In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the need for the church to rise up and be a representation of Christ in the world. He criticizes the idea of trying to produce something spiritual through worldly means, stating that it only leads to empty results. The preacher highlights the importance of overcoming Satan and emphasizes that the weapon of the overcoming saints is the word of their testimony. He also speaks about the need for the church to have a vision of God's purpose and to be filled with the Holy Spirit in order to produce unity and effectively meet the needs of the world.

It's a good day. God has started right, wonderful prayer meeting. Everything works out if you begin right. You know, most of us, of our life, we give God the leftovers of our life instead of the early morning. He said, seek me early, and I will be found of you. But most of the time, we give Him that wore-out part of our life. We've did everything we want to do, then we come to God with a little lay-me-down-to-sleep prayer and wonder why He doesn't give us His best. But it's so wonderful coming here before every service, before we begin, with an hour of prayer, talk to God. Then let Him talk to us. That is the whole key of our getting on with God, is putting Him first. You know, we give Him the leftovers, and nothing ever happens. It's when we give everything that the miracle comes. Resurrection only happens on the far side of the grave. My wife and I were driving through Alabama years ago, and she was sitting there about half asleep, and I spoke to her. I said, you know, if we would learn to live the cross, just live it. I heard one of America's most famous celebrity preachers say, you don't have to cling to that old cross. When the cross ceases to be central, then everything comes in. S. D. Gordon said, if you make it to heaven, just outside the gate there will be a cross that says to you, nothing enters here that's not Christ. Nothing. That cross means death to all that will die. And the only thing that won't die is Christ. And as we live that cross, there's a constant death and resurrection taking place. You know, it's not an accident that Paul put death at the end when he said, that I might know him in the power of his resurrection, fellowship of his suffering, being made conformable to his death. You see, death precludes, resurrection rather precludes, that there's been a death. But the whole thing was, he said, there can be death without total destruction. It is the very nature of life to rule out all that's death. And when you allow this life to work in the leadership of the Holy Spirit, he always leads to calvary. Amen. There where God deals with that which is not Christ. When God looks at us in the service this morning, he sees nothing but Christ. And all of his working with us is to rid us of all that's not Christ. Because no matter what we think, we can misjudge the long suffering of God, but that's what it is. Because in the final analysis, there will be nothing left but Christ. Everything else will be in hell, all that will be. This whole universe shall take on the character of Christ. Paul talked about everything filled with Christ. When everything is filled with Christ, everything will act like Christ. And that's God's desire and God's working. You know, I've listened, our pastor preached. I told him going home last night, I said, you should preach those one at a time. Let us repent slowly. Amen. You know, you climb up out of the hole you've dug for us with all of them. Very difficult. If you'd take them one at a time, we could repent much easier. But what a message God's dealing with. You see, always the order. We mess up the order, so God leaves us. Christ is the order of God. And when Paul said, let everything be done decently and in order, that don't mean a man can't get happy and run around the building. You know, that's what the dead folks say. You know, did you get happy? You know, it's all out of order. But Christ is the order of God. And when he said, let everything be done decently and in order, and so you have to look at his life to see the order. The order is very plain. When he went into that temple, the first thing he did, took him a whip, cleaned the temple up. You've got to clean it up first. Amen. You may not like the cleaning, but that's the way it has to be. Nothing happens till the temple is clean. To renew that church, nothing's going to happen in the street that doesn't first happen in the upper room. You have to clean up the temple. Amen. You've got to deal with everything that's in the temple. Once you get it cleaned, then restored to its proper order, my house shall be called a house of prayer. It's become everything but a house of prayer. But he restored the order. He said, my house shall be called a house of prayer. You made it a den of thieves, but I'm cleaning it up. But then, once it was the order, the house of prayer, they brought the sick, they brought the lame. The power was there to heal and deliver. Then the praise came. We've tried to go from praise to power. I've watched people for the last 30 years come to church on a Sunday, go through the mockery of praising a God they haven't talked to all week. Amen. You couldn't drag them into a prayer meeting, but they'll get up, they'll choreograph everything, they know when to kick just right, when to laugh, then go to sleep while you preach the gospel. I've watched that all up and down the line. But the temple has to be cleansed. Once it's clean, then make it a house of prayer, and you won't have to beg God to heal the sick in that temple. It will happen. I went to a city years ago. I'd just begun to preach in 1954. I didn't know anything but Jesus, wished I hadn't ever learned anything but Him. You know, along the road you let a lot of things come in you think you might impress somebody with, but the only impression, the only effectiveness of life is the measure of Christ that we bring, nothing else. But you know, I went there. It had once been a great revival church, now 40 people. There's 40, that's all that's left. When I got there on a Saturday, those days you didn't lock a church, there wasn't anything in there worth stealing. They had no PA system, not even the phone in the thing. That one, I think, did. But I went in, the wife and I, the place stunk, songbooks tore up. You know, the toilet smelled. I said, it's dead, been dead for I don't know how long. I said, we're in a war here. I didn't know much, but I didn't know I'm among the dead. I began to preach that 40 people. This is 1954, not 2004. Amen. I couldn't believe what I'm saying to them people. I'm plowing, preaching, digging up the worst kind of sin. Well, about Wednesday, my wife said to me, when are you going to pour the oil? I said, as soon as I wound them. I said, the axes are bouncing off of that hide. Amen. No need for, you know, it's just nothing. Well, I preached on to Friday. And sometimes I'd seem like I'm looking at myself. And I said, you know, I can't believe I'm saying this to them people. I'm dealing with adultery, fornication, 1954, old line Pentecostals. Well, I preached on Saturday night. The pastor told me, in the morning's communion. And he said, when I give it to you, just you keep going. Don't give it back to me. Just call them in. We were staying with the pastor those days. The evangelist either stayed in the