In this sermon, the speaker discusses the power of the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, which sets believers free from the law of sin and death. He mentions his fear of flying and the challenges involved in his upcoming teaching trip. The speaker then talks about the significance of Jesus' resurrection and how the Holy Spirit quickened him, emphasizing the importance of this moment in human history. He concludes by discussing the various trials and difficulties people face and how they can be more than conquerors through God's ways and thoughts.

...and you don't go, you don't keep running to the dentist and say, I wish you'd run to the dentist. It seems like, you know, so long since I've had a tooth grown out. I wish you'd quit running to the dentist. I think particularly about the... I don't know where the tooth is in this class, but it's got quite a lot of them, as a matter of fact, but... I don't think there's anything much further beyond the other 37. This kind of... You get to where, uh... Sister Solan was talking about a few minutes ago. It cuts you down to size, kind of thing. Knowing all these things... We're more than conquered through him that loved us. The text is a lot easier if it said, uh... just that we're more than conquered. In fact, if you've done it, too, that situation you're in, and said, well, of course, poor Heather meant this. You know, like you never had a mother-in-law like mine or some other problem. He didn't mean that. He just said, more than conquered, you know, speaking generally. That's what he says in all these things. And, uh... It makes the study look soft if you just read the chapter at least seven times in the chapter he mentions things. You remember in... Rodney Winkler's insertion in the greatest poem of love that was ever written. And I was thinking of the same spirit of the living God, the little Irish lady, um... the daughter of our fellowship, Annie Wilson Carmichael. I was getting my son to buy some of these books. Annie Wilson Carmichael. Uh... She wrote another verse to that level of him that's well worth knowing. For the same spirit of the living God, love of God, eternal love, pour thyself through me. Nothing less than tells you, love, that I ask of thee. Pour me, flood me, overflow me. Love of God, eternal love, pour thyself through me. But in that same poem, Paul says, uh... about this love, this divine love. And it is this kind of contentious love. He says it bought us all things, it gave us all things, it hurt us all things, it then gave us all things. It was about to tell you, I think, but first I... I think it was about to tell you that they, uh... Immediately, Adam broke his relationship with God. From that moment, he got interested in things. And he's been interested in things ever since. And I think that as we go on in our Christian life, very often, what God has to do is cut us off from things. He cuts us off from this thing and that thing. When we get saved, you see, we give up all the bad things. You may disagree here, but... When we really get saved, it's not that we give up the good things. It's the good things that are the enemy of the bad things. So, the letter of God says that we have fellowship with... What does it say? Fellowship with who? No, no, no, that's what we put. What does it say? We have fellowship with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ, and with one another. You see, very often, we make fellowship with each other. And such a thing as fellowship with Him. So, the good is the enemy of the bad. This meeting tonight, as good as it may be, and I hope God will contribute something to our faith, and soul life, uh, spirit life, really. But it is no substitute for communing, first of all, with Him. Our fellowship is with the Father. I need one another. I need Jesus Christ, His Son. But I can make fellowship with Sister Mary, over the phone in the morning. I get the kids off the room. It'll be great when I get back to school. I get in the yard, over the phone, and the husband won't be home. And I can talk to Sister Sue for twenty minutes. Oh, I enjoy that every morning. And I'll sit coffee and talk to her. Well, you couldn't get fellowship much better, could you? Than sitting in a, uh, a lady boy's chair, drinking coffee and having fellowship. But, uh, it's a course that you do. Again, for fellowship with the Father. You see, and with His Son, Jesus Christ. But again, going back to the, we get involved in themes. So many themes. So many themes. Paul said again, what things are going to be accounted for at last, as I may gain Christ. And there's nobody can tell you, nobody has ever worked the spiritual life out from A to Z. You know, I say sometimes strategically, lots of people are looking for a book on six easy lessons how to become a saint. Well, there isn't one, but if you find one, please send it to me, and I'll make you one from it. I won't read it. Because it's full of nonsense. There are not six easy ways to become a saint. Uh, sometime, we'll be coming next week, if you want this, but then I'll be away for about a month, or five weeks. Then when we come back, as the Lord wills, we'll sit around. I'd like to make a series of studies, experiments, because revelation is progressive. All revelation is progressive. I don't care who you've heard, and I don't care how many times you swing on the chandelier, the legs slap on your tummy, or anything else. The, uh, the fact is this, that nobody under heaven, not the apostle Paul, or anybody else, has ever explored all the possibilities of day. They're still unfolding. God has something for us in our day that he didn't have for people's day, shall we say, in Wesley's day, or some other day, because they were not living in the atmosphere that we're living in now. I don't think that the devil has ever had such a good time as he's having right now, though it's outside of the church and inside of the church, by a great deal. And, uh, there's no such thing. There's nobody this side of eternity has yet arrived. Now, everything that I've said is good, so why don't you pray with them, because you're not mature enough, you see. Five years from now, I'll try again. Uh, but right now, you're just not mature enough. You don't know why they're content to stay on earth when they're so mature, but nobody on earth has yet arrived. I've been a Christian for, I can't tell you how many years, but more than half a century, anyhow. I've been a Christian more than 50 years, if that helps you, but, uh, I should speak better than I do. But the fact is that with all I know, I know very little. Revelation is progressive. God is continually, uh, developing us, printing. Children only go to a certain height. The blessing, they don't grow, shall we say, the second 15 years as tall as you did the first 15, you know, you'd have to lift a roof around here. But they go other ways. They go mentally. They go emotionally. They go spiritually, we hope. And it is true in the areas of our nature, you see. We, we, we can't garbage from that. Next week, I'd like to talk and leave you with it because you can chew it over for a few years. I want to talk about worship, which I don't think, uh, frankly, I don't think one person in a hundred Christians, uh, maybe even thirty-three Christians know much about worship. You see. But that again is another area. Now, here is a, here is a, uh, challenge to our hearts tonight. Romans 8, and verse 37. And all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. Now, uh, you're looking, but that, I'm not saying you're cheating, but if you weren't looking, how does Romans 8 begin? How does it begin? Right. All right. And it begins, no, therefore, that is, therefore, now, no condemnation. How does it end? Crucial separation from the love of God. So the chapter begins with no condemnation, and it ends with no separation, but it doesn't say there's no tribulation. In fact, the whole thing between the two is packed with tribulations expressed some in several nakedness stories. You can't paint the picture. I used to paint when I was younger. I paint now with a brush about so wide, but I used to paint with a little brush. And, and I learned one thing at the beginning. You can't paint a good picture without shadow. And I was always trying to have what Dr. Chalmers called a corrected image because somebody wrote to us the other day and said, would you come up to our booth? Uh, and it's four or five hundred miles away from here. We got tired of just, again, not that it's wrong in itself, but when you do it most of the meeting and all the meetings you're trying to get blessed. That's soul-ish. You could do the same thing on Soul Train. Uh, the thing is that they got to the place now where things were beginning to calm down. They came out of a dead church into a lively church with excitement and prayer and you clap your hands and you sing and you live and go. But it's like, you know, there's something missing. It's all up in the air. It's a balloon. It doesn't get down. It's got nothing solid. and again, when I'm in a meeting I'm on the victory side. I don't have a great time. You know, tomorrow when I go on the victory side I go, uh, I feel bad-tempered. I, now, now, that's not the right way. Uh, Dr., another good man at the end of the week after, Dr. James Stewart of Edinburgh says he wouldn't believe a man is really born again if he has a bad temper. Now, do that over for a while. On the basis of, uh, one print in 517 that if any man is in pride he is a new creation. He's not an old creation patched up. He is a new creation. And when God makes all things new he makes it new. Therefore, he argues, he said, if a man still has a bad temper he lives somewhere on the edge of regeneration. All right. So, the chapter begins with no condemnation. There is no condemnation. And again, there's no separation. But it doesn't say there's no tribulation. In fact, there's an awful amount of it listed here in this chapter again. Now, what's the first reaction to a text like that? In all these things we are more than conquerors to him that led us. You know, there's no sharper division not, not between night and day or hardly between heaven and hell than there is between Romans 7 and Romans 8. Now, when we go home or sometimes, we write through Romans 7 and take a pencil and every time we think of that, you know, that little awkward thing, I, I, I, I, you just put a line under it. You know, I want to do this. I can't do it. I don't want to do that. I do it. It's not I. It's something that's relevant. Take a pencil and go down and mark everyone with a red pencil I, I, I. And then take a green pencil and mark how many times the Holy Spirit is mentioned in Romans 7. You won't have anything to do because he's not mentioned at all. Then you cross over the bridge out of Romans 7 into Romans 8 and take a pencil in Romans 8 and mark