In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of surrendering to God and allowing Him to work in our lives. He encourages the audience to trust in God's plan and to actively work on themselves to grow spiritually. The speaker also highlights the power of the Word of God and the need to believe in its verbal inspiration. He warns against allowing fear and societal pressures to cloud our relationship with God. Ultimately, the message is about finding rest and freedom in God's presence and not letting anything hinder our connection with Him.

Now, again, in the Philippians, the third chapter, I'm only going to read this verse, 13 and 14. Brethren, brethren, says the Apostle, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do. For getting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press the mark to the prize of the high calling that draws in Christ Jesus. Now, you know that he wrote this two years before he died. He just had two years to go, and then at the end of the two years, or between the writing of this and his testimony in second Trinity, something had happened, evidently, because the man of God said that here that he was, he knew what he believed, and that he had fought a good fight, and that he had kept the faith, and that he was now ready to be offered. Now, that something happened in those two years to the man of God. Now, you have been listening to me over these last weeks, and again we ask, what is the pastor advocating? What is this that he preached? Well, I'm concerned that it be nothing else but Christ, because anything anybody offers you that is not just more of Christ is false. I'm concerned that in doctrinal foundation it be the scripture, and in its whole spiritual mood it be apostolic, and that it be in harmony with the best in the historic church, the best in devotion literature, the best in humanity, and the best in biography. And yet, why does this preaching sound different? Why does it sound strange when compared with the much so-called and true gospel preaching? Well, I want to tell you this before I enter in, really, to the message for the night, but I want to tell you that about a generation ago, Titchfield isn't captured the gospel church. By the gospel church, I mean the fundamentalist church, the gospel church, those who believe in Christ the Savior and accept him as such, and the scribes and the lawyers took over, and set up a hierarchy in schools, and bible conferences, and churches, and they all went over to it, and the rule became a rigid adherence to words. Now, it so happens that I believe, and have never believed anything else in my entire life, but in the plenary, that means full verbal, inspiration of the scriptures as originally given. You'll be honest with me, and if you have reason to quote me, quote this, that I believe, and have always believed as a responsible Christian teacher and believer in the plenary, verbal inspiration of the scriptures as originally given. But the problem was, and still is, that by school I don't mean any particular school, I mean a school of thought. The verbal inspiration, the doctrine of verbal inspiration, rigor mortis set into it, and with the result that we were, the religious imagination was stultified, the religious yearning was choked down, the religious aspiration slapped down, and the longing, aspiring wings of the children of God were clipped like a hen in a hen coop, and we were told to shut up and like what we had, that this was it. Brethren, do you know what happened to this? The result of this thing, with the language of the New Testament greed, do you know what happened? Well, I'll tell you. There came about a revolt, a revolt against the scribes in two directions. The masses of evangelicals revolted without knowing they were revolting. They didn't know it. It was the gasping of a fish in a bowl where there's no oxygen. The masses revolted into religious entertainment, until the gospel churches are now camping on the doorstep of the theater, and then over against that, and on the opposite side, some of the more intelligent fundamentalists and evangelicals revolted into evangelical rationalism, which is already busy making a piece of liberalism, and the result is that you just don't hear what this that I am speaking about. It sounds strange to hear anyone preaching as I preach, because on one side we have the masses saying, I've accepted Jesus, whoop-de-doop, let's go and have fun, and on the other side, serious, reverent men thinking their way perilously near to the borders of liberalism. And the New Testament message, objectives and methods, have been allowed to lie dormant, and in the name of the lordship of Jesus, which is lordship in name only, we have introduced our own message, our own objectives, and then have thought out our own methods for achieving those objectives which are, in many cases, not scriptural at all. Now, my brethren, I want to ask you, is it heresy to yearn and pray and long after God? Is it heresy? Does it constitute a radical mind to yearn and pray and fight? Do you remember what I read the first night, the great prayer in the cloud of unknowing? God, I beseech thee, soul, for to cleanse the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable gifts of thy grace, that I may perfectly, lovely, and