parsonage or Sunday school room. That's the way it was. And there we were in the parsonage with him. And I told her, I said, well, I'm going to preach on communion in the morning. She said, I'll be very happy. You've splendid the pews. She sat right on the front always with them babies. And so I went to bed that night. I woke up at 4 o'clock, just like that. And God said, you won't break bread with anybody until you break it with me. I got up out of bed. I knew what he wanted. She woke up and said, what are you doing? I said, I'm going to church. You come with the pastor. And I told her what God had told me. Well, I got down there and began to pray. And he said, I want you to read 1 Peter 4, 17. That will be your text today. So I opened it up. It said, judgment must begin at the house of God. I said, my wife ain't going to like this. You know, it's going to cut across things. You know, I never had time to do what I do ordinarily. You know, kind of work out, outline the thing. I just had to pray it through. Well, he gave it to me at 10 minutes past 11. And it was like you turned the hydrant on. So one hour and 15 minutes at 1125, it stopped just like you cut it off. I couldn't believe what I was said. You know, I could tell my wife, she'd duck her head every now and then, look up at me frightened, you know. He told me, he said, don't call me back. Just get them in for the communion. Well, it just shut off. Dead silence. Forty people had come all week, not one visitor, just those 40. They'd come. I learned later that one of the men had said they'd planned on catching me when I'd come outside and beat me up. Well, it never worked out that way, you know. But they had got pretty upset with what was going on. But it just cut off. You know, that's through. So I said, the pastor told me not to call him back, that we're going to have communion. And he wanted you to come. Ushers, would you come prepared to serve? You folks come to the altar. Nothing, nothing. I said, I spoke Spanish. I know I did. So I'll say that again. So I said it this time in Texas English. I mean, I said, the pastor wants us to come, take communion. Would you please come? Neil Usher's come. Nobody, nothing. Total silence. You know, I don't, I'm just very new. I started preaching in September 1953, and this is about February 1954. So I've not run into anything like this before. I have run into it since. But at that point, I hadn't. And I said, you come. They never come. Well, the pastor and I had two big high-back chairs, chairs that high, back of them. We were both in it. And he was sitting there when I started preaching. And you know, when you look at a thing, you know what it is, and you turn, then you don't see nothing. It's not what it was. And when I turned around, he was not in that chair, and I said, he's left me. You know, I thought he had left me. But I looked a little closer, and he was underneath that chair. He had crawled down underneath both chairs. And he was down there crying, just weeping. Well, I got under there with him, and I said to him, Pastor, I said, Pastor, what are we going to do with these people? I said, what's wrong with these people? And he looked at me, weeping, and he said, Son, you have killed every one of us. That's his exact words. And I said, well, what are we going to do? He said, I'm not going to do nothing. That's just you, whatever you do. I'm doing nothing, laying right here. Well, I got up, and I said to myself, I'm going to one more time. And my wife was sitting there. The door was right there to go out, one of them. And I said, if they don't move, me and her are going to leave. If they owe me anything, they can mail it. You know, I'm getting out. I don't know what to do with this. It's totally beyond me. And so I said to him, I said, come, let's take this communion. Nobody moved. Well, I started around and got right here. You'd have to be in hell to hear what I heard. An old man in the back. I never heard such a scream. I'm telling you, it was, it, it, it, your hair stood up. He'd come down that aisle screaming, and he throwed a handful of money at that pastor. God have mercy, he said, I swore I'd starve you to death. And he fell on that floor and began to writhe and cry and groan. And the whole thing broke. They put hundreds of dollars on that altar. I mean, hundreds of dollars. Those three girls, all in love with the one unsaved boy, all three of them fornicating with him. I mean, all of this come out in that altar. I stood there till 2 o'clock. I've never seen such an agony. They come to me. Forgive us, we, we, we've wondered how to get rid of you, what to do with you. You know, but the 2 o'clock, it was all cleaned up. They'd repented to the pastor. We went home. Come back, pastor and I, a little early. The house was full. Not an ad on the radio, not in the news, there wasn't no television much then. But the house was full. And when we began the song service, I've never saw it before. I've never saw it since. But a cloud just eased down out of that roof and stopped just outside of the reach of a man's hand, and everybody was filled in that house. Everybody was filled. The next morning, the pastor's eyes, and the church had a phone there, and that one, I told you, the phone rang. And a Catholic lady lived, you know, it was in San Antonio is where I was, and it's Mexican, almost totally Catholic people, wonderful people, but mostly Catholicism. And the phone rang, and the pastor answered. He said, What's going on down there? That's the first I've heard out of that place in four years, you know, the noise that had come out of it. But you see, clean up the temple. You're not going to, He's not going to come till you clean up that temple. Make it a house of prayer. Then God will come. I didn't know the message, though it is a message, isn't it? Get the order right. Make it a house of prayer. Turn it back to what it belongs. I want to read from Revelation chapter 12 and verse 11. I want to talk to you this morning about overcoming saints. We find out how to do that, but I want to talk about the overcoming saints. Revelation chapter 12 and verse 11. Thank you, Jesus. As we read this word this morning, thank you for the prayer meeting this morning. Thank you, Lord, that you look deep inside of me. Oh, God, help us. May we never forget Gethsemane. My God, may we come to see what really happened there. Most of us never have even seen what went on in that awful hour when you agreed to die for me. Oh, God, please help us this morning to see what you want to say and what you want out of our lives in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus. Revelation 12, 11, They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto death. Seven times in the two chapters in the book of Revelation, the word overcomer is mentioned. Now, the word overcomer speaks of defeat somewhere because it never was God's intention to have a church and a church within a church. God never intended that there be one group of people had the victory and the other folks dragging around. That just speaks of defeat, amen, somewhere something lost out. It is the will of God that all overcome because only the overcomer will be in that rapture. In the 23rd verse of the 3rd chapter, it said, To him that overcometh will I give to sit with me in my throne. Now, to overcome is to overcome one thing. U-S-E-L-F All along