In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes that God's plan is not to make believers perfect, but to make them desire perfection and fight against sin. He explains that the battle against sin begins as soon as a person is saved and that the fight is primarily against one's own sinful nature. The preacher also highlights the importance of understanding the specific purpose of Christ and how it relates to the universal salvation of humanity. He concludes by urging believers to show compassion and support to fellow believers who may struggle with temptation, emphasizing the ongoing conflict that Christians face in their daily lives.

...which is stated that we've been baptized into Jesus Christ. And we have several Bible studies. The teacher has been trying to start at the beginning and bring us some conception of what we have and what we are in our utter and absolute identification with the Lord Jesus in the baptizing work of the Spirit. We found out that in regeneration Christ is put in us. That in the baptism of the Spirit we are put into Christ. Now it's very difficult to teach Bible truth because we are so time conscious. For instance, the doctrine of justification has been isolated from the doctrine of sanctification because justification is treated in the first five chapters of Romans and sanctification isn't treated until the sixth. And I think that I speak the truth when I say that we are piling hell full of church members who have just heard a part of the gospel, namely that God, on the basis of the shed blood of Christ, justifies sinners, pardons them from the sin, and gives them a title to new life. But we stop there and we fail to see that although sanctification is mentioned in the book of Romans after justification, that a man is sanctified and justified at the same time. Justification doesn't happen and later on we become sanctified. It's all a part of salvation. And when we come to the baptizing work of the Holy Spirit we are on the same proposition. The regeneration is one work of the Spirit, one phase of the grand work of the Spirit. Baptizing into the body of Christ is another phase of the work of the Spirit, but it don't happen one, two, three, four. It happens all at one time. For instance, when a man is justified, he's perfectly justified, but he's also perfectly sanctified. Sanctification is not a process, it's an accomplished fact. Every reference in the entire New Testament to the matter of sanctification, as to who procured it for us, and I wish you get this, is in the Arius Tense. It's something that's done and done. And we've lost sight of the wonderful truth that a man's either holy or he's unholy. He's not part holy and part unholy. In God's sight, man's holy. If he's saved, he's unholy. If he's lost, he's righteous. If he's a child of God, he's unrighteous. If he isn't, we get into some trouble and insisting that the chief need of the sinner, the primary need, the need of all needs, if he doesn't have this happen to him, nothing else will, is to be regenerated. And we insist that a man must be generated in order to repent and believe. So people hear that and they say, well, you believe that you're regenerated and then sometime later you repent and then on down the road you believe. No. In the order of time, the act of repentance and faith, just like that. A man's regenerated and he repents. A man's regenerated and he believes. But in the order of nature, it is foolish to tell sinners to do something apart from telling them that they terribly need the miraculous work of the Spirit in order that they may do what God requires. And so we come to the baptizing work of the Holy Spirit. I spent this moment to caution you that he doesn't do it one, two, three, four, five, six. The instant a man is born in the family of God lays hold on Christ, turning from himself to God. That very instant, that very instant, he is put, not part of him, but all of him, forever and ever, into the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. But in order for us to get it, in order for us to get it, we have to break it up. We have to break it up. Now what we're driving at in these Bible studies, have you found out yet? We are saying this. Now listen to me very, very carefully. The only thing in the Scripture God's put in the Revelation for his people to enter into, to realize and act upon in the promotion of practical everyday holiness, which is the purpose for which Christ died and without which a man cannot enter Heaven. Did you get it? It is silly for a man to talk about being a child of God unless practically in his everyday life he lives in devotedness to the will of God. Now that's so. That's so. But the only teaching in the Bible that the Spirit of God uses to promote actual, practical, everyday, down to earth, holy living, is the recognition on the part of God's people of their utter and absolute identity with the Lord Jesus Christ. You can pound people over the head until you're blue in the face. It won't promote holiness. It won't promote holiness. It wouldn't do any good to pound the old sinner for the way he lives because that's not the issue, is it? And God Almighty doesn't pound His people, but He does lay out before them who they are and what they are and what they have by being vitally joined