or punching at his parents, they are terrible. We are spiritual children, but these children shall change in their soul. They shall become selfless, especially when they become parents. That will really do it to you when you have your own children. They shall learn. Lord willing, they shall learn to give, they shall learn to share, they shall learn to not be quite so selfish. They are going to change in their spirit, in their conscience. They are going to change in their soul which is their emotions. Selfishness, basically, is a characteristic of children and, unfortunately, we see a lot of human adults that are very, very selfish.
What that means is they have not matured in their soul. What is the treatment that helps selfish adults to mature in their soul? Anybody, what does God do? If you come to the Lord and you are selfish in your soul, because for whatever reason your soul did not mature, what does God do to bring you to a point of selflessness in your soul? He whips you, brethren. He whips you hard. That is what He does.
Children change in their body, obviously. The average child is seven or eight pounds when he is born, and a man can grow to anywhere from a hundred thirty pounds to two hundred pounds. I am not talking about an overweight man. A tall man could be two hundred pounds. We are the children in an immature stage of Almighty God, and we shall change in our spirit. How are we going to change in our spirit? Anybody? What are we going to become? We are going to became Christ, and we are going to become righteous.
Both answers are correct. Christ is righteous. We are going to became righteous in our spirit. We are going to change in our soul. How are we going to change in our soul? Let me tell you, brethren, the people in this church, they are pretty selfish. How are we going to change in our soul, brethren? We are going to be judged, and we are going to become selfless, selfless.
Right now, most human beings are very involved, and there are three kinds of love for those of you that are not aware of that. There is the "eros" kind of love, which is sexual love. Everybody likes that. Then there is "phileo" love. Some people are so immature in their souls that they are not even capable of phileo love. That is true. Some people are not even capable of phileo love, which means a love for your brother, a compassion for your brother. It means if you see your brother in need, and you are capable of helping him, you can help him. I know people that have grown to human adulthood that will pass their own relative by and not help them.
I was just recently told about a man that was brought over from Europe by a relative of his that was living in the United States during the time of Hitler. His relative brought him over, kept him in his house, gave him a place to live, fed him, got him a job and got him started. As soon as he got his own place, this relative said, "Well, are you going to bring your mother and brothers over?" He said, "No way. If I bring them over, I have to sign a paper that if they do not work, I am responsible for them." Hitler just rolled through that country. Apparently, his whole family was killed. This is an adult male. That man does not even know phileo love.
We do have a lot of people in the church and in the world that experience phileo love, but when we grow up as spiritual children we shall experience agape love. "Agape" love is not available to human beings unless Christ has appeared in them. Human beings with or without Christ experience eros love, and human beings with or without Christ experience phileo love. Human beings that have Christ may or may not experience agape love. I declare to you, brethren, that to bring forth agape love in the soul of any man, great suffering is required; great suffering is required. Agape love does not appear in your soul, if you have not suffered, and for some people it is hard to discern the difference between phileo love and agape love, and this is the difference. This is the difference.
Phileo love will produce sympathy for your brother. If you see your brother with a physical affliction, if you see your brother with an emotional problem, and you feel bad and you feel what you would identify as sympathy, that is phileo love. There is very little you could do to help them. You could relieve them if they have a disease. You can wipe their brow and put them in a clean bed, but your sympathy does not have the power to heal them. If they need a job, you could give them a job, a bed, a meal or a place to sleep. If you see a bum down in the bowery and you give him a bed and a meal, you can alleviate his pain for that night, but the sympathy of phileo love has no power to deal with the spiritual root that is causing this man's affliction.
Agape love carries with it compassion, and the compassion of Jesus Christ heals. If a person is manifesting the agape love of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is a love that comes forth from an indwelling Christ that carries with it the power to deal with the root of the spiritual problem that is bringing forth the torment in the person's life. The phileo love gives them a meal and a bed and the agape love brings forth deliverance. If you can receive what I am saying, you now have the tools to judge whether it is phileo or agape love manifesting in a believer. Look at the results of that person ministering to the afflicted one, and you can judge whether it is agape love or phileo love. It could be a mixture of both. I think if agape love is present, phileo love is probably present also. Phileo love does not presuppose agape love.
In my opinion, there is not much agape love in the church today, the agape love that is going to be coming forth from the sons of God, from the indwelling Christ. We are still in Verse 1. You know, when the Lord gave me this message I really thought it was just seven verses. I said, "Lord, seven verses is not going to be enough," and I must have spent fifteen or twenty minutes on the first verse. This is what we have got.
Verse 1. "Now I say that the heir...(that is you and me, the whole human race)... "as long as he is a child," ...as long as we are in this childish immature condition both in spirit, soul, and body... "differeth nothing from a servant or a slave though he be Lord of all."
What does that mean? God is taking care of us. He is feeding us, He is giving us places to live, He is given us laws to live by that we can get married and have families and depending upon the curses and blessings falling upon our family line, we are having a decent life, a good life or a terrible horrendous life. Glory to God. The Scripture says we are servants or we are slaves because of the condition of our spirit, our soul, and our body. Glory to God.
Verse 2. "But the child is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the Father."
