In this sermon, the speaker describes a gruesome scene of a man being crucified and then disemboweled, emphasizing the horror and brutality of the cross. The speaker then transitions to discussing the importance of having a vision for the lost souls in the world and the lack of vision in the church. He highlights the presence of envy, strife, and divisions among believers, suggesting that immaturity is hindering the church from receiving the revelations God wants to show them. The speaker concludes by emphasizing the need for believers to die to themselves and be filled with the Spirit in order to experience true life and fulfillment.

Paul to the Corinthians, the first epistle. First epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 3, reading from verse 1. And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk and not with meat, for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able, for ye are yet carnal. For whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions, are ye not carnal and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul? And who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one, and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. For we labour together with God, ye are God's building, ye are God's husbandry. One of the great forgotten preachers in America, and I never see him quoted anywhere, was a man by the name of Henry Varley. And he left a place in history, I think, because on one occasion he said something that maybe you'd like to recall right after he said it. I've preached like that sometimes, you have, if you're a preacher. But he said on that occasion, the world is yet to see what God can do, or a person God can do through a man or a person who is totally committed to Jesus Christ. There was a young man listening, he wasn't brilliant, he hadn't been to Bible school, which was an advantage, and he just sold shoes in a shop, that's all he did. Just an ordinary commonplace shoe salesman. But under his breath he said, well if the world hasn't seen what God can do through a man totally committed, then I'd like to be that man who is totally committed. And eventually he got to be quite well known, his name eventually, well at the same time as a matter of fact, that nobody knew, it was D. L. Moody. Moody was no scholar, he murdered his English. Instead of saying Daniel, he said Dan-eel, and he said Jerusalem in one big slur. But he left an imperishable record, and he wrote, rewrote the history books in some areas. I'm quite sure that Varley wasn't justified in saying what he did say. The world is yet to see what God can do through one man totally committed to Jesus Christ. We already had that man 2,000 years ago. He was a man that was going down the Damascus road wearing a toga, and in that toga he had what he thought was the death sentence of the church. And he was going down the road breathing out threatenings, mad, intoxicated, infuriated. Somebody dared to stand up against the great religious system that had prophets like Isaiah, and deliverers like Moses, and other great people there, and a bunch of little nondescripts who suddenly set up a rival religion. And so again he set off on that Damascus road, and it was very wonderful. You know when he testified afterwards on two occasions, and Daniel said the same thing, if you ever dip into that book, apart from trying to find the mystery of his middle toe on the left foot. But if you ever read that book, you may remember that Daniel said that there was with him a company of people, and they saw light, but he said I only heard a voice. And do you remember that Paul said the same thing? He was going down that Damascus road breathing out threatenings. He was going to wreck Christianity. And yet afterwards when he's testifying, he said there shone round about me, and them that journeyed with me, a light from heaven. But I heard the voice. And you know I've got beyond crowds. Dear Van Tavener says, he's an unusual preacher, he said I start with a good crowd Monday night, and it goes down right to the end of the week. Well I'm getting that way as you can see. I was thinking of preaching tonight on Will Ye Also Go Away? But the fact is you see that he said the light that shone round about me, I'm not concerned about a crowd anymore. I've preached to thousands in ballparks here, they're everywhere, so what? But I'm quite convinced that God would convene a meeting like this and bring me a few thousand miles to preach in it just for one person. You know Jesus preached his greatest sermons to one person, one woman at the well and questionable morality. A man up a tree. My we need to preach to a lot of them, a lot of people up trees these days. And we need to get them down, but he preached to a man up a tree, he preached to Nicodemus, to Zacchaeus, to the woman at the well, the greatest sermons he preached. There shone round about me and them that journeyed me a light from heaven. You see he reckoned on that Damascus road, he reckoned on everybody but Jesus Christ. And isn't it amazing that Jesus slipped off his throne as it were and met him there? I'm glad he met Jesus, I'm glad he didn't meet a preacher. Glad he didn't meet one of these funny folk down the street you know that carry a big banner and give you a copy of the four laws. That would have been the end of Paul. But he met the Lord. Isn't that great? Some of you think not, all right have it your way. I think it was wonderful. I think that the fact that Jesus met him in the way, he never forgot it. And if you go to hell after tonight you'll never forget that you meet Jesus. It can't be the same. If you have a confrontation with a preacher, if you listen to theology and say well I don't quite agree with you know it's a bit boring in this area or the other. So what? But if you meet Jesus Christ you'll be entirely different. They shone round about me and them that journeyed me. And so on that Damascus road he gives you really a summary of what really happened to him. Something miraculous. How do you explain his, well his outrageous sacrifice, his unquenchable zeal, his deathless commitment. No man ever withstood all the temptation and trial and difficulties that he did. But you see he explains it through his epistles. I selected them for you because he says on that Damascus road what happened. Well he didn't just say well I believe you're the Son of God. What happened? He said he exchanged his life. Because afterwards he said it's not I, it's Christ that liveth me. So the life that he embraced is an exchange life. It was an expensive life, it cost him all that he had. That's something we sing but of course Christians don't tell lies, they just sing them in church. And so we sing well the whole realm of nature mine that were an offering and we wouldn't give him it. We won't give him Wednesday night. People in this church have sung it many times. I'm sorry for pastors these days. Whatever church I go to, maybe it's me, but not a quarter of the members of this church have turned up this week. Maybe not a fifth of them. Rub their eyes when they sing the old rugged cross and when I surveyed the wondrous cross and the whole realm of nature. Forget it, they're lying, they don't mean that at all. But Paul did. Everything that everybody was reaching after. He was of the tribe of Benjamin, he was of the seed of Abraham, he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He belonged to the most exclusive holy club in the world and they guarded it lest anybody should soil it with their sinfulness. And yet my richest gain I count the loss of the tribe of Benjamin of the seed of Abraham, the most colossal intellect I'm sure of any man that ever lived outside of Jesus Christ himself. And yet he says what things were gain to me. He could have made a list like that and said they were gain to me and he said it becomes offensive he says I counted them but done that I might win Christ and be found in him. So on that Damascus road it was an exchange life, it was an expensive life and the secret of his success is spelled plainly for us in this he says this one thing I do. It was an explicit life. I