to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is what God depends on to promote practical holiness. Now we haven't got much practical holiness now. We've got a bunch of folks over here that say, well, we live entirely above sin. But the way they do that is to reduce sin to where it's just a little plaything. And they make a mighty poor description of what sin is. On the other hand, here's a fellow that's heard a part of the gospel and he took Jesus as a fire escape so he'd be declared righteous and wouldn't go to hell and never heard that the purpose of the death of Christ was not to set a man free so he could walk away from God, but was to set him free from that that bound him so he could walk with God. Don't you see it? And so they say, well, I'm saved. I can take you right to the place down to Old Hollow Creek Baptist Church where I was saved. And the lives have been ungodly and void of practical holiness ever since. But they're saved. They're saved according to the preaching they heard. Don't you see it? That Jesus came down here to keep you out of hell. But the Bible says Jesus came down here to make men h-o-l-y holy. That's the greatest need of this hour. Not Pharisees on one side, not sticklers after something on this side, not people who are proud that they don't do a few things, but people who exhibit to a game-seeing world a practical, downright, heartfelt, cheerful, persevering, willing obedience to the will of God. That's what holiness is. That's what holiness is. And so this is important. If you call yourself a child of God, that isn't in any sense enough to talk about a revival of religion in our day as long as all of the willingness and the downright carnality and downright lawlessness and downright rebellion on every hand is apparent in all of our churches. And the reason we're in the mess we're in is because we have missed it and we have not told sinners this, that the only way on earth a sinner can come to Christ is to come and ask him to make him holy, for that's exactly what Christ comes to do. And this generation didn't want to be holy when we talked them into a profession, and they don't want to be holy now. They just don't want to go to hell when they die. So we started this teaching. We first found out, therefore, that when the Holy Spirit yet tells us in Romans 6 that we've been baptized into Christ Jesus, that this is not talking in the first instance of water baptism. I believe it includes it, but that water baptism, baptizo, the Greek word, when used for water, when used in its literal meaning, means to plunge or to dip or to immerse. There's no use to argue about that. But I'm not interested now in establishing the form of water baptism. What we're talking about is that in most of the instances in the New Testament, the word baptizo, if you interpret it literally, you make a monkey out of yourself, and it must be interpreted symbolically or, as the scholars say, metaphorically and get what it means in the Scripture. I remember my professor's theology and seminary. Most of what he tried to teach me then didn't mean much to me then, but it means a lot more to me as I come and go. And this man always was telling us young students that the Bible didn't mean what it said. It meant what it meant. And that's right. You just take the Bible and all this, what they call it, you've got to interpret the Bible literally now, and you can prove the moon made out of green cheese or anything you want to. And the Bible can't be studied with a dictionary on one hand and the Bible on another because words don't mean in the Bible what they mean in the dictionary. And so you shut up to the Holy Spirit. I was reading a letter in a book today that Luther wrote one of his companions in the days when the Reformation was breaking. And this great teacher had written Luther and asked him how to study the Bible. And Martin Luther wrote this great theologian and he said, The only way on earth to study the Bible is in the atmosphere of prayer, recognizing that the human mind cannot contain its logic, that the Bible is not a logical book and that nobody on earth can reveal the Bible even to a child of God except the Holy Spirit who indicted its words. And we desperately need that today. I'll tell you what a little bit of learning will make a fool out of anybody. Sure as the world. That's right. It'll make a fool out of anybody. So when we come to the word baptizo, most of the time in the scripture it refers to being identified with something. People were baptized unto Moses over there, you remember, in the Red Sea in the cloud. They were identified with Moses and while they're dead baptized why do we identify ourselves as dead men says Paul in the book of Corinthians. So we turn to the baptizing work of the Holy Spirit using as our starting text 1 Corinthians 12, 13, as many of you have been baptized. By one spirit we're baptized into one body and the context shows that the head of that body is the Lord Jesus. I think now for four or five Thursday nights we got tangled up in the truth that the Holy Spirit baptized us into the body of Christ in the decree of election before the foundation of the world when we were given to the Son. And we had a blessed time for several Thursday nights starting at the beginning. My young preacher brethren, if you don't start there you'll