Tutors and governors, we are under tutors and, hopefully, we are in the church being taught in a situation like this. If we are so rebellious and disobedient, or if we have not been blessed enough as children to be exposed to it, if we are not in a ministry where we are being taught the ways of the Lord, what are we being taught? We are out there in the world, and we are being taught by judgment, we are being taught by judgment.
There are two ways to go. We can be taught by receiving the spoken word or the written word of the Bible, which rarely works. We can be taught by judgment, either as human children through the paddling by our parents, or once we become adults we become subject to spiritual paddling. That is much more painful then childish paddling, and it can manifest in many ways that human beings would identify as hard times, hard times. It can manifest in physical illness, mental illness, financial disabilities, or inabilities to have lasting, rewarding relationships with other human beings.
Of course, I include drug addition and alcoholism under physical disabilities. That is all the chastening of the Lord, brethren.
We are under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the Father. The tutors are either subjection to a ministry, subjection to our parents, or subjection to spiritual judgment, and the governors are factors that govern us. Well, what is government? It is really restrictions, brethren. Government tells us what we can do and what we cannot do. We are spiritual beings who are being governed or are subject to the laws of this realm. We are subject to the laws of this realm.
We are learning discipline. We are learning that we have to sleep or our body breaks down. We have to eat properly or our body breaks down. We are learning that if we break the laws of the land, we can be hurt or we can go to jail. We are learning wisdom. We are learning to honor our natural parents. We are learning to honor all men. We are learning to submit to one another.
The tutoring is the instruction, and the government is the restriction. If you are a child, your mother puts you to bed at 8:00 P.M. The instruction that you are learning is that you have to get a good night's sleep, but the government is that your bedtime is 8:00 P.M. When you are an adult, the instruction is either in a church or through judgment as we just explained, or you could be learning through your parents, and the government are those factors of our life which restrict us.
Most people have to work, brethren. If you do not work, you do not have a place to live, and you do not have any food to eat. That is a pretty hard lesson to learn, but there is a governing law in this world that says unless you are unusually lucky, which you really are not lucky, if someone picks you up and you are a healthy adult and someone says you do not have to work, I am going to just support you. Do you know that, that could be a curse. I should not have even used the word lucky. I could not call it blessed, so I said "lucky". You are really cursed.
Do you know how many people have won the lottery and have gone into financial ruin? They not only lost all of the million or millions of dollars that they won from the lottery, but they lost everything that they had because when they won the lottery, they gave up their job that they had been working at for years. They gave up all of their plans for retirement, and they went through all of their savings. They gave up their pension plan because they thought they were now a millionaire, and they lost everything. I see on television, particular singers from the 1950 rock groups, who made thousands, if not millions of dollars, and they now have nothing. One man was working as a superintendent in a school.
There is nothing wrong with being a superintendent in a school. All honest work is acceptable to God. This man was a millionaire. He was a singing rock star, and he did not have the government or the instruction that would have required him to deal with that money in a Godly manner so that he could have lived for the rest of his life and left an inheritance for his children.
There are governing factors in this life. The Scriptures says, "If you do not work, you do not eat." There are exceptions, if you are sickly or if you are not capable of working. There are laws, there are governments, there are certain things we can do during the day that we cannot do at night. There is the day and night cycle. There are certain things that we could do during the summer that we cannot do during the winter. You cannot go water skiing in the winter. There are polar bears that go swimming in the ice cold water, but most people will not, so we are governed by the seasons. You have to wear a winter coat unless you are a polar bear.
I have seen little children fighting their mothers who are trying to put that winter coat on them. They do not want to wear that hat, and they do not want to wear that coat, but they are under government. They must wear a coat and hat in the winter time, and their instruction is, their tutorship is, that you can get sick and die from pneumonia. Hopefully this lesson is learned before you become an adult.
When your parents teach you, what happens to you, if the teaching is successful, it becomes internalized in your own mind. If you are a sane, well-adjusted person, when the winter months roll around, you know that you have to wear a winter coat, and most people will wear a hat in a storm. Of course, there are people that are mentally ill that do not know that.
There are certain things that our parents teach us that very few people fail to internalize. We all know we have to put on a hat and coat in the winter. Human beings grow up with all kinds of emotional problems, that either they were never taught the answers to by their parents, or their parents taught them, and for some reason, they did not internalize them. Things like how to mange your money, how to get along with your husband, how to get along with your wife, how to get along with your boss, how to deal with a crisis, how to deal with this crisis or how to deal with that crisis.
We have human adults all over this nation that never internalized the answers to dealing with difficult situations that could bring great destruction into their life. They do not know how to deal with it, and the very same situation, if they knew how to deal with it, could be just utterly neutralized and bring no harm into their life at all.
Did you ever see a situation on your job or in a family where two people have the same problem, one guy deals with it, and the problem is just dispelled. The other guy cannot deal with it, and it brings great destruction into his life. Did you ever see that? I have seen that happen to people all the time. The person just does not know how to deal with the problem. They just do not know what to do. It is not a case of them choosing not to do what is right. They simply do not know what to do.
We are being tutored, we are being instructed in what? We are being instructed, hopefully, in righteousness. We are being instructed in how to live in this world system, and we know that the way to survive in this world system is to be expressed in one word, righteousness. Sin will bring destruction unto us. We are under tutors, and we are under governors. We are under instruction, and we are under restriction.