find preachers who are selling this on the side and doing that on the side. Now if the Lord called you to sell made tag washers go sell them. I'm not suggesting that you can't be a spiritual person and sell them but I'm convinced of this and it's a paradox and maybe I contradict myself sometimes because I really wish in my heart there were no professional ministry. I think the saddest thing that ever happened in the church is when we had a professional ministry. And if you think you can't run the church without professional preachers what do you do with Plymouth Brethren they're one of the holiest groups and they have no paid ministers. Be that as it may Paul says that all these things that were gain to me I counted them but done that I might win Christ. It was an explicit life this one thing I do nothing could shake him out of that. Lash him at a whipping post 195 times let him hang on to a piece of wood in the Mediterranean in the night and the day I was in the deep in weariness in painfulness in fastings in perils of the deep in perils of mine own countrymen enough to kill a thousand people and he sends it all up like this is as our light affliction which is but for a moment isn't that a joke you thought there were no jokes in the bible Paul's full of them. Why a hundredth part of what he went through would kill most of us it would torpedo us and sink us we never get out of it but not so with the apostle. No sir this one thing I do he had seen the vision glorious to use a phrase or Lloyd Douglas that talks about the magnificent obsession he was obsessed with Jesus Christ. Nothing else is worth not the life is worth living and he takes his vast intellect and his scholarship and his pedigree and it being of the tribe of Benjamin and the seed of Abraham and he flings it all at the feet of Jesus and says listen I'll exchange the whole lot. It was an explicit life this one thing I do is an exciting life. He wrestled with wild beasts at Ephesus. I think that means the deacons check with the amplified that uh it was it was not only an extensive life but it was an exciting life he wrestled with wild beasts and you know what it was an extensive life because Paul is still preaching tonight. You'll talk about out of his inmost being shall flow rivers of living water people have been under the wild banana trees in Papua trying to figure out with the finger reading something of the translations of the apostle Paul and the intellectuals at CBC are being trying to find the answer in the Greek and whatnot this week. Isn't it amazing the coverage of his life? Out of his inmost being he might have been a genius and invented some things in his day but you see he took not merely his lousy sins to the cross he took himself to the cross. Into not only behavior he took his whole being there were the whole realm of nature mine. I'm glad you sang the old rugged cross. I thought you couldn't sing the other hymn beneath the cross of Jesus. I love that hymn at Clefens. You see I think he did this I uh I'd have to work a lot on it but I'll I'll go over it in one statement. I believe that he really did survey the wondrous cross. When you see all he did how he planted churches over Asia Minor he wrote 14 epistles if you include the epistle to the Hebrews and I read his life and I say to myself my I'd like the power of the apostle. Why do you know what he did? He did everything Jesus did. Whatever Jesus did Paul did. He healed the sick. He cast out devils. He even raised the dead. Don't tell anybody I mean don't mention this in Dallas will you or CBC but you know the Baptist down in Africa raised the dead. Did you know that? I'll give you the name and address of them that raised the dead. Little Bumer a little black man about this height went into a meeting place not long ago. They called him from the central office in town and said you're on duty in the in the in the cemetery this week to bury the people that have no church membership and as a man say Jack Jones uh he's in the hospital he died this afternoon you'll bury him tomorrow at two o'clock of the day after and that's it. And the little black man went down called a couple of deacons and he said come down to the hospital and pray with me. Oh we'd be glad to come with you pastor. He didn't happen to mention mention the man was dead he was going to pray for. And so they went down and when they got there he had checked in at the office and the man said well uh he said you fellas sit there well I and the man said oh he's in the morgue he's on a slab number 12 pull the curtain back in. Do you want to see him? They said you don't have to bury him till tomorrow you know. He said that's right. So I went down to the morgue and he pulled the curtain back and the deacon he's dead. What are you going to do? Hey I'm going to pray for him raise him up. Do you mind if we go home? Well of course they believe the bible from cover to cover. Sure they're good deacons you know. Jesus Christ the same yesterday today and forever. His power's just the same until they have to operate it. And you know the little man did when the deacons backfired which they often do he pulled the curtain over and he climbed on the body of the dead man just laid on him and put his hands on the dead man and his face to him and he said oh I must tell you this he just finished seven days of prayer and fasting and he wondered why God had had him do it. And boy was he charged up and he just laid on the dead man he said get up in the name of Jesus. The man coughed. Boy if he'd done that with me laying on him I'd have hit the ceiling. Brother Dume had just got off him. Dume was a great admirer of by the way if you fellas love Tulsa. I've seen Tulsa reading a little paper that he got from him a little handwritten note from Dume. He said I'd rather have this from this little black man in Africa than have it from the president of the United States. Little Dume just got up and the man looked around. Dume said go home. Isn't that terrible? I mean it's not bad for Pentecostals but for Baptists that's horrible for them too. It's horrible to do a thing like that isn't it? But you see what happens when you when you really move in in the supernatural. No not when you go to me you clap your hands and raise your hands. Can you all sing this and say yeah. So a lot of tired weary stuff. Some of these meetings are rubber stamped as any meetings you're ever in. It's all the same. But not when God's breathing on the meeting. All right don't look so cheerful. Uh I said I'd like Paul. I'd like Paul's power. He could raise the dead. He could cast out demons. I'd like his peace. He said he had a peace rather passeth all understand. I'd like his poise. Wouldn't you? You know you go to school to a model school and they put books on your head and tell you how to walk like this like little wooden soldier. They wind up and you walk like this and say oh boy she walks like a model. Well there's a poise in this village a lot better than that. And Paul had it. And you know he said that poise was such he said that when he was going through hell itself and the ship was rolling and nearly hitting the bottom he said none of these things move me. Isn't that nice? That's one of his other jokes. And uh he said none of these things move me. And I like his purpose. Again this one thing I do and I like his passion. For me to live is Christ. I like his persuasion. He said I know in whom I have believed. Yeah I like all those things. His power, his peace, his poise, his passion. I'm not so sure I'd like the other side of the coin though. His prison, his poverty, his punishment, his privation. Oh we're living in a place where you get the baptism and from here on you're on an escalator and you go to glory. It's great. Make more money than you've ever made in your life before and become popular and they ask you to go give your testimony to breakfast or a banquet. Before long if you're not careful you'll be a big shot. Paul went the other way. The older he got the poorer he got. But you see if you're going to have this side of the scale you've got to have that side of the scale. And we don't