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 Quotes from a Speech at the 1998 Ministerial Enrichment Conference


[b]Quotes from a Speech at the 1998 Ministerial Enrichment Conference[/b]
[i]David Wilkerson[/i]

I want more than anything else, for everybody who sits under this ministry to know the glory of Christ. To know that when they sin they don't have to run and hide from Him. They don't have to live in guilt and fear. They need to turn around and go to the Cross and know that there is forgiveness and they can rise by faith.

I want to know that every time they praise the Lord in Times Square Church it comes out of a heart that is overflowing with worship for what Jesus has done in their life. His forgiving, healing power. I don't want them to live under guilt and fear and condemnation. And if they're going through a battle I want them to hold steady in Christ and know that He's long-suffering. And if they'll just hold on and turn to Him and seek Him with all of their heart, God will be patient with them until the victory comes.

God helping me, I will not rebuke the righteous, and by God's grace, offer no comfort to a man or woman who is not ready to accept His grace and lay their sin down.

The Gospel of Accommodation is giving birth to megachurches with thousands who come to hear a non-confrontational message. It's an adaptable gospel that is spoon-fed through humorous skits and through drama and short, non-abrasive, 20-minute sermonettes on how to cope. It's called 'seeker-friendly' or 'sinner-friendly' gospel. I find those terms anti-scriptural to begin with. The gospel has always been confrontational. There is no such thing as a friendly gospel. There is a friendly grace, but there is a gospel that confronts sin.

I tremble when I read in the Scripture that it is possible that Satan in the last days will come right into the church. He's going to come and pose as an angel of light and he's going to take ministers who at one time had the touch of God and he's going to transform them into angels of light and they're going to become his tool of deception. I find that frightening. It causes me to fall on my face before God.

People don't like to hear what I'm talking about anymore. They don't want to hear the gloom and the doom. But we're headed toward those perilous times. We're just a few years away from a collapse like the world has never known. And one of these days, when that happens, all those who preached prosperity will disappear because the people will say, 'Your gospel has failed me.' When that time comes, I want to grasp on Jesus, and I want everyone that I've preached to to have a faith in the keeping power of Jesus Christ and I want them to know Him in His fullness. And I want to know that I've done it in love, I've done it in grace, but that they know the difference between the holy and the profane.

In his sermon "Keeping the Sabbath," Wilkerson read from Jeremiah 17:24,25,27 God's promise to bless or to punish depending on His people's willingness to honor the Sabbath.

Now, hold steady, I'm not going into some legal pattern.

Wilkerson's message was not a call for legalism. Rather, he went on to connect Jeremiah's prophecies with Christ. Jeremiah, like the other Old Testament prophets, decried the Israelites' bearing burdens on the Sabbath. Mule trains of goods from the ancient caravan routes came to Jerusalem to promote commerce on the Sabbath. Wilkerson figuratively connected these literal burdens with the pain and heartache humanity carries. God, through Christ, has made a way for every burden to be lifted from the human heart. The Old Testament Sabbath laws pointed toward Christ's New Testament fulfillment of the Law.

When we get to heaven, we're going to realize when we backtrack and look back that it was all about Jesus all along. Everything was Jesus. Everything was Christ.

From before the world's creation, God's plan was in place to send Christ as our "burden bearer." That mission was successfully completed at Calvary. The challenge for every believer is not just to accept salvation by faith, but to completely trust Christ with all of life's burdens.

You preach in your congregations, don't you, that your people are to cast all their cares upon the Lord because 'he cares for you'? And then you pick up all your own burdens and go back and sweat. We don't practice what we preach.

Because of the Cross, we are living in a day of rest when God commands us not to bear our burdens.

Don't you know you're in the Sabbath? Don't you know you're not supposed to carry any burdens? The Lord will not share your burden. If you want to carry it, He'll let you carry it until you get down with it. It will bring you right to the ground. Then the Lord will take it. He will not take one end of your burden; He has to have it all or nothing!

I almost died from carrying burdens. I developed colitis and almost died over it. Until the Lord said, 'You've got it all wrong. You go that way and it's going to kill you.'

If I'm going to obey His Word, I'm going to believe that every burden that comes upon me, immediately I am to lay hold of this--I am in His Sabbath. I will not carry this burden. If He can't handle it, what am I going to do with it?

I serve a God who says, 'You don't have to worry about the economy. You don't have to worry about your family. You don't have to worry about your church or your health or anything else.' Every burden that comes at you from the enemy to try to keep you from having a clear mind and a simple, childlike faith in Jesus, lay it down! Take control of it and say, 'Lord, I'm living in the Sabbath. I'm living in Jubilee. I'm going to walk in my life free!'


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