never get right. Then what one way to start in dealing with anything God does and that's at the beginning. That's at the beginning. And every great truth that Baptists used to hold and fought for and some of them thank God died for begins at this one place. The foundation of all error in preaching or witnessing missionary work or anything else is right here. Here's where the battleground's been fought ever since men have been opening their Bibles and trying to find out the way of salvation. For the battleground is lost or won here and the crown of glory is put on the head of God or it's put on the head of man whichever camp you want to fall into right here at the beginning. Right here at the beginning. The Bible either teaches that faith is the result of election or it teaches that election is the result of faith. It can't teach but one of those two things. And if you'll notice it very carefully that's what a lot of the controversy is about now. Did you see it? That is the controversy in the days of the Reformation. Roman Catholics taught as most Baptist preachers do today that God elected people upon their foreseen faith that he watched and saw what man was going to do and then man acted. The Bible we believe teaches that in the beginning God made the first move and the first move he made was to sanctify or elect or separate or set apart or choose whichever word you want to use. They're all used in the Bible and mean the same thing. A people, a definite number of people and that Christ engaged not only to come down here and pay their debt but he engaged also to purchase for them the gifts of repentance and saving faith. Now that's where the battleground starts and so we started and we went to some length to show how Christ had to become connected with the world so he could become connected with the race so he could become connected with the Jews so he could become connected with the law so he could be legally the legal, righteous actual substitute for the people God gave him. And we found out that because the purpose of Christ is specific it has to be universal. That in order to give life to as many as God the Father gave him he had to have authority over everybody. Do you get that? If you go to any lawyer this one time the Bible's logic. I used to debate and I know exactly I'm telling the truth now. In deducting between what the scriptures say this way or that way anybody who's honest will tell you that you must take a specific fact you can get your hands on and interpret the other by it. You cannot interpret the specific by the universal. You've got to go at it the other way. And if you'll do that you'll be rid of all the controversies raging in Winston-Salem now. And of all the preaching that puts the crown of glory on man's head and therefore takes it off of God's head. And some of us rejoiced when we found out that in order to purchase his church my Lord bought the whole world. Praise God. That in order to redeem his people he was identified with the human race. And we got a great blessing I did out of reading some of the passages of the New Testament that go beyond my own imagination. I couldn't explain them if I wanted to. But if you'll read the New Testament pretty carefully without any theory to try to square your theory the Bible by your theory to prove what you already believe and that's dangerous, is it, by the Bible you'll be amazed at the universality of the achievements of my Lord. This Bible speaks of a redeemed world. The devil's not going to have this world. The Lord's going to get it. This Bible speaks of a redeemed race. This human race is not going to be captured by the devil. I deprecate people who go around thinking they honor the Lord Jesus Christ for making out like that the Lord Jesus is not going to get much done. He's going to redeem the world. He's going to redeem a race. He's going to redeem the Jewish nation. And bless God, he's already redeemed his church. That's right smart, isn't it? We are identified with the Lord Jesus Christ in election. A young preacher boy down at Washtenaw College in Arkansas, they had one teacher down there until this year who was a Calvinist. They fired him out. They ain't got married now. But they've had him up until then. And this young preacher boy is a member of my friend Brother Johnson over in Pine Bluff. All the preachers, I'm anxious for you here. If we ever get where we can get in a building so to get $2.00 a head, I want you to have Brother Johnson. And one of the professors at the college was, they make fun of Calvinism down there, like they do in most all the schools now. Boycott the preachers and all that tomfoolery. That's a far cry from the way this started. All the Baptist schools started out Calvinistic. All the Baptist churches started out on the Calvinistic rock. Now the thieves have come in and robbed them. And I wish we could steal some of them back for the Lord. But this professor was tackling the young preacher. And of course, believing that men are saved by their decision, you have to believe that if a man decides for Christ one day, he could decide, undecide the next, you see. The only people that can believe in the security of the believer, people that believe in election. That's right. That's silly to talk about believers. I understand some folks say, I'm a Calvinist, I