In this sermon, the preacher focuses on the scripture from Zechariah chapter 4 verses 1-6. The angel in the scripture tells Zechariah that what he sees cannot be accomplished by human power or might, but only by the spirit of God. The preacher emphasizes that the church is the body of Christ, joined together by one spirit. He explains that the church should not be a religious machine, but a glorious church that operates by the power of the Holy Spirit. The preacher also mentions the importance of discerning between religious fantasy and the true vision of God.

Wishing of this message, Forging the Vessel of Recovery. And what we've been saying is, that when God reacts against the backsliding and the loss in His people, He always reacts with a new beginning, with a vessel forged out of whatever He ever has at hand. You find in the Bible, there's always a remnant that God starts over with. You can't read the Bible without being impressed with what the Bible calls remnants. They are the harbinger of a new beginning. God is always, when things got out of hand, reacted with a vessel. And I've been talking to you about that vessel. Yesterday, the features of that vessel, showing that that vessel, those that'll be a part of that vessel, are not going to be a part of the spiritual situation that's taking place in that age. Not going to be a part of the backsliding. They're going to be against that. We use the life of Samuel in demonstrating that. Showing that he had a personal life with God. He knew the voice of God personally. God didn't call Eli to go down there and tell him what he wanted to know. He talked to Samuel personally. He had a personal life with God. And if you're going to be a part of that vessel, you also are going to have such a life with God. You're going to know the voice of God for yourself. You're going to have a prayer life. There's going to be a steadfastness in you built upon a New Testament basis. If you're going to be a part of that. So we come this morning to this thought, that it is a vessel of glory. That vessel that he's going to use will be a vessel of glory. I want to read, first of all, in the book of Ephesians. Chapter 5 and verse 27. A vessel of glory. That he might present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. Talking about this vessel. Talking about what God is going to use in the clothes of this age. Now I want to read again the scriptures we've been reading in the book of Zechariah. Chapter 4, verses 1 through 4. 1 through 6. Zechariah chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. And the angel that talked with me came again, waking me as a man that is wakened out of his sleep and said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, I have looked, and behold a candlestick all of gold, with a bowl upon the top of it, and his seven lamps stands thereon, and seven pipes to the seven lamps which are upon the top thereof. And two olive trees bind one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other on the left side thereof. So I answered and spake to the angel that talked with me, saying, What are these, my Lord? Then the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my Lord. And he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the Lord, unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. A glorious church. That's what Paul said that he's going to present to himself. Not a wore out, broke down religious machine that's run out of gas, struggling to outrun the devil, give out, run out, trying to find some gimmick to keep people interested in it. No, no. I didn't want him coming after it all. He's coming after a glorious church, a victorious church, a church that's weathered the storm, rolls on top of it, may be bruised and battered, but not from running from hell, but from storm and the bastions of darkness. Thank God, the church full of God, an organism living, a glorious church, a church with God's glory in it, but more than that, a church that can be glorified. Oh, we need to know that. Not everything around here can be glorified. Jesus came with the only kind of humanity that can be glorified. He came as the firstborn of a new race, representing the only thing that can be glorified. And when Paul talks about a glorious church, he's talking about a church that can be glorified. Now, the church born at Pentecost is representative. That is the pattern. It is representative. That church born at Pentecost had certain features about it. Number one, it was full-grown. That didn't come into the world with two gifts hoping to get seven more. No, just like Adam. When Adam came from the hand of God, he wasn't a little baby that's going to grow up and be a grown man. He came from the hand of God with the sharpest intellect this world's ever known anything about, totally grown, needed to go to no university, named every animal, everything that God made, knew what he knew when he was born. Or when he came from the hand of God. Well, so was the church born at Pentecost. It is born full-grown. Second, she well understood her purpose for being. That church knew why it was here. It knew that it wasn't here as a debating society about religious matters, but here as the vessel of the Lord demonstrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ to be a reality wherever that church was, men knew that Jesus Christ was alive. They knew the corn of wheat had fell into the ground and died. They came out of that upper room with the same spirit, the same power that he had. They came out. They gave all. Jesus didn't come to give. He came to give. I know, folks, listen, I know and I say it without reservation that God doesn't care that you possess something, but he does care if something possesses you. Now, I want to tell you what I do believe. I believe you can carry that to an extreme. I do not believe that I have a right to live in opulence while 3,000 million people live that never heard the name of Jesus. John Wesley said to his workers that if I die having more than 10 pounds on me, then you can know I've lived as a thief and a robber. And when he died, all he left this world was three pounds and the Methodist church. All I'm saying to you is, ladies and gentlemen, we're here to spend and be spent, to spend and be spent. That church knew why it was here. It wasn't here to accumulate the world's wealth. It