We had a message here a couple of services ago where we said that God is a controlling force. He will restrict you, He will put bars on you, He will put restrictions on you. Do you feel that you are being crushed into a corner? Do not assume it is the devil. Even if it is the devil, the devil is God's servant. It is God, it is God. He is doing it for your perfection. He is doing it for your perfection.
Of course, if you are in rebellion, if you are in a condition of rebellion, and you feel that you are being crushed into a corner, let us say you do not know the Lord. You cannot hold a job. You cannot find a job. You cannot maintain a relationship, whether you are going out with men or you are going out with women, and every relationship breaks down, and you cannot seem to have a lasting relationship, well that is a controlling force in your life, brethren. That is God because God is the controlling factor of everything, but a situation like that is a judgment of God.
If you cannot sustain a lasting Godly relationship, if you have trouble holding a job, if you are constantly in poverty, and you just cannot seem to get out of it, that is a judgment of God, whether you are in the church or whether you are out of the church. If you are out of the church, the only thing that is open to you is to repent and ask God to have mercy on you.
If you are in the church and if you are sick, there are many...I do not want to single anybody out. Any ongoing problem, if you are sick physically, if you are sick mentally, if you cannot sustain relationships, if you are in constant poverty, if you cannot hold a job, whatever problem is in your life, if you have been with God for a few years, and it has not gone away, you should seek God as to the possibility of wrong thinking in your mind that is continuing to bring this judgment into your life.
Because brethren, when there is a curse upon you or when you have a demon, a lot of Christians will admit a Christian can have a demon, but they do not understand the way the demon destroys you is that he causes you to think incorrectly. When you think incorrectly, your behavior is not correct. Either your behavior is not correct, or the things that you say is not correct. If you are having trouble forming a lasting relationship, maybe there is a problem in your mind that is causing you to be unkind to the woman. Maybe you are a man that thinks women love to be manhandled, and all of these women are fleeing from you.
Wrong thinking, brethren. It is a curse in your mind, and it could be a demon operating in that curse. If you come to the Lord, and you submit yourself to a ministry, and you are reading your Bible, and some time has gone by and there are problems in your life that have not dissolved, and a lot of these problems do go away simply by receiving the promise of salvation and submitting yourself to a ministry. A lot of people get a lot of deliverance very quickly.
If you have been with the Lord for a season, and there is destruction or unhappiness operating in your life, I suggest to you that you seek God as to whether or not there is a curse or a demon in your mind causing you to think incorrectly so that destruction is either upon you or that there is something operating in your life that is depriving you of loving, rewarding relationships of a life that is not in poverty. God has never promised us riches, but He has promised to meet all of our needs. Your needs should be met. Glory to God.
You should be well, and if you are not well you should seek God as to what the possibility of something operating in you that is bringing this upon you. We had a teaching on this last Sunday I think. I cannot get into it again now. There are several reasons for being sick. It is possible that you have been delivered from the wrong thinking, and God has still not restored your body. If anyone is listening to this tape and you want to write to me or call me, do that. I just cannot repeat the whole teaching right now. Glory to God.
There is no condemnation, in any event. If you have any of these problems in your life, there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. I am telling you this so that you could seek God, so that He can give you right thinking, and so that the destruction in your life could be destroyed and that you could live a rewarding Godly life in the earth. There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. He wants to help you.
Verse 3. "Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world."
I pretty much spoke about that already. We were in bondage under the elements of the world. That is a past tense. I am preaching tonight, I am not teaching, so I really do not know if that word is past tense in the Greek or not. We know that a lot of people in the church get all hung up because they think that from the minute they say "Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior," they have received every promise in this Bible. Actually, we have received very few of them, very few of them. Glory to God. We have received the promise of salvation and everything associated with it, but it takes awhile for God to work through all of the dirt, and the filth, and the sin in our mind and bring these promises to a point where they are manifesting in our lives.
The length of time that it takes to start to receive the blessings is directly related to how deeply you are in sin at the moment that you receive the promise. Brethren, if you are a young believer, or if you are an old believer and you are hearing this tape, do not be deceived. When I say to you that it is directly depending on how deeply involved in sin you are, that sin is not limited to sexual sin, or alcoholism, or drug addiction.
Several of the big sins are rebellion, witchcraft, and pride. Do not think you are okay because you are not involved in drug addiction, alcoholism, or sexual sin. That is not all there is. There is more. The sin that God hates the most is pride. Why? Because if you have pride, it will stop you from repenting. It will stop your deliverance from coming forth. The others are sinful too. Do not get me wrong, we have to repent of all sin. Do not be deceived because the biggest sin in the church is self-righteousness.
Did you ever hear of the man that said, "I have no sin in my life, and I am proud of it." Oh really? You are filled with pride, brother. Repent! (Laughter) Glory to God. I am making a joke out of it, but a lot of people do not know. They really do not know that pride is a sin. They really think they are okay.
I watched a movie the other night called Stud Lanigan. He grew up in a very religious household. His mother had them all in church, and everything was very religious and legal. I do not want to get into any of the details, but the woman did not have a shred of love in her. She was a shrew. My opinion of the movie is that she was mentally ill, constantly blaming people and accusing them. There was no love in her. Her son died a young man with a broken heart. He died from pneumonia.