how many times the I is there and it's only there twice in verse 18 and verse 38. Doesn't it say, it says in verse 18 that I reckon. You see, in verse 38, I am persuaded. Now, it can't put any other, it can't put us there. This is personal. But Romans chapter 7, it's 31 times with I, I, I, I, I, and no Holy Spirit. Romans chapter 8, 19 times with the Holy Spirit and no I except on the two occasions where it can't do anything else. So plainly, Romans chapter 7 is a sin centred or a self centred chapter and Romans 8 is a Christ centred chapter. Or, if you want it in coloured language, shall we say, Romans 7 is ego centred and Romans 8 is Christ or Christ centred. You see. Now, Romans chapter 7 to me is a graveyard. Or, if you like, Romans 7 is a funeral march and Romans 8 is a wedding march. Here's a man bursting out with ecstasy. You know, hallelujah, there's no condemnation to Romans or in Christ Jesus. Romans 8, 37 is what? Well, I think Romans, when he says Romans 8, 37 I can do all things through Christ extensively. I put it this way as our friend of the day. This is an exclamation and jubilation for liberation. You see. We are more than conquerors these days. Now, what can you do? I mean, if you're dealing with that text dramatically, what can you do? Therefore, we are more than conquerors through him that loveth. There are only three possible approaches to a text like that. Number one, it's written by a guy that doesn't know what he's talking about. Another way is let's put it in military language. Here is a man in uniform. I remember giving my age away, but I can remember before World War I, never mind World War II. My cousin came to our home. He joined one of the crack regiments in England. He was about six foot two and a red jacket on and blue trousers and he just strayed to the runway and marched along the street. Why, I thought he was the king of the world. Oh, I told her because that's my cousin. That's my cousin. He was in one of the crack regiments and he was the king of England. He let you know that he was in the crack regiment and oh, it was difficult to get in. I happened to see him just once after he came home after World War I. He was a wreck. Boy, he was afraid of six o'clock when he went out. When he came back he was beaten up. He was slagging his feet. They'd done massive surgery on him after shrapnel tore his body up. It was very different about the young guy that said, boy, we're going to have to fight and conquer and do this. And the man that came home with battle scars. Now, the man that said, we're involved in conquest, he was the one that loved it. He was a youngster with his buttons all polished and saying, we're going to do the job. He's a man who's straight, he's cornered, his back is bent, he's an ace. You say, well, how do you know? You're guessing. No, I'm not. After all, if they tied you to a whipping post in last year, 195 times, and that's what he said, he said, five times I was beaten with rugs, 40 stripes saved one. So the next five quarters makes 200 on my computer. Five less, we go from only 39 into 195 lashes. He was in the beach a night and a day, that's 36 hours. He was in readiness and fasting and painfulness and tribulation and distress. He was in the beach He just goes through the whole range of trial and temptation. And what's more, he lists them again in this chapter. Because he says in verse 38, I'm persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things become, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature. Now, you can't get much further than that. Even when he's listed all that is, he says, neither things present, nor things become. In other words, he puts his shoulders back and if you pardon me, rather, what might sound a vulgar phrase, he spits in the face of the devil and says, look, there's nothing that you can invent that can separate me from the love of God. You've tried about everything and it doesn't work. And I'm so confident in the Lord Jesus Christ that I'm absolutely sure that there's nothing that you have that can separate me from the love of God. And that a sufficient way for me to be more than conqueror to him that loves me. So first of all, I say, one approach to this is that this is this is a statement of somebody that's ignorant and irresponsible. Just saying, well, of course, you can do everything and everything. I don't care whether you live in a palace or a prison or a pigsty or whether you own things of saints or the Jews. It makes no I didn't have an interest. It's in the somebody immature that's saying this. The second thing is to say, well, it's an unbalanced statement of a super optimist. I mean, you could say for sex, supposing somebody saw the text writing and said, what do you mean about sex? He'd say, well, it's philosophical. You know, it's a state. He's the kind of guy who says, well, let me understand this doesn't make any difference. I've still got my brains. You know, he can't beat him anyway. You could say, well, I don't think it's philosophical. It's theoretical. He hasn't found it out. Or, if you like, you could say, it's theological. Or, if you want to come down to it, you might even get down to the same place where you're saying to yourself, at least, I think it is. It's practical. You see, this isn't some youngster going into war again. It isn't a man that sat down and started to build a tower and wasn't able to finish it. It isn't a statement of an unbalanced super optimist. It's an expression of experience. Because elsewhere he uses the same meaning when he says, I can do all things. You don't hear much about this usually. We're so blessed with gifts and other things we keep bringing the changes, but get off them for a minute. How is it working out in your life? Paul says, I can do all things, not some things. All things. We are more than conquerors through him that loved us. And he uses the same word in 1 Corinthians 13 and it's a pretty rough word there, you know, when you come to think of that word, it's a difficult word, but he says, what does he say? He says that this love beareth all things and it believeth all things and it hotheth all things and it endureth all things. Now, that's pretty comprehensive for the whole of life, isn't it? In other words, Paul's saying there isn't a thing that can come into your life on any given level, physical, mental, spiritual, because if you sort the things out at the end of Roman race, you'll discover he's not talking about things you can see. He's talking about, always, he's talking about things you can't see. So he says, what's your set record? Child tribulation. Well, tribulation could be physical, but it could be mental, too. Distress, could be physical, could be mental, too. Imperils of the sword. You can't put a sword through my spirit, but you can put a sword through my body, so I could be suffering physically. This man's trials are not on this level at all. This man's trials are on a different level entirely. The more money you get, the more possessions you get, all you get is increased suffering. And the more money you get, the more you get, all you get is increased suffering. And the more money you get, the more you get is increased suffering. And the more suffering. And the more money you get, the more you get is increased suffering. And the more money you get, the more you get is increased suffering. And the more money you get, the more the more money you get, the more you get is increased suffering. the more you get the more you get is increased And the money you get, the more you is increased And the more money you get, you get is increased suffering at a we end up in concentration camps, which we should do, I don't doubt that at all. Supposing we lose, the government gets to a socialistic, a communistic state, and we lose all our independent rights, property, ownership, and everything else, which could happen. It's happening under ten people, I don't care, we're heading up for it pretty fast anyhow. The Rockefeller's not a guy who'll see to that. Supposing we lose all that, and I say to you, we could be more than conscious. Well, it sounds a bit exaggerated, because as Brother Begg was saying earlier tonight, we don't live in a moment of outstimulation or despair. Well, of course, we're not going through the tribulation, praise God. Oh, I see. Well, you know, there are two things that, amongst others, people don't like to do. Number one, not many of us embrace suffering. If you haven't done suffering, you don't go, you don't keep running to the dentist and say, I wish you'd yank this tooth out, you know, it's so long since I had a tooth grown out, I wish you'd pull it out, just for a change, you know, not just, no, you say, oh, let's keep sawing away and keep, we don't want to lose any teeth. We don't embrace suffering, you're thinking of like, and people don't like to suffer, and secondly, we don't like to die. And if you have a right to, you get out of both of them. Oh, yes, you don't have to suffer, you don't have to die. Pop goes the weasel, out we go. The only thing is, it so happens that Hale brought out in China a few years ago, uh, 1925, and I happened to have met a man whose friend had challenged not so long ago coming through Formosa, because when he stopped off to see some Chinese and he greeted them, oh, they said, those men in that factory come from Hunan probably, that's where he used to be. And he went in and greeted them, you know, he was eloquent, and he's Chinese, he's an American, but he speaks Chinese like a native. So he talked to these men working, little yellow men working away there, ironing and doing other things, and he greeted them, and, uh, they took notice of him. So he greeted them again, and they took notice of him, so, uh, the first time he said, oh, I see now, I see, uh, well, of course, uh, you haven't seen me for 35 years, and I've got a bit fatter, and I've lost my hair, but I'm a pastor. I'm so-and-so. Hit my head. Well, I was feeling pretty bad, he made about three approaches, so finally he said, listen, I'm Pastor So-and-so. And the man looked with tears in his eyes and said, not pastor. Not pastor? No. Well, not then. False prophet. False prophet. And what do you mean a false prophet? I never told you the wrong thing enough? Oh, yes, you did. Oh, no, he said I used to have a banner, and I used to teach the heritage, and, uh, but the man said, look, you told us? Sure, but you told us the Russians were going to come and invade this country and rape the women and break in the banks and burn the churches and tear our Bibles up. But just as they come over the border, they're going to be raptured, and you're going to see your churches smoking, and you're going to see blood in the streets, and you're going to see your Bibles being thrown up, but the Lord won't let one hair out of your dear little head to suffer. You're going to be tossed away in the