believe in the security of the believer. You're a liar. You don't do no such thing. If you don't believe in election, you don't believe in the security of the believer. You can't. And he was getting on this young preacher about deciding for Christ. I think Billy Graham was the subject. And he was trying to decide whether to let Billy keep on preaching or not. Brother Carwell and I, I think I've already told you, we had a meeting one day, and we agreed to let Billy go ahead and preach. Also, we decided to let Oral Roberts continue. We started to stop him there for a day or two, but then we decided we'd let him go ahead. Now that's sort of silly, isn't it? I guess I just will let him. I reckon he will anyhow, don't you reckon? Well, this professor hopped on the young fellow about decision. About decision. And he thought he had the young fellow in the crack. And he said, If a man, if a decision is made, then it can be unmade. And the young fellow said, You're dead right. If man's saved by his decision, he can be unsaved by his decision. But he said, Thank God man ain't saved by man's decision. He's saved by God's decision. Do you get that? Huh? Huh? Do you get it? This isn't a dry doctrine to prove. This is the very heart of the gospel. Do you get it? We're identified with the Lord. We're put into His body by the decree of election. All the devils in hell can't undo what God does. Now if that ain't so, we all wind up in hell, brother. If what your Baptist preacher's preaching sold the whole outfit I was going to have. Our decisions can't stay the power of the devil. Our decisions can't overcome the carnality of our old Adamic nature. There's enough hell in your life, my dear pure woman and I, if we could see the awful stench and filth in your heart, not talk about us old big men, why you'd run our country. Oh, how wicked we are, even God's children. Huh? Why my goodness alive, lift up your decisions and your little feeble efforts the best they can be. To mine God and obey Him, they wouldn't lift us the weight of a flea toward glory. Thank God! Thank God for the assurance I'm saved by the decision of almighty God. No, hell can't break that decision. Do you get it? Do you get it? We're put into Christ and the decree of election. Huh? Praise God. Now, we took up then, if I can remember, what did we take up? We took up then, and I'd better get over here and see. And we took up then our identification with Him in His virgin birth. And we found out that the virgin birth and the new birth are just alike. And the miracle of a divine, holy thing placed in the nest of a corrupt thing like our carnal nature. Isn't that wonderful? And then we found out that we are baptized into His circumcision. And that we are to use the knife on our own flesh in the cultivation of practical holiness. Then we found out eight days He is circumcised. The next time we find Christ was when He was publicly baptized. And we found out that the public baptizing in water of the Lord Jesus was His manifestation to the world by God the Father as the Son of God. When He who said, Cometh Me to fulfill all righteousness, was baptized then and not until then. The heavens were rent and God opened the heavens and spoke and said, This is My beloved Son. Now the next time we come into contact with the Lord Jesus Christ is in His conflict with the devil immediately following His baptism. In Luke chapter 4, immediately after the Lord was baptized, He was led by the Spirit. That's always been quite a statement. I don't know how to handle it. Except that I'm a hard shell. And the devil can't even tempt one of God's children apart from the permission of Almighty God. Nothing the devil can bring to pass in the life of a child of God but what will bring glory to God. Because it can't happen unless the Lord lets it. He was led of the Spirit to be tempted of the devil. And bless God, as surely, watch it, as surely as a sinner is taken out of the pit of corruption and translated from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God's Son and is publicly manifested to a world as a Son of Almighty God just as soon as that takes place. He's in a rip-roaring fight with the devil. The devil will get him if he can. The devil will start him after him if he can. Just as soon as he's publicly manifested as the Son of God, he becomes the target for the assaults of the devil. I think it's 1 John 4 and 17 that says, as he is in the world, so are we. And that's exactly true of us. And we, being a partaker of and identified with everything the Lord is and everything he does, we are baptized into the conflict. We are put into the fight, into the battle that the devil engages in in his effort to overcome the believing child of God. There's one difference between the temptation of our blessed Lord and the temptation of you and of me. Bear in mind that the record in Luke 4 gives us this truth, that the Lord Jesus met the temptation in the power of the Spirit as a man. He didn't meet it as God. He met it as man. But even as man, he's different from you and me, he did not have a sinful nature. He didn't have a sinful nature. He was apart from sin. He's separate from sin. He had no temptation to sin. I'll let him about tell you he did. He was different. He took upon himself the nature of man, but he did not take upon himself