was here to give the world what it didn't have, the Lord Jesus Christ. She knew why she was here. She came full grown. And third, the fruit of the Spirit was evident in her life. They took knowledge that she had been with Jesus. Now, the church that he raptures, glorifies, will be no less than the church born at Pentecost. If you think he's coming after something less than that, you're wrong. He said in the Gospel of Matthew, upon this rock, I'll build my church. Look at that church born on the day of Pentecost. And he said, I'll build my church. If he comes back for less than he started with, then he lost, he failed in what he said he would do. No, he's not coming after just a religious debating society. He's coming after a living organism making Christ real wherever it's planted. The church will be held accountable for every gift and grace given her in the beginning. Do you believe that? Say hallelujah. That church will be held accountable to God when she is born on the day of Pentecost, every gift of the Holy Ghost was in her and operative. No, they didn't have no schools around teaching them how to discern spirits or to talk in tongues or to work miracles. I was in Ohio, and a man told me this many years ago. That's when that leg-stretching deal first got started. They wanted to teach me how to work that miracle. I said, oh, brother, I'm not interested in that. Teach me how to open blind eyes. I've watched that kind of a gimmick. I know God lengthens legs, but I'd watch Him sit there and discern that somebody had one leg an inch shorter than the other. One man told me, he said, you, I see, have got one leg an inch shorter than the other. I said, something's wrong with your brain. If I have a leg an inch shorter than the other, it looks like I'm walking on a railroad track with one leg. You can't have a leg an inch shorter than the other without knowing it. But I watched them. When the fellow came by with a built-up shoe, they said, we'll deal with you later. Deal with you later nothing. If you're going to stretch your leg out, pull on one that's really short. And he said to me, I want to teach you how to do this. I said, no, teach me how to open a blind eye. I'm not interested in playing around with folks' legs. I said, in the first place, I can't stretch it out. If I put my hand on their head and Jesus lengthens the leg, they don't need me pulling on the leg. And if He don't, my pulling on it isn't going to make any difference. I'm saying to you, that church knew where it was, where it was going, and it was born that day with all the gifts of God. And the church that He raptures, glorifies, is going to be held accountable for every gift. Let me read you some Scripture in the book of Ezra. Now, I want to give you a little backdrop while you turn to the 8th chapter of Ezra. Ezra lived at a time when Israel was going back home. Now, when Nebuchadnezzar sacked Israel, sacked Jerusalem, he took those vessels of the Lord, those golden vessels, those spoons, and all of the vessels in there that represented the believer. They were tied up of the believer. You see, they were that which contained the blessings of God. And when Nebuchadnezzar sacked that place, he took all of those golden vessels of that temple, took them 1,200 miles away to Babylon. But the Holy Ghost, listen to me, looked over those vessels all of the years of that captivity that not one spoon was lost. Oh, hallelujah! I want to tell you, the kingdom of heaven still stands sure. God does know what vessel it is. The Holy Ghost watched over those vessels during all that captivity. And not one spoon, not one fork, not one vessel was lost. Now, Ezra has the awesome task of taking those vessels back to the temple in Jerusalem. He took those priests and he told the king of Babylon, he said, God will protect us, look over us. They got across a banded infested world to get back there. The chances of being robbed was about 25 to 1 that this was going to happen to them. But Ezra said, now, folks, we can't call on the king to protect us because I told him God would look after us. So they called a fast. And when they got the fast behind them, asked God to keep them, brought those priests up, loaded them down. He weighed them in first of all, put those vessels on their body, and said, when you get to Jerusalem, you're going to be weighed again and you better not lose a spoon on the way. You better not lose a spoon on the way. Listen to it here in the 8th chapter of this great book of Ezra, verses 24 through 29. And I separated 12 of the chief of the priests, Shabiah and Hashabiah, and 10 of the brethren with them, and weighed unto them the silver, the gold, and the vessels, even the offerings of the house of our God, which the king and his counsellors and his lords and all Israel our president offered. I even weighed unto their hands 650 talents of silver, vessels, and 100 talents, and of gold, 100 talents. I also 20 basins of gold of a thousand grams, 2 vessels of fine copper, precious gold, and I said to them, You are holy unto the Lord. The vessels are holy also. The silver and gold are free will offerings of the Lord God of your fathers. Watch you and keep them until you weigh them before the chief priests and Levites and chief of the fathers of Israel and Jerusalem in the chambers of the house of God. You hold on to them. Don't you lose a thing. You're weighed now. You're going to be weighed there. That church was weighed in on the day of Pentecost. Every gift, every grace of God was there. And when she stands on the scale of the judgment seat of Christ, every gift will have to be accounted for. Every gift, every grace, everything. Let me tell you something, ladies and gentlemen. This isn't a game we play. I said this isn't a game we play. We deal with serious matters. That church needed it all. It's going to give account to God for everything it had. There will be no excuses laid at Him that day as to why we didn't do the job. That church will be held responsible for every gift. Israel had so mixed with a heathen until the only way you could tell the difference was by their birth certificate. Listen, like Israel in the eyes of God, the church is in a wilderness filled with evil whose only purpose is to destroy and rob her of the thing that God has given her. That's the purpose of this world, to take away from us the