rapture. The man said the only thing that happened was my dear wife was thrown out of my arms and my children were thrown in, but my church was burned and my Bibles were thrown up, but there was no rapture. And maybe I mentioned this before, the man in Canada, he's 70-odd years of age, he went through the Russian Revolution, and he told me that the fundamentalist pastors had a greater heartache to the Christians than the Communists were. Because they told him it was coming, they said, Nazar will be murdered, the streets will flow with blood, you'll lose all your rights, it's going to become a prison camp, Antichrist is going to reign, and John says to the many Antichrists, the only thing is you'll be raptured, and you won't see it. But he said, I happened to live through the Revolution. You see, very often we see through our American language, if I had yellow glasses on tonight, everything would be yellow, if I had blue glasses, everything would be blue. And there's a dangerous teaching, and I never tried to do this, and God help me, I don't have to brainwash people. You've got a head, you've got a mind, and remember the word of God says that for your own master, your family, your fort, you have to live according to the life that God gives you. Now if you think there's going to be a rapture, you're going to get out all right, but supposing you miss it, you end up in a concentration camp, and you don't chew at me for one thing, you might be arguing with some other pastor, somebody else, and say, well, why don't we condition? You see, because God's business isn't just to make us happy, God's business is to make us holy. Believing I'm saved, and from the time I'm saved until I die, God is knocking me into shape, in my judgment, for a position to rule within him a millennial age, and to rule within him eternity. And they're not all going to be the same. Rule over five cities, rule over ten cities, rule over one city. Hating is going to be the same for everybody. Some are going to be beaten with many stripes, and some with few stripes. But I think I've said this before, let me say it again, that sometimes I think that the sign of God's blessing in the Old Testament is prosperity. That's what gives of God's blessing in your life, prosperity. But in the New Testament, it's adversity. Isn't it strange that the greatest man that ever lived after Jesus, I think the greatest brain was the Apostle Paul, and never once did he give out a material thing that said, Could you bring my clothes? I'm shivering in this jail. If you could bring it, it would be pretty helpful. But what did he say? He said, I want to fill up the sufferings of Christ. I want to so live like Jesus Christ, that I want to bear burdens in the day. And he says, I've sorrow of heart. I've great sorrow of heart. He talks more about sorrow and anguish, and burdens for the lost world. In fact, in Romans 9, he says, I could wish myself a curse for my brethren. That doesn't sound much like jubilation. Now, there's no doubt about it. He had joy because he expresses that. But you see, he's not hopping on one leg all the time. I mean, I bet today, you've got two feet. Now, it's an economic day, and shoes are getting scarce and so forth. Why don't you hop on one leg? And then you're not sure, I'll hop on the other, you know. I mean, you don't have to go around on two legs, just because everybody else does it. It's a silly habit. Nobody knows why we do it. But anyhow, you say, well, no, no. We've got two legs. We should keep balance. Sure. Sure. And this is the whole truth. It is a spiritual life, keeping balance. Not shutting that thing out, not taking too much of this thing, but by the grace of God, in your spiritual kingdom, keeping a balanced life. All right. Romans, then, chapter 7 is darkness, and Romans 8 is light. Romans chapter 7 is a funeral march. Romans chapter 8 is a wedding march. Romans chapter 7, he says, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from what? The body of this death. What's he talking about? You know, there are a hundred and twenty different types of crosses, from the cross on which the Prince of Glory died, as Isaac Watts said, when he wrote it before Wesley's day, he wrote where the young Prince of Glory died. There's a cross like that, we call it the traditional cross. There's a cross like a letter T, where a man was crucified and his head was knocked back. There's a cross like a letter X, where they stretched a man up, his arms and his legs and stretched him up. There's a cross which was a tree, with just a big copper spike, and they pushed the man's body on and turned him around and left him hanging at whatever angle he thought best. But the most cruel death, maybe, of all that the Romans had, was to take a man who had murdered a man and hang him for the body that he murdered. They would lay the corpse on the ground, they would lay the man on top of him and tie the living hand to the living hand, the living legs to the dead legs, the trunk to the trunk, the head to the head, then stand him up and say, go on, carry that body. And he carried that dead body. Now, that's the most pernicious, horrible death, because when he went to sleep at night, he could try and find a place where he could at least stretch out, and when he woke up in the morning, he awaked up looking into the glassy eyes of a corpse, and before long, what happened? The death in that body began to wash his own body. Now, that was the most cruel death, and Paul said, I have in me a body of sin, who should deliver me from the body of this death? Well, you can read old Scoppy, he was the only person that knew everything, of course, apart from the Lord, but if you read Scoppy, you'll discover he says, well, a corpse has no way of deliverance. Well, then you may as well be a Mormon, or a Jehovah's Witness, or a Buddhist, if there is no deliverance from sin. If you don't get into trouble when you preach salvation to being saved from sinning, from your sins, it's when you say, but you can be saved from sinning. And doesn't it say in Matthew 1.27, that Paul is named Jesus, for he should save his people from their sins. If it's sin and righteousness, they mutually exclude each other. If you put lights on in this room, the darkness goes out. If you turn the lights off, the darkness comes in. You can't have them both, you have one or the other. Now, of course, you hear people say, it sounds so holy, doesn't it, to say, oh, well, you know, as good as we are, we're saved and we're filled with the Spirit and the Lord's being good to us, but, you know, all our righteousness is a total rag. Oh, come on, why don't you read a bit lower down in this chapter? Everybody quotes it as, like, a holy thing to do. But I happen to read the book that you read, called the Bible, and it says in the first article of John, that he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. It's not imparted righteousness, imputed righteousness, Mary, but imparted righteousness, because, to use another analogy, a corrupt tree can't bring forth good fruit, and a rotten tree can't bring forth good fruit, and a good tree doesn't bring forth bad fruit. Now, well, you say, that sounds a bit like sinless perfection. No, no, it's not sinless perfection. It's not that it's impossible for us to sin, it's possible for us not to sin. Let's go on a minute. He says, well, here I am, I'm embalmed. Call it the old nature, call it what you like. Well, he's just read in the next chapter that in all these things, in the garden, in the study, things present, things to come, it's a face in the devil's head on every day, that in a concentration camp, or you live in a house where you shouldn't, Martha and I often stay in a home that we shared over in the Bahamas, and we've got curtains, and we've got a couple of yachts, and we have a cook, and we've got everything laid out, and we've got chocolate to dine, that's all we like to go in, but it's very nice, the meals are served up, everything's gorgeous. And, you know, sometimes I look at those folks, and they say, oh, Martha, it's a tiring day today. Well, that's early writing checks all day, and you get very demanding, very tiring. And you eat dinner with a lady who says, oh, my Lord, my Lord, and I thought she was going to die, and I looked at Martha, and I said, Martha, what's wrong? Oh, I just realized, you know, I've given away a quarter of a million dollars in less than a year, and I'm not sure I've given it all away yet. Well, I thought she hadn't, because she hadn't given me a dime, but, you know, you see, if you're really not counting that much dinner, you know, it's not very difficult to talk about which is it, whenever you wish to have. I mean, the lady comes in and says, would you like a cold drink? Which would you like? How shall I do the steaks today? What is the menu? You say, oh, that's just a minute. Let me see. Today we have, Martha, dear, what shall we have? A pencil. Well, Martha writes the menu out. They have a store, they just go to the store and anything you want. They just ask the people, say, would you like fish? Would you like this? Would you like... And I think sometimes, boy, it's a pretty easy life compared to some people I know who are meeting trial and difficulties, a widow that has two or three children, or somebody who's pregnant. There are so many levels on which people live. Now, it would be easy to say to those people where Romans 8, 37 says, in all these things, we are more than conquered. Right. All right. Who says we have a body of... the kitchen in bondage? Oh, wretched man that I am. I appreciate it. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Hmm? Well, you say, Mr. Daniel, if you went down the chapter in Romans 8, verse 8, it says, David were in the flesh, cannot please God. There you are, you see. Aha, you see that now. That torpedoes your argument, doesn't it? You've got me tied up, except that little hole in the wall, and I'm talking all I can get through. I'm getting out through here where it says, David were in the flesh, cannot please God. Now, just before you go through the hole, would you let me read verse 9? Because it says, here not in the flesh, but in the spirit. Now, how do you get on? Hmm? I don't know what we're saying to them. They're just poor people. They're not in the flesh. They're in the spirit. You say, Mr. Daniel, what's this I've got? I've got a suit. What's your suit covering? My flesh. Well, then you're still in the flesh. No, I'm not. Because there are two different words in the Greek for flesh. Pax and soma. One means this flesh, but the other means a fleshly nature, a lusting nature, a greedy nature, a bitter nature, usually called the carnal nature. Now, in Romans 7, Paul says, there are a lot of laws he mentions. Let's mention two of them. He says, I serve God with the law of my mind because I realize everything that God says is good. And I share God's view on these things. But wait a minute. He says, with my body, I serve the law of sin. He says, that's where you started from, right? His body serves... No, no, no. What did you say? This body of mine, I don't care how sane we are, I don't care if you do more miracles than this human or anybody else. Everything is equal, apart from the law of sinning. You're going to pay the same penalty as Adam. As in Adam, all that. And my body is going to serve the law of sin because the law of sin is death. And my body is going to die unless the Lord comes. That would have been wonderful if we never had to have death, wouldn't it? I suppose it would have been like, you don't go for the law. As the old people said, you got from ear to head and the Lord said, well, you know, we've been warned, don't turn back and go. Come in with me. And so maybe that's it. They walked so close to heaven and he said, come in. But otherwise, I'm going to serve with this body. I'm going to serve the law of death. But then he has another law warning in his name as which he calls the old man, the old lie. And he said, I'm bound to it. Like that man, he's bound to that bed, and if he comes down and he's going slow he's fighting a bigger law of gravity that wants to pull him to the ground and not let him go that way but goes that way so the only thing he can do is put all the power he has on you can see it in the plane and he goes It goes like that in other words, he's trying to make that plane come down steady, steady Then the floor he goes gravity pulls and pulls and that's the ticklish part It's harder than flying It's harder than getting him off the ground is to get him down and beat the law of gravity and make it safe that's where most accidents start. Why did it do that? Well you know why it did it? It had a greater law inside of it than the law of gravity. The law of gravity is pulling that way, but that law is going that way. Paul says he's put the power on and then he said steam, but he's not steaming, but he puts the power on and it beats the law of gravity. So Paul says that the law of this world is the law of sin and of death, but I am made free by the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus which is in me. And while the Holy Spirit of God is controlling me, I can if I will, my will must be in it as well because God never makes anybody slaves in the sense that he dominates you like that. You still have a free will. As I say, the Holy Spirit fills you as you like. The Holy Ghost won't lift you out of bed tomorrow morning at 12 o'clock. And then he called us, when dearie, was it Sunday night? All our folk call us after midnight. We just see them all say she's going to call us at least at 11 o'clock. But I found out why, because you see the cheapest phone rate is after 11 until 8 the next morning, so all my friends call after 11. These people call from Texas every night and this man is quite a wealthy man, he's a wealthy man, his wife's very godly, in fact maybe, I don't know, I have more insight than he has, but he said, you know, my wife has been asking certain questions about a certain portion of scripture and he said now she's making kind of covenant with the Lord and she gets up every morning at 5 to pray. This is something she's entered into. Now God didn't mean to do that. He just decided she was going to spend her time a little more profitably. And I'll tell you, you see, your day is divided into three eights. Eight hours you work, eight hours you sleep, what do you do with the other eight hours? If you're not selling a second job, what do you do with the other eight hours? On the same basis, you live 60 years, you sleep plenty, you work plenty, what do you do with the other 20? Now, don't you get the idea that all Christians die happy? They don't. They don't. As the people will say, so the spirit dies miserable as bricks nearly. Why? Because they suddenly realize how much time they've wasted, how much money they've wasted, how many opportunities. And when I was a kid, my mother didn't used to sing Mansion over the Hilltop, she believed it but it wasn't written, but she used to sing hymns like, Will there be any stars, any stars in my crown when at evening the sun goes down? When I wake with the blessed and the mansions of rest, will there be any stars? And I'm glad I had a mother that always seemed eternity conscious. She sang hymns all along that line. Now again, you've got eight hours a day, eight you can sleep, eight you can work, eight you can work. Sixty years, plenty of sleep, plenty of work, what do you do with the other 20? The Holy Spirit isn't going to make you be a saint. Reading the Bible will not make you a saint. You've got to put it into your bloodstream. You've got to practice it, work it out. You ever think of how many kids who've been to Bible school, school that comes over the last 20 years or 25 years, that know the Bible, and some of them are as godless and indifferent and unconcerned about spiritual things as they could possibly be. Your will has to go into it, you have to cooperate with God, because there's certainly a down drag. The flesh, that is, speaking about natural appetite, sloth, eating, other areas of the body can be in. There's a constant pull, just like that train is having a constant pull against gravity, but it goes on because there's a greater law in the train than there is in the law of gravity. The same with the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. He says, "...has made me free from the law of sin and of death." Now, if you went through the chapter, you'll find at least 8 different laws in Romans that I'm not going to bother about, but just a reminder to particularly hear about these two. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free, has loosened me, has given me power over these other laws that are around about, that did have dominion. But he says, "...the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free." The previous verses, there's no condemnation. Well, thank God we're free from condemnation. I think it's Martin Luther, I was thinking of him today, was having, you know, he had such a melancholia. Have you ever discovered that most of your days of ecstasy are in church on a Sunday? Huh? And your low points on a Monday when you're not there. Well, if that's true, then you're living on the church, you're not living on the Holy Ghost. Because if you want to be as holy as a washcloth, you don't want a washcloth, sorry, by the electric washer, as my mother was, by the washcloth when she used to rub her knuckles off nearly and hang them out to feed or something else. If I live on atmosphere, then if you take me away from that atmosphere, my Christianity goes loose. But if the Lord, the spirit of life, lives in me, shut me in a prison, I'm as happy as if I'm in church clapping my hands or singing or seeing somebody new. I'm living on him, not on the results of him. But Luther was having one of his fits of melancholia, and he said, the devil came. You know, if you go to, is it Wittenberg, and they show you there a mark on the wall, a black spot where he picked up his inkwell and threw it at the devil. He saw the devil, then he let go, and somehow he missed him. I wish he'd hit him, but anyway, I missed him. And there's a mark on the wall. But he says that one day Satan came in, and I turned around, and he's written right from the roof, the ceiling, down the wall, across the wall, and down the other wall, he's written all my sins. And I watched him, and he filled this wall up, and then he filled this wall up. And then he started writing on the ceiling, and he half-filled that. And he said, I said eventually, well, what are you doing? Oh, he said, I'm writing all your sins up. I said, if you want to write, he said, well, write them. And he said, Satan, no. Continued writing for a while, then he quit. He said, now what? He said, well, nothing else to write. Oh, there's one thing to write. No, no, no, no, no. He said, I've written everything. No, you haven't. Well, he said, what do I write now? He said, you write across them all. The blood of Jesus, Christ, God's Son, comes across them all. He said, there is therefore now no condemnation for the sins that I have committed in the past. Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to have an easy time at the judgment seat. As I said the other day, and I think Soda was right, and you'll see these big boys that you think are big boys, and big preachers, and famous preachers, and famous evangelists. Keep your eye on them when you get to the judgment, and see how many men stand erect at the judgment seat of Christ, as Soda said. I don't think many of us will. You see, there are so many possibilities of grace. There are so many areas of grace. That we could mention here in this chapter. All right, let's come out of Romans 10. Romans 10. You know what Milton wrote? He wrote two classics, didn't he? Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Now, ladies, fasten your seatbelts a minute, because I'll tell you something. He wrote Paradise Lost after he got married, and he wrote Paradise Regained when his wife died. That's just a historical fact, and I don't know why. I mean, I'm not connecting the two. It's actually factually true, you know. He said he did that. You know, Romans 7 is really Paradise Lost. Romans 8 is Paradise Regained. He's entered into a full living relationship. Now, why? Why, why, why, why? Why is this man so sure about this thing? In all these things, we have more than come to prove him. I'm going to come to my best. Father, I'd be defeated like that. Just as if that fellow in the plane said, you know, I've been on the Atlantic 25, 45 times. Man, I've seen these clouds roll up, and it's great going up. I'm in that stream, you know, the jet stream. If I fly one way across the Atlantic, I will fly from New York to England because it's blowing the jets deliberately at this stream. I'll come back. Romans 7, there's no Holy Spirit. Romans 8, 19 times the Holy Spirit. And he said, this is the secret. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free. In verse 11, he said, it's the Spirit that ends up raising up Jesus from the dead. Let's go back a minute. Let me step back a minute here. Let's go back to verse 9. You're not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. It shall be the Spirit of God dwelleth where? In you. All right, the next verse. How does that start? In Christ. All right, in you. Verse 11, it's the Spirit of heaven dwelling in you. Now, three times he mentioned the same thing. It dwells in you. You're not a Christian because you believe the virgin birth. The devil believes it. He witnessed it. The devil believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Sure he does. We're not a Christian because we believe the virgin birth, the physical resurrection of Jesus is coming. The devil believes the Bible. He has to. He witnessed it. He knows it. He's seen it work. Here is the most amazing thing on earth again. He says, if the Spirit of God dwell in you, well, there is nothing more amazing this side of heaven. You know, I'm not against excitement. I wouldn't forbid it. But if you have to go to church and see miracles or something else just to get excited, you missed it. You're dealing with results. You're not dealing with the origin, the source. The exciting thing is Christ lives in me. He's having grace of this side of eternity. Christ lives in me. Now, the Holy Spirit, and I want to stress this. I say it to myself often, so why shouldn't I talk to you as well? But I say this very often to myself, you know, the Holy Spirit is totally incapable of doing anything that's small. He made the world that we live in. He created Jesus in the matrix of the Virgin Mary. The Spirit of heaven raised up Jesus from the dead. There's nothing more exciting than that. I know a young man who bought some books of Parker's. And I got an illustration of Parker's not long ago, and I amplified it a bit myself, you see. Hey, as I said to the folks Sunday morning there, if I said to you, when was the first countdown in history of saying, now let me see, Cape Canaveral, oh, just a minute. If you're talking about Cape Canaveral, you've missed it by 2,000 years. The first countdown was the resurrection moment. Satan was smart enough to know that when Jesus went in that tomb, Jesus said, destroy this body, this temple, and if you do, I raise it up again. But he spoke of the temple of his body. Now, Satan said, if we can keep Jesus Christ there, we can damn every man that's ever get lived or ever will live. There's no other way of salvation. Now, here's Satan. He goes in, and Jesus is lying on a slab, and Satan touches him, and he says, he's as cold and dead as that slab. There's only about another hour to keep him there, and if we do, because as I said last week, you're not saved by the death of Christ. I don't care how much theology you read. We're not saved by the blood of Christ. I don't care how many hymns you sing about it. There are two parts of the whole. Jesus must do more than die. He's got to rise again from the dead. That's the key, because that's the key. Because I live, ye shall live also. If the tomb could keep Jesus Christ, I couldn't have resurrection life, and resurrection life isn't something I'm going to have. When I shut off this mortal toilet, Shakespeare said, I should have resurrection life in me now. I'm only going to have the same life in eternity that I have now, minus this body, at least a body that will be changed, likened to his glorious body. But here's Jesus, he's dead. Satan says, now, we've got an hour to go. Then he gets a bit restless, and he says, we've got ten minutes to go, but I'm not feeling too comfortable. That man, Jesus, did so many tricks. You know, I could pull another one, and boy, I'd be sunk if he did. Now, what can I do? You see, they put Jesus in, and they've got a stone over the tomb, and they've got wax over the stone. They've got seals over the wax, and they've got soldiers over the wax, and over the stone, and over the seal. So he's just about tied up. And Satan says, no, that's not good enough. That's not, I'm going to do something. I know what I'll do. I'll roll all the sin of the world against that stone. Now, he's not going to shake that. All the sins of all the men that ever lived against that stone? No, not even Jesus Christ could do that. He could raise the dead and do things, but he'll never move that. And then he says, now, you know, still, I don't feel comfortable. Five more minutes, he's going to settle the thing forever and ever for a million millenniums of time, trillions of years. And this is the crux of it all. You see, Paul builds a pyramid like that. Fourteen epistles, if you include Hebrews, and he turns it all over and he balances it like balancing something on a fine point like this. And he said, look, all that Jesus did, his virgin birth and his death and his miracles, it all is balanced on this one point, his resurrection. And if he doesn't rise from the dead, Christianity collapses. All right, so you've got Jesus in the tomb. You've got the stone, you've got the wax, you've got the seed, you've got the soldiers, you've got the sin of the world. There's only one other resource I have now. Bring every demon in hell. So he shouts down the caverns of hell, pass every demon in hell. Hasn't that a third part of the heavenly host fell? All right, now put your shoulders to that stone and hold it there. Now you've got the stone and you've got the wax and the seed and the soldiers and the sin of the world and every demon in hell against that stone. And he says, now, now, this is the most vital period in all human history, and I'm going to count. And at the end of that count, either he wins or we do. And he goes down, eight, nine, seven, six, five, four, three. And just when he got to nine, the Holy Ghost went in and quickened Jesus, because that's what this chapter says. The spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead, and out he comes, you see. And he shattered death. And he not only shattered his tomb, he shattered my tomb, because he says, because I live, ye shall live also. You remember, Jesus went to the tomb and that woman impetuously said, well, you don't care about my brother. If he did, he'd have come in here and he'd be walking around and he's dead and he stinks. We've been in that cemetery three days, I don't know why. And Jesus says, well, let's go to the cemetery. What, to take some flowers? No, I just had to see the grave. And when he gets there, he says, roll the stone away. You see, some things God won't do for you, you have to do it yourself. Roll the stone away. And I often wonder how Jesus said it. It must have been thrilling. Jesus just stood there and he said, Lazarus? I wonder if he said it like that. Or do you think he belled like Gabriel's trumpet? Lazarus, you know. And he just said, Lazarus. Lazarus got up and walked out. Deacon Paul Morgan said he had to say Lazarus, because if he'd said come out, the whole cemetery would have come, you see, and it wasn't time for them to come yet. So he just said, Lazarus, come forth, and Lazarus came forth. But you see, when he came forth, he was like a lot of us. He didn't have liberty just because he had life. He still had grave clothes on him. We've got millions of believers who still have grave clothes on them. Loose him and let him go, he said. Cut the grave clothes off. Then they cut the grave clothes. He's emancipated. Now, why is this man so confident? I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me. We are more than conquerors through him that love us. Do you know why? Well, first of all, he says in verse 15, we not receive the spirit again of fear, but we receive the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry out to our Father. Isn't that lovely? That should be the first ground of my confidence. I'm a child of God by faith in Jesus. Now, look, he goes a bit further, and he says, verse 26, emphasizing the spirit. The spirit helpeth our infirmities. We know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the spirit maketh intercession for us. And the next verse, the spirit, because he maketh intercession for us. And then leap right across to verse 34. Jesus is at the right hand of the Father, who also maketh intercession for us. Well, if you're a real Pentecostal, you can shout it out at any house. But, after all, what more could you have? You have the Holy Ghost making intercession, and you have Jesus at the right hand of the Father making intercession for you, whether you're washing dishes, or scrubbing the floor, or batting the baby, or doing a business deal. He's still there living to make intercession. And all you have to do is switch to him in that moment, and he's still there. He's never off-duty. You see, they said to those Christians, the epistle to the Hebrews is written to people who are getting a bit shaky and in every right to be. If you read Eric Saar on the arena of faith and see the background, you see, somebody says to a man, Isaac, you haven't been to the synagogue, I know there's a temple, you haven't been for a few months. And he says, no, I've known the Christians up that back alley there. Oh, come on, come on. Now, you know, that Jesus father never rose from the dead. I mean, how come you never saw him except your little gang in that little room, you know. I mean, why didn't he appear to somebody? I mean, it's a private thing. You know it's not true. Now, just a minute, just a minute, Isaac. Hey, see, there's the high priest going into the temple. Look at his beautiful garments. Now, you know, Isaac, you don't have a temple, and you don't have a high priest, and you don't have a law, and you don't have a prophet, and you don't have sacrifice, but you're in bad shape. I mean, isn't it silly going up that back alley talking, you say he hears you and he can't see, and boy, it's not funny really. You know, I could go and get him to see, and I like an altar, and I like a priest with garments on, and somebody saw the pope and said, why did he call him father when he dressed him like mother? But why does a priest wear garments down to his filth? I mean, I'd like to see that. And he wears a breastplate with the twelve tribes on, and one of the tribes is my tribe. He has my name on there. At least my tribal name is there. Now, you don't have anything like that, do you? Hmm? And you don't have anybody like Moses. I mean, Moses, oh boy, he's our great prophet. He gave us the Ten Commandments, and he did this, that, and the other. And the Christian priest, he's getting under the weather, and he's saying to himself, no, I don't have Moses, and we don't have a law, and the prophets, and we don't have blood sacrifice, and we don't have a priest that goes in every year, and we don't have a high altar, and we don't... And he says, hey, wait a minute. Have you said everything? Yeah. Sure, sure, you don't have a leg to stand on. He goes, no, I don't need to. I've got a chair to sit down on. Let me tell you what my position is. You say that we don't have a priest that goes into the holy place every year. You see, your high priest has to go into the holiest place of all once a year for the sins of one people. And he has to take blood. And he has to find out whether he's accepted or not. But you see, my high priest, he entered the holy place years ago, once, in his whole life. He doesn't have to do it over and over, every year like you do. And you say, you're thinking about Moses. But you know, Moses failed. I mean, he did bring him to the promised land, did he? No, no, but he didn't. But Joshua did. Yeah, but that's true. Joshua brought you into the land, but it says that he couldn't bring you into rest. You know, we lay the evangelist preachers on Matthew 11, 28. Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. That's a great text. No, it isn't. That's only half the text. There's a bridge there. You cross to the other half. And then it says, after you've said, come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. And learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest. He's already given you rest. Oh no, there's another rest. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God, Hebrews 2 says. And why didn't they enter in? There's only one thing, which is the opposite of faith, really. They did not enter into the promised land because of one thing. They couldn't believe. And belief is the greatest enemy that we have. It isn't possible. It isn't reasonable. It isn't rational. And so we start rationalizing and reasoning, and all the time the devil's got us where he wants us. But this man says, well, Moses brought you so far and got you. Joshua brought you so far and couldn't get you through. But you know, Jesus, my master, my Lord, even when he brought me out of Egypt into the promised land, when he brought me into rest, you say that we don't have a temple. But we do. He says, where is it? He says, you're looking at it. What do you mean, you're looking at it? He says, well, I'm the temple of God. I'm the temple of God. A church, people say, you go to church. How can you go to church when you are the church? To them, the church is stained glass windows and a steeple. That, no, call it the church house if you like, but that's not the church. The church is his body. The church is this redeemed company that he's purchased with his own blood, and he's come to enjoy by his spirit. Now, do you wonder that this man says, well, after all, I'm sure living in the area of victory, because there's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, I'm protected in justification by his death. Therefore, I'm more than comfortable with my past sins. He's a propitiation for my sins. The resurrection is a proof of the fact we have an advocate with the Father. Now, if I'm safe in justification, I'm safe in representation because he's living at the right hand. And on top of that, it says that Jesus lives to make intercession. So, I'm safeguarded by his ascension as well. I'm justification and ascension through Jesus, and protection because he's at the right hand of the Father. Do you wonder that he says I can be more than conqueror through him that loves me? And then I'm safeguarded by intercession. I was talking once with, well, the editor of Decision, call me one day, Dr. Sherwood, Sherwood Worthy, he's with the rest of them in Switzerland tonight, and he said, Len, I want to come and talk to you. So, he came to my office and we talked for a few hours. And in the course of talking, he said something about Billy that he loved very much, and surely Billy's a great guy. And I said, you know, Sherwood, a few years ago I used to think, boy, I wish I had as many people praying for me as Billy Graham has. I said, I'd just been in Australia and some ladies, 12 ladies came up and they said, you know, we pray for so many people, the first person we pray for every morning is Dr. Billy Graham. So, I said, well, that's very nice. Sherwood Worth says we estimate that two million people a day pray for Billy Graham. I said, well, that's wonderful. But I said, it doesn't worry me a bit. I said, I used to think I'd like that, but it doesn't bother me anymore. He said, what do you mean? Well, I said, does it say, even in the amplifier, does it say if two million of you will agree to accepting anything in my name to be given to you? No, no, it doesn't say two million, how many does it say? Two. Well, I said, I said, if I've got two people ready to make intercession, for me, with God, I've got as much as Graham as it is two million. Because God isn't on the side of the young, is he? God has always worked in a minority, the Church always has been a minority, and it will be a minority. And I was thinking of Dr., what's his name, Harold Coon is presenting one of the papers in Switzerland these nights. He told me about it a while ago. And I remember he said a while ago what's really stuck in my mind, and I enjoyed, he said, remember that Christianity wasn't served up to the world on a silver platter. Christianity was born in a sophisticated totalitarian world. It was a sophisticated world. Without being ruled, you know, even in those days, you can read history, women went to the celebrity balls of the feet of poplars. Nothing new under heaven. Oh yes, yes, I can show you that, I can show you that in print. There's nothing new under heaven. They lived it up. Christianity was born in a slave system. There were at least 6 million slaves in the Roman Empire, and maybe the world population wasn't more than 20 million, and there were 6 million of those 20 million were slaves. The Bible says nothing about slavery except obey your master. So Christianity was born in a foreign atmosphere. It was born in a totalitarian, a sophisticated world, a totalitarian world where the Roman Empire, it spread, and it's like an octopus, it had the world in its grip. And this is the man writing in the middle of that that says, in all these things we're more than conquerors. Through him that loved us. Now let me say this and remind you that, what does he say? I'm afraid that neither death nor life. Well, maybe we haven't got too many problems about death, because we haven't got there yet, but he says neither death nor life. Now this is where, this is where the problem comes, isn't it? People say, do you think you could die for the Lord? I thought many times I could die right on the spot, living for him was the problem, not dying for him. Many a person could drop down under the Lord and say, Lord, I'm ready to go. The children drove me up the wall today. My husband's come home unemployed, and they had a wreck with a car. Oh, Lord, please come tonight and get us all out of this. I mean, that would be the easiest way out. But that doesn't make character, you see. And so he says that in all these things, whether it's death or life, all principalities, all powers, these mysterious powers up in the heavenlies that we're fighting right over, and this is why Mr. Nixon and these other guys can't win anyhow, because we've come right up to the end time, and these principalities are fighting more fiercely than ever. And I don't believe it's a political situation we're in, as what a great may be. It's a spiritual power that we're up against. It's the last great onslaught of the enemy. And then he says, no height, no depth. Do you ever get into deeps? Oh, yeah, we get into depths. You hear people say, oh, I get into the depths of despair, I get into the depths of doubt. Well, I don't think there's anything wrong in it. After all, it's God's school, and if he decides to put the lights out and let you sit in the schoolroom in the dark, so what? If he decides to withdraw this thing to test you as to whether you love your church, or love a group of people, or love clapping hands, or love something else more than you love him, he's going to test you somehow to see if your love is because he's generous to you and good to you and kind to you. I'll make a safe guess. I've just got this good book here. I'm going to read it. Gulag Archipelago by Sultan Hinson. An exposure in which he says there's about 600 pages. I don't think I'll read them all tonight. My wife will say it's too late, but I'll get into it. Sultan Hinson says that right now the condition of people in Russia is worse than under the Tsars, and that's why I've written this book, and that's why they've kicked him out of the country. Maybe your opposite number, my opposite number in Russia tonight, and the shirt through his back, and maybe all he's had is a bag of bread today and a cup of bean soup and some things that normally you want to give to the pigs, but that's all he's had to live on. Isn't it amazing how patient God is I mean, if I were doing God's job, honestly, I think I'd change a few things around. You know, if he'd let me have control for about 12 hours, I think I'd change a few things. Don't you think it must have been a heartbreak at times for Moses to be back on the desert 40 years? Good heavens. How many tens of thousands of people died in that 40 years? God, why didn't you send me back? Let me do the job. They're dying every day. I've got a report today. So many thousands have died. But Moses sat on the backside of the desert, and God let the people die by the thousand. He didn't hurry up. You know? It's a strange thing, what things God does. And what about when he takes you into the area where it is dark? You know, I love to think of, well, it says, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature. All those depths. Do you ever say, Lord, take me in the dark just to prove yourself to me? No, I like to walk on the sunny side. I like to walk in the garden with the flowers, and I like to reach for this. And I like people. I like meetings. Boy, I can't get to it. Say, George, are you going tonight? And I'm always glad when he says, no, I'm too tired. Boy, I've got to wait for the meeting. Now, that's all right. There's nothing wrong with it. But if you forget the meeting to get you back into condition, then you can't be living on him. You're living on meetings. And if the meetings go, some of our faith might be shattered. Look, here, let me put it, I like to put it this way. Here's Joseph. He lives up here. His father sends him to Dalton to his brothers. When he gets to Dalton, they put him down in a pit. They pull him out of the pit, take him down into Egypt. He gets into prison. He goes into Egypt, and they put him in prison. He gets in prison. The bottom falls out. He prays for a couple of guys. They both get out of prison, and God leads him in. He's only 17. And he didn't come out till he was 30. You see, Jesus didn't minister till he was 30. John Baptist didn't minister till he was 30. Joseph didn't do anything till he was 30. Joshua didn't do anything till he was 30. A priest in the Old Testament couldn't minister till he was 30. Work that out. But here he is. He's in prison. Down, down, down. God, he doesn't let me stop it. No, just one more stop. Stop it. No, I decided I'd let you go a bit further. Well, this is the bottom. No, no, a bit further still. Well, Lord. Oh, Lord. There's nobody around here. I mean, there's only a couple of wicked men here. Well, that's all right. And then he's left for 13 years. But then he starts going up, and up, and up, and up, and up, till he gets on a throne where he and the king sit together. Now, we don't mind sitting on the throne, but brother, it's the stripping business that hurts. Lord, fill me, but the Lord says, well, just a