Brethren, if you have grown up in a household like that, you need deliverance. If you have grown up in a household where you have been rejected by your parents, where your parents for whatever reason were not capable of showing you love, were not capable of accepting you, you need deliverance. This young man's heart was broken. His mother was mentally ill. She loved him to the best of her ability, but she was mentally ill. His father was just a very cold man, weak. He grew up with a broken heart, and he failed at everything that he tried to do. He died from pneumonia at a very young age.
Examine yourself. If you fall in this category, you need prayer. There are curses of premature death attached to growing up in a household where you have not been loved, but have been rejected, and accused, and not appreciated for what you are. Glory to God.
Even so, when we were children and that is what human beings are, they are spiritual children. They are in bondage under the elements of the world, and let me tell you something, brethren, if you grow up in a household where your father is weak and rejecting and your mother is a shrew and legalistic, you better believe that you are in bondage under the elements of the world. You are in bondage under the elements that you grew into. We are shaped by our environment, brethren.
When you spend eighteen years growing up in a household, do not think that you are walking away without being affected by it. You had no choice as to being born in that household. That is what you were born into. God put you there. That is what you were born into, and you were subject to the spiritual elements that you were birthed into. In Christ Jesus, we are called to overcome.
Almost everybody has been hurt as a child. It is my personal feeling there is a very small group of people in this country or in this world that grew up in loving supportive households that enabled them to stand up and go out and make their mark on the world.
There are people who have everything they touch turn to gold, and I am not just talking about money. Some are happily married, acknowledge God, and seem to be well adjusted. I assure you, brethren, they did not have a rejecting weak father and a shrewish, hateful mother. I assure you of it. There is much more to success than the education involved in going to Harvard. It is what happens to you when you are a child. If you are hated from birth, you are just so devastated that if someone were to say to you, "Here go to Harvard and pay all the bills," you could not make it.
You see, what people do not understand is that all these ethnic groups that came over from Europe, that moved up in the social strata in this country, came from supportive loving households. They had strong parents who taught them discipline and right from wrong. Most of them were given a strong religious upbringing even though they were poor. When they came to this country they had the opportunity to get an education.
All of their loving, supportive upbringing had an opportunity to be expressed after they were educated in this country, but you take ethnic groups where the parents are drug addicts, where the family has been torn to pieces, where they are hated, where they are rejected, where they see their parents as failures, they are emotionally disturbed.
These ethnic groups that came over from Europe were poor, but their parents were not failures. Their fathers were men who knew righteousness. They knew how to run their family, they knew how to love their kids, but they were poor. Take children that grow up in families where their fathers are alcoholic, where the mothers and fathers fight constantly, where there is no respect, where there is no honor, where they do not even know their parents, where there is no teaching in righteous, where God is not exalted; they are in trouble.
Brethren, you can take these kids and buy them a wardrobe full of clothes and put them through Harvard, and the chances are they will have a learning disability, and they will not even be able to concentrate on the work because they were emotionally disturbed from an early age. We have spiritual problems here in certain groups that are not present in other groups. Poverty is not the only factor. We are under the elements of this world, and some of those elements are the families and the spiritual situations into which we are born. Glory to God.
Verse 4. "But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law."
"When the fullness of time was come," what does that mean? When the time for the human race to grow up is come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, under the law. There are a few things I want to talk about there. What is the significance of this, "When it was time for us to grow up, God sent forth His Son"? Well, we all spout this Scripture, but what in the world does it mean? It means, brethren, that for us to grow up, there is something that has to be added to us. We are in a childish, immature state, and our maturity is not within us. It has to be added to us.
This is just another way of the teaching that has been coming forth here that we are the female element, and God sent forth the male element. It is the same teaching. God is presenting it in another way. We are spiritual children, and our adulthood is without us, just like we talked about a few minutes ago.
If you grow up in a Godly home, your parent's morals and ethics will be impressed or engraved upon your soul, and when you become a young man or a young woman you could leave your parent's home and everything they taught you has now been internalized within your own soul. You know what is right and wrong. Hopefully, you know how to take care of yourself so that you do not get sick. You know how to dress, you know how to hold a job, you know how to relate to people, and you go forth and live your life, Lord willing.
Well, brethren, the morality, and the ethics, and the knowledge that we need to survive and prevail in the realm of the Spirit is in Jesus Christ, our Father. In the hour that He has successfully imparted into our soul His righteousness, His morality, His ethics, His wisdom, His knowledge, His understanding, in that hour we shall stand up and enter into the realm of the spirit as our own man.
What this Scripture is saying, in the fullness of time, God sent forth His own son. He is saying that we are very young children, brethren. Those people that are not in Christ, which is billions of people across the world, they are virtual infants. They have not yet even begun to receive of that which their Father is. What do they have if they are not Christians? What do they have of their Father in this hour? Anybody remember? They have the law, the Bible, and they also have the law of God written in their hearts.
We know cultures that do not even have the Bible or family-oriented societies, and they take care of the weak. The husbands take care of their babies. They know it is not Godly to steal or to murder. The law of God is written in the genes and chromosomes of men and is also written in the Judeo-Christian Bible.