the line, it is God dealing with us, what we are. To overcome is to overcome what we are because that has no place. There's nothing of the natural man. The natural mind, no matter how educated, is still a natural mind. It's not the mind of God. It is always. A natural will is a natural will. The first work of the Holy Spirit to deal with a human being is to reveal Christ to the heart. Now, that's the first work. Reveal Christ to the heart of that individual and then he begins his work as he reveals the object. This is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. He revealed that to the heart. And then he comes to us and shows us how other, how different that Christ is than we are. That you are not what you are best. You are not what he is. But this is what I'm going to make you. This is what I'm going to do with you. This is the whole will of my life with you is to conform you to this that I've revealed to that heart. Then he begins to show us how impossible that is without a miracle. And so from that moment till you get to heaven, all of the working of the Holy Ghost with you is to bring you into that image of Christ so that it's not you but Christ that lives in and through that life. Jacob would never have found the plastic that he found with my good friend, Pastor, running to on the street. If we had been what God wanted us to be. As I prayed in that morning prayer meeting in Thailand, saw that woman bowed before a Buddhist priest, and it's so registered. And I wept in that prayer meeting. I said, Oh God, that woman kneeling before that devil-possessed priest. He said to me, the priest is devil-possessed, but she's not. Amen. She's looking for me. And the only reason she doesn't know me, you never told her who I am. You never obeyed me. I'd give the orders 2,000 years ago, but you was more interested in the comfort of your own self than you was. You'd spend millions on playgrounds for Christians to destroy them while she went to hell looking for me. The only reason she worships, she's looking for me. But the whole working of the Holy Spirit with us is that Christ be seen, that we come. That is the overcomer. When they can take knowledge of you and I, that we have been with Jesus. You know, faith is not confined to the doing of God in the past. True believers are those who translate creeds into life, divine promises into reality, and the happenings of the day to the fulfilling of God's promises. Amen. He'll make us know that prophecy is not something God's trying to make happen. You go to these prophecy conferences, you'd think that's what's going on. But that isn't something God is trying to make happen. He's just saying to you and I, you may not know exactly who the person of the antichrist is today, but if you'll stay with this light, it's an upward-onward movement. He'll deliver you from the torture of the details. Just walk with God. Don't spend your life trying to know what He didn't tell you. The highest form of knowledge on this planet is to know there's some things you cannot know. Amen. Just walk on with God and believe it anyway. And the overcomer. The Bible foretells of a day when the spirit of antichrist becomes so powerful that the whole world will wonder after that beast. They said, Who is like unto that beast? Who is able to make war with him? Now, in the midst, though, of the seemingly hopeless situation that you read of here in the book of Revelation, come to those who are searching for a divine solution to the driving demands of our time. There's never been a civilization with more pressure upon it than the one we live in now. I'm thrilled when I read of what God did for Mary Magdalene, for Brian Bartimaeus, all of them along the road, but I don't live in the first century. I live in 2001. And the problems are bigger now than they was then. I want to know, is this God the same? Can I expect the same today as happened back there then? That's the cry. They don't come for you to discern to them the politics of the day. They come with problems. Man, it is why both have to work to feed their family. The husbands are drunk. Kids are on drugs. The woman comes to church wanting to know, does God have anything to say to me? And all she hears is a story of the politics of the day. That's not the gospel. The gospel is God's answer to the heart of every human being. Amen. And right in the midst, amen, in the midst of this seemingly hopeless situation, amen, there comes a message, amen. Now, and here's the message. Now has come salvation in the strength, and the kingdom of God, and the power of his Christ, for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before God day and night, and they overcame by the blood of the Lamb, and the word of their testimony. Now these are flesh and blood people in mortal combat with the antichrist, Satan externalized in men and women. Satan externalized in men and women, and the Bible said they overcame him. What a story. What a message. The Bible said they overcame him. They overcame by the blood of the Lamb. Now the blood of Jesus speaks of a purifying passion, amen. It speaks of that which drives the heart. The passion that keeps a person moving in spite of everything. Everyone, every human in this building, and every human on the street out there, lives in the grip of some passion. There's something driving that life, no matter who he is. Amen. It may be passion for money. It may be passion for vainglory. Everyone's life is motivated by some passion which furnishes the drive and causes that person to act like they do. It has something inside. They're acting. They are. What they are is what's coming out. You know, we talk about women gossipers. Well, men worse. If you get one of them, I had one of them. Every time I turned around, amen, there's some new story going, and I confronted him one Sunday. I got home. The phone rang. Amen. And here he was at it again. I come to church that night. He was kneeling at that altar. I pulled him up, almost untied his shoes, getting him up, and I confronted him. He started the same old thing. I don't know why I do that. I said, I know why. That's what you are. You are a liar. You are a gossiper. You don't know nothing about God. You're here at an altar in a pretense. You see, all of us, what we do is what we are. Amen. That's the whole of it. If you lie, you're a liar. That's all there is to that. That's the reason you lie, is because you are a liar. If you steal, you're a thief. But if you walk with God, that's because that's what you are. Christ has become that life. Now, every one of us is motivated, which most of our passions are not purified. They're not purified. Here is a people with a passion so pure, it held no hope for personal gain, no selfishness, no self-centeredness, no seeking for an easy way out, no cowardice. They just knew life is what it is, and they faced it. That passion was so pure that the Bible shows us that even their lives did not count. They had one objective for living, that was to overcome Satan. Now, these overcoming saints had one weapon, the word of their testimony. But as our pastor spoke this morning, he confirmed to me that I'd come up with the right message when he talked to Jacob. And Jacob said, I saw so many plastic Christians. I saw so much that didn't speak of Christ. I spent four years in the war. I knew nothing about God, but I was surrounded by