the sinful nature of man that was guarded, was it not, in his virgin birth. Is that right? He was a sinless man. And absolutely, as the theologians call, impeccable. There wasn't any possibility of his sin. I think it's in John 14, I forget the verse, where the Lord says, The prince of this world cometh and he finds there's nothing in me. The prince of this world comes to the Lord, pick at him all he wants. He couldn't find the flaw. But blessed God, everlast one of us hath saved the prince of this world, cometh unto us and finds, what, plenty in us. And there's a good deal of difference there in the tempting of the devil when the target is the Lord Jesus Christ and us. We have, as somebody I read said, the fifth column of the old Adamic nature in us, lusting at the sin and lusting against the Holy Spirit. And yet, with that old Adamic nature still in us, and we're going to see two or three things about it that may shock us in a moment. The Lord God Almighty purposes to get glory out of our victory over the devil as we as men in the power of the Spirit wage war with the devil. Satan strikes at a Christian to get at Christ. Did you get it? He ain't got nothing against you. His hatred is of the Christ. But he can't get to Christ now, for in the body, and he is in a body, isn't he? He's at the right hand of God. And the only way on earth Satan can strike at the Lord Jesus is through one of his own. The body is on earth. The head's in heaven. Is that right? In the flesh, in the body. For there's a man in glory right now, and he's in flesh, isn't he? Not flesh and blood, but flesh, isn't he? That's right. So in the flesh, the body's here, and the head's up there, and Satan's hatred is against the seed of war, and he strikes at Christ by striking at us. I wish we could carry that with us day by day. He ain't got nothing against you, brother. You don't amount to so much, except as you represent the one he hates. And every blow he can inflict to damage your testimony or defeat your witness is a blow struck at the Lord Jesus Christ. And my, he's real. He's real. He's real. Any of you remember a few years ago when some of the brethren had quite of a stir, as good as he had written in the papers about a certain Sunday school lesson in our Southern Baptist literature, I don't know whether you remember it or not, but in which the temptation of Christ was discussed. And as one professor tried to teach me in the seminary, the devil wasn't actually there. But the temptation was subjected. And the Lord just talked within himself, you know. And it just occurred to him that he was awful hungry, and he'd just say to those bread and so forth. But that ain't what happened. The devil was actually there. And the devil is actually real now. There's one thing about the devil, and I wish you'd get this, he is not a supernatural being. He's superhuman, but not supernatural. The devil can't be everywhere. He can't be everywhere. Did you know it? He's got, he's localized. He's got more power than a man, but he hasn't got supernatural power. There's only one supernatural power, and that's God. That's right. And he can be defeated. How? By the resistance of a humble child of God. Did you get that? Resist the devil and he'll do what? That's what it says. This summer, I think last summer, while we lived in Alabama, I went with my older brother one time where I was kind of born and raised, in Alabama. And I had been away from there about 40 years. Of course, it wasn't like I thought it was, you know. And I wasn't there longer than that. I remember as well as if it was yesterday, one thing took place while I lived there several years. I was about five years old, and my mother sent me to town, seemed to me like it was a long ways to the store there. But I found out when I went back, it wasn't two or three blocks, but I had to walk. She'd send me to get something to store, and I used to forget half of it, and I'd have to go back and get the other. And there was an old hound dog, just a hound dog, that's all it was, right on the route I had to go. That's the meanest dog that there was. Man, I'm telling you, that dog would come running out at me, barking and growling. And whew! It decided how fast I could run. And I got to where I'd walk several blocks around so I wouldn't meet up with that dog. And my big brother, who was seven and a half years older than I was, he was about thirteen then, pretty much the man, you know, pretty brave. He found out what I'd done, and he told me he was going to give me a licking if he heard of me being afraid of that dog anymore. And he said, that dog won't bite you. Well, you heard that joke, you know, so I won't tell it. I didn't know whether the dog knew it or not. But that dog scared me. Just a little old time. And he made me one time go by there, and he told me to get a great big old rock, just big as I could handle in my hand, and just go walking right by that place where that dog was. And when the dog came running out, just to wrap back, and let him have that rock. And the grace of God or something helped me. Because I threw the rock for it, started running. And bless God it worked. That old dog, I missed him a country mile, but he'd come into yelping and a howling, and he'd start running in another direction faster than I was that way. And bless God, it