We know what is right, but it is the letter of the law which has brought great harshness onto many members of our human race. In the fullness of time, when the process that matures us into spiritual manhood began, when that hour came, God sent forth his son. Why? To impart by his Spirit everything that we need to be a spiritual man: knowledge, wisdom, righteousness, glory, everything that comes through His Spirit. The hour has come for us to grow up. We know that because God has sent his Son into the earth in this hour to reconcile all men unto Himself. God was in Christ reconciling the World unto Himself.
The Son was made of a woman, and He was made under the law. We, mortal humanity, the female residue of the first adam, who died, are formed from the substance of the fallen adam. The second time Adam came, He came as Jesus of Nazareth, made of a woman. Glory to God. Jesus, the last Adam, came forth as the spiritual male element. He came forth with the power to impart everything of God to us. He came in a human body and with a human soul under the law. He was under tutors and under governors. He was born of a woman, and He had to grow up and be restricted by His parents. He was restricted by the elements of the world, everything that we spoke about earlier. He had to be instructed, and He had to be restricted by the Spirit of God in Him.
I am going to put this on the tape just in case you do not remember or someone listening to this tape does not know it. I am preaching that Jesus Christ of Nazareth was born with a fertilized human spirit. He was born with Christ in Him. We have been teaching here that our human spirit is the part of our spiritual being that is destined to bring forth Christ when she is fertilized by the Spirit of God.
Jesus Christ of Nazareth, I suggest to you, was born with a fertilized human spirit and that happened when the Holy Spirit hovered over Mary. That is the difference between Him and other human beings. We are fertilized when the Holy Spirit enters into our heart, and we receive the Holy Spirit. Hopefully, after that, our human spirit is fertilized and Christ is formed in us.
Jesus Christ of Nazareth was born of a woman made under the law. He was a man that was born with a fertilized human spirit. Christ was in Him from birth, but He still had to be instructed, and He was still under government. God expected Him to obey the law until such time as that holy thing, that logos, that anointing, the law that is above the law, rose up in Him and gave Him permission to break the Hebrew law. He constantly was breaking the Sabbath laws. He broke the Sabbath laws constantly but, brethren, He did not do it out of His soul. He had to wait. He was under government, and He had to wait until God Almighty said, "It is the hour for you to come forth." He did not use or manifest any power until then.
I do not see anything in the Scripture that says otherwise. I do not care what all the books say, and I do not care what all the preachers say. You show me a Scripture that tells you He was doing miracles before He was baptized by John. I want to see it because I do not believe it is there. He was a man, a human just like you or me. He did not do anything before His time. He did not do anything the Father did not tell Him to do.
He grew up under the Jewish law. He studied Hebrew. He studied the Bible. He studied the prophets. He went to synagogue every Sabbath and did what every other Jewish young man did including going through a bar mitzvah. Glory to God. He did not just appear and start working miracles. He was educated in the ways of men. Glory to God. Alleluia.
Verse 5. "To redeem them." This is why the Son of God was manifested, "To redeem them that were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons."
He was manifested to redeem them that were under the law. Brethren, you are under the law. You are under the law, the spiritual law of God, the spiritual law of God. Either the law is written in your heart or it is not. You can give yourself an acid test. I will tell you how to tell whether the law of God is written in your heart or not. If you never get an evil thought, if you never have a conflict over what is right, and if you are not dying, the law is written in your heart. If that is your condition, you will not be dying.
You know you are under the law if you are dying. If you have relatives that have died, if you are aging and you have any reason, whatsoever, to believe that after you have lived a full life you are going to die, you are under the law. The law has judged the whole human race under sin and condemned it. The judgment for sin is death. That is why you are dying, because of sin. Glory to God.
Jesus Christ came to redeem us that were under the law and everybody, everybody, the law has judged everybody guilty. No one is not guilty, no, not one, except the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ came to redeem them that were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons. Everybody quotes these Scriptures, brethren. What does it mean? What does the adoption of sons mean?
The church world thinks that, we, in this vile body, are going to be adopted by God and flown off to heaven. No, brethren, the adoption is in our spirit. The adoption takes place in the spirit. Christ has to be formed in you. When the Son of God comes forth and enters into your heart in the form of the Holy Spirit and you are receive the Holy Spirit, your human spirit is fertilized and produces Christ. When Christ is formed in you, that is the adoption. Then Christ in you has to rise up and bring your soul into submission. Then your soul is saved, which is the end of your faith. I do not know anyone that this has happened to, yet, except Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Eventually, your body will be glorified.
We are adopted from inside out, brethren. We are not adopted in the condition that we are now in. We must change. The intent of the word "adoption" in this Scripture is that we shall become His son. I know that in the natural realm you adopt somebody, and the child still looks the same. If a white couple adopts a black child, the child is still black, and everything about him is still the same. That is the vile, corruptible, natural realm. In the spiritual realm of God, brethren, when the Lord adopts us, we are going to be changed. We are not going to look like this. We are going to be totally adopted by Almighty God to the point that our very makeup is going to change. When God adopts you, you become just like Him in spirit, soul, and body. You are going to change.