wordily praise thee. To long perfectly to love God, and wordily to praise him. Does it mean more than words when you say it? Mean as it costs you everything. Is that heresy? Should they put a man in jail for it? Should he be ostracized for it in the light of our hymnody, in the light of our devolutionary books back to Paul, in the light of the theography of the saints? No, I think not. Now, I want to read to you just a brief little thing here from Nesseper, from a book called the Philokalia. It starts out, he wants to help us Christians forward to know God, to do what the cloud calls being one with God, united with God. Now, I want you, Bible Christians, to ask yourself the question, could I go along with this? Now, this Nesseper was a Greek Christian. That is, he was over on the Greek side. He wasn't a Protestant, and he wasn't a Roman Catholic, and he wasn't a Martoma, and he wasn't a Coptic nor a Nesper. He belonged to over on the Greek side, but he was a saint, and he wrote a little book to help people to go on with God, and he said you who desire to capture the wondrous divine illumination of our Savior Jesus Christ, you believe in this, and you seek to feel the divine fire in your heart. Amir was a scholar and a saint, and he wrote it into a book in the I think 16th century, which is a classic, and is recognized as such, and he dared to use the word to seek to feel the divine fire in your heart, and strive to sense and experience the feeling of reconciliation with God, who in order to unearth the treasure buried in the field of your heart, and to gain possession of it, have renounced everything worldly. You desire the candles of your soul to burn brightly even now, not in the future. We have become so dispensationalistic minded that we push everything into the future, everything into the future. But, this man says you who desire the candles of your soul to burn brightly even now, and Peter said in this present world, and who for this purpose have renounced all this world, who wish by conscious experience, conscious experience, you think he was a modern psychologist, to know and to receive the kingdom of heaven existing within you. He said what? I'm teaching all the time that Christ dwells in the heart of every believer. Know ye not that Christ is in you except he be reprobate? And if a man has not the spirit of Christ, he's none of you. And the riches of the mind lie potentially there. But we have been forbidden to believe it, or forbidden to say so, and we have been choked down, and the oxygen cut off, and our wings clipped, and our longing killed. And that's why when I say it sounds different and strange, and people say, what is this new doctrine? It's no new doctrine at all. Now, my brothers, I want to talk a little bit tonight about the cloud of concealment. Now, Christ has made full atonement for it. Let's start there. Christ has made full atonement, Christ has for sin atonement made. What a wonderful savior! Would you like to hear said for you by somebody else that could say it better than the theologians? Little Lady Julian. Here's what she said, the precious amends for satisfaction our Lord hath made for man's sin, turning all our blame into endless honor. Could it be said sweeter than that? The precious amends our Lord hath made for man's sin, turning all our blame into endless honor. Paul said it a little differently. He said, where grace abounded, sin does what? Oh, where sin abounded, grace does much more bound, turning all our blame into endless honor. Now, God's face is turned toward us. I want you to think like that tonight. Don't let the devil cheat you, don't let doubt deceive you, don't let anything I say or anybody has ever said cheat you from this glorious knowledge. That the face of God is turned toward you, and as a Christian the smiling face of God is turned toward you. Why then do we not enjoy, now to use these words again, why then do we as Christians not capture the wondrous divine illumination of the Savior Jesus Christ? Why do we not feel the divine fire in our hearts? Why do we not strive to sense and experience, or why do we not sense and experience the feelings of reconciliation with God, as well as the knowledge of it? And why do we not gain possession of it? Oh, I know they dismiss it by saying it's your position and your possession, but that can get so cold as dry ice. Why is it that the candles of our soul do not turn more brightly even now? Why is it that we do not have the conscious experience and know and receive the kingdom existing within us? Well, I'll tell you why. Because there is between us and the smiling face of God a cloud of concealment. Now, my friends, there is never such a thing as a day when the sun doesn't shine. In some of the cities, I think it's Atlanta, Georgia, and maybe I'm wrong, but one of the southern cities offers, a newspaper offers, that they will give all that rum, that day's rum to the newspaper, free as charge if the sun doesn't shine somewhere. Is it Atlanta? St. Petersburg? Well, now let me tell you something, that the sun shines every day, and there never has been a day from our Godhead let the sun rule the day, that the sun hasn't shone. But there are dark days, and misty days, and cloudy days, and days that get so dark you have to light