religious people. Amen. We got through the canal. We went to Australia. We had to regroup. We were stricken with malaria. We'd been killed. We were in terrible shape. They had to regroup us, get us ready for the next island. And here's all these religious people on Sunday morning. They want me to go to church with them. I said, Why? You're as drunk as I was last night. Amen. We fought over that one Sheila, that one girl. Why would I want to go to church with you? I knew nothing about God, but I knew I'd never make a pretense of such a thing. That more than anything made me know when I married my wife, she wanted to go to church. We went to a church where she, as a little girl, had went. It was dry as dust, pale as a corpse. I went through the ordeal of the thing. We should have had a beer. That's right. That's a terrible thing to say. But it was hot. There was no air conditioning in 1946. Amen. I slept through the thing. Then he said, I want Deacon Kelly to dismiss us. Well, when Deacon Kelly got up, I worked with that joker. He's worse than I am. He's a drunk. He's a whore monger. He's got a wipe he runs around on. And I said to my wife, I said to her, Look, if you want religion, you go. If we have any kids, you take them. But don't bother me with that anymore. I wanted none of that. Amen. But I'm talking about Christians. I'm talking about men to live as Christ to live. That the whole motive of that life is that Jesus be Jesus in me. Hallelujah. They are what? These overcoming saints, the word of their testimony. But that word is nothing if that life is a nothing. There's three things you and I can do to make a difference in this world. Number one, we can live. That's number one. If you don't live, don't talk. Amen. If you're not living for Christ, then don't talk about Christ. That's a disgrace of all time. We can live. We can talk. We can pray. That is the key to our being the witness on this planet that God wants us. But the first is, before I talk about Him, I must know Him. They did more of those than tell the world about victory. They manifested that victory to such a degree that the world took knowledge that they had been with Jesus. They manifested that life. This is Christianity. I said, this is Christianity. This is the character and image of the overcoming saints of all ages, wherever you meet them. And they are the only Christians. He said, To him that overcometh shall inherit all things. What are all things? Just walk down the catalog from Ephesus all the way to Laodicea, and you'll find the final thing is the rapture. Amen. To him that overcometh will I give to sit with me in my throne as my father. But then after that, he said, To him that overcometh will inherit all things. Everything that he said in seven different overcomings, he will have. But it's only to that overcomer. And this is the character of the overcoming saints. They saw Jesus and everything else becomes secondary. Amen. When Paul was struck down on that road to Damascus, conquered by light, the Bible said when he got up he saw no man. And for the next 40 years or however long he lived, he never saw another man but Christ. He was totally oblivious to everything else. Conquered by light. His whole mind in being this one thing, I do, become the testimony. He says fanaticism. I know it is. Amen. That is the whole of it. We talk about fanatics over sports, fanatics over this. The fanatic for Christ is what God has to have. People that have no other reason to live but for Christ to be made real on this planet. But I know when you speak to the average church today, that's a foreign language. Amen. Christ is given one hour and a half on a Sunday morning and that's sufficient. What do you want out of me? I'll tell you what he wants. He wants you. Your life. All you are. All you have. All you ever hoped to be. That's what he demands. But the payday is he'll give you all that he is. They saw both the responsibility and greatness of being a bond slave to Christ. That was the overcoming saying. They saw the greatness and the responsibility. These overcoming sayings of all ages have seen that the holiness of Christianity consecrates all wealth and all activity under God. If you don't hear anything else I say, underline that and take it home. They saw that the holiness of Christianity consecrates all wealth and all activities under God. Nothing outside of that. We've had that separation of things. We've had the Pat Boones to come along and tell us, my spiritual life is one thing and my secular life is another. No, sir. There isn't but one life. When you come to him, he brought that life. Body, soul, spirit, everything. There is no separation here. There is none. He's either all or not at all. You're going to be Lord, he's not your Christ. And that narrow gate isn't ten miles down the road. That's where a man gets in at. That's where we come into this. Now, that's Christianity. Now, these overcoming, they saw that. They realized that our wealth is as much a gift of God as our hands and our feet. They knew that. And they would no more use that wealth wrong than they would use their hands and feet. They knew that. They recognized up front, amen, that this is all. These true saints understand that the purpose of His being is that the Father may reveal His Son in and through them, nor the reason to be here, but to contain the Creator, that God's Son, Paul, who is the very objective of everything, the type of what all are to be as a saint, a type of the church as a whole. He said, It pleased God to reveal His Son in me. And that's the only thing that pleases God. You know, the Bible said, As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God, or gave them power to become the sons of God. I met a very beautiful lady, 57 years ago. I mean, she's nothing masculine about her. Very wonderful, lovely lady. I used to look at her. How can such a pretty thing as this and such a dainty lady become a son of God? Amen. How can such a thing be? But then He showed me, I only have one son. There's only one I want to reveal, and he looks better in her than he does in you. Amen. Oh, yes, sir. That Holy Ghost reveals God's Son. That's the only Son that God wants seen as we're led by Him. But they saw the responsibility of it all. He further understands that the manner we use, and you listen to me, and spend our money is such a great part of everyday business and everyday life that the common life must be of the same nature as how I spend my money. I watch a man that has to have every trinket. I see a woman that has to have 25 pair of shoes. I see all of that. I can tell you that tells more about them than anything else. The way we spend our money and the way we use our wealth tells more about what we are than a thousand words. Amen. We sing, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, as we went through that. Two thousand million people live on this planet never heard that word one time. Now, it may be more important than you to have another pair of shoes, but I can tell you one day we'll stand there, and how we spend our wealth, how we spend our activity is going to be the answer to everything. I said yesterday morning, the one question asked is did you have faith? If not, you said, I believe. The house is full of them, but the rock bottom line is action. Faith is an act based upon a belief supported by continued confidence of