never bothered me anymore. After I went by. Well, bless your dear heart, miracle of miracles, even though the old Adamic nature's still in us, even though the prince of this world cometh and finds plenty in us, even though God help us, we ain't plumbed, saved, yet. Bless the Lord! We'll not live perfect lives, but we can live lives of victory. Because we're in Christ! We're put in the conflict not to be defeated! Because those who share His conflict can also be identified with His triumph, do you see it? Now let me caution you. It's not necessary to go in tonight to the different ways the devil attacks. But I will tell you this, he can beat you in your own strength if he attacks your strongest point. Bravest man the Bible speaks about fell at the point of bravery, the coward by the name of Peter. The meekest man in the Old Testament fell at the point of his strength, Moses. The purest man in the Old Testament fell at the point of his strength, David. That's right. That's right. But usually the devil ain't game, and he doesn't attack a man at his strong point. He finds his weakness. The Bible speaks of his wiles, is that right? And speaks of how he entices, and how he lays traps. The Bible tells us one place he's as an angel of life, another place he's as a roaring lion, in one place he's a great deceiver, one place he's a slanderer, and he comes at people from different directions. There's a passage of Scripture that places where it is, and one of the epistles, and I don't have it in my mind right now, you can find it, says we are not ignorant of his what? His devices. Of his devices. Are we ignorant of them? Paul said we're not ignorant of his devices, talking to those people. But I wish you'd let me, if you will, give you just a little bit of practical downright help from my own little experience, what little knowledge of the Bible I have. Dear ones, remember now, that when you became identified with Christ and his baptism, the baptism of the Spirit into the conflict, remember now, it's a lifelong conflict. And there are no pensions. There are no retirement plans. It lasts as long as you live. And remember another thing, that that Adamic nature of yours, that old heart of yours, Grady Gordon, is black, and it'll be black tomorrow, and it's wicked, and it'll be wicked tomorrow, and it's full of poison now, and it'll be full of poison tomorrow. And remember this, that that old Adamic nature is not going to be put out of business in this life. Now you say, well, I know that. Well, do you? Do you? Do you? Are you aware of the fact that the more, watch it now, the newer you get to the center of the fight, which is around the gospel of blood redemption, how God saves men, the fight's going to get worse. Many a child of God's been tricked by false teaching to the effect that if he'd pray every day and read his Bible, he wouldn't be subject to temptation, and gradually he'd get to be a little angel. No, no. It ain't so, my friends. The longer you walk with the Lord, the worse the fight's going to be. Now you young people listen to me now. You won't believe a word I'm going to say to you now, but so, you young people don't know what temptation is. You wait till you get gray in your hair, and the older you get, the worse it'll be. You young people don't know what a fight is between the old nature that's fresh and the new one. You wait till you get a little old, it gets worse all the time. It gets worse all the time. Now that isn't the popular conception of what's called sanctification. They say, well, I'm getting a little better all the time, two or three more weeks, so I can just retire. No, you can't. No, you can't. The old Adamic nature is still there, and it's getting worse all the time. You're not going to see your old nature put out of business in this life. I want you to see something. God Almighty in His wisdom has designed to bring glory to Himself not by making you perfect, but making you want to be perfect. Not by fixing you so you can't sin, but fixing you so you'll fight against it. Not by making you a tin can with no conflict, but by setting you right down in a red hot fight the instant you're saved. Most of the fight ain't with somebody else. It's old man Rob Barnard who lives in the same house you do. Is that right? If you believe that, it might help you some. Brother, will you listen to Brother Barnard? The more of a spiritual capacity you have, the more capacity you have to fall. Will you listen to me now? At the times of the greatest spiritual heights you ever experienced, that's the time when you're more liable to fall. That's right, Bill. That's the God's truth. That don't sound right, but so! It's so. It's so. There wasn't any fight in this Abraham's house as long as this smell was the only sound. But when the second one represents the spirit Isaac was born, there was a fight. How you getting along? Huh? How you getting along? About got old man Adam whipped down? He'll get up with you in the morning. Huh? Huh? You see that, loved ones? Why didn't the Lord fix it some other way? I leave other people to question God. That's not our business. But always a whine. I don't know about that. I don't know much about what God's told us He has done. Without worrying too much about why He didn't do something else. But isn't it a battle? Isn't it a