the light, and days that get so dark that in the country the chickens go to roost, I think. Now, there are dark days, and yet the sun is shining just as brightly as on the brightest, clearest day in June. Why then does it not shine on the earth? Because there is between the sun and the earth a cloud of concealment. The sun is all right, the sun is up there grinning broadly, and just as bright, and just as hot, and just as as radiant as ever, but he doesn't get through to the earth because there is a cloud of concealment. Now, what is this cloud, my brothers? You know what it is from the standpoint of the weather, but what is it as applied to Christmas? Well, what's the matter? Well, it's the cloud of concealment, the cloud that we allow to be over us as Christians. And what is this cloud? Atonement has been made, there's nothing to do, for it's all been done. Not a drop of blood needs to be shed, not a spear needs to enter a holy heart, not a tear, nor a groan, nor a drop of sweat, not a moment in agony. Death has no more dominion over him, it is done, it is finished, it is forever done, and the face of God shines down upon us. And even upon Christians there's that cloud, or above Christians there's that cloud of concealment, be put thee in thy God, as the brothers say. So, what is that cloud? Well, it's the cloud, it may be one thing, it may be many things. There is the cloud of pride, for instance. You are your father's child, and heaven is your home, and yet for a lifetime you may go without the wondrous divine illumination of the Savior Jesus Christ, without feeling the divine fire in your heart, or sensing or experiencing the feeling of reconciliation with God, and without the candles of your soul burning brighter, because you allow a cloud of pride to be over your head. And the devil says, well, God hit you, God turned his back. The devil lies. The back of God has never been turned to a child of God, nor to a repentant sinner since the hour Jesus groaned and died and said, the faith of God is turned all away. But we allow this cloud of pride, and the cloud of stubbornness. There are some people that are just plain stubborn. They will not bend, they will not kneel, neither to man or God or to anybody except the law and death. They will not. And so, this cloud of stubbornness. God complained about Israel. He said, your neck is brash, and your forehead is hard, and you couldn't get them to yield. And then there is the cloud of self-will. Now, self-will is a very religious thing, and it may become religious and get converted and enter right with you into the church when you join, and will you with the chamber when you pray. Yet, it's self-will, and self-will, you'll note, is good-natured only when it's getting its own way, and it's grouchy and ill-tempered when it is crossed. Now, you think about that. Is your surrender to God sufficient so that you can be spiritual even when you're crossed? And then there is ambition, and you know there's even religious ambition. There are people that are religiously ambitious for something perhaps that isn't in the will of God, or that's for self-aggrandizement, and the result is that it's a cloud above them, between them and their God. Now, there's a little proverb, and in the Nox translation it reads like this. It rather amuses me, because it's so true, and it's such a perfect picture of the human heart. He says, "...tripped by his own folly, a man eats his heart out, finding fault even with God." And you find Christians like that. Tripped by their own folly, they eat their heart out, finding fault even with God, having what God calls a controversy with me. And then, "...everything I claim for myself." Now, this is the one thing I've been teaching, I suppose it's hard to grasp, that I've got to give up everything. But this pastorate I have here must go on the block, and I must be ready at any moment to give it up, and let it ride away on any sermon I preach, or any position I take. I dare not stick to it. My job as editor is easy, my position in the religious world, my ... everything has to be on the block, and ready to go. If I own it, it is a cloud over my head, and it becomes a cloud of impurity that nothing will penetrate. And people try to pray through it, but you can't pray through it, nothing can penetrate it. You try to fast through it. There are people that fast for days out of nothing but stubborn. You know that. The history, I won't go into politics, but over the world in the last 25 years, you remember that there were some who fasted and died for political reach. Just sheer, downright stubborn. And there are those who try to fast their way through. You can't do it, brother. The cloud of concealment, if it is something that you say is yours and you won't give up, you think you do, but you don't, it'll put a veil over it, and if there's any sun it'll not be very bright. It'll be a cloud, and you can't pray through it. This idea that if you pray long enough, everything will be all right. Why, God got some people up off their knees and told them to quit. Two different instances the Lord stopped praying to them. Did you know that? Said, no use. There was a man Saul, and he was praying and praying. God came and put his hand over his mouth and said, Saul, not