believing that if God said a thing, God will do a thing. But how we spend our wealth, therefore these saints understand if reason and Christianity govern them in their stewardship, then reason and Christianity has got a great hold on them and will dictate the direction of their life. They know that if that's what governs them in their money. But if desire, pride, self-will are the measures of our spending, and given then desire, pride, and self-will will set the direction of the greatest part of your life. You may come to church. You may be able to weep with the saints, but I can tell you that's what will govern the most of your life. Once you're outside, you'll be more interested in the mall than you are in anything else because that is the thing that governs the life. It is a driven thing. If we sow the pride and desire, we'll reap the sowing, which is corruption. We'll reap it. If we sow our fleshly, religious programs, we will only add to the darkness. Amen. Go through it all. We invent one after another. It's just a constant, different program, somehow or another, trying to make something work instead of just coming back and be children of God so the community can see Christ one more time. They're not wanting you. They're not wanting your program. Belfast is not interested in abstract ideas. It is interested in the people that represent those ideas, the people that walk with God. It's the people that they're interested in. If we sow unto that which is life and light, we'll open the windows of heaven upon us, not only of our money, but of everything we do if we sow into that. Light and life is what the church is all about. Our message is, you must become before you can do. That has to be the message. We have sent them forth without sanctifying them. Jesus said, don't you leave Jerusalem until you be endued with power from on high. First He said, go ye into all the world and teach all nations. Now, any good English teacher, I don't know how it'd work out in your grammar, in diagramming that sentence, the main verb is not go, it's teach. Amen. The whole thing. But we've made it go, and we send them without tarrying. We send people out totally unqualified to be out there to tell. Then we wonder why we shipwrecked the thing. We wonder why we've got what we have here today. But it is that waiting, that waiting upon God. We understand nothing, but the light of God's life can dispel the darkness of this age. Nothing. No program, no religious humanitarianism is going to break the shackles of Islam and Buddhism and Hinduism. Only the light and the presence of God. I was in India three years ago. I put this in the Tamil language, and I told them we had about 50 students, and I said to them that morning, I said, Now, our prayer, before we begin, every morning, we're here six to seven o'clock, our prayer. Everywhere you go, they want to pray 15 seconds, sing three courses, amen, and go through it again. I love singing. I can tell you, even the ungodly like singing. You get the beat right, they'll pat that foot. That flesh don't want to stay on that altar. And I said, there'll be no singing. We're here an hour. If you run out of anything to say, just wait there. Just stay on that altar. Amen. There'll be no music. I fell down to begin to pray. Seemed like five minutes later, here struck up the band. Amen. I got up. I got the boy. I said, Didn't I tell you there would be no music? He said, Pastor, you've been there two hours. I lost. Down in that altar. God brought to me, 1972, I was on shortwave radio out of Sri Lanka. I was put there by the Pan-American Broadcasting. I bought that time. I was receiving, not bushels of mail, but a lot of mail comparatively out of that Hindu wanting to know more about this Christ. I'd been on there just a few months, and I got a letter from the Pan-American Broadcasting. They said, We're very sorry. We have to take you off. The Hindu government told us, You're not allowed on this television, on this radio, because he leaves no room for nobody but Jesus. No room for Hinduism. No room. We will not tolerate it. And so they took me off. Well, I still have that letter, but I hadn't thought about it for long years. But at that altar, God said to me, as I was dealing, and He was dealing with my heart, He said, If you come here for a little analytical Bible study, son, you're wasting my people's money and your time. There's nothing going to happen here unless you make my son alive in this world of darkness. He who is the light of the world must live here. No humanitarian program. No little Sunday school class. No missionette program. No, no. You're going to make him alive or go home. And as I lay there, He reminded me of that letter. He said, You preached me here then, but it wasn't time. But He said, I've anointed you for India. Now I can tell you, you just have to hear the stories coming out to know that that's a reality. But all I'm saying is, He made me know in that altar, Don't come here with your little religious programs. Don't come here with your little psychological altar calls. You're going to come here and draw a line. Most of evangelism over there, they spend a million dollars for a three-day crusade claiming two million converts, and nobody, nobody goes to anybody's church. And the problem is, they just preach Christ in competition with three billion other gods, and they just add Him to whatever else there is. They've got three billion gods. Now, why not one more? Amen. But when you come and say, there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved, and that world can see that Christ in you, that's the key to everything. These overcoming saints. Amen. The light and life will come when the people of God catch a vision of God's purpose to meet the needs of that world out there. Such a vision will possess the church when once more the church is filled with the Spirit of God lifting out of her selfishness into the emotions of God. Only then will that vision come. When that Holy Ghost comes and deals with that, lifts us into the emotions of God, for this alone will produce the unity that God can command His life upon. Only this unity, produced by the Holy Ghost. Now, our text speaks of the scene of battle. Where is the battlefield? Amen. We know about war everywhere. We know about war, but where is this warfare? Be enraged. They knew it was in the hearts and the minds of the human race. It is there this battle is fought. It isn't in that physical world out there, but the battle's taken place in the heart and for the mind and for the heart of the individual believer. Amen. Here is where those conquering saints went to battle, and here's where they met the devil, right here. This is where they met him. We need not wait for the enemy to come until he's already arrived, folks. They don't talk about the war going to be yonder, it's going to take up tomorrow. It's already come. The battlefield is not a battlefield of yesterday, neither a battlefield of tomorrow. You can't look into the future and say the battle will be waged at this point in time, but it is enjoined now, this morning. And the warfare for the minds of this world is now upon us, and we're not going to win it by arguing with them. We're going to win it by making Christ a reality. That church must become the church. There will be no need for church growth programs. If we make the church the church, men