battle? Oh, my soul! I'm not going to go into the triumph now. We'll get into that when we get to the truth that we're identified with Him as resurrection. But isn't it a privilege to be in the fight with Him? Huh? Huh? Oh, baptized into conflict. Huh? Baptized into conflict. Just one fight right after that. Huh? That's it. That's it. Now, tonight, let us pass. I got just, ooh, I ain't good either. I spent most of my time on that. I don't think I'll get into the next point, which is the truth that we're identified with our Lord in His suffering. I didn't know I'd fool around so much. This is rather vital. I want to ask you something, brother. Would you jump on whether your brethren, if being sorely tempted, they fell? Huh? Huh? Would you help them or jump on? Which would you do now? Huh? Which would be the Christian thing to do? Huh? Huh? Ah, yes. I long for some of that spirit, not to popularize sin, but to realize the awful conflict that's going on 24 hours a day in the life of a child of God. And I wish, beloved, that we were Christian enough to recognize it. Of course we won't, you know. You walk up to me and ask me how I'm doing. Oh, just fine. I'm just lying like the devil. Ah. Huh? I remember a preacher telling me one time that he got in an airplane and crossed America. He said he didn't know but one preacher in the world that he could talk to about the awful mess he'd fallen into with sin. Wouldn't you just love to find out Brother Weisner here was tempted to borrow and fell and brought shame on himself? Boy, you'd tell it to everyone in Winston-Salem, wouldn't you? Huh? Not if you're a child of God. Boy, you're in a fight with yourself. You say, well, bless the Lord. Ah. Oh, bless the Lord. Ah. Oh, listen. Listen. Listen to me. This conflict is awful and I wish we'd face it, quit trying to hide it. It gets harder all the time. The conflict with the world of religion, the conflict with the world of society, the conflict with the old Adamic nature, the personal conflict with the devil. I'd hate to believe that I counted for so little in the battle for truth that Satan said I don't need to bother with him. There's a passage of Scripture in the Bible that says we ought to confess our faults one to another. And that isn't the little old what we call false. Now, that means when we've been overtaken and we've fallen. That's what it means, brother Claude. And there's a lot of healing that takes place from that confession. You read the context. And there'll be a lot of sympathy one for another. I'd love to see it, my brethren, like it was in the New Testament. To where the persecution and the hatred of the outside world was so vivid that God's people just had to have and longed for the time when they could come together, tell one another their victories, share one another their failures, huh? Confessing our faults one to another. A great preacher said to me one time, he was preaching to me, and I didn't know much about what he was talking about then because I was just a young preacher full of whim, wig, and what-tality. I thought if the Lord gave me a year, I'd have the world converted. I really did. Really did. He called me in one time, and he had a way of talking about something happening about 2,000 miles away, hoping I'd get what he's driving at. He said, Son, he said when I was 20 years old, I was already in the ministry, he said, I said, by the time I get 30, I'm going to have the old man conquered. I'm going to be fixed up. He said, when I got 30, I was in worse shape than I was when I was 20. He said, I said, by the time I get 40, I'll have the old man conquered. He said, when I got 40, he'd give me more trouble than I ever had. And he said, I actually said, by the time I get 50, I'm going to put this old man out of business. He said, he got 50 at worst still. He said, I said, by the time I get 60, I'll have the battle won. But when I got 60, the battle was fiercer than I'd ever dreamed it could be. He said, young man, it took me till I was nearly 70 years old before I learned what I hope you learned before you're much older. That when you're manifested to this old world as a son of God, the world that hated Christ, the flesh that's an enemy of the Spirit, and the devil that eats the seed of the woman will be your constant enemy. And said, they'll fight till the last breath. And the closer you walk with the Lord, the harder they'll fight. And the more spiritual you are, the harder the battle will be. And the higher in your walk you go, the more probabilities you'll fall. He said, there's one scripture in the Bible that you need learn early. Apart from me, you can do nothing. And another one, he said, let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed. Blessed he fall. Now, if you're here and you're a church member not saved, you'll probably get a lot of comfort. You'll say, well, it won't make much difference if I do fall. Well, go ahead, you go into hell anyhow. I'm not talking tonight. Somebody wants to take comfort in the cloak of sin. I'm talking right down to earth. Rejoice that you're baptized into a lifelong fight, a lifelong conflict with the devil, with the world, and with your old self. And rejoice that there's one in it with you. If you weren't in him, you wouldn't be in the fight he's involved in. Amen? All right. Let us thank.