thing that God has given us. To rob us of the gifts and the graces that make us effective. The only effectiveness we have. Well, Israel was there. Like Israel, though, in Ezra's day, the church is in a wilderness mixed with a heathen until the only way you could tell the difference between Israel and the heathen was a birth certificate. Look at this. In Ezra chapter 9, just verse 1. And when these things were done, the princes came to me saying, the people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the people of the land due and according to their abominations even of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jephthites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, and the Amorites. They've taken their daughters for themselves, given them, listen to it, for their sons, so that the Holy See to mingle themselves with the people of these lands. Yea, the hand of the princes and rulers have been sheathed from this trespass. And when I heard this, I rent my garment and my mantle, plucked off the hair of my head and my beard, and sat down astonished. Thank God the day you listen to television and they rejoice because we look like the world. They rejoice because we run with the world. They think it's a wonderful thing to sit down with a hodgepodge politician they don't know who he belongs to, yet talks in tongues and still lives like the devil. Amen. You've got rock and rollers trained to be filled with the Holy Ghost, singing in Las Vegas all week in some church on a Sunday, and we act like it's great. Let me tell you, Ezra pulled his hair out when he heard that he couldn't tell a difference between who's God and who's not God. Amen. They're so mixed and mingled with the heathen that the only way you can tell is Christians are totally Israelites was by their birth certificate. The church is filled with adherents whose only claim to salvation is a baptismal certificate. Are you a Christian? Why, let me look back through my stuff. I've got a certificate to show you I am. I was in Africa the last time I was there last year or this year, February of this year rather, and the brethren were having an argument, 500 preachers that I had there, 500 churches across that great country, and they wanted to talk to me of some questions that had come up. The superintendent, a wonderful man, and when we got together one of the questions was, I said, a lot of the preachers want to wear clerical garb, a collar backwards and a coat, black coat, so they'll be recognized as clerical. What do you think about it? I said, ladies and gentlemen, if they want to claim you've got to be a preacher as a collar backer, for God's sake, go pick up some other profession. If that's the only way they know you belong to God, then you don't belong anyway. Amen. The Bible said you'll be a witness after the Holy Ghost has come upon you. Use the same language used about the tabernacle and the witness. Well, this Stephen said he was a tabernacle witness. Couldn't dance, couldn't shout, couldn't talk, but every heathen knew God lived on the inside of it. Every heathen. It is what's in us that matters, not what kind of vesture we put on on the outside. Like the priests of Ezra's day, the church also will be weighed in at the judgment of Christ, and will give an account for everything she began with, ladies and gentlemen. We'd better get ready. Listen. The Bible makes it plain that the church must be awakened. Must be awakened. It's asleep to what's going on spiritually. For the most part, people are rejoicing over things that ought not to be even in the church of the living God. In this fourth chapter of the book of Zechariah, that I read to you, it said he waked me as a man out of a deep sleep. Isn't that what he said? He waked me. Listen. Zerubbabel is awakened out of a spiritual stupor. He's caught up in the religious hodgepodge of his day, and he thought everything was well. He looked at all of the splendor, of the robes, the priests, the altar, the temple, and he thought everything was wonderful with it all in place. But the angel waked him. He's a very, very religious man, but he's dead to the spiritual world. Dead to it. Because of his religious background and tradition, Zerubbabel presumed that God was like what he saw. Because he was religious, what he saw in that priesthood, in that temple, he believed that's what God was like. Amen. Now, because of the existing system, Zerubbabel thought that God was a form, a system, that could be promoted and sold in the marketplace. Oh, I want that to sink into you. You can't package Jesus. You can't sell Him like soap. He's not a system. He's a living person that must be known, met, and known. But Zerubbabel, like today, because he looked at that system of religion, he thought God was like that. He thought God was a form, God was a sacrament, that God was a system that could be packaged and sold and doled out to the people. He actually come to believe that until the angel waked him out of that sleep. Listen, this is a great transgression that the vessel of recovery must be delivered from. The Neo-Pentecostal today must be delivered. The great transgression. You ever read in the book of Psalms where David said, Deliver me from presumptuous sin. Don't let them have dominion over me and thus will I be delivered from the great transgression. Zerubbabel looked at that system and thought that's what God was like. He presumed that that's what God is like. Never bothered to probe in, pray through, and to know. Today you've got God presented. One of the biggest ministries in this country today saw an angel that told him to open up his hospital to the poor and now he's sending out a statue of the angel that he saw. And that's supposed to be your point of contact. I've been saying the Catholics is wrong doing that ever since I've been a Christian. The Bible says you don't have anything before you as an image of what's in heaven or in earth. Let me tell you something, ladies and gentlemen, you just presume about God and that's a great transgression. I don't have any right on this earth to presume something about God. All I can know about God is what's in this Bible and what I see in the Lord Jesus Christ. And to presume that God is something, to presume that God is something, then act like that's so. We presume that God's mercy outweighs His justice, or that His