like poverty. Oh not that being poor will make you passionate and give you a purpose and poise. No not in itself. But what if God says it's the only way to keep you anchored down. You get so lost. The Bible's constantly warning against riches. Less you know they get to your head and you get overbalanced and you think because you have a bit more grass than somebody else and your pool is three inches longer than the pastor's or somebody that you're some big shot. No no no. If you're going to have one you have the other. You can have his poise, you can have his peace, you can have his power, you can have his passion. But maybe you have to have some of his poverty and well I'd like his piety but oh boy his poverty I'm not so sure about that. And prison. Would you like to go to prison as many times as he went? Would you like his punishment? Time to a whipping post and lash him. Of the Jews five times received I 40 stripes saved one. Five forties is 205 less. 195 times they lashed his back and pulled the skin off it. And one day because he had a tremendously good time they they they put him in a corner and everybody could throw a rock at him. And if you'd seen him his one eye was up the other was down, his jaw was broken, he had a limp, he had a bad arm. He was a mess. Would you like his punishment? Would you like his prison? Would you like his poverty? Hmm? This side yes, that side what? But you see according to this old book there's only one way to get life and that's death. There's only one way to be clothed with the spirit and that is what? That's to be stripped. There's only one way to be filled and that is to be emptied of all you have. Your pretty little ego and all your ability that you thought the Lord would use and he ignored the whole lot. Hmm? How did it happen? Paul says that uh on that Damascus road it pleased God to reveal himself to me. And then he went in the wilderness for about three and a half years and he said it pleased God on the on the Damascus road to to reveal himself to me but in the wilderness he revealed himself in me. Hmm? Not in the midst of a revival campaign, not when he raised somebody from the dead, not when he did one of these fantastic things, but when he's alone shut in with God far far above the restless world that was below. The biggest thing you have to do and I have to do is discipline yourself to get alone. Oh I wish I wished it you know I wish the kids were off to school and I could get alone and as soon as they get off you get on the phone and talk some stupid stuff to Mary Jane or look at some uh you love Lucy more than you love Jesus and uh and you waste the time eh? Oh my what a difference what a difference when we really want with all the power of our being we want this Christ-centered not a self-centered life but a Christ-centered life. So there on the Damascus road it pleased the Lord to reveal himself to him and in the wilderness he revealed himself in him. Yeah we would uh if we got a prize convert like the Apostle Paul today we put a rope around his neck and drag him in front of every tv show and exhibit him wouldn't we? God has a great school do you want to go? A lady said to me one day what what university did he go to? I said Bush University. Bush University. I can't remember Bush University. Do I know anybody that went? I said well Moses went. She said Moses who? He's very learned. She was an American and uh so I said Bush University is a university of silence. God sent brilliant Moses there learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Read the seventh of the act of the apostle and God fired him into the backside of the desert only 40 years not too long. Elijah turned the nation upside down strangled the economy scared them all stiff and God says hide thyself. Oh Lord I'm the greatest preacher in the world everybody's scared the king and nobody I'm everybody's nervous when I'm around go hide thyself and in case you've forgotten did not Jesus did for 30 years cut up bits of wood knock nails in things God to the end of the day just brushed the sawdust off his legs and got the bits of wood out of his toes and went home. The son of God did that for 30 years and John Baptist do you remember him? First Pentecostal preacher was a Baptist. John the Baptist do you remember what he did? He he was in the wilderness until the day of his showing for he lived amongst the wild beasts. He stayed in the deserts you think that that's some steam cut that's the place where he's been weeping. 400 years there's been no profit 400 years God has not spoken. Oh that I will surrender heavens and come down and God says wait a bit son you've only about five more years to go. That would kill most of us wouldn't it? Isn't it amazing how far he got without the diploma and the trumpet? Isn't it amazing that he turned the nation upside down without double nets and white buckskin shoes which you'll see plenty of at Dallas next week. Isn't it rather amazing? I go to some conventions I'm not sure what I've got to to a bunch of evangelists or guys that are candidating for Hollywood they're so flashy and fleshy. But that's all they've got big three inch white belts white shoes and that's all no anointing no power just a few gimmicks. God sends his great men into silence. John Baptist for 30 years and then he preaches only six months. Jesus for 30 years and he preached about three years. Moses 40 years on the back side of the desert. Elijah's out there. Didn't those men do some stupid things? They're crazy prophets are crazy men aren't they? Who was the prophet that laid on uh what is Ezekiel laid on his side 300 days? 300 days on main street? Oh the clown what's he doing there? He's sharing God's anguish for a nation that's what he's doing. All God's children got shoes. The dear colored folk used to sing that because none of them had any shoes except if they picked somebody up that the boss gave them. So they sang about shoes. I'm going to walk all over God's heaven in my shoes. But in the old day slaves didn't wear shoes. The first thing the father did when the prodigal came put shoes on his feet. Don't let him be running around like that. And yet Isaiah the tallest greatest maybe of the old testament prophets he walked around the hot streets didn't he for years, three years in his bare feet. And yet we get dressed up and look so pretty, fleshy, flashy, floppy little boys these days. Hair down to the shoulders many of them. Not that that's wrong if your hair's down there keep it there till the Lord talks to you about it you'll grow up. That uh you know these these guys you go to these meetings and you see them around there and they look so nice and you say now which of those evangelists had the tonic do you think? They look so pretty they look so nice. Oh there's nothing like that about these men of God at all. They're there in the quietness, they're there in the stillness, they're waiting on God. And this is where Paul went for three and a half years he waited in the stillness before God. And he says he revealed himself to me on the Damascus road and he revealed himself in me when he was when I was away there in the wilderness. You know there's a sublime uh can I put it this way there's a kind of holy arrogance. There's an arrogance which is carnal, there's an arrogance which is repulsive, there's an arrogance which is delightful I think. You see Paul's testimony was that he was crucified with Christ. Now it's all right to sing about the old rugged cross but I don't care how far you've traveled and I've traveled a bit but I've seen a lot of things. I've never seen a crucifixion of you. We never see crucifixions. When a man was going to be crucified as soon as they took him out of the city and they laid him on a cross and nailed him to that cross. Well even if you saw the man going out carrying a cross there was one thing he knew for sure he wasn't coming back. It was a one-way ticket. And when they nailed that man to the cross immediately he was nailed there he lost all his rights. You could abuse him, you could throw if you wanted, you could go burn his toes, you could throw a bucket of filth on