In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of having faith and not giving up. He shares an illustration of a ditch caving in on some men because the walls were not properly supported, comparing it to our lives without the word of God. The speaker also mentions a scientific discovery of drilling into the earth's crust and hearing human screams, which some believe to be condemned souls from hell. The sermon also touches on the topic of suffering, highlighting the pain of childbirth and the joy that follows, and encourages listeners to rely on God's grace to carry them through difficult times. Additionally, the speaker expresses concern about the lack of discipleship in the church and the need for a revival.

It's good to be back with you again today on Eagle's Wings. The scripture says, You have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bear you on eagle's wings, and brought you unto myself. God wants you unto himself. And when we make it to God, we've made it. Jesus said it is finished on the cross. Everything in relation to us was finished. As far as God was concerned, he had done what needed to be done. And now what we are doing, is seeking to complete or fulfill that which he has given us. You're complete in Christ. Christ is all we need. He's all, is he all we want? That's the question. In the book of Colossians, in chapter 1, in verse 25, down to the end of the chapter, Paul said that he was made a minister. According to the dispensation of God, which is given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God. So many of us live without a goal. We live without purpose. And thus we live without power or joy in our life. For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain, the apostle Paul said. For me to live is Christ, is my personal cry too. What bothers me is sometimes that self gets in the way. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, the Scripture says. So, are we crucified with Christ? If we're dead, then Jesus will live. If we live in ourself in the power of the flesh, then Jesus will die for all practical purposes. Let me encourage you to receive Christ as your Savior, if you haven't done so. I think I ought to just take a little time right now, right at the beginning of this program, to encourage you to receive Christ as your Savior. The Lord Jesus could come back before we got time to finish this program today. His soon coming seems to be more evident now, according to Bible prophecy, than any time in history. And I know through the ages we've always had our prophet saying that he's coming soon, he's coming soon, but he's never been any closer than now. He could very well come soon, with our world situation the way it is, and the New Agers trying to get their occultic movement into gear the way they're going. You know there's no head over the New Age movement? Do you know that? Oh sure, there's some leaders in it. But you know who the head is? It's Satan. And we know the Scripture has said that he would be bringing about a one world order, a one world government, and this New Age movement is making more progress than probably anything else has. Let me encourage you to look at your situation. Are you in Christ? Are you saved? Are you ready for eternity? Are you ready for death? Are you ready? So many through the years have made fun of the doctrine of hell. But the Lord Jesus Christ is the one that taught us about hell. He talked about hell more than anybody in the Scripture, so you're making fun of Him. And you're going to call Him a liar. He says that hell is a literal place. You know, I was reading in a Christian magazine an article on hell, and it was taken out of a secular magazine. The article actually came from Finland. And the English translation was published by M&M Digest in Dallas. And let me just share this with you. This is a group of scientists that shared this. The article says, Scientists are afraid they have opened the gates to hell. A geological group who drilled a hole about nine miles into the crust of the earth are saying they heard human screams. Students of the Scriptures have assumed that these screams were from condemned souls from the deepest pit. Some of the scientists fear that they have uncapped hell and are afraid to continue their experiments. Now, I don't know. I'm going to stop here. I don't know when this discovery was made. But it goes on to say that the information that we are gathering is so surprising that we are sincerely afraid of what we might find down there. Dr. Azavkov, manager of the project, to drill a 14.4 kilometer hole in remote Siberia said, The second surprise was the high temperature they discovered in the earth's center. The calculations indicate that the given temperature was about 1,100 Celsius or over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Dr. Azavkov pointed out that is far more than we expected. It seems almost like an inferno of fire is brutally going on in the center of the earth. In quote, it goes on, The last discovery was nevertheless the most shocking to our ears, so much so that the scientists are afraid to continue the project. We tried to listen to the earth's movements at certain levels with supersensitive microphones which were let down through the hole. What we heard sent thinking scientists into confusion. It was at times weak, but a high-pitched sound which we thought was coming from our own equipment. After some adjustments, we comprehended that indeed the sound came from the earth's interior. We could hardly believe our own ears. We heard a human voice screaming. Though one voice was discernible, we could hear thousands, perhaps millions in the background, screaming. After this ghastly discovery, about half of the scientists quit because of fear. Hopefully that which is down there will stay there, Dr. Asikov added. My friend, this is just scientists confirming only what the scripture said, that there is a hell. If there is a heaven, then there is a hell. Jesus Christ talked about both. He died on the cross to keep you from going to that hell and to take you to his heaven. You say, how can I make sure that I get there? You make sure that you get there by making sure that you receive Christ as your Savior. You repent of your sin, repent of all your effort to save yourself. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. The Bible says the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever would believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God isn't interested in condemning you to hell. Hell wasn't made for you. Hell was made for the devil and his angels, the scripture says. But if you'll follow the devil and his angels, the demons, then you'll go there with them. And it's not a fun place where you're going to be with all your buddies. It's a place of gnashing of teeth and of darkness and eternal suffering. A place where you want to die so it'll be over, but you will be dead. That will be the death. Eternal pain. Paying for your own sin, but you don't have to go there. The Lord Jesus Christ died on that cross, suffered your pain for you, paid for your sin for you. And God will accept you if you accept his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. All kinds of gimmicks, all kinds of systems, all kinds of cults and religions have all kinds of ideas and ways that you can get to heaven, but Jesus said, I'm the way. I'm the truth. I'm the life. He that has the Son has life. The Scripture says, if you have Jesus Christ in your heart as your Savior, then you have life. He that has not the Son does not have life. If you don't have Jesus, you don't have anything. You've missed it all. Well, shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul, Jesus said. Think about it. Is it worth it to have your own way? The philosophy of the world is have it your way. You have it your way and you're not going to like it in the end. Have it Jesus' way and you'll be satisfied. A lot of pain, a lot of suffering. Maybe we ought to talk about suffering a little bit. I think a lot of times we don't understand suffering. Part of life is suffering. When you were born into this world, somebody suffered. Your mother went through pain. Childbirth is a very excruciating pain. You feel like you're going to bust to pieces. So I'm told. I've never experienced it. My wife's had five children and I've been there for four of the births. And it bothers me because I'm so helpless to help her. But after the birth is the joy, the relief. And there's a child comes in and the Scripture says that the mother will forget all the pain because of the joy of the child. You're going through some suffering maybe that is unbearable. You just don't know how you can take another moment of it. God's grace is sufficient. He will carry you through. And that's what this program is about. To bring us to the point where we experience God so deeply in our lives that His grace is sufficient. The Apostle Paul had a thorn in the flesh and he came back to the Lord three times and finally the Lord said, My grace is sufficient for you. Learn to live by my grace. That will be your strength. Let Him lift you up on eagles' wings. Learn to fly by the grace of God. The psalmist said, Keep me as the apple of the eye. Hide me under the shadow of thy wings. My friend, they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary and they shall walk and not faint. Let me encourage you to draw off the Lord Jesus Christ all you need. Christ is all you need. Is He all you want? You know, we're inspired over different things. A football team that's playing very well and winning will inspire us. A new baby that comes into the world, that will inspire us. If we get a new car, that will inspire us. If we get a new home, that will inspire us. But these things wear off, we know. You get a new job, a new bonus, these things encourage us and we're all happy. But what happens when they're over? The Lord Jesus Christ is to be your inspiration. If He's your inspiration, then nothing, no circumstance will affect you. I've heard that after the air raids of 1941 in England, that in the spring, 95 different kinds of flowers and shrubs popped up. How'd that happen? Well, they tell us that all of the bombs that made the impact over there in England brought up seeds that had been planted over the years, hundreds of years, and the bombings had brought these things to the surface and so they popped up. I wonder if the bombings in your life is bringing up the fragrance of Christ or is it drawing out the evidence of the flesh? The sufferings we go through for Christ bring Him glory as others see Christ in us and they bring forth fruit. Or it can bring out of our life the fragrance of self. I was reading over in 2 Corinthians 2, 14-16 where we're to give thanks to God for really our triumph in Christ. Now, thanks being to God, which always causes us to triumph in Christ. We're to give thanks in everything, the Apostle Paul. Now we're to give thanks to the Lord Jesus, to God, because He always causes us to triumph in Christ. And makes manifest, because of this triumph in Christ, it makes manifest the savor of His knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are saved and in them that perish. To the one we are the savor of death and unto death, and to the other the savor of life and to life. And who is sufficient for these things? To one person you come along, you're a sweet-smelling flavor. You are bringing hope into their life, you're bringing them joy, you have brought them what they need. They needed Christ and they're so glad to get Him to another. You bring the fragrance of Christ and they get mad at you, they get angry at you, they are upset with you, they hate you, they maybe even want to kill you or destroy you or get you fired. Because they are reminded of their sin and that God is present and that God exists and they don't want that. They want to exist. You know, you take a rose and you crush it and you're going to get the fragrance out of it. But if you're driving down the road and you run over a skunk, you're going to get the flavor of a skunk. And you know, we try to avoid those skunks and people are going to try to avoid you if the skunk flavor is coming out of your life instead of the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't afford and I can't afford to live in the flesh. We can't afford for our churches to be dominated by flesh. We just can't afford that. You know, the Apostle Paul in Colossians chapter 1, he says, I am, in chapter 1 verse 25, whereof I am made a minister according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you to fulfill the word of God. He, the Lord Jesus Christ, was his ministry. The