love outweighs His justice. You're lying to yourself. Amen. Your grandma, if she's not saved, is going to go to hell. It don't make any difference how kind she's been or how much you love her. God does not allow you and I to dream in our mind what He's like. The essence of idolatry is what a lot of stuff is being said about God today. Men lay awake at night dreaming up and saying, God told me something. And what God told them is an absolute opposite of what the Bible says about God. I was holding a meeting for a preacher many years ago. He had been married before and he left his wife. I didn't know why. I didn't bother. I didn't know what was going on. He had left his wife. Then he had married a woman that was a preacher but had never been married. Never been married. Well, come that whole revival, those days you always stayed in the Parsonage or Sunday School room with no holiday inns for you to be in always one or the other. And I was there every night at the church. They'd say to me, you know, they'd bring up about their marriage. I'd tell them they were worried about it. They'd bring it up to me. He'd say, well, I'll tell you, I know you don't believe that we're right with God. I said, you don't know what I believe. I'm not sending you doing all the talking. Well, I know. And every night, same thing, same thing. And so I'd come in this night. We'd had a service, a long one. I was weary of two services a day. And we're sitting there eating a sandwich and here it come again. She said to me, I want to tell you something, Brother Clinton, and we fasted and prayed many days and weeks before we got married. I said, well, I'm going to tell you something. I don't know what your problem is. You keep throwing at me. But I can tell you one thing. You can fast and pray till you drop dead. If this book don't give you a right to be where you are, then you're wrong where you are. Till you fall dead, it ain't going to change nothing about this book. And for you to presume that you can change God in what is wrote in this book is a great transgression. That's the one thing the vessel I've recovered is going to have to be delivered from. I must be governed by what He says, whether that parishioner likes it or not. Whether the rest of the church world likes it or not. I must be governed by God. The Neo-Pentecostal Church today, instead of introducing the world to the person of Christ, sells the world a system of principles and beliefs. You want to get God to bless you? Then here it is. Success seminars are being held all over this country. You just put these principles into operation. Seed faith. Abundant life. All of this is something you seek after instead of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me tell you, the Bible says, and you hear me real close this morning, because some of you are going to leave out here mad at me maybe, but you listen to me real close, so there's basis for you being mad. The Bible said, He that hath the Son hath life. L-I-F-E He that hath not the Son hath not life. You don't seek after abundant life. You get the Lord Jesus Christ and you've got the only source of life there is. He is the abundant life and I want to say to you that you don't need to go through any kind of religious form or ritual. All you need to do is find Jesus. He's the answer. The blind man in the ninth chapter of Mark found Jesus, got his eyes healed. He couldn't explain to them the theology of a sinner, God talking to a sinner. He said, I don't know whether God heals a sinner or not, but there's one thing I know. I said, you're all my life blind. Your religious system couldn't heal me, but a man came by and made me whole. He found Jesus. I said he found Jesus. Oh, listen folks. The church today is promoting a system of principles and beliefs. Amen. Instead of the person of Christ, everything in this book leads to Christ. The law was a schoolmaster leading to Christ. Amen. Once you've found Christ, you've found the sum and the total of everything that God has to offer. Once you've found Him, you preach sanctification in any other vein except it be a person, and you're going to split the church. There's folks who'll fight you over being sanctified entirely. Amen. They'll almost murder to prove to you that they're sanctified instantaneously. But it all comes out of making it something mechanical, a system. But Paul, writing in 1 Corinthians 1 and 30, said God had made him, that is, Jesus, to be under a sanctification. When you sanctified, you found a person. Amen. You found a person. Listen. Thus Christianity, for the most part, has been reduced to a cult. Anything you run across in this world, ladies and gentlemen, that has anything for its center apart from Jesus Christ is a cult. You go to the church of Christ, they've got it all centered in the water baptism. It ain't in the water baptism. When Simeon stood there that day in the second chapter of Luke and said, with Jesus in his arms, he said, Let thy servant depart in peace, for I've seen your salvation. He never saw a church system. He never saw the communion. He never saw a water pool. He saw a person. It's been a person. It is a person. It is a relationship between me and the living Christ that constitutes salvation and whatever else is the center makes it a cult. If Jesus isn't the center of it all, then it's wrong. Listen. Christ has been reduced to a religious leader. He's no longer the way, but like Buddha, they've made him just come to show the way. You know the national anthem? Amen. It doesn't have any power, but it inspires the Queen of England. She don't have any real political power. That's all vested in Ms. Thacker and the Parliament. She is just there as something to inspire, an emblem. That's all Christ is in this rotten world we live in. He just comes in to the board meeting and the boards say, God bless this. Jesus bless us. Now you get out of the way and we'll take care of the business. And I'll tell you one thing, ladies and gentlemen, in that vessel of recovery God sought in this world, He will be front and center. He's become not much more than a religious leader. Come to point up what you'll do. He didn't do that, though. He's the way. What seest thou? When he awakened, the question was, What seest thou? Oh, listen. This was a question the angel asked Zerubbabel in that first verse after he awakened