came to Christ because they knew there was an answer there. He walked this earth in a body that he got from Mary. He'd worked all of his miracles in that body. That body wasn't him, he lived in that body. He worked through that body. He cast out demons in that body. He walked on water on that body. But he put that body down at Calvary, but on the day of Pentecost, he got another body. That's the church of the living God. And you can't read the book of Acts without knowing there was no difference. They didn't come with a new ministry. They simply assumed the ministry of Christ, the exact same ministry. That's the church of the living God. And it must return to that if it's going to win the battle for the minds of men. They have their arguments. You know, I read I read the book of Dr. Carl about evolution. And he said, beyond all reason. And in that, he talked about how the evolutionists had already been defeated, but he won't give up. He can't. He knows it's an utter impossibility. And he talked about, in that book, he dealt with the fact that there can be no design without a designer. And he took up the human brain. And in that human brain, he said, and what they've learned, that if you can imagine one million square miles of trees, that's half the United States, and 100,000 leaves on every tree, then you can know something of the connection to the human brain. And if you memorize 5,000 facts every hour, it would take 250,000 years to overload that computer. Amen. As he dealt with God and man and what the evolutionists and the fallacy of even thinking that. But if we're going to win the war for the minds and the hearts of that man, it's not going to be in an argument. It's going to be a demonstration of God's Son one more time becoming the body of Christ. One more time, that church to stand up and be a representation of Christ in every place. It must rise to the occasion of this end time. We need to throw out those Hagar's. We've played and fornicated with all this stuff trying to produce something spiritual. All we did is fill the house with Ishmael's, not Isaac. You may become the poster boy of the organization by all of that foolishness, but you're not going to increase the kingdom of God. No, no. Anybody who goes to a circus, you can get a crowd at a circus. Just turn the church into a circus and they'll come in there. But that don't mean the kingdom of God has been increased at all. It's been decreased. You know, you're only forced to grow what you're going to kill. My papa taught me that when I was a boy, feeding his hog differently than he fed mine. I said, look, I'm trying to win. My dad was a wise man. I said, why are you doing that? I'm going to get that blue ribbon. I said, you know if I get that, we'll sell that hog a dollar a pound. I'm going to tell you 1923 a dollar a pound was fortune. A gallon of gas, three cents. Amen. So you can imagine what was going on. He told me, he said, now son, you've got to understand that you're only forced to grow what you're going to kill. Only. He said, if you're going to eat that hog, make him grow fast. But if you want that hog to have little pigs, don't do that. If you want to eat that frying side chicken, you can make him weigh six pounds in six weeks. But if you want to lay an egg, you don't do that. And if you force you to go, you're going to grow this way and not this way. I said, sure. You're killing yourself all the time. No matter what. You're forced to grow what you're going to kill. I saw a lot of Pentecostal churches kill with a bust ministry. They bust in more flesh than they could assimilate. They bust in more. The carnality become the rule, and the church was lost simply because we took the world's ideas, forced people into a church, made them a part of it, tried to assimilate that trash into the church. I can tell you that flesh, that religious flesh that sits in a church on a Sunday morning is only an extension of that sodomite community. It is no better in the sight of God. All of it outside of Christ is a perversion. He killed people for adultery just like he did for homosexuality. Because whatever is not God's order is perversion. That's the whole, you know, the war. If we, the overcomers of this end time do not rise up to the occasion, there will be no tomorrow. There's always that remnant, and I have a feeling that there's a mighty good part of it in this place that come, that are hungry, that are reaching out. Amen. The hungry would have left. The people not hungry would have left. They said, I don't have to listen to this. Of course you don't. Amen. You don't have to. I told you about my dentist. He said, no, you don't have to flush all your teeth just the one you want to keep. Amen. Just do whatever you want to. You don't have to do nothing. You can reject the gospel, believe none of it. That's your prerogative. But the consequence, life, is just living with the consequence of your action. That's sure, true, spiritually. Amen. If you make your decision, we don't rise up. We must know this is war. Jesus said, I give you a kingdom even as my Father gave me a kingdom. That's not a different kingdom. All He's saying, you will have to set the boundaries of that kingdom. There will not be a millennium until He comes back with us. He'll put the devil in a pit at that time. But here and now, He'll give me a kingdom, give you a kingdom. And He said, you've got to set the boundaries just like Jesus did. He said to the devil, this is the kingdom and there's no place here for sin, sickness, fear, and devils. No pigs in this parlor. There's nothing in here that don't belong here. And He said, I'll give you a kingdom. I'll give it to you. But you're going to have to establish the boundary. It's a warfare. Hell isn't going to leave the Republic because you got saved to become a preacher. The closer you get to God, the more you're going to draw the powers of darkness against you. It gets meaner all the time because Hell has no antagonism but a real church of the living God. He knows the two of them cannot go together. It's either Himself or that church. Gaddafi, the head of Libya, said three or four years ago, I fear one thing and one thing only, that that sleeping giant called a church might wake up. Oh, God, awake that church. One more time, awake that church. Amen. God has given us power over the enemy, but we must set the bounds. I said we must set the bounds of that kingdom. You and I have to set the bounds. You know war, I know this is a strange statement, but I'll clarify it. War is the noblest thing in the world if it's the right kind of a war. I said if it's the right kind of a war. Christ gives us the example of overcoming saints in the past. No guesswork. We make them, we look at them, we decide, but God gives us the example of those overcoming saints. I'm going to quit soon as I get through here. Amen. I've just got to... But God gives us that overcoming, that saint. We've heard what's got to be dealt with for that saint to come there. That temple has got to be cleaned. I am the temple. Amen. You and I, He doesn't live in a house made with wood and brick, but He lives in me. I have become the Holy of Holies. If the world sees God, they're going to see that God in me. And I, to overcome, is to manifest this life through my life in the night that we'll live in. Now, Christ, the captain of our salvation, was one of