dispensation, he said, that dispensation means an economy or literally a stewardship. He had been given a stewardship and he suffered tremendously to carry out that which God wanted him to do. And you may be suffering tremendously going through things that you just maybe can't understand. But it's for a purpose. Keep the faith. Don't cave in. I was sharing with my kids a little bit last night. We were going through the passage about where to have faith and not to faint or to cave in. And I shared an illustration of how back when I was pastoring in Wyoming, about a block away, some men were digging, probably putting in a water line and the ditch caved in on them. One man's back was broken and he was paralyzed and I can't remember what happened to the other. But they didn't shore up the walls. They didn't shore up the walls with some sheets of plywood and brace it up. And this is what happens in our life. If we don't shore up our lives with the Word of God, we'll cave in. We've been doing corn this week. We've got some fresh corn and we've been freezing it. And every now and then we'll run into one that's shriveled up. Why are those kernels of corn shriveled up? Ask my children. Why do these things shrivel up? Ask my father-in-law for his great wisdom on this. Well, it's pretty simple. That corn stalk that somewhere along the line had been broken off from the source of water and it began to shrivel up as a result of that. And we are like that as Christians. We shrivel up. If the Word of God is not permeating in our life, if you're not memorizing it and meditating on it and reading it, you will shrivel up spiritually. There will be no strength there. Not only that, we canned half of it, a little bit more than half the corn we got or froze it the first day and it was oh so sweet, really sweet. But we were tired and ran out of time so we had to do about five bushels the next day. And you want to know something? The next day that corn had lost its sweetness. It just wasn't as sweet. Not sweet at all almost compared to what it was. And that's the way we as Christians are. If we miss just one day without the Word of God soaking into our soul, the sweetness and the fragrance of Christ is going to be lost. Paul said, I made a minister according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you. You know, God has given you to others. You know, He leaves us here. When we're saved, we say, why does He leave us here? He leaves us here because He has a purpose for us. He wants others to see Jesus in us. And Paul says, I've been given to you to fulfill the Word of God, even the mystery. What was the mystery? Well, a mystery was something not revealed. In the Old Testament, the church was a mystery. They couldn't see it. They couldn't understand it. They didn't know it was there. But boy, when it popped up after the Lord Jesus Christ went back to heaven, the Christians there could see it. They could see that mystery. They could understand it. So he says, Even the mystery, in Colossians 1.26, Even the mystery, which hath been hid from the ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to us saints, to whom God would make known. What is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles? Which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. What is it? God would save the Gentiles. That was a mystery to the Jews. And it was a barrier to many of them that God would reach out to another nation other than their own. And not only that, that God would save on an equal basis. Now, all men are sinners. All need to repent. All need the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, if they'll be saved. Christ in you. Christ in you. When you receive Him, He comes into you. Chambers said, It is not Christ for me, unless I am determined to have Christ formed in me. When you receive Him as your Savior, He comes into your life. And then you go through things to where He will be formed in your life. The caterpillar goes through a change. There's the metamorphosis change and the molting. But when it's all done, there's a beautiful creature that's just such a joy to look at. The Lord Jesus may be letting you go through some things, some suffering, so that Christ, the beauty of Christ, will be evident in your life. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. Ephesians 3.17 You know, the Scripture says, He that keepeth His commandments dwelleth in Him and Christ in the believer. Keeping His commandments, one of the commandments that He's given us is to have faith, to believe in Him, not to give up. And hereby we do know that we know Him if we keep His commandments. So many are circumstance oriented and the fragrance of Christ is not in their life. And they're not keeping His commandments. You do not keep the commandments to get saved or to stay saved, but because you are saved and you love the Lord Jesus Christ. My little three-year-old, he's picked up on this. He says, I love you, Daddy. Or, I love you, Mommy. He even stuck his head out the other day and said it to one of his cousins as he was riding off on a four-wheeler. I love you, Justin. I love you. Well, I don't know how much he really knows about love, but he also knows this because we keep answering back. If you love me, John, you'll obey me. And so he says, I love you, Mommy. I'll obey you, Mommy. And that's the correct form of love. If we love, we will obey. Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. Christ is all you need. Is He all you want? He's our perfection. Colossians 128, Paul went on to say, Whom we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. Whereunto I also labor, striving according to His working, which worketh in me mightily. If Christ is doing something unusual in your life, and you know it, and you have faith, have self-faith, have it to yourself, then don't turn aside. One of the things that I've learned is that those that don't have the faith that you have, will maybe try to discourage you or turn you aside. Preach Christ. How is Christ to be preached? By warning and by teaching. We teach them, why is Christ to be preached? Verse 28, we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. We want to present before Christ our fruit. Perfect, mature Christians, you know, we're to be discipling others, building Christ into their lives, teaching them what He's taught