him. What seest thou? What you see when looking through religious fantasy and presumption and what you see when looking through the eyes of God may very well be different. What you see looking through all of the religious fantasy of today, when folks are running around with angels hanging on to airplane wings everywhere you go. Listen, I believe in angels. Oh, yes, sir. But I'll tell you one thing. There's a lot of hoax connected with it today. Oh, people everywhere fantasizing, you know, just laying, dreaming up notions about what it's all about. What you see when looking through those dreamy eyes of religious fanaticism and fantasy and presumption may very well be different. What you see when those eyes open and you look through the eyes of the Holy Ghost, Zerubbabel looking through the eyes of religious tradition saw the temple, the priest, the religious dress and splendor, the sacrifice, etc., and really believed the revival was on. Isn't that beautiful? I'll tell you, when that organ come on like it did, and that priest come out there in that garb, didn't them cold shields run up and down your back? I've been through all of that religious ghostism, brother, in meetings. Now, listen, every one of you bow your head now and the organs are coming it down, you know, just like one of them horror movies. I'm going to cast this devil out. Amen. I can't be responsible for you now. You bow your head. You close your eye. The shield bumps are going up and down the back. Ain't no telling what's going on here. Amen. I don't bow my head and close my eye as enough demons in Greensburg getting every one of you. Don't get on that freeway and close your eye. That ain't what keeps the devil out. I said another thing, if I've got enough power to get the devil out of you, I've got enough power to tell the devil where to go. Amen. Jesus said, go back where you come from. I ain't going to let him get in somebody else. Old brother Aaron Wilson built that great church in Kansas City. One of the great, great assemblies of God's churches started down in the stockyard. One day it was in the post office and the mayor of Kansas City was there and saw, brother Aaron came to him and said, brother Wilson, there's something I believe you need to know. I was down close to that building, the stockyard where you have in church and said, I heard some of the awfulest groans coming out of there. Said as if somebody was dying and said, I just wondered if you was aware of what's going on and if you were, what in the name of God is happening? He said, Mayor, that's the greatest sounds in your city. That's the groans that can't be uttered coming out of saints that are dead to themselves and pleading for your city. The old man pastor retired at 80 years old the sword cleaved to his hand couldn't lay it down went to Springfield started another church 84 years old. Went to a tent meeting and the young man in there in the tent meeting going to cast the cold devil out of some woman said, everybody bow your head now I'm going to run this devil out and don't want him getting you. Everybody bowed their head but brother Wilson just sitting up there bowled up right like a post. He didn't know who he was and the young man said, old man I'm talking to you you hear me old man? Yeah I hear you son what do you want? Said, I'm going to run this devil out of this woman I want you to bow your head. He said, let me tell you something son you run him by me here. I've been battling that joker for 60 years just run him on by. He ain't going to get me. Oh thank God I believe that folks. I said, that's what I believe about it. Amen. I'm not interested in any religious spook shows. I'm telling you Jesus is endless. He's more powerful than anything that we're going to face and all of this hocus pocus doesn't mean there's a revival on. Moderns, irrevocables see in the mechanical Pentecost pretended miracles in their unwakened state believe that they're witnessing the great power of God. Having never seen the gold they shout over the brass. Those shields were gold until they got stole. Then they put brass in there. And having never seen the gold they shout over the brass. The tragedy is only a handful escape the deception. The rest dance around the newest golden calf. I said, only a handful escape the deception. The rest of them do their dancing around the golden calf. Naked. That doesn't mean the clothes are off of them like Israel. But naked as far as the righteousness of God is concerned. Listen here though. He said, what seest thou? And he said, a candlestick all of gold. A candlestick all of gold. All through enlightened eyes he saw the real church. When those eyes were open. You know candlestick is a church. That's a church. You read that. In the book of Revelation. That candlestick. It isn't like that candelabra you have in your house. No, no. It held the oil. It was what the oil flowed through. I've been telling you every day that that's what we are. The Holy Ghost poured out from heaven. It isn't poured out on Greensboro. It's poured out on believers and through believers to the world. It fell on 120 at Pentecost. It didn't fall on the whole city. It had to flow through that 120 to the crippled man at the gate. He didn't even know it had fell until Peter came through the gate the next day and says, I've got something yesterday I want to give to you today. Amen. He saw a candlestick. That's a church. When his eyes were open. What do you see? I see the church. What kind of a church? He said, I ain't just seeing backslidden priests offering lambs without any heart or anything more. I see a candlestick all of gold. You know, gold in the Bible is divine. That's God. He's saying, I see a church all of God. Lord, have mercy. He's seeing the end of this. What did Paul say? I present it to himself. He presented to himself a glorious church without spot, without wrinkle, without any such thing. Thank God, he said. He said, I see a church like that. That's what Zerubbabel saw seven or eight hundred years before Christ when he got awake. He saw a church all of God from the natural side. Zerubbabel saw what God had with enlightened eyes. He saw what God wanted. And there was such a discrepancy, such a gap between the two of them. He didn't really see how all of it could take place. The angel said, Do you know what you see? And he said, Oh, no, sir. I