It would be as if that white couple had the power to make that black baby white or if a black couple adopted a white baby, that by adopting, by signing that paper, that white baby became black. This is the adoption that we are talking about when it comes to God. He is not adopting us in this condition. We are not getting into the kingdom of God without obtaining to His righteousness. Glory to God.
Verse 6. "And because He has sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your heart crying , Abba, Father."
This is the verse that God gave me. He said, "Here is the witness to what you have been preaching." The Scripture says Adam was the Son of God in Luke 3:38. A lot of Christians are surprised to hear that. The Scripture says Adam was the Son of God. Therefore, we are Sons of God. The whole human race is Sons of God, but we are children. Ye are sons (that is the whole human race), God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son in the form of Jesus Christ into your hearts crying Abba, Father.
We sort of touched on this at the last meeting. Why would God want to save us? The human race is so vile and so contemptible, why would He want to save us? He wants to save us, brethren, because we are His Sons. We are made out of His substance. That means we are His son and because we are His sons, He has sent forth the spirit of fatherhood, that we can receive of the righteousness, and integrity, and morality, and the life of our Father, so that we can grow up to be mature spiritual beings. "Because ye are Sons (we are already sons), God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son in the form of Jesus Christ of Nazareth or the Spirit of Jesus Christ into your hearts."
What is He crying? He is crying, "Abba, Father, Abba, Father." It is the Spirit of Jesus Christ. He is the Father, and He has come to impart to us all that He is, so that we can rise up and go forth into the spiritual realm of God. We will be fully furnished and equipped to survive (and more than survive) and partake of whatever glory He has for us. The Scripture says, "Eye hath not seen and ear has not heard what God has in store for us once we are converted." We cannot even imagine what God has for us. Glory to God.
Verse 7. "Wherefore thou art no more a servant but a Son and if a Son, then an heir of God through Christ."
Well now, what does that mean? He just called us Sons. Verse 6 says, "And because ye are Sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son..." In Verse 7 He says, "Wherefore thou are no more a servant, but a son..." That sounds very confusing to me. I think a lot of Christians get mixed up on it, but I suggest to you what God is saying is, "Yes, we are Sons."
If you go back to Verse 1 where it says, "I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be Lord of all," I declare to you that the human race is Lord of all, but because we are children we do not differ at all from a servant or a slave. Verse 7 says, "Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a Son," because even though we were a Son, we were a servant because of our immature state, and now we are a Son. Why? If Christ has been formed in you, you are a Son.
You are a true Son that is growing in the spiritual admonition of His Father and receiving the chastening of His Father, which is a very strong element there. If a Son, then you are an heir of God through Christ. If the Spirit of Christ is in our heart, if Christ is being formed in you, you are now an heir of God. You are now entitled to everything that God is, through Christ, that is being formed in you when the Spirit of the Father enters into your heart and reproduces His image in your heart. Glory to God. Alleluia. Any questions on this?
COMMENTS: What you said about drinking seemed to open something in my mind, like I understood it better. Many years ago I used to drink a lot and God delivered me from that. Then I found I could drink a glass of wine and not want more like I used to. I wanted to know why is it wrong because everybody is saying it is wrong to drink. I felt if you only drink a glass of wine, why is it wrong? It did not seem to be doing anything to me. I have been asking God about that.
PASTOR VITALE: Let me ask you a question. You were someone who used to drink a lot. When you would drink a glass, just once in awhile, did it get you heady at all?
COMMENTS: I could always feel a little warm effect from alcohol, but I also feel that same feeling when I drink vinegar.
PASTOR VITALE: I was wondering whether it was just me or not. Recently, I was at some kind of a celebration and they had champagne. I just put the glass to my lips, and I got high because I have not had anything alcoholic in all these years. I repented and said, "Lord, I will not ever do that again."
COMMENTS: I was given a fruit drink when I was in Puerto Rico that I was told had no alcohol in it. This fruit drink made me feel different, so I wondered if some alcohol was in it. I still questioned why it was wrong to have even one drink.
PASTOR VITALE: What if you have that one drink, and you did not know that five minutes later, God had ordained for someone to walk down the street that you are supposed to minister to? It will interfere with any anointing to minister.
COMMENTS: It is funny that drinking is brought up in this message today. I had a disagreement with someone at work who said "It was okay for anyone to drink" and told me I should drink if I felt like it. I told him "I do not feel to drink, and I am not condemning you if you choose to." The Levite priests in the Old Testament were not permitted to drink and to me we are priests and kings unto God today. I told him I believe it does impair your judgment. Do you believe Jesus drank wine?
PASTOR VITALE: No, I do not believe Jesus drank wine, and I will tell you why I do not believe He drank wine. Jesus was a Nazarite. For many years I read the Scripture that said when Jesus was on the cross, He cried out, and they put vinegar on a reed and He would not take it. I said, "Lord why would He not take it?" Well, the Lord just answered that question for me a few months ago and told me Jesus was a Nazarite. If you look up that word vinegar in the Greek, it was an alcoholic substance. They gave it to Him for the purpose of killing pain, and He would not take it because He was a Nazarite. I believe Jesus was a Nazarite. He was consecrated to God.
COMMENTS: John did not drink, and they said that something was wrong with him, and they called Jesus a winebibber. When I read that, I thought maybe He took a drink once in awhile.