him, you could throw a rock at him, you could howl at him, you could do anything. He had no rights once he was nailed to the cross. And at night when they were crucifying a man, particularly a man of the caliber of Merabbas, people went, they were excited. How are you going to put Merabbas to death? You know he held us up, he stole money, he broke into our home, he did this, he did the other. And now we'll be able to get our revenge and they put him there and they howled and jeered and picked up their rocks and one might say you try and knock out his right eye, I'll knock out his left eye, you try and break his ribs, you see if you can smash his feet. You could do as you like, he had no rights. He was a target for everybody's abuse and devilishness. And thousands would go watch a man crucified at night, six o'clock at night. But there'd be nobody there at six o'clock in the morning. Well yes, the wood, the vultures. I remember going through India, maybe you've been there, the birds were nearly as big as me. And when they put out their wings they had about a 16, 18 feet wingspan and they'd just flop like this and they'd keep their necks in their feathers and then they'd stretch their neck out about this length with no feathers on and their beaks about that length are horrible things. And when a man was on the cross they'd come on the cross and they'd reach down and pick his eyes out and start tearing his body and disembowel him and he'd be a horrid mess. And while they were having breakfast the dogs would come and lick up the blood and leap up at the feet and tear the feet and try and destroy the man. It was one thing to see a man crucified at night, it's the next thing, another thing to go in the morning at six o'clock and see that man disemboweled and make you sick to look at him. And as Paul finishes his letter to the Galatians he says, but God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified to me and I am crucified to the world. Now there are three crosses there, the world is crucified, I am crucified and Christ is crucified. There's nothing attractive about a crucified man, he'd make you sick to look at him. And Paul says the world is crucified to me, it has no attraction at all. I wish that were true of every Christian, don't you? You've got people who could be here tonight, maybe they're sitting in a ballpark fooling around watching somebody. Of course they believe the world's going to hell, but after all baseball's more interesting than a revival meeting. The world isn't repulsive to them. They love its armors, they love its money, they love everything. Are you kids going to quit talking or do I quit? One of the two. I'm tired enough to go home to bed. You want to take over? The world is crucified to me. All of its pleasure, its pomp and its pride, whatever has the mark of the world on it, it's repulsive to me. And not only that, he says I am crucified to the world. They say there's an idiot for you. There's a man who could be a greater scholar than Gamaliel. There's a man who could draw the world to his feet. And here he is, being whipped and abused. The man must have no sense. If he's a genius, he's too such a genius, he's a lunatic. Why? Why does he give all he has? The world is crucified and I'm crucified to the world. You know, it's really a sign of greatness when people think you're insane. Paul was so eager testifying before a king that Thestus jumped up, he forgot his manners, and he said, go beside yourself, not running to make me mad. All right, I am that most noble Thestus. I'm intoxicated with a vision, with a power that can change the world. Some of the kids ask in the street, well, why has the world gone on for two thousand years and we're in this mess? And it gets worse and more immoral and more drunk and soothed. Why, who cares whether you have a baby or not before you're married? That's accepted. Society of women, Jane Fonda, these other people, they don't care about morality or anything else. Why should we bother about it, huh? That's the concept of the world these days, isn't it? And then they say, well, where's the answer? Isn't there an answer? Sure there is. Well, why doesn't the church step in? Listen, Christianity has not been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Christianity has been tried, found difficult, and rejected. Kissinger is running his legs off and trying to do this, that and the other. We have a peace conference in Geneva. Yeah, but we have one there at the United Nations. Never heard about it now. Kissinger's put them out of business. But we have a United Nations there, and before that we had a League of Nations, and before that we had the Hague. And now we have a Geneva peace conference, and they've cost us multiplied billions and trillions and quadrillions of dollars, and it didn't cost us ten cents. Why? Because the answer's in the book, that's why. Christianity has not been weighed in the balances and found wanting the superb message for all. And we should have peace on earth, and not a jail in the whole world, and not a prostitute, and not a drug addict, and none of the insanity like the Exorcist, which is a Sunday school lesson now, compared to the new films coming up. Brother, we're running into trouble, Sue. Do you know the film they're making now is on the sex life of Jesus? They tried to make it in Denmark, and the government wouldn't let them. They tried to make it in France, and the government wouldn't let them. So they've gone to a heathen country, Mohammedan country, they're making it. But you don't go like that very far before the judgment of God comes, and we'd better get ready for something. No, sir, Christianity. And he says, God forbid. Later, I say, he says, the world is crucified to me, and I'm crucified. And you know, it's the day of that wondrous cross. This man doesn't run into this thing blindfold. The Lord says, I stopped you on that road. You want to go think it out for three years, and if you change your mind, go back and be a brilliant scholar, the most brilliant scholar in Jewish history. I think he did what Isaac Roth says in that hymn, he surveyed the wondrous cross. Cross is a wonderful thing. It's pagan, but it's wonderful. Because if you lay a cross down on the floor, it points to the four corners of the earth. And the gospel has a message for every part of the world. If you stand it up, it points to a topless heaven and a bottomless hell, and the arms embrace the world. If you think of it, people of all nations, they write towards the cross. We start at the right, and we, we write over there to the cross, and people over there write this way to the cross, and some people write from the bottom up to the cross, and some people write from the top to the bottom. And if you take a map of the world, and you put the, the, the end of your compass there, right on Palestine, and sweep it round, you'll find it's just about the dead center of the world. Because the cross is the center. J.B. Phillips that gave us that translation, I like some of it, said, remember this, that God purposes in his sovereign will that all human history shall be consummated in Jesus Christ. And whether the world ends with a banger or whimper, I don't care. I know this, that finally, as I tried to say last night, every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, and the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom. God's going to take the Rockefeller business over one day, and every island in the sea, and every army in every other place. God's designed everything to go back into the hands of the Son that he loves, the Son that gave his life on that cruel cross. So Paul says, I, God forbid, he finishes the epistle, pardon me, in that same verse, God forbid that I should go saving the cross of the Lord Jesus, by which the world is crucified to me. And then in his farewell word to the same epistle he says, this is sublime I think, he doesn't say with his tongue in his cheek, you know, I hope you realize how much I sacrificed for the Lord. When people talk about what they sacrificed for the Lord, I know they're sick spiritually. There's no sacrifice