don't know what I'm looking at. He said, Well, I'll tell you one thing. What you see isn't done by power. It isn't done by might. It can only be done by the Spirit of the living God. A candlestick, all, listen, a candlestick, all of gold. Hallelujah. Listen, God bridged the gap with that by my Spirit, sayeth the Lord. I want to tell you something. The Church is Christ. That startles a lot of minds. Amen. The Bible said, We are the body, He is the head, joined by one Spirit. Joined by one Spirit. You see the real Church, you see Christ. You see Christ, you see what the Church is. The whole, some, and total. Amen. The sum and the total. As He was in this world, so are we. Hebrews 10 and 7 says, or 7 and 10, 10 and 7 I believe it is, said, Lord, it is written in the volume of the book, I came to do thy will, O God. The Bible says, He came to destroy the works of the devil. Then again the Bible said, How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth, who went about doing good, healing all, A-double-L, that were oppressed of the devil. I come to do thy will. That is the will of God, that Christ destroyed the works of the devil. As my Father sent me, so send I you, Church. As my Father sent me to destroy the works of the devil, I send you to destroy the works of the devil. My Father wants to anoint you, that you go about doing good, healing all, that are oppressed of the devil, because God is with you. The Church is Christ, as He was in this world, so are we. Now knowing that, listen, hanging on to that, we've got to see something. Hanging on to that, the Church is Christ. Now the Church is the Body of Christ, then should demonstrate Christ alive in every place. Everybody please let's say Amen. I was in Capernaum years ago, had about 40 people with me. Jesus spent much of His life on this earth in that city. It was the crossroads of the three major civilizations, Egypt, Babylon, and Syria. Right there, the main highway, He stayed there. That way He was able to touch every civilization from that place. In that city, He worked a lot of miracles. The Bible said, if what was done in Capernaum had been done in Sodom, Sodom would have repented. But sitting there in that city, I said, do you know folks, when He was here, this city was divided down the middle. There's those over there saying, we've got to kill Him. He's messing up everything for us. And the others are saying, He is God. Amen. There was no in between. Nobody is indifferent about Him. They either wanted Him out of there or to stay for always. I said, but in the city where I live and pastor of 100,000 people, there's at least 150 to 200 churches and nobody knows they're there except the people that go to them every Sunday. Yet we're supposed to be Christ. The same attitude ought to be toward that church as was toward Him. Because it ought to be Christ made alive. The church's voice should be the voice of God. The church's action should be the action of God. We are the vehicle of expression. If the world knows Christ, they will know Him through the church. Upon this rock I will build my church. If He'd come back for less than He started with, ladies and gentlemen, He will fail. But 800 years before Christ got here, Zerubbabel saw a church all of God. He looked out there and a church all of God. Then Paul wrote after He had come, died, rose, and sat down, poured out the Holy Ghost and said, He had presented to Himself a glorious church. Listen. Christ will present to Himself a glorious church, number one, without spot. Do you know what spot is? Listen to it. Jude 12, 23. Jude 12-23. If I were to read it all here this morning, you can read it. There's only one little chapter in Jude. Jude 12-23. It begins, Hating the garments spotted by the flesh. Hating the garments spotted by the flesh. He's coming after a church without the flesh. Without spot. Oh, there's one thing God hates. This is His mixture of flesh and spirit. There's one thing on this earth God hates. It's that mixture of flesh and spirit all through the Old Testament. He taught this. He said, You don't sow a field with mingle seed. Don't wear a garment of linen and wool. Don't plow an ass and an ox together. You come into the New Testament, and He calls it hot and cold. That's flesh and spirit. He calls them goat and sheep. Amen. Flesh and spirit. He hates that mixture. He never intended that that church be a flesh pot perfumed by the Holy Ghost. There's one thing He hates. Belshazzar went to hell at midnight. Not because he got drunk, but because he dared mix the wine of the flesh in those vessels of God. He took that wine of riotous living, poured it into those vessels of the Lord, and a hand wrote on the wall and said, You'll weigh it in the balances. And found wanting. Found wanting. Ladies and gentlemen, God is saying to the church, Clean up your act. Come out from among them. Clean it up. I'm not going to glory in any flesh, and no flesh is going to glory in my sight. The church I'm coming after will be a church without flesh, without spot. Paul said, The problem with the church, the reason she can't do anything today, is that flesh is there lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. You've allowed it in to have a so, say so, natural reason, as took over the voice of God in the church. We don't go to the altar and fast and pray to find the direction of God. We call a committee, and the committee is made up of folks that only wave at God about once a week. Amen. I've been in churches where the deacon board never showed up at the revival meeting, not one time in a week's revival, and yet they sit down and determine the policy of that church. It is an abomination to God. Abomination to God that you would allow somebody that don't even come to God. I've seen at home, I don't guess you have that in North Carolina, work out in every direction, that flesh, people never come on a Wednesday night, never come on a Sunday night, then come a-trotting in there all spiritual and hopped up and hyped up and want to prophesy to me. Want to give a message in tongues. Sound like dry peas on a buckeye. I said, No, I won't come here with that nonsense. If God can't talk to you enough to get you to come to church, Amen. He says, forsake not the assembly of yourself together if you can't read in the Bible and understand why He ain't talking to you, Amen. Don't