the greatest warriors that ever lived. He walked this earth. He took no sword, but He won the war at Calvary. Amen. He brought a victory, but that victory must be enforced in every generation of that church. That victory is as certain as Calvary, but it must be enforced. We must stand up. The devil doesn't leave. We've not educated him out of his evil. We've not converted him. He's the same. He's just become more artful in his deception and in his working with us. And we must rise up to the same occasion. Paul was a soldier. All of this, I'm just telling you, who must rise up, that what an overcoming saint really is. We have examples of it. How wonderful it is that God not only showed us what Pentecost was, but He gave us an example in the Bible of a church full of Pentecost and lets us know that if we'll return there, then the same thing will happen. If we will just return to back to what we are, back to our roots, back to the basics, just simple become the vessel of God that He can pour Himself through to a world. Paul was a soldier from the hour of his conversion. So was every true convert. There's a trinity of evil as well as good. The devil, the world, and the flesh, all the battalions of evil are ranked in that right there, all of them. Principalities, powers, wicked spirits in high places, rulers of the darkness, four battalions of evil, all working through that world, the flesh, the devil, that whole trinity of evil. There's a trinity. Paul fought them all. The Bible said, The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. That's not the physical violence of a world, but men that lay hold of God in an author and say, I'll not let you go until you bless me. You must come on this thing. Every revelation ever come to a human came out of a practical situation. We Pentecostals talk about heavenly ground. That's when we're there in those goose bumps and hot and cold flashes. I'll tell you heavenly ground is when you've got a red sea in front of you, mountains on both sides, Pharaoh's army behind you, and if God don't come, there won't be a live Jew in the morning. That's heavenly ground. That's where revelations come. That's where the warfare is won or lost. When we stand up to face hell, no matter what it looks like, I have given you power over all the power of the enemy. When we begin to see and to recognize, listen, Christ fought Satan with the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, and we must use the same. But he said, No weapon formed against you will prosper. Greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world. There's no city we can't go, no country we can't invade, no devil we can't cast out, no sickness we can't heal if we go in the power of the Spirit of God. If we move with God, there's absolutely nothing that can stand before that church. It is terrible as an army with banners. It is the most frightening thing to a world. That's the reason they're always screwing it down, pushing it out. They're frightened at the thought that it might stand up again because once it does, then it's over with for that world, no matter where they've led men. The Wesleyan revival saved the rest of Europe from the fate of the French Revolution because it turned men's thoughts to eternity. My God, did He do it again! And all He awaits is a vessel through which that can come. That's all He awaits, is that vessel. Christ was full of the Holy Spirit. Paul was so full that he said, I keep my body under subjection. That's the only people that overcome. If you walk in the Spirit, you will overcome. The opposite of that, though it isn't said, is certainly true. If you don't, you won't. If you don't walk in the Spirit of God, then you're going to walk in the flesh, and hell is going to have a field day with our life. Courage, endurance, discipline, loyalty are the essentials of a soldier. Paul was a master of them all because it was not Paul, but Christ had died and lived in and through him. He was a dead man on a furlough. The world don't know what to do with such people. Amen. They're dead before they get there. Christ was crucified before the foundation of the world, and for 33 years, every step moved toward Calvary. There was nothing they could do about Him. The Apostle, when they said, please don't go to Jerusalem, they're going to bind you. He said, why break my heart? I'm not only willing to be bound, but to die if that's what's necessary. Give us ten such men. Wesley said, give me ten men that fear nothing but God, hate nothing but sin, and I'll change the way this world is. Evidently, the little man found that. I read a man's testimony. He said, Whitefield was the orator, but he said, Wesley, both of them were, I'm sure, but to him, he said, Wesley was a man of power. He said, when Wesley, I sat with over 10,000 people in an open field, on the slopes, and he said, first time I ever heard him, and said, he walked, he was a little man, according to the testimony, and said, when he stepped to the pulpit, he pushed the hair behind his ear, and for the next three hours, he talked to nobody but me. Nobody but me. Oh, no. Listen. That is the key to our change in this world. Not Sunday morning Christians. Not folks that want to share their miserable life with God an hour and a half on a Sunday. No, no. It's the people who are dead. I said, who are dead. Amen. Amen. In the midst of multitudes of fiery and bloodthirsty fanatics, he, like his master, remained calm and undismayed. Amen. Nothing frustrated him. He stood unabashed in the presence of kings and potentates, poured out his eloquent logic in the defense of Christianity, stoned almost to death, he rose up to preach. Amen. Arms broke, no question. He could fiercely face Festus, though his prison chains clanked by his side. He could manfully demand of the magistrates of Philippi when they dare scourge a Roman citizen. He was a man. He was a soldier. And he is an example of what God wants in this 21st century. Give us five or ten men like that and I will turn to God. Nothing can stand before such. A man sent from God is the answer to everything in this hour. God has never needed anything but a man, and that man has never needed anything but God. It's when we go to take on the accessories that we begin to lose out. We become dependent upon this or upon that. But one thing we need, and that one thing is God. A more fearless warrior never lived than the apostle Paul. That is to say, a man more like its master, the Lord Jesus. Amen. Joseph of the Old Testament and Paul of the New were the closest of type to the Savior that we walk with. Amen. Of the Jews, Paul said five times, received our forty stripes, save one. Thrice was I beat with rods, once I was stoned. Thrice I suffered shipwreck. A night and a day I've been in the deep. And journeys often, perils of water, perils of robber, perils of my own countrymen, perils by the heathen, perils in the city, perils in the wilderness, perils in the sea, perils of false brotherhood, weariness, painfulness, watching, hunger, thirst, fasting, often cold, naked, but I fought on. I kept the faith. Hallelujah to God. I fought a battle. I kept the faith. You know what he said? I remained a Christian. For all the years you left me, demons walked away from me, Mark broke down on me, but I kept on walking. I kept the faith. When it was all over, he was a Christian. I was in Rome the