PASTOR VITALE: They were lying about Him. The devil was a liar from the beginning. I do not believe Jesus was a winebibber.
COMMENTS: The Bible says Jesus' first miracle was that He changed water into wine. Do you believe that it was alcoholic wine that He changed it into?
PASTOR VITALE: I believe that it was, but it does not say that He drank it. See, there is nothing wrong with drinking wine. It is just that Nazarites were not allowed to drink anything of the vine or wine. The Nazarite vow is that you cannot even eat raisins or anything that comes off of a vine. I do not think that applies to us today, because I think it has a spiritual significance. That which is of the vine is only for Jesus to eat. The fruit of the vine is for Jesus to eat. That was an Old Testament type. They could not cut their hair, which means they could not compromise their spiritual life in God.
When Samson had his hair cut, he lost his spiritual strength. When did he cut his hair? When he fornicated with Delilah. The cutting of the hair is a type of spiritual fornication. If you want to be a king and a priest unto God you have to stop fornicating, spiritually. You cannot eat of the fruit of the vine. What is the fruit of the vine? It is Christ. The fruit of the vine is His. We cannot take anything that is going to impair our judgement.
COMMENTS: Did Jesus of Nazareth specifically take the vows of a Nazarite just because He grew up in Nazareth?
PASTOR VITALE: I cannot specifically find that in the Scripture, but that is what the Lord told me. You are certainly free to reject that. Matthew Chapter 2:23 says, "He shall be called a Nazarene," but I checked that out once. It meant that was where He lived.
We are going to pray right now Father, that you show it to us in the Scriptures. It is always nice to see it in the Scriptures even though I think everyone has received it in the Spirit. Glory to God. Thank you Jesus.
COMMENTS: It was quickened to me that I do not want to lose out on any blessing that drinking would stop.
PASTOR VITALE: I think that God wants us to understand. This is the age of the Spirit, and He wants us to be obedient. He does want us to be blindly obedient if He has not taught us yet. We are growing up and becoming spiritual adults. I believe He wants us to understand, and we are entitled to these explanations. The church is floundering because there is no teaching priest. Well, there is a teaching priest but He is buried very deeply. The average Christian does not have access to the teaching priest that is in the church today. He is here. He is talking to you through me right now and whoever else He is talking through, but the large majority of the Christians reject Him.
COMMENTS: Someone has said that there was not only vinegar and wine, but also some drug mixed in with it that was offered to Jesus.
PASTOR VITALE: I think it was myrrh, and He would not take that either. He would not take anything that altered His consciousness. I am trying to remember where I got that Jesus was a Nazarite, but it is just not coming to me. We know that John the Baptist was a Nazarite. They just lied about Him.
What is happening in this hour is that people will outright lie about you because they hate you. Lots of times, people are just deceived. Their carnal mind just rises up, and they really believe these things about you. The Lord showed me a long time ago that when you are moving in the high realm of the Spirit, if you are moving in a high office in God, people cannot fathom your motives. They cannot fathom the righteousness in you. When God raised up this ministry I went to the pastor, and I told him I was leaving the church. He could not believe it. He wanted me to stay for his own ungodly purposes.
He wanted the ministry that God had revealed to him, through me, to be in his church. He wanted me to stay. He could not or would not believe that God had called me to this ministry. I could not believe what he was saying or offering to me. He said, "I cannot give you an office in the church." He thought I wanted power in the church. He said, "If you just stay a little while, you are not here long enough." He really thought that I was putting pressure on him saying, "If you do not give me an office in the church, I am going to leave." I could not believe what the man was saying to me. I said, "I am leaving because God called me," and he could not believe it.
People that are not where you are spiritually cannot discern the righteousness. They cannot discern your motive as righteousness. They cannot discern Christ in you, and they attribute where they are spiritually, to you. You are going to find people attributing evil to you, because in the same situation they would have been thinking evil.
Another perfect example is when I was going to that other church where I was a part of the ministry that went into the city on Monday nights. I went there straight from work, and there was someone driving the van one night that did not usually drive it. When I got on the van I realized that I had lost my pocketbook. Actually, I did not think I lost it. I thought I had left it at the office. The pastor was almost always on the van, but this particular night he had come in his private car.
I said to the man, "We are headed for the expressway and instead of going that way to the expressway could you just go this way?" It was virtually not out of his way at all to go past my office. "I just want to run in and get my pocketbook." He said to me, "No, I have strict orders from the pastor not to deviate from my course and I cannot do it." I said "okay," and I got out of the van and drove back to the office. It turned out that it was God because my pocketbook was not in the office. I was really frantic. It is very distressing to lose your pocketbook with your money, and driver's license, and credit cards.
I just prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed and finally after about an hour I just drove around and around. I had taken the mail to the post office before I drove to the van, and I drove to all the places where I had stopped. After about an hour, the Lord brought me back to the office, and I had dropped my pocketbook right in the parking lot as I got in my car. The parking lot was pitch black, but the Lord said to me, "It is over there." I drove my car in, I put the head lights on the spot, and there it was right in the parking lot.
I really was not mad because I knew that God had not touched the heart of the driver of the van to drive me past my office building. If he had, he would have really been in trouble. My pocketbook would not have been there, and then I would not have had my car either. I would have had to go into Manhattan without my pocketbook, or he would have had to drive me back to my car which would have made the van late. It really would have caused confusion. I was not mad. I really believed that it was God, and he could not believe that I was not mad at him.