come here trying to prophesy to me, talking in your tongues. They don't hang around sometimes, or else they straighten up. But I'm just saying to you that the flesh has come in, took over, will imitate the gifts of God and folks ooh and ahh at that kind of nonsense. My friends here, some of the best friends I've got right over here in the Stetsons, Amen, for many years we've been very dear friends. I was talking about this, I was preaching about this. Everybody coming to church, you know the preacher says, I'm going to give everybody a personal prophecy. I believe in prophecy. God's, I believe He'd give you a personal prophecy. It's going to confirm what He said to you. Man comes in, lays his hand, prophesied on him, said, You, you are going to prosper beyond your words. He'd bankrupt in six months. You're going to lose all this weight. You got carrying around here and not even going to have to die. Gain 50 pounds in six months. Amen. That's the flesh. I was in Baltimore, Maryland, came there for a day seminar and going to preach on a Sunday in one of the larger churches there. And when I got there, there's a little boy in the hospital dying with this RAISE or RISE, however you say it, syndrome. The brain is swelling. Give him no hope. He's been unconscious. They wanted me to go down with them to pray for the little boy. I went down to the hospital to pray and on the way down the father said, I know God's going to raise him up because we've had at least 25 prophecies. God's going to raise him up from this sickness and he's going to be a preacher. Well, we went and prayed for the little boy. That was Friday night or Saturday. It was Sunday morning at 5 o'clock. The phone rang and he wanted me to go to Baltimore hospital with him. The little boy died. He said, I want you to go with me to raise him from the dead. I got in the car with him and we're driving to the hospital and he says, I know God's going to raise him from the dead because of the prophecies. I said, now you hold it just a minute. On the way down. I said, you haven't been saved long and I want to help you. God's as real as you can breathe, brother. And I said, if God raises him from the dead, it won't have anything to do with those prophecies because they said He's going to heal him, not raise him from the dead. And I said, I want to tell you something else, son. They thought they was just making you feel good. That wasn't the devil. That's the flesh just sticking its nose in and coming off with prophecies off the top of its head. I said, now if God raises that boy from the dead, it will be a sovereign act of God. He didn't. He didn't raise him from the dead. And the young man survived because I put it to him straight. I said, it's nothing in the world but the human mind going through the motions of prophesying. But the Bible says, if you speak with God's Spirit, what they speak will come to pass. You don't play a game. But he said, I'm not coming after church playing games with the gifts. I'm coming after church without spot. That's without the flesh. Listen to this. We'll present to himself a glorious church without spot, that's flesh, and without wrinkle. You know wrinkles denote one of two things. You're either tired or you're old. Isn't that right? You're either tired or you're old. I was in a meeting down in one state, I won't say, a man had, one of the singers had married a woman about 20 years older than him. That didn't bother me, that's none of my business. But I looked at her and she looked, her skin on her face looked just like this fine lady on the front seat, so smooth and nice. I said, boy, for a woman up in her 50s, she really has been kept. But when you got behind her, you found the wrinkles piled up on the back. She'd had the face lifted. They're still there, just put them in another place. But wrinkles say you're either old or you're tired. And he is not coming after a church that's give out or wore out or got old. Amen. Let me tell you, the church is the only thing on this earth that's found the fountain of youth. Can you say amen? I said, it's the only thing on this earth. I've went into churches that had lost the revival. They were dead. They're biting and devouring one another. They're give out. They're playing religion. They're all ready to sit down and quit. Preach there for several weeks sometime or several days. Sometimes it comes quicker. Then revival comes and it's just like springtime. Thank God the youth has been renewed. The vigor has come back. Amen. The church he's coming after is not going to be old and it's not going to be tired. Number one, when you're tired, you tend to be afraid. When a person is tired, then they're afraid of things that ordinarily they're not afraid of. I used to, when I was a boy, I played football. When I played football, more years than I'd like to think about ago, we didn't have 22 men. We didn't have offensive and defensive guards. If you was the offensive guard, you was a defensive guard and the only substitute was the water boy. Amen. I was mean as the next one. When we started, you'd get in there, grind, gruel, hit, bump, knock. Amen. But after about an hour and a half of that, you find yourself backing up a little. Amen. You're not near. You get tired and you don't want to be hit. Well, I'll tell you, the church operating in the flesh has give out as afraid of the devil. Oh, it's nothing. You know what I'm talking about. You go in the churches. That preacher pulling on your coattail. He's afraid you're going to disturb that something laying out there asleep. Amen. Oh, listen, don't stir that up. See, that gave me so much trouble last year. It's just laying out there. And I know if you hit it, it's going to stink. Don't, don't. You know, scared to death to bring the devil up. Let me tell you, the absence of conflict doesn't mean peace as long as Beelzebub sits there. Then his corrupted influence is there. And unless he stirred up, waked up, and run out, operating in the flesh, afraid of him. Give out. You give out. Man, I've been fighting this thing too long. I see preachers. They say, listen, I've got to get off somewhere. Amen. I've got to get off three or four months. I said, no, you just need to get back. You ought to get filled with the Holy Ghost. Amen. You'll get your strength back. I had three evangelists travel in a team. They preached