Saul, Samuel. Said, Samuel, don't pray anymore for Saul, he's through. Don't pray for him, shut him up. And then there was another instance where Joshua was lying face down praying. We'd have written a tract about him. We'd have said, oh what a thing. But God says, what? He's lying there on your stomach. I don't honor a man for lying on his belly. Get up off your feet and deal with the situation in your crowd, and then I'll bless you and save all that lying around going. So, remember that this modern idea that if you pray long enough, everything will be okay. It's not right, but the saint of God loves these long seasons of prayer, and God gives an answer to prayer, and prayer is the soul's sincere desire, and the breath of the saint, and all that I believe, and I think practice in formation. But the idea that I can hang on to things and then pray the cloud away while I'm hanging on to the cloud, no no you can't look. Then that's the trouble. So, nothing will get to it. And then there is fear. Fear is always a child of unbelief, no matter what you're scared about. Whether you've got cancer, or whether it's if your child's likely to have polio, or whether you're likely to lose your job, or whether Russia will send a guided missile and destroy Chicago. Remember, always the fear is a child of unbelief, and fear over your head is a cloud of obscurity, and hides that smiling face from you. It doesn't, it doesn't turn the faith away, for the blood of his own that kept keeps his faith forever turned towards his people, and towards repentant sinners. And then there is self-love. Self-love. We make a joke out of this, but we never should make a joke out of a thing, because self-love is a cloud of concealment, a cloud of obscurity. And even the Christian who has offered himself to Christ and has believed and has converted, that Christian can keep a cloud of concealment over him simply by loving himself. And to fall out of love with yourself is an accident. That is, it is, I don't mean an accident, I mean a hurt. It hurts you like falling off a and then self-gratulation, and self-admiration, these self-sins. They're there, and as long as they remain there, and then the odd thing about it is that the scribes have excused me, and proved that they should be there, and who can do anything about it. And yet we cry within us, oh that the my soul might burn bright things in the now, oh that I might know the divine illumination of my savior Jesus Christ. And we groan with the groan that goes back to Paul in Philippians, it goes back to David in the Psalms, that we might come into a warm, personal, pleasant, lasting fellowship with Jesus Christ that lives us, and where it irradiates our heart, and yet we can't because we admire ourselves, and we're not going to have anybody disturb us, and we congratulate ourselves, or and we love ourselves. And then there's money. Money these days gets between thee and thy God, as the brothers called it, gets between thee and thy God. Some evangelist years ago, in my hearing, pointed out that you can take two dimes and cut out a landscape. You can take two dimes with you to the great smoky mountains, and go clear to the top north of the great smokies, and with two dimes shout out all the glorious, green, rolling, blue-capped vista of the great smoke. Just put them in front of your eyes and put them close, and that's all it takes. The mountains are still there, smiling and sunny, but you don't see them because there's dime in front of each eye. It doesn't take much money. We who don't have much money are always taking a snide remark that's a rich man, but brother you can be rich and only have ten dollars, because if it is between you and your God, then that cloud is concealing God from you. And then there's people, just plain simple. The Lord tells us that we shouldn't be afraid of man with his breath and his nostrils, and yet there are people, we're Christians, who are have a cloud of fear about this. Constantly a cloud of fear. They want to fit in. They want to fit in here in this society, and the sociologists tell us we must do this, that they must adjust to society, and the schools are busy. Instead of teaching the history, and writing, and reading, and arithmetic, and all the rest, they're teaching the children to adjust so as not to be queer, and to get along well. Well, if you've got that as your goal, you have a cloud over your heart, my Christian friends, and then there are our friends, and then there's a position we hold, whatever it may be, and then there's our loved ones, and this is the tenderest, and perhaps the hardest. But that's all you've got to do. You say, then what do I do with it? If this cloud is over my head as a cloud of concealment, and my father's smiling at me, and I can't see his face, what what shall I do? Well, the old brother suggests, and I borrow it and suggest to you as a beautiful illustration, he calls it a cloud of forgetting. He said, put this cloud that's above you under your feet as a cloud of forgetting. And Paul said exactly the same thing, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth under those things which are before. You see, the things which were behind Paul were clouds, and if they'd been in front of him, then he'd shut out God, but he put them behind him. His deceit, his