minute. I'm going to start emptying you before I fill you. Lord, clothe me with your Spirit, but he says, before I clothe you, I'll strip you. Lord, you said that you'll give me this and give me the other, but he says, before I give, I subtract. God has some very strange ways of working. It's sure, as the good old book says, that his ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts. Now, how can you do more than conquer? Well, let's take just the simple illustration. Take Daniel going into the den of lions. Boy, it's a nice story, isn't it? I mean, you know, sitting in this nice furniture, it's nice to talk about going to a den of lions. I enjoy it. But what about going there? I mean, when they lifted the the stone off and dangled him on the rope and he goes down into the den of lions. Whoops. Well, that's a bit rough. Well, I think when he went into that den of lions, he was a conqueror, because he never complained, he never grumbled. I think when he went into the den of lions, all he did was walk around and put his hands and see which had the softest tummy, and he said, well, that's the nerdiest thing I'll get to a beauty rest mattress down here. So he laid down with his head on the belly of the lion and he went to sleep. Now, isn't it strange that he goes into a den of lions, the lords shut the lions' mouths, he goes to sleep, the king goes to his bed, they sprayed the room, you know, so he'd get no germs, and they sanded him with ostrich feathers so he wouldn't get too hot, and the poor king couldn't sleep. It just felt as though his pillow was full of rotten glass and spring had gone in the bed or something, and he gets up and walks around and finally says, let's go back and feed daddies. He goes at two or three in the morning and he's done, and Daniel hears them rolling the stirrer and went, oh, there it is again, and the king says, Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, is your king able? He says, well, I'm all right, I'm... You're still alive. Still alive, I've had the best sleep I've had, I've done a lot of business because this is the best sleep I've had for ages, and here you come and disturb me. Now, you'd think the king would be disturbed, Daniel would be disturbed and the king's sleeping, but the king's disturbed and Daniel's sleeping. So when they put Daniel in, he's come to, but when he comes up and they change the law of the state, he's more than concrete. The three Hebrew children go into the fire. I'm sure if you asked them, would you like to go in the fire, most likely they would have said no. I guess that's what they would have said. Well, what happened when they got in the fire? Well, all that happened when they got in the fire was the fire burned off them what the world put on them because their hands were tied and their feet were tied, and all the fire did was burn the fetters off them. You see? Sometimes they're going into a circumstance, we've been praying, Lord, I want to be more spiritual, and I want to be more like Jesus, and we're going into a fire and the first thing, ooh, Lord, Lord, please take us away and please take us away and please take us away and all the Lord was doing was answering prayer. He was going to stoke the fire up so it would be so hot it would burn those things off you that are still troubling you, you know, opinions of people and what will they say that you didn't get rid of somewhere. And the Lord says, I've burned it off this way and I've burned it off that way and he says, oh Lord, please, let me work it out myself. Maybe the pastor knows on Sunday and if I can't, well, I'll write Billy Graham to answer it in this little column, my answer, you know. Maybe he has an easy way out. Or Peter, you know, Peter's always talking his head off and one day Jesus says, I want to borrow your boat and let him have it without saying a word. That was unusual for Peter, he's always an answer. So he borrows the boat, he says, all right, Jesus, you want my boat? Take it. Now imagine when Peter wanted to let Jesus have that boat without saying a word, he was a conqueror. But when the boats came back filled with fishes to the rim and over, I think he was more than a conqueror. Or a super example is that Jesus goes to the cross and he's led as a lamb before Rasheedah is done. I'm going to write an article one day, I've got a title, I often get titles before I write an article. I'm going to write an article one day on the perennial challenge to the believer. The perennial challenge, the challenge that never changes down the ages, do you know what it is? Come down from the cross and save thyself. I mean you made a consecration, but you know that preacher got you all worked up and he scared you to death and made you believe you'd go to hell if you died with ten dollars in the bank and he's got a hundred times more than you have anyhow. And the Lord didn't really mean that. Now I know you can be worked on, there's no question about it. And that's why I never, I would never ask people to make a commitment in a meeting, I'd say you go home and pray about it. In fact, the greatest evangelists I've known don't even make articles. You talk about being New Testament, there's no article in the New Testament, where is the one? There isn't one. It's a man-made invention. But, Jesus, when they said come down from the cross and save yourself, he could have done it all right. Again, God's ways aren't our ways. As I said to some people that I know that fill their pockets with facts every morning going to work, if they knew they were going to die on a cross, the first thing they do is fill their pockets with facts and they throw them from the cross and they shout to the thieves and I decide Jesus let them both go to hell. He didn't testify to either of them, did he? He didn't say a word to them. The rich young ruler came to him, maybe the richest man on earth, ran, in the middle of the day, which nobody does. Shows how earnest he was, nobody runs in the middle of the day in the east, they walk slow, in fact, they don't go out ever since yesterday. But this young man is so earnest, he comes to Jesus and Jesus says and the young man went away with his head down and Jesus never ran after him. He went after him and said, well, I think he's over again. He goes, come here, come here, I want you to talk with me a little while about this. He didn't understand what I said to him. Jesus didn't do that. He just left him, you see. But again, the challenge is come down from the cross and save yourself. You know, I mean, you're being filled with the spirit but, I mean, you know, they scorn you in the office already and I don't, don't, don't tell you you're in a meeting the other night and you're filled with the spirit and somebody spoke in tongues and I didn't speak in tongues and we were all walking around and beating our tambourines and having a get-together and that's, that's silly. So they'll go Saturday night and do this, that, that, that, that, you know, like they do on TV. I don't know why they call it dancing. We had a girl in our, our street did that 50 years ago and they call it some kind of dance and I took her to an institution because, you know, when I turn the knob and I see, you know, you never see those kids smiling, hardly ever, have you noticed that? On the school train or something, I turn it on just, just to see sometimes and you see, they're dancing, dancing, dancing, and you never see them smiling. Are you doing it, darling, too? Well, you see, the thing is, save yourself. Don't go out on a limb. I mean, don't tell the in-laws what's happening in life. Don't, save yourself, save yourself. We're always trying to save ourselves and that, that's the challenge. You know, God told you to live on less money and give some permission. God told you to change your job. God told you to do this. It looked great in the flesh and excitement of the thing and you knew it was the law and I'm not saying it wasn't. But the challenge is going to come before long down the road. Modify it a bit. I mean, put it in better language. Be very careful how you present it and, you know, save yourself. Save yourself from scorn. Save yourself from humiliation. Save yourself, you're back where you started. After all, the problem of sin in the Garden of Eden, as far as I know, Adam didn't beat his wife up. Maybe he didn't mention it but I don't think he did and he didn't get drunk and he didn't steal anything in one sense The first rebellion in the world was when Adam said I'm going to run my life and let not make God run it. And sometimes people in church get away with it because we're preachers or they're all prodigal sons and they're not. I know some people who have more morals and ethics than lots of Christians and not even say. You see, God's first argument with a man is not that he's bad. God's first argument with a man is dead in trespasses and in sin. And Jesus didn't come into the world to make bad men good. He came into the world to make dead men live. It doesn't matter if you have a degree a yard long outside of Jesus a man is as dead and as damned as those guys who have been perished on the way out of prison. And we look on people sometimes and we argue with them as though this was Chalmers' problem in Scotland. Chalmers preached on the Ten Commandments for about two years and he funded the laws of God and the people sat there like dummies. And at the end of about two years of preaching on the Ten Commandments he realized that maybe the Scottish people were the most moral people in the world. There wasn't adultery. There was hardly a liar in the place. They weren't thieves. They weren't anything else. He'd mixed the whole thing. God's problem is not that men are bad first. God's problem is that men are dead. The first thing that was committed by Adam was I'm going to run my life my way not God's way. Why did Satan get kicked out of heaven? To steal a slab of gold off Main Street as far as I know. He got kicked out of heaven because he said I'm going to run my life my way not God's way. And as Finney said and I'll finish with this Finney said until you touch a man's selfishness you haven't got far with him. Any man that's sensible once he's allowed his sins forgiven when you say Jesus Christ you can't have Jesus as your Savior. We say will you take Jesus as your Savior? That's not New Testament. The New Testament is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. About 475 times our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We've divorced the one from the other. We say to people will you take him as your Savior? Then a bit later we ask them say is he your Lord? Or you should take him as your Lord. You can't really have Jesus Christ without him being your Lord and your Savior. He doesn't want you to allow your sins. What are you going to do with them? I remember an Irishman with the old boy and he went to a meeting