every third night. Every third night. We have a prayer meeting at home every morning at 5 o'clock. They're there. I said, boys, I want you in this prayer meeting. They hadn't come the first three or four mornings. I said, you need to be in this prayer meeting. We're here warring against Hinnomen. We start this meeting. I want you out here in this prayer meeting. They said, oh, brother, we just can't do that. We're preaching every night in service every night. We just can't get up at no 4.30 and be in a prayer meeting at 5 o'clock. Amen. I said, I'm down there. I preach more than all of you. There's three of you. I said, I preach five times a week here in this church. And half the time I'm out somewhere preaching twice a day. Amen. In somebody else's church. They said, I know. I know. You're going to fall over dead too. Oh, I said, I know. I know the hazard there. I said, I'm a great student of John Wesley. I said, he's one of my favorite folks. I said, I read he rode a horse 80,000 miles. He preached four times a day. Killed him at 86. He just fell over dead at 86. Oh, no, brother. No, no. The weariness doesn't come from too much. The weariness comes from the flesh. You got involved in the flesh. You're trying to fight the devil. You're trying to keep it together with a council session back there somewhere. When all the while it's the devil in them, folks. You can't talk it out. You've got something behind that giving trouble. Lay hold to the devil. Run him off. Amen. Get a hold of that flesh part of a deal. Get the Holy Ghost back in it. And when he comes in, he ain't afraid of the devil. He'll look him in the eye. He'll run him out. Resist the devil, and he'll flee from you. Not old. Not tired, rather. Not old. Wrinkles. Speak of being old. Getting older. Those skin doesn't have the elastic in it it once had. No more what they've been. All of old age or anything else, it'll catch up with you after a while. Just you hang around here long enough. Got an old friend, 92 years old. He told me one day, he said, Thank God I'm old, Brother Clinton. I said, What do you mean? He said, If I wasn't old, I'd be dead. That's the way with you. If you were old, you'd be dead. Just been here a while. Really, you get older. Listen. That church don't get old. Women in the Bible are always a type of the church. A fallen woman, type of that corrupt church. A virtuous woman, type of the real church of the living God. No type in the Bible like Sarah. No type of the church in the Bible like Sarah. Amen. Here she is. Got to be 100 years old. Her womb is dead. When Abraham left the land of Ur with her, she's the most beautiful woman perhaps ever lived on this earth. I mean, she's so beautiful, he has to lie to keep alive. He said, He'll kill me for you, woman. Amen. Everybody look at you wants me. I'm telling you one thing. You let that church be the church, and folks out there are going to want that church. There's nothing more beautiful on this earth than the real church of the living God, walking in the Holy Ghost, demonstrating Christ alive. There's an attraction there. Amen. You don't have to have toe-tapping quartets. You just make Jesus alive. I said make Jesus alive. There'll be an attraction to that church. Sarah, the most beautiful woman ever lived. Abraham lied. Told her, said, She's my sister. She's so beautiful. But let me tell you, that desert took its toll. They didn't have no wigs. They didn't have no oil of old age. They didn't have all this business to prop up that which disappears. Amen. She got old. That desert son had his toll on that skin. Hair become as coarse, almost as strong. Amen. The womb is dead. Teeth have gone. Amen. There's nobody whistling at Sarah now. Or out old woman. That's all. But then God came. God the Father. God the Son. God the Holy Ghost. On the way to Sodom, sat down and ate a cake with Abraham. Said, Well, Abraham, the time's come. But what I told you when you was younger, Sarah's going to have that baby. She's back there in the tent and heard that and laughed. Oh, she said, That's preposterous. Just the same, she found herself at 100 years old, pregnant. And her and brother Abraham are heading toward Abimelech. Abraham said, Look, Sarah, tell that man that you're my sister. She's beautiful again. Oh, yes, sir. The hair's back curly again. The skin is cleared up. And that woman, once more, is a beautiful woman. Now you have the church. Thank God she may be a little wrinkled today, from her wrestling with the devil in the flesh. But you let that river flow through her and she'll stand up. Thank God. I said she'll stand up. And nothing on this earth, nothing on this earth has ever been comparable to the church outside of God Himself. Amen. I said outside of God Himself. Ladies and gentlemen, He's forging a vessel, a vessel of glory. I said a vessel of glory. Not going to be a repeat of a carry-on, a succession, but of a new beginning. Something that knows a voice of God, has a personal life with the Almighty, steadfastly standing on a biblical basis with a prayer life and a river flowing through her. And the world's startled at what she is. The vessel of recovery. The fact that it'll be is in the Bible. He will have such a church. The only question that could be asked here this morning, are you going to be a part of it? Are you going to drift along with the tide and defend everything that's opposite? Or are you going to look at it in the eyes of the Bible? Amen. I close here. I wouldn't go to here the second time. Any man preach that didn't allow me to question his preaching or his gift, if it upset him, if I didn't understand him and didn't believe what he had to say, then I wouldn't be back the second time. Just because I don't believe it, don't make it wrong. It's just that I don't understand what he's saying. And I have a right to know my soul is involved. I said my soul is involved. And I want to say to you, nobody has ever really believed anything till they doubted it enough to question it. To say, is this a fact? Jesus said it's a wise man that will search the Scriptures to see what he's heard, to see if what he's heard is really the fact. It doesn't matter who says it, how big the wheel is, if it doesn't fit that book, then it doesn't fit the vessel of recovery. Stand with me this morning. Let's worship God. Hallelujah. Come on, lift your hands.