in the light of Calvary. That ends all sacrifice. From henceforth let no man trouble me, he says. I like that. It isn't a tearful farewell to, well if I wasn't a missionary, maybe I'd be a millionaire now, all right, sacrificing so much for the Lord. Ah, on the other hand, he says, well hallelujah, isn't it marvelous. You see, he says God so loved the world that he gave his only I believe that. And then he says to the Ephesians, isn't it, that Christ loved the church and gave him, that finally narrows it from God loving the world and God loving the church, he says he loved me and gave himself for me. And if he loved me, that's the greatest miracle he ever did. If he solved my problem, for after all he says I'm the chief of sinners, and he was a man of impeccable morality, that he called himself the chief of sinners. Why? Because sin is not some overt or outward act. Adultery and all the other lousy things, that's sin. The greatest sin in the world is not adultery or drunkenness. The greatest sin in the world is to say I'll run my life and not let God have it. What did Adam do to get kicked out of the garden? Did he get drunk? Not that I know of. Did he beat his wife up? I don't think he did. He got kicked out of the garden. Why? Because he chose that he would run his life, just like Satan got kicked out of heaven for the same reason. Now Paul says, God forbid that I should do it. Now he says henceforth, let no man, don't waste your time on me. Let no man trouble me. Why? Because I'm saying joyfully, with a thrill, goodbye world, goodbye success, goodbye material progress. Let no man trouble me. I bear in my body the marks. I think it's Moffat that says, I bear in my body the brands, just like you brand cattle here. Herodotus has been called the father of historians. And he says that in the days, in the great temple of Heracles, they kept the altar fires burning 24 hours a day. And if a man escaped as a slave, he would run into the temple and he would nudge the priest, most likely asleep, and say, quick, brand me, brand me. The priest there would show him a bunch of branding irons. They had the marks of gods on them. Which brand would you like? Brand me in the name of that god. The man would put the iron in the fire. And the man would put his hand out like that, you know, and hold it like this, and suddenly, they'd put the sizzling iron on his hand and he was branded. Turn his instep up, and he would hold tight, and he'd feel this heat coming, and suddenly, the burning thing burned a brand in his instep. And if he had a shirt on, he would slip it down, most likely he hadn't, and they'd brand him in the back of his neck. I like that picture. Paul says, don't trouble me any more, world. You see, after that man got a bit of healing, he'd go down the street, and his old master would say, hey, see there? And he'd call whoever it was, and he'd say, see there's Marcus, the man that ran away, bring him here. And the escaped slave would come up, and the man would say, listen, you're going back there to the slave camp. I'm going to tie you up, and I'm going to thrash you within an inch of your life. And he'd wait till the boss had said all he wanted to say, then he'd say, you see that? You see that? You see this? You've been branded. I've lost all my rights. You can't serve me with hands that have been branded for a god. You can't walk down the ways that I want to send you with feet branded. You can't say the things because your very brain, this is a sign your brain is dedicated to your god. Why I can't, I can't do anything with you. I think that's a sublime picture. Paul says, listen world, if you come up, you're going to lose anyhow. I bear in my bodies the brands of the Lord Jesus. I went there and I was branded. One hymn writer says, let my hands perform his bidding. Let my feet run in his way. Let my eyes see Jesus only. Let my lips speak forth his praise. All for Jesus. All for Jesus. You know, if you've got crucified hands, they won't get in the wrong places. If you've crucified feet, you won't walk in the wrong places. If you've a crucified mind, you won't think about the wrong and the impure things. Paul says, don't trouble me anymore. You're wasting your time. God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. All right, now what happens? Well, as I said, he's taken from that main road where he met the Lord, and he goes there into the wilderness. I'd like to know what happened in there, wouldn't you? When he was caught up into the third heaven, what happened? I was in a meeting one day, and a man leaned over the dining room table, and he said, my wife's read one or two of your books, and she likes them. I said, well, that's nice. And he said, did you read my wife's book? No. Did she write one? What, on cooking? Oh no, no, spiritual book. My wife's the woman that died and went to heaven, and was there seven days, and then she came back to earth. And she walked around the bedroom on her tiptoes for seven days without eating, just walking around, praising the Lord. He's not read that book. I said, no, I don't really want to. He said, well, that's really something. My wife went to heaven for seven days. I said, I've got news for you. I said, once I get inside of heaven, Gabriel's not going to pitch me out to send me back to this dump. I'm going to stay there. Do you think I'm coming back to a world like this when I can be there in the presence of a majestic, holy God with all the saints? Well, I don't know what Paul saw in that wilderness experience, because the Lord said to him, now you can preach anything, but never open your lips. I'm sure the Lord would never put that burden on a woman, but on a man he said, he said, never open your lips on anything you've seen. And he never did. What did he do, preacher? You know some Greek. What did he do? Do you think God rolled out a plan of the ages and showed him from the, well, let's say the incarnation to the consummation and showed him things? He says, it's not lawful for me to tell you. Do you think he went to the edge of hell and he peered into the abyss? Do you think he had a preview of glory like John did in the book of the revelation? What did he see? Well, I'll tell you, I believe in spiritual pregnancy, because when this man came out of that wilderness experience, all these churches were in him. He conceived them in the Holy Ghost, the church to Corinth, the church to the Philippians and the Colossians and the others. I believe that intellectually he had been conceived by the Holy Ghost. He conceived these epistles he was going to write. It comes out the most amazing man. He strides over Asia Minor in, what's his famous Englishman, I've forgotten his name, begins with P. But anyhow, it's 15, what do you call them, it's 15 league boots that he had. He could stride 15 leagues, it looks like it. When you think of this man without jets and without trains, without planes and see what he planted in Asia Minor. And he made those three fabulous mystery journeys again. He began in Tarsus, the historic capital of the world. He ended up in the military capital of the world, Rome. He went to the intellectual capital of the world, Athens. He went to the religious capital of the world, Jerusalem. And he went to the immoral capital of the world, Corinth. A hell all if there was one. And he established the church of Jesus Christ. And it was the old German commentator, Meier, not F.B. Meier, Meier who said when he read Paul's epistle to the Corinthians, he said, I just said blessed and sublime miracle of God, that you could establish a church in Corinth. It was hell on earth. They worshipped gods, they made a sign to something, and they picked up a harlot as they went out and lived in sin. They were the lowest, most degraded people ever. And Paul went into that area and established a church for Jesus. Or he'd been to the intellectual capital. They discovered he wasn't such a fool. They said his bodily presence is weak. Yours would be if you'd been battered to death like him nearly, and mine would be. And his speech isn't very much. But when they began to assemble the brilliant people, as it