one night. The next night he sees old Mickey coming down the road and so Mickey he says Hi Mickey and he says Hi Paddy sure now it's a great morning. He says I gave the Lord Top of the morning to you. He said I was down at Mission Hall last night. You were? Was it a good meeting? Ah it was the greatest meeting. He said you know I gave the Lord my pipe. He said you what? He said I gave the Lord my pipe. Ah he said he doesn't smoke. Well you know you know what he meant. In other words you can take Jesus as your Savior but not as your Lord. You can't. You can't. He doesn't want our rotten sins. He wants me. He wants me. He wants my ego if you like. Myself. Me. So he can live and reign in me. He doesn't want to take me to heaven but a friendly benefit. He wants to rule in my life now. We say thy kingdom come thy what do you think about thy kingdom come? What's it going to be? Angels on traffic duty instead of cops? Going to bed at night in a millennium? That's not it. It means thy kingdom come in my life now. I ought to live on earth as I am already in heaven. That's what Paul said. We are a colony of heaven. Our citizenship is in heaven. We are a colony of heaven. And as I said last week it's like living in the American Embassy in England and you go at Thanksgiving the rest of the English are going on but in the Embassy they have the stars and stripes and the big eagle and they're having turkey and everything else. The English aren't having anything like that because they don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Well by the same token it should be that in the house of God the house of God ought to be the nearest place to heaven on earth unless it is your house. Wait a minute. Unless it is your house. You see. My home ought to be a little bit of heaven. My church ought to be a little bit of heaven. My life I ought to be living now in that relationship with Jesus Christ. I was thinking of it today. I ought to live every day so that if if the threat of life snapped I could walk right into the presence of Jesus without being embarrassed. Isn't that it? But if life stops like that I'll walk right up and I'm going to be busy busy him. There's going to be none of this sloppy silly talk you know from his beautiful throne he will welcome me home. Forget it. That's not true. That's the poet's imagination. That's him-nology not theology. We want serious serious serious difficulty before we get any crowns and any rewards and any royal garments and anything else. One reward one thing is this we're going to have to stand at the judgment seat of Christ and get it all straightened out. You see there's no condemnation for the past sins that I've committed but from the moment that I became Jesus Christ and I'm really his I don't only get in my rotten sins I get in myself I get in my life I get in my pocket book I get in everything I have. It's his not mine. And if so be that the Spirit of God dwells in us like that then Paul says sir we can be more than conquerors through him because as we read three times there he dwells in us and I don't have to live a victorious life he'll live a victorious life through me. And when I take my hands off myself he'll do the guiding he'll do the stopping he'll say you can go ahead he'll say hold back and my spirit since I am a spirit is in communion with his spirit and those two spirits that his spirit will bear witness with my spirit. Not only I'm a child of God but whether I'm to go or whether I'm to stay that's what you'll find out working in the life again of the Apostle Paul. So we get out of Romans 7 with it's bondage and get into Romans 8 with it's liberty. Romans 7 with it's slavery and Romans 8 really with it's sovereignty. Romans 7 paradise lost and Romans 8 paradise regained because the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus is in dwelling in us now and it's a whole new ball game as you say Romans 7 self centred Romans 8 Christ centred Romans 7 I'm in the middle he's on the outside Romans 8 he's in the centre and I'm wearing the circumference we're more than conquered through him that loved us and while ever we stay in that place of submission and obey him day by day we live on the victory side immediately we step out of that we step out into defeat we start the prayer back to bondage unless we quickly repent and tell the Lord we're sorry and say Lord this day as we were saying a little earlier tonight you read the Acts of the Apostles they have constant replenishing constant reselling constant renewing you see there is a case I keep saying I'll stop and people say to me well you said finally and you went on a good while I said well Paul said finally and he wrote three chapters after that so I'm in good company when I say that but you know Romans 12 1 and 2 says well I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God ye present your bodies a living sacrifice and these Greeks will tell you that word present is in the aorist tense it means something it means something you do once and for all so I say if I go David was away last week when he came back he didn't get married to his wife again I don't know if that's a relief but he didn't go to the wedding ceremony when he comes back he may embrace her give her a hug and say my darling I've missed you and so forth but he doesn't get married again now by the same token if I'm related to Jesus Christ in that sense Romans 12 1 and 2 you present your body when I preached on that one a man came to me and said look I do that every morning I said don't you he said don't you I said no why not well look if I put my Bible on there and I said look that's my body on this table I presented my body that's my body I give it to the Lord Jesus there's only one way I can give it back to him tomorrow that's I've taken it off in between if I put it there and I leave it there I presented it once and for all to him as a living sacrifice and he manipulates it and he manages it and he does what he wants with it now if I take it off and self gets in and I start running my own way I'm going to have to come back and renew that vow and hand it back to him and say Lord I'm sorry I got under self control again and that grieved you grieve not the Holy Spirit of God and I'm sorry and I get back into that relationship again you see and this is why we have our ins and outs because self gets in and injects what it wants to do it thinks and somebody else thinks and before long I get off the fine balance of walking in the Spirit you see and it's easy to do because the Spirit is so gentle he's a dove he's not an eagle he's a dove he symbolizes a dove a dove has no gall bladder a dove only marries once a dove has nine feathers on that wing and he's got nine main feathers on this and there are nine gifts of the Spirit there are nine fruits of the Spirit and even in an energy crisis doves don't try and get off the ground flapping one wing you know or they'd be in a mess they'd never make it they flap them both and get off but some people always flap one wing gifts gifts gifts of the Spirit some people tuck that in and don't talk about it it's fruit fruit fruit of the Spirit but if you get fruits and gifts going you really make it you know you get some place but the old energy wants to get us off kilter they do it by somebody's preaching if you're not never through mine of course but if you're not careful isn't that right he will somebody will come out oh it's all this it's all this it's all this we got past that I'm always suspicious when people say I've got past that now we should get past childishness for sure but you see this is an area and of course I'll mention this but this has been revealed to us you know just to us well you better go back and see what every time and I do get some literature you'll be amazed what I get most of it goes on file 13 you know that round file it's mostly something that's been revealed to us and you know what I do I go right to the Peter where he says the scripture is of no private interpretation and it's something that we've got we've twisted it this way and it's only ours well forget it it's not genuine anyhow that's the way you get papacy and that's the way you get these fellows that want to lob it over us and this is why I like a meeting of this kind and maybe one night instead of talking we'll just let you fire questions and exchange views and let Jim and any of you make contributions because no man has a monopoly of wisdom you see you may know a lot of things I don't know the Lord has revealed this to you that he hasn't yet revealed to me and so you can make a contribution to my faith as I try and make them to yours this is why we build up each other in our most holy faith and it's a long process and it's a slow process and I remind you again it's a quiet process my wife keeps opening the window at night when we go to bed and we must have more bullfrogs and guns and things round our house they sing and yell till two or three o'clock and that's about the most crazy things in the world but you know I often see when I look at those trees they're about 250 I think and our lot is about 2 acres and I look at those big thick trees and you know they grow and sometimes when the winds rage they have a branch cracking and go like that you know I'm glad as I said the other day I'm glad that when things are growing they don't make any noise I never get me sleep at night if 200 trees grown every time they're growing the other day it'd be horrible you know growth is very beautiful it makes no noise that light doesn't make a single noise tonight and if you let your light shine it you won't have to make any noise if you're drawing people to sleep without making any noise when you have to stand up and blast at something and say you know how much bigger I am in the spirit since I was last year or when I joined this church you'll get off your rocker a bit you know if a lady's got perfume on I don't you don't have to tell me she's got perfume on if some people haven't you don't need to tell me but by the same note there are some things so self evident and you know there is nothing more lovely than a holy life a life in spiritual health a life in spiritual strength a life with spiritualism is the most beautiful thing on earth because it's exactly what Jesus came to do to restore in us and give us more even than Adam ever had and um it's a good thing to look at the end of the day and just check up have I been more than comparable if I haven't let me know make a note of where I failed and safeguard myself against it next time and plead for strength and grace to overcome that thing next time as somebody said uh perfection is made up of trifles but perfection itself is not trifles and so God will keep adding and adjusting and manipulating and uh one day inside the pearly gates we'll understand it all and we'll see through life's darkness and then we'll see face to face