mistake, his blunder, his error, his wrongs, the times he'd fallen on his face, and the time the Lord had to rebuke him for his pride, and all this, he put them behind him and under his feet as a cloud of forgetting. And the old man, as God says, put them under you, and did not have them, not because he and thy God. Life, Paul put a cloud of forgetting beneath him, between him and all the creatures that ever God made. We've got to get that cloud of forgetting under our feet, and of course, that's the job of the Christian, and that's why I'm preaching like this, and some are understanding, and are going to do something about it. Others are not. Others have come up to the cave-ish barnier once a week for years, and have turned back into the wilderness, and wonder why they're sand in their shoes. It's because you would not go on the cave-ish barnier, right? So, put a cloud of forgetting beneath thee, and all this that had been a cloud of confusion, now becomes a cloud of forgetting. Now the face of God, I repeat, is smiling still, and not all the cloud I've missed, and not all the clouds the devil can blow up there. And the devil can blow up a storm, and put it between you, and afflict you, and the face of your God, experientially. But remember that God is waiting within the veil, or to change the figure, he's waiting for you to move up, to move up. I remember getting on a plane at McGordy Field in New York some years ago. It was about, I would say, three o'clock in the afternoon, and the smiling, relaxed, friendly pilot came out and made a little speech. He knew that old duckers like me would worry about it because it was raining. Rainy, miserable day, like it would get here sometimes, just plain miserable. And he said, now we are leaving in a moment, and he said, the situation is this, friends, in 15 minutes we'll be in the sunlight. In 15 minutes we'll be in the sunlight. And he says, the weather report shows that it will be clear from here to Chicago. And sure enough, it was. We had a strange weather. And so we got into that plane, almost feeling our way there through the smog and the mist, and in 15 minutes we had put the cloud under our feet, and the bright shining sun above, and as we rose even the cloud became quite big. You who've flown a lot have had the experience of seeing that gray, gray billows of whipped cream that are underneath you, white the thick eggs, and when you were underneath them and looked up they were a misty, miserable smoggy thing that cut out the sun. But in 15 minutes you put them under your feet. An old brother is admired to take off in the most annoying and fly all the way 900 miles in the sun. Now that's what I mean. You're going to have to put this under your feet. You're going to have to get busy about it, to do something about this. And more than sit and take in some more, you're going to have to work on yourself. And yet I wonder if you are, I wonder if I'm not contradicting myself. So he says he wills I'll do, but look on him and let him worry. I wonder if it is better, more accurate to say that if you'll consent to put the clouds under, he'll put the clouds under. What does a man do in an airplane? Now I, being of the nervous type, I help the pilot. I keep balancing the thing as we turn. Now really, I do. But what help am I giving to the pilot, that great big good-natured fellow sitting up there dreaming? What does he care about a little fellow weighing 159 in the summer, a little less in the winter? What can I do to that great big four-cylinder, four-engine monster? Not at all, but I help him the best I can. But he gets up there into the sunshine, look on him and let him alone. That's all. But you've got to be willing that cloud get under your feet. I know a lot of people that'll never go up, a lot of them. They'll have every suit in the wide world to get not going up. They'd rather stay right down here in the smog. And they do. The sun shines brighter and they think the sun will be shining when it is. Now put it under you my friend, put it under you. What is it? Well I've said money, people, friends, position, loved ones, fear, all that I claim and call my own, ambitions, pride, stubbornness, self-will, and anything else the holy ghost may point to in your life. Only you know what it is. He is a jealous rival, and he he's a jealous lover, and he suffers no rival. And whatever rival there is is a cloud between thee and thy god. I don't say that that you're not going to him. I do not say that you are not justified. I say that this we've talked about, this wondrous divine illumination, this ability perfectly to love him and wear the lucid face that has been choked out, and smitten down, and taught out of his generation. This, this we lack, and we lack it because we will not put under our feet the cloud of the spirit. Let it rise between us and our god. My brethren, if you will put it under your feet, why you'll find that it hides all the past, and all that that bothers you, and that that changes you, and worries you, and dreams you. It's down there, and it's out, and it's gone, and there's nothing but the clear sky above. But if you have put the cloud under you, then who wills I'll do but look on him and let him alone. Simpson wrote a song that nobody ever sings anymore, for two or