says in the 17th Acts, the Epicureans and the Stoics and the poets and the philosophers, and Paul sat down in the middle and they discovered he knew more about their poetry than they knew, knew more about their history than they knew, knew more about their philosophy than they knew. Maybe he recited Socrates and all the other boys, he knew them all right, and they were amazed. And then he waited for his moment and he said, listen I want to tell you somebody about, something about a man called Jesus, and he died for the sin of the world, and he rose from the dead. He what? He rose from the dead. Oh you don't mean that? That he actually rose from the dead? Yes, he had to do that. He didn't save us by dying for us. We're not saved by his blood. And that's one part of it, but he must not only die, he must rise again. And he died and he rose again. And they said, sir, you're very brilliant. You stagger us with your knowledge, your intellectual powers are so vast. There's the door. We're not listening about a man who died and rose again. That's pure nonsense. And so he steps from that era of the intellectuals where they worship the brain, to Corinth where they worship the body. From these brilliant people whose whole excitement was learning, to people whose only excitement was lust. Pretty big leap. And when he gets down to Corinth, he isn't going to go around the same way anymore. Do you know why? Because he doesn't have a note of his. He says when he comes to Corinth, this hell hole, this place where the devil just ran the whole show, I'm determined to know nothing amongst you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. To the Jews a stumbling block, to those brilliant Greeks foolishness, but to those of us who know him, the power of God unto salvation. And so he preached Jesus. And he established a church. He had a great, wonderful revival. He didn't rent the auditorium there and have a healing meeting. They had an auditorium there seating about 200,000 people. The Greeks had auditoriums that make the Yankee Stadium look like this platform. You go into Greece, go into Italy and see some of those things that the Romans built. We don't know how they built them. We know they're no bulldozers for one thing. And the architects were wonderful. And one of them seated 350,000 people. That's a gang for you. Why didn't he rent it and have a healing meeting? He could raise the dead. He could cure the sick. No, he says we won't put the cart before the horse. Let's get things straight. The most important thing is that you know the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Not healing for a paralyzed arm or a sick mind, but healing for your soul. Because if you heal the body, the worms are going to eat you anyhow. But you know, if you get right and if you get healthy in your spirit and get really redeemed, you'll live forever and ever and ever in eternal bliss. And I'm here gathering some jewels for Jesus Christ. And he preached unto them Jesus and they accepted his message. And they were marvelously, marvelously converted. But they had a problem. In the scripture I read to you tonight, he's writing to them nearly two years after they were converted. Now there's nothing nicer than babies. People used to stand in crowds when my mother wheeled me down the street to look at me. But they never look at me now very much. Say, well, they're the old boys going. But babies are nice, aren't they? You know, when they get, of course, they're only guessing. You know, baby beautiful baby's born and you bring the little thing out, hasn't got a whisker on its head and no teeth and you say, isn't it like its daddy? I think that's stupid. If I didn't say, isn't it like his granddad, you might be a bit nearer than that. But there's a little thing like that, beautiful, just about two spans long, lovely baby. Oh, they're so lovely. Till they cry at two o'clock in the morning when it's freezing. But they're lovely things, babies. You can't guess what's in that little baby. Well, they're all right when they're babies, but what if the baby's five years after they're born? What do you do with them? I preached in the great Methodist church in Dublin's Fair City at a conference along with Leonard Evans. I remember that night Eva Stewart Watt was there. She wrote books for Dr. Stewart. Brilliant society lady that God told to sell a mansion and live in the gutters. And I preached in the gutters with her too and been to her night spot before Wilkes never thought of it. She didn't open till 11 o'clock at night. The gorgeous girls came in, prostitutes came in, jailbirds came in, intellectuals came in. And I shared some meetings with her. She was a very marvelous woman. And she did as one hymn says, teach me to love the dying souls of men. She really loved them. She went down to where they were because she tasted the redemptive power of the cross of Jesus Christ. When she told Jesus she loved him, he says, well, do you love me enough to sell your mansion and go down in the gutters? When I quoted her in the Bible school of Winnipeg a few years, a lady came up to me and said, Eva Stewart Watt, that's an unusual name. I said, she's an unusual woman. Did she ever live in Africa? Yes, her father had plantations in Africa. You mean to say that she lives on the back alley in Dublin? I said, she does. Why, she said, when we lived in Africa, we wouldn't buy our new clothes until my mother said we're going to Johannesburg or somewhere to buy clothes. Wait till Eva, because Eva set the pace. Is she still stylish? I said, yes, I noticed the other day she had beautiful stockings on. She knit them herself. And she had a lovely skirt on. She had it on three years ago when I saw her. It was just a plaid that went right down to her feet. And she wears a little tamashanta and she had a cape and pushed her, and she put a collar up and sit in the snow and the rain outside of Dublin jail. Strangely enough, the jail is called Mount Joy. I wouldn't know why. And at five o'clock in the morning she waits for derelicts to come out and takes them home and gives them a bed in the somebody smuggled a gun to him during the day. And he comes in at night, he says, stay as long as you want. And I've gone in that house when they've been lying on the floor and I've walked over them and gone to a bed where I wondered why there were 12 sheets on the bed. There were about 12 sheets on the bed. Do you know why? Well, there's so many holes in that she had to put a sheet over every hole, you know, and by the time you're done, you got under it, you felt you were sweeping under about 50 tons of cloth, you know. But this is how she lived. Why? Because she had a vision, that's why. Because she believed that this gospel is able to save to the other one. She was in the meeting that night, Leonard Evans spoke. I can't remember what he spoke on except this. He said, I was born in a town in Wales. I think it was Llanelli, strange little town. Mother was going across the square pregnant. I was still in there. Another young lady crossed the square and they look, hi, hi, Jean, oh, you're expecting a baby too. Well, when you get your baby, send me a note, whether it's a boy or a girl, what it is, and I'll send you a note. And he said, I happen to be born the first. And his name's Leonard, Leonard Evans. And he said, I've never been very brilliant, I'm just medium. I've played football, I played for the state, as you would say, and I've done this, and I've been to college, and I have some degree, and I wear my clerical attire. But the boy that was born four days after I was born, he's still lying in the same room, his mother took him in. She's been his slave for thirty, he said, I'm thirty-five years of age. He's thirty-five. His mother has never had a vacation for thirty-five years. He's never said mother. She's his slave. She still changes his diapers. If you want to make him happy, you buy a balloon and wave it, and he makes some strange noise. If you want him to get excited, you get a can and put some little rocks in and shake it, and he wants it. You think she walks him around and says, this is my eldest