first time. The only real thing, there was a prison where they kept this man of God. Everything else, amen, a dungeon was carved out of rock. Now there's electric light in there. I went down in there. I had my young son with me at that time, 17 years old. We'd been in Africa for five weeks. We'd just come out around, and we went in there, and up above, amen, up above one place, there was around one of those iron masts to the street above. You know, there was a hole, and they had an iron grating. Only light that could have come when Paul was there. I took my young son. Now he's a businessman, a wonderful man, a real man of God. But I brought him. I said, I want you to sit there, son. He said, Why do you want me to sit there, Papa? I said, Son, that's the only place that he could have sat and wrote I and II Timothy. I said, There ain't no light in this awful hole, amen, but right there. I said, Just sit there. I just sat there where the man of God sat. We went outside. The man that kept that place. I said to him, Do you know where they executed Paul? I said, Nobody probably knows, but what did they say about the legend? And he said, Well, it took me around the back. He said, It was right here. And he said, Why do you want to know? I said, Do you know when they brought him out here? They wanted to tie his hands, and they wanted to blindfold him. And he said, Please, just leave my hands alone. Put no blinder on me. You know, legend says that they had to change guards every four or five hours, because men were being saved. Put Christ in that cell when they put that man there. Amen. And they're getting saved. And now, there's great sympathy for him. And they said to him, So we just want to make it easier for him. Oh, no, he said. Legend said, He said, Before the blood was dripping, I'll be home with him that sent me. He wrote Timothy and said, I'm fought the battle to this place. I've been spit on the last time. Nobody's going to stone me again. This is the last prison. I've just got my ticket. I'm heading out of here, son. I'm going home. God, give us ten such people, and this city will turn to God. Isn't that going to turn by passive, indifferent Christians? Amen. That everything's got to be just right for them. Like his master, he suffered everything, flinched at nothing. Obedient to conscious truth of God was a lodestar from which he turned neither right nor left. Whether you stayed or didn't stay had nothing to do with what he preached or what he said. Amen. One Sunday morning, I'm preaching. I'm preaching. I was younger then. I could jump over that poor pit. Amen. I've learned that I don't have to run. I can just shake a little, get the same results, save the energy for preaching. That morning I was preaching. Oh, I'm telling you, I was coming down. I was coming down the line, amen, preaching just a hundred miles an hour in that church and just walked down the aisle. And the lady and her husband sitting like my dear friend Nick, only the wife was on the outside. And when I come by her, I just said to her, you're going to live and not die. I said, why did I say that? Amen. But I kept on preaching. Amen. But that morning, what I wanted to tell you, after all of that, amen, that morning, unbeknownst to me, they organized it right in the middle of that preaching. Sixty people got up, just stood up and walked like a herd of turtles, I mean. It took ten minutes to get out of that church, amen, as they strolled out there bringing all the effect. I've died a thousand deaths, but I never quit preaching. I said I never quit preaching. I just kept on preaching. Amen. Some months later, some of them began to drift back, but I met them at the door. I said, let me tell you something, sir. The same devil you thought was here when you left is still here. They have nothing changed. Amen. Not the message, not the way we do it. We'll take the offering up as usual. We'll give it what we want to give it, and nothing has changed. Listen. He moved at nothing. He was fearless, but he wasn't a product of flesh. For I know that in me, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. For if the will is present with me, but how to perform, I don't know. Paul's ability to stand was because of his total commitment to the Lord Jesus through and by the Holy Ghost. I can do all things through Christ that's strengthened of me. According to Philippians 3, 16 and 20, our ability to be, our strength to do, is and by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Listen to it. That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what's breadth, length, depth, height, and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. Now unto him that's able to do exceeding, abundant, above all we ask, I think, according to what? The power that works within us. Hallelujah. By the power that worked in him, Paul conquered himself, and the word of command from heaven was enough for him. Amen. Nothing else. Just God speak. That's all. Grace had sharpened his intellect, rectified his judgment, made him as wise in his moral strategy as he was fearless in the fight, never did a soldier make fewer mistakes or execute a wiser campaign that simply put says, never was a man more like Jesus. And that's where God wants us to come. May God's Son alive. Hell is in trouble. Let us stand. My God, help us. Oh, my God. Oh, my God, in the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus. Oh, that one more time the church would become the church. Just one more time Christ would become alive. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Hallelujah. You know, in the midst of all that confusion that morning, 60 people, about a third of the congregation at that time, had maybe a little over 200 people. I said, in the midst of all of that, I just kept preaching. I come down to the house. And I said to that lady, you'll live and not die. The enemy, you know, said, you confused all this mess going on here. Why'd you say that? Well, they didn't know what went on. They didn't know the people had come. But I was at the back door when they're leaving, you know, just barely able to be there. It was all tapping to me inside, you know. But she come out. She's still weeping. And I said, ma'am, I spoke to you this morning. She said, I know. I said, Friday evening. I was in the diagnostic clinic in Houston, Texas. The doctor came in our room and said to me and my husband, he said, I'm sorry to tell you, 30 days from now she'll not be alive. He said, her disease is so we can do nothing. He said, I don't think she'll live a week, but the longest she'll live be 30 days. And he said, I'll leave you with that. He said, when they left, he said, my husband was weeping, of course. But he said, I said to him, honey, I saw a television program of a church in Beaumont, Texas. I believe if we can get there, it'll be all right. Hell knew what that church was. That's that organization. Hell knew what that church was. I never saw her for six months as well as anybody I ever seen. You see, when that world says, that woman said, if I can just touch him, the doctors got all my money, and I'm not talking against them, but they couldn't help her. There comes a limit. Said, but if I can touch him, when that church says, if I can just get to that Forest Side Church, if I can just get there, if I can just get to Pastor Nick and his congregation, that's the testimony.