This man waited about a week or two, and he came over to me at another meeting in the city and he said, "Hello" to me and I said "Hi." This is the driver, a very nice man. He said, "I am so glad you are not mad at me anymore." I said "I was not mad at you" and he said to me, "Oh sure you were" and he just wrapped his arms around me. He was so relieved that I was not mad at him, but he did not believe me. He said "Oh sure you were, but I am so glad that you are not mad at me now." I said "I was not mad at you." He said "It is alright, it is alright," so I did not argue with him. I really was not mad, and he just could not believe me. They attribute what they would feel in the same circumstance to you, and if you are in a higher spiritual realm they cannot fathom it.
COMMENTS: My patient gave me a difficult time when I told him I was going to eat my sandwich in the van while he was in art class. Later on he told me the reason was because he felt I was going to sign a nurse's paper with the van driver to get extra money from his insurance and then split it with the driver. I said "If you think I would do that, you really do not know me." He thought I would do that.
PASTOR VITALE: You said that he did not know you. This man could be with you for twenty years, and he still would not know you because the darkness of his own heart is not capable of recognizing the righteousness in your heart. He just cannot deal with it. This is another reason why, with regard to our parents or with regard to elders in the church, if God has witnessed to you that someone is of God, you have to at least pray about something if they ask you to do something, and you think it is wrong.
You, at least, owe it to yourself to pray about it and sometimes God does not answer you right away. If it is something that requires an immediate action, you are going to have to make a decision whether you are going to trust that person, unless it is a matter of conscience about righteousness.
If you are not getting a word from the Lord and it is a question of, "Well, are you coming or are you staying?" I believe that it would be to your advantage to say, "Alright I will go, because God has not told me not to go and he has put you in charge so I will go." God does not always speak to you immediately, just like He does not speak to little children with regard to their parents because sometimes there are things that you cannot understand. Sometimes there are just things that you cannot understand.
I know that I try not to rebuke people, but sometimes God gives me very hard words for people. There is this one woman that I ministered to, and she was just so mad at me and it really was not even a rebuke. What I said to her was with a gentle voice, but it was a really hard word. She was really mad at me, and then we would keep pulling apart and coming back together because God keeps sending me back to her.
A couple of weeks ago she really blessed me. She called me up, and I had counseled her and God witnessed to it. She got off the phone, and she called me back and said, "You know Sheila, I just want to tell you that I have not understood you in the past, and I just want to thank you for your counsel. I just want you to know that we had all these disagreement because I just have not understood your motives."
That was a real blessing to me to hear her say it, but that is my whole point. Sometimes you just do not understand the motive of a person, and there are going to be times in your life, I believe this, where you are going to have to make a decision as to whether to do something or not, where it is not a question of righteousness on the line, and it is not clear cut. You are just have to go by faith, if you acknowledge that God has raised that person up into a position of eldership. If there is a quickening in your spirit that says, "No," you do not go.
I have experienced this, where God just has not answered me. I said, "Should I do it or should not I do it?" and He just does not answer me. Then you have to make a decision. Well, God has not answered me so I am under the law. What am I going to do in this circumstance? There is nothing specifically unrighteous manifesting here. It is just a decision.
For example, should we go here, or should we go there, or should I join her? If we are going to pray for somebody like we went to pray for that woman, maybe someone was not sure if it was the right thing to do, but God did not really speak to them. If God was not specifically holding you back, then you go with the group, you know. Otherwise, we get caught up in religious works saying, "God did not speak to me," and you do not do anything. You know you cannot get caught up in that. It is very dangerous, to get caught up in that.
As I told you at the beginning of the service, God did not even give me a message for tonight. I sat down, and He gave me those seven verses to preach on, but before He gave it to me, I was going to pick my own verses because what am I going to do? I do not know if I am to put this on the tape at the beginning or not. How would you have felt if I said to you, "Well, God did not tell me what to preach on tonight, so I am just going to sit here, and I am not going to preach." That would not have been fair, and it would not have been responsible on my part. I picked the Scripture and when I picked the Scripture, God said, "No, not that one, that one." It was not until I picked my own Scripture that He said "no, not that one; that one." If I did not hear from Him, I would have preached on that other one.
What can I say? He wants us to be able to function in all circumstances. He wants us to hear from Him. He wants us to be able to hear from Him in the spirit. He wants us to be able to hear from Him through another man, and He wants us to be able to make intelligent, correct judgments when we cannot hear from Him, based on the circumstances and based on the laws and the principles that have already been internalized in us. He expects us to deal with situations in this realm where He is not speaking to us, based on everything He has already imparted to us and He is going to try us in these ways. He is going to try us.
COMMENTS: Why did Jesus change the water into wine as His first miracle? What is the significance of that?
PASTOR VITALE: The significance of it is that it was the first element of His ministry to the human race. Wine typifies spirit, and He is going to change the human spirit into the Spirit of the Father. He is going to change the water, which is colorless spirit, which really typifies Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, into the red wine, the ruddy, life-giving wine of the Father. I have this on a recent tape. Glory to God.
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