three reasons. One is it seems bad, and the second is nobody experiences it much. It is, I take the hand of love divine, I count each precious promise mine, with this eternal countess prime, I take thee under my feet. I take thee, blessed God, I give myself to thee, and thou according to thy word dost undertake for me. Christ doesn't have to die again, no cross needs ever to be erected again, no value needs to be added to the attainment. The face of God smiles on his people, but the cloud hides him. You're a cloud, my cloud, but you say that's true sinners, that's true back-blooders, but that couldn't be true good gospel people. It is true of the masses. And because that cloud has been above them, and because they've been taught they can't rise, they've rushed to get a little heartbeat from the theater, rushed to get a little bit of warmth, a feeling from jubilee, ballads, religious songs, and theatrics, and all the rest. I don't blame them, they've been cheated, and the liars have wronged them, as in the days of Jesus. Jesus walked among men in that day with his eyes, Christ in his beating feet, and he said to them whatever they tell you do, because they're theologically right, but don't be like them. And they said we'll kill that man, and they did kill that man, but he rose the third day and sent down the holy ghost into the world, and he's mine and yours, our sweet possession. Don't you let anybody tell you how much you can have of it. Only God can tell you how much you can have of it. Don't you let anyone take you aside and tell you now not to get excited and not to get fanatical. That you've got all that there is, and brethren, don't you let any of that happen to you. Just as sure as God is not here, just as sure as God is, if we continue in the direction we've been moved in evangelical church, gospel church, that which is now fundamentalism will be liberalism in a short time. We've got to have the holy ghost back, and we've got to have the face of God shining down, and the candles of our souls burning bright, and to sense and feel and know the wondrous divine illumination of him who said I'm the light of the world. Does that make a fanatic out of you? Come on, let's stop little fanatics, just go and be joyful in the Lord. If that's fanaticism, what a sweet fanatic it makes out of a name. What a happy, wondrous thing to be a fanatic. No, no, that's not fanaticism. It's fanaticism when you repose against the scriptures, imagine things, go to weird things, and misinterpret the word of God. But you can't go where one line of the word of God has been misinterpreted, by what I say. Not one line. It's all here. The doctrines of the faith, the faith of our Father's living spirit. So what about it? I take the undertaking. Now, if you're willing tonight to put that cloud of self, and cloud of self-love, and cloud of fear, and cloud of stubbornness, and cloud of pride, and cloud of greed, and cloud of ambition under your feet, then there's nothing for you to do. Nothing. There's nothing for you to do. You can't climb to heaven on a rope ladder. There's nothing for you to do. I take the hand of love divine, I claim it, praise it, promise mine, with this eternal comely sign, I take the undertaking. I take and bless it, Lord, I give myself to thee, and thou according to thy word that undertakes for me. How do you want him to undertake for you? Some of these dear Christians have been walking around under a cloud for a long time. You can't get above it. You just can't. Because you tried to permeate your way above it, you tried to believe your way above it, but it doesn't work that way. You can't. You've got to put it under feet. You rise above it. You put all your sins to pitch thee, and all who preach it, God evermore. And look away to the sunlight. Then you realize there is nothing you can do. What can a man do? He can't sell himself as a whole goat. He can't sell his own heart. He can't crucify you. He can't. God has to do it, and he will do it. He waits to do it, and he waits optimistically and friendly and on your side, wanting to help you, willing to do it, anxious to do it. We could use the word anxious to cut you off. But you sit back, and with a spirit, you agree, and you've been to so many altars, and you've read so many books, you're all confused. Until the sun shines, until the cloud hovers, until God's poor people won't crowd in under their feet. Into this sunshine in fifteen minutes, said the boy, into this sunshine in fifteen minutes, says this man who's brought you tonight, that you put it all under your feet. Dare to put it under your feet, and look at all that the Lord needs. Not trying to tell him what to do nor how to do it, but look on him and let him work. And over the next hours and days and weeks, you will move upward into a place of spiritual restfulness and power such as you never knew before. And you'll have a marvelous deliverance from bondage, a marvelous freedom. You'll believe in the scriptures, you'll believe in the word of God, and you'll verbally parade this full, clean air of joy. You'll believe in it, and just out of it there will come fragrance and radiance and illumination which you never dreamed of before. I'll give those here that can say amen, that know what I'm talking about. Amen? No, no.