us. One of the major flaws, I believe, in the church today, and this is a part of my burden for revival, is that we are not a discipling ministry anymore. So many are just an entertaining ministry. And if you want to see the evidence of that, you just see how many come out for singing, and then how many come out for a prayer meeting. Prayer will be the basis of your discipleship ministry. It will be no deeper. Your discipling ministry, your church, will be no deeper than your prayer ministry. You say, well, we don't have a very powerful prayer ministry. And I'll guarantee you that you don't have a very powerful discipling ministry either. You're not turning out those that are willing to give their lives and go into the foreign field and totally be lost for Christ and service. But if you're a praying church, you're a powerful ministry. And we're striving, agonizing, Paul said. Maybe the key here is right here in verse 29, here in the area of suffering. He said, we're into also labor, striving according to His working, which worketh in me mightily. We were going over this last week. Striving according to His working, which worketh in me mightily, he says. The Lord Jesus Christ is desiring to work mightily in your life. There's somebody else desiring to work mightily in your life also, and that's Satan. He desires to get the glory. He desires to be exhausted in your life. And if the Lord Jesus Christ won't be exalted, then He will get the glory. You know, we've been talking in the last few weeks, didn't talk any last week about warfare. But I want you to understand that there is a real warfare going on and the battle is very intense. You say, well, I don't feel much. Well, then you're not a threat to Satan. You're not a threat to him. You have no burden to share Christ with those that are lost, with your family or friends. You're no threat. You say, wait a minute, I go to church, I'm a deacon, or I'm a Sanskrit teacher, or maybe you're even a pastor. But if you're not a threat to Satan, then you're not desiring to win souls and witnessing to the lost and sharing the gospel. Total churches, whole churches are no threat to Satan. And you say, well, we've got peace and harmony. You talk about having peace and harmony. We've got it. Well, let me ask you, are you seeing souls saved in your church? Are you seeing people come to the Lord Jesus Christ? You say, well, no. Well, that peace and harmony is a false peace and harmony. If you're winning souls to Christ and you're praying and agonizing and you're seeing people get saved, then there's going to be a continual threat to the peace and harmony in your church. Strife will be a normal evidence of a spiritual church that's going ahead. And you have to pray continually and strive to keep that peace and harmony there, because Satan's going to continually try to disrupt it with strife. And the evidence that things are popping up and that there's problems and these things, that's just evidence that God is working. I'd get concerned if you don't see some evidence of Satan trying to destroy. And the thing you want to maintain is the peace and the harmony amongst all of this attack. And you pray it down. You deal with it. You deal with that person that's come up with a false doctrine. Or you deal with that person that's got into immorality. You have to continually... The day you hear about it, you better take care of it. Don't put it off. Don't put it off. You can't afford to. It's a real warfare. Now, Satan, he's the prince of this world. The Scripture says, now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. You see, Satan fell because of pride. I was talking to you last week about that rooster. He's so proud. And boy, I thought I killed him one day. But I was telling you about the pecking order and everything. But Satan is like that. If you're proud, you will exalt yourself up. He manifested his pride by desiring to have equal authority with God. And one of the reasons we need revival in the churches is we have little gods popping up here and there on the boards or even in the pulpits or out in the pews, wherever. Little gods. And Satan is whispering these messages. You need to be teaching that class instead of that other person. You need to be doing this. And if he can get us puffed up, we will step in. His very nature is rebellion. Did you know that? And we will become rebellious. Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. And we all know that almost the total realm of communication is now in the occult. You look at the comic books. And I wouldn't let my kids read hardly any of the comic books that are on the shelves today. When I grew up, I read comic books. I read too many, probably. All the time, they were just nonsense. Just funny stuff. But today it's occult. You look at the pictures. You look at the symbols. You look at the words and the message. It's occultic. The toys are occultic. The cartoons are occultic. You better be careful. If you're letting your kids get into that stuff, you'll lose them. You need to reclaim the ground that Satan, he's the prince of this world and he's manifesting himself. Therefore, our first line of warfare is to reject every temptation to get out from under God's ordained authorities and get out from under God's rule in our life. And we need to be careful that we do not let the prince of this world have any kind of ground in our life in any way. Well, I think it's about time that I start thinking about closing down in a minute or two here. But I just wanted to take a word in closing to remind you that we are in a warfare and there are principalities and powers. I'm up here right now recording in the western part of Nebraska. We're pushing for an evangelistic crusade and if God's spirit will break out, we might see revival into this town. But I was with the pastor the other night out in the hills praying, walking down a road, laying out in that road, even praying in the night that God would work. And we were trying to zero in on what the main principality, what the main power in that area. And we sort of was thinking maybe it was pride. Such a proud town. Such pride of religion. And so many are like that today. So much pride. Well, I'm going to have to be going. I trust that you'll have a good day and that God will be your blessing. He'll be your joy. Till next time, God bless you.