son, and has pictures of him, and sends them. No, she takes him out at night when it's dark. They take him in the park down the back ways where nobody goes. She doesn't exhibit her son. Thirty-five years of age, and he's a babe. And Paul writes to the Corinthians, and he says, you're a babe. You say, but Mr. Rameau, that's abnormal. Where can you find, how many boys do you find thirty-five years of age, and they're still babies that can't speak, and you feed with a bottle and change diapers, and mothers are slaves. I hope not many, but I'll tell you this, most of our preachers have got churches full of them. The church is no longer an armory where we put on the whole armor of God. It's a nursery where people go with hurt feelings on a Sunday morning home. Now you can be hurt and injured, I know that, but you ought to find the answer in prayer anyhow. But the church is no longer an armory where we put on the whole armor of God. You're babes. He diagnoses the trouble. The reason you don't grow, he says, you've got carnality, and then he diagnoses the carnality. Whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions. Envy is internal, strife is external, division is infernal. This is the reason you don't grow. This is the reason of your malnutrition and your weakness. You can't carry burdens. You don't send boys out to battle, babes out to battle. They don't battle, they want bottles. I remember when the Germans were bombing England, and I got up one morning, I said, sweetie, I'll have to go up in an area there. The bombs were pretty near. I got in my little English car, and I drove up into an area, and it was roped off, and there were big signs, do not enter, unexploded bombs. There was a policeman there, he saluted me, I was the best-known preacher in town anywhere, that we were always having trouble with the cops in our street meetings. You want to see somebody? I said, sir, this area that's been devastated, I've got members in my church live up there. Well, then, Mr. Ravenley said, just get under the rope and hurry. And as I got under that rope, some youngsters wanted to go. Come back! Well, my auntie lives up there, my schoolmate lives up there, somebody else, but come back. When I got up there, it was devastation. A bomb had just vaporized the houses. Sure, there were bodies blown up in trees, little babies' bodies up there, people splashed against the wall, a chair leg here, a man's leg sticking out there, somebody's head down there. As hellish as anything you ever saw on a battlefield. When I came back, the priestman said, it was pretty rough, wasn't it? Didn't it make you feel bad? I said, it made me sick. You can smell people burning in the debris there, the blood, it was carnage, it was horrible. He said, that's why I couldn't let these kids go up there, could I? Because if they ever saw that, it could send them crazy, and they'd never forget it as long as they live. As I said the other night, you should have a map of America in your home, and not look at it for who the football teams are, but remember how many millions are perishing in it. And have a nice fear, you can get some very nice ones, you can get some, you can plug in and illuminate. And remember all those areas of the world tonight, two thousand years after Jesus died, and there's millions of people without God and without hope. Why? Because the church has no vision. Because God didn't show us the things he'd like to show us. Why? Because like the children, we're too immature. There is among you envying and strife and divisions. Are ye not carmel and walk as men? These little things think they, when they've got a headache, it's the end of the end of the world. What would they think if they shared the heartache of God? Paul says, I want to fill up. I'm not trying to escape hellfire and have a mansion on Main Street and be a celebrity in it. I want to fill up the sufferings of Christ. I want to bear in my body the owner's marks. I think one of the most horrible things when we get to the judgment seat will be for God to look down and say to you or me, Pastor, I had many things to tell you, but you couldn't bear them. You never grew up enough for me to share my burden with you. That's why you've got men that break up countries like David Livingstone going to Africa, or Gilmore to Mongolia, or Judson to Burma, or some of the other guys that went. The boys going to the Oukar Indians, why? They want to bear the burden. Dismiss their responsibility to this generation. You babes, weak, unable to fight battle. What, what, what is the main problem with a child? Selfishness, isn't it? Touchiness. Oh, aren't they easily offended. We've got loads of people like that in the church. Don't like authority. Won't be submissive. No, I don't think any decent pastor is going to be a bully and be pushing his church around, but there is a certain submission that there ought to be to the man of God who gets the mind of God for his people. He is the shepherd, they are the sheep. But children rebel. Paul talks about what he says, he a carnal, and he talks about the carnal which is enmity against God, and it's not subject to the law of God, and it never can be. You say, well, I'm saved, all right, but I know I'm pretty carnal, and I wish the Lord had kind of put this into subjection. He never promised to put it into subjection, even God can't control carnality, he says so. What does he do? Destroy it, that's what he does. What does Paul say? He says later, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. No, babies don't fight battles. They want battles, they want comfort, they want ease. They're rebellious. You've got an awful lot of people rebelling against God these days, when they know what God's will is, and yet they rebel against it. They're not submissive, they're not teachable. Everything's related to me. You see, if you go if you go into Romans 7, that's a battleground of theologians, but I'm convinced that Romans 7 is not the experience of a justified man, it's the experience of an unsaved man, because he finishes by saying, oh wretched man that I am, I am wretched, I'm sold under sin. People say, you see, that's what Paul said, he was sold under sin. He never did, but he just quoted him. Remember this, will you, in the original there are no stops and divided chapters, it goes right into the eighth chapter, and in the eighth chapter, what does he say? There is no condemnation to those of us in Christ Jesus, and then he says what? He says, they that are in the flesh cannot please God. There you are, go on, read on, but you're not in the flesh. You're not in the flesh. If you're only born again and saved, you may still be in the flesh. You're petty and easily offended, and you get angry, and you're stubborn. What does the Old Testament say? Stubbornness is what? It's as the sin of witchcraft. What? You mean to say because I'm stubborn? Yes, when you're stubborn against God and men, you may as well be down there with the witches, those old hags down there. You see, it's that inner territory. It's all right for Jesus to take my rotten sins, but when he comes in and he wants to take self, what did he say? Did he say, Paul, speak for the church, we are crucified? No, no, no, no. He didn't say we are crucified. He says, I am crucified with Christ. It's a paradox. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh by the Son of God, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Is there anything worse than this devilish thing he talks about? There is among you envy. Envy! Have you got that malignancy? I was in a meeting some years ago and a lady called me on one side. She's a very famous lady, known around the world, and she whispered in my ear, Brother Len, I went to the doctor this week and he told me, I've got cancer. Don't share it. Will you pray for me? Tapped her on the shoulder, I said, I'll pray for you. I get one or two friends to pay for that. That was 20 years ago. She's still living tonight, bright and healthy. I'd rather you whisper in my ear tonight somewhere, Brother Avenue, I've got cancer. I'd rather hear you've got cancer in your body than carnality in your spirit. Because if you've got cancer in your body, you'll suffer. But if you've got carnality, you'll make everybody else in the church suffer. Envy! The good book says envy. It says rottenness of the bones. Why did they deliver Joseph? All that marvellous figure that eventually, he says to his brothers, well, you meant it for evil, that God meant it for good. But it says they sold him for envy. Why did they put Jesus on the cross? Because they envied him, it said. What an illignant. There used to be in one of the great cities in, uh, in Greece, a statue of a man, you know, with his arms like this. He was the greatest wrestler they'd ever known in Greece. And they had the Olympic Games 400 years before the Apostle Paul. And when they presented the trophies, the old warriors that won the prizes were given a special place, lest their eyes were dim, and they could see the new men that had won the prizes come up. And this young man came up, he was the chief wrestler. He had won the heavyweight championship, as we would say. And as he was leaving, they gave him only a little chaplet, you know, a wreath of, of leaves that faded away. And as he was going out with his wreath, an old man met him on a stake, and he said, you're the champion heavyweight wrestler of Greece. For a few more years, you'll be the greatest man in the world in this area. But I happened to live in the days when, and he mentioned the name, you know, Demosthenes or somebody. The man whose statue is down in the middle of the marketplace. He was the champion wrestler when I was a boy. Oh, he could wrestle. I think he would have picked you up like that, and just about taken your legs and torn you apart. He'd have picked you up and whipped you. He was, he couldn't. I wish he was living now. I'd show you I'm a better wrestler than he is. And you know, that thing so burned in that man's mind, and in his heart, that in the middle of the night, he got up in the moonlight, and he went into the market square, and he looked at this great monument, and there's the man with his arms out. And he started talking to that thing, and he got angry, and he climbed up that rugged piece of rock, and he put one arm around the shoulder of the, of the wrestling figure, and the other around his waist, and he said, I wish you were alive. I'll tell you what I'd do if I were alive. This is what I'd do, and he snapped the man off of his ankles. The monument broke. The man went down about a dozen feet, and the monument hit him on the head, and killed him on the spot. They found his body in the morning, and they put the thing together, that because one man had told him that somebody excelled, and was greater than he was, that envy so burned in him, that he destroyed himself. Jealousy. This good book says it's as cruel as a grave. Have you got any of it in a little corner in your heart there? Is there somebody you're jealous of? And you sing sweetly about Jesus, and you've got that cancer in there? Jealousy. I remember a preacher in England, and he was killed, driven out of his office in the church by jealousy. Oh, it's very common to children. They're easily disturbed. They get angry. They're envious. They're jealous. They're stubborn. I do not believe in any experience of the deeper life that doesn't take care of that, because you see, if there's going to be resurrection in your life, there'll have to be crucifixion before there's resurrection. There'll have to be destruction. Read again. Read the seventh chapter of Romans, will you? And take a pencil, and as you go through it, read how many times the first person singular, I, I want to do this, I can't. I don't want to do this, I do it. I, I, I. I think you'll count, the I is there, 31 times in the chapter. And then take another colored pencil, and mark how many times the Holy Spirit's in that chapter. You won't have any problems. He's not mentioned once. It's a self-centered chapter, an I-centered chapter. Then you cross the bridge into Romans. Romans 7 is a funeral march. Romans 8 is a wedding march. Romans, Romans chapter 7 is defeat. Romans 8 is deliverance. Do the same thing through Romans 8. Go down with a pencil and mark out the I, I, I. You only have to do it twice, verses 18 and 38, where he says once, I am persuaded, and in the other case, I reckon. He couldn't alter it. There's no other language you could put there. But then read how many times the Holy Spirit is, and you'll mark with your pencil, mark, mark, mark. In Romans 8, the Holy Spirit is mentioned 19 times. No self except where he can't alter that. Romans 7, it's all I, no Holy Spirit. Romans 8 is all Holy Spirit and almost no I. The difference between a self-centered person and a Christ-centered person. Well, at the end of Romans 8, Paul says, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me? Well, most of our Bible schools have no message of deliverance for that. You struggle with the old man till you die. Well, then you may as well be a Mormon or a Buddhist or anything else. You can have a sinful nature till you die, are you? You'll have a human nature. You'll be a human being. You'll never be dehumanized, but you don't need a sinful nature. What can that do for you? I must finish. Do you know how many types of crosses there were? A traditional cross is like that, isn't it? There was another cross like a letter T. There was another cross like a letter X, where you stretched a man's arms up and his legs and pinned him to the cross. There was another cross which was like the old rugged cross, they say, just a straight old stump of a tree with a spike in it. And they'd take a man's body and push him on like that and spin him round and leave him at any angle. Horrible crucifixion. Do you know sometimes a man on a cross wouldn't die for thirty-six hours? He'd suffer all the indignities at night and then he'd be torn up by the birds and he might still be living when the dogs were biting his feet and he'd still be in a state of dullness, but he could be living thirty-six hours or more after he was crucified. And there were a hundred and twenty different types of crosses. But I don't think really they were the worst death. The worst death was this, that if I killed a man, the law might say, we'll make this man, we'll make this man really suffer and we'll make him an example to others. And so they'd stretch the dead man on the ground and then they'd stretch me on the dead man, fasten my hands to his hands, my legs to his legs, my body to his body, my neck to his, and then they'd stand me up with a corpse attached to me. Off you go. And they'd start me off and I would stagger with this thing. Maybe a hot, horrible day, carrying a corpse. At the end of the day I might stink by an embankment and fall asleep and wake up with those glassy eyes and that stinking body and before long it was killing me. That was the whole idea. It's a body of death. It was intended that it would corrupt me. And there I am staggering with this body, dying by inches. I see the pastor and I say, Brother John, deliver me from the body of this death. He says, yes. Right, there's nobody coming. Get this penknife out and he starts cutting the ropes off. He's just going to cut the last one off my feet and he looks up and there's a big Roman saying to him, what are you doing? I'm relieving my friend. I'm just delivering him from the body of this death. Is this illegal? Yes, it is. I can't. Well, it's illegal except for one thing, that immediately you cut that body of death off your friend. The law says I have to tie it onto you. Will you carry it for him? Oh, no, I've got a wife and some lovely children. I wouldn't like to walk in the house with that rotten body, that stinking body. Why? He smells awful. I like rave mail all right, but I don't like him enough to bear the body of death. Well, then I'll have to tie him up and so he ties me up again to the body of death. Now, Paul says I've got a corrupt, rotten thing in here. You can call it depravity. It goes deep as the old Puritans went. I don't care as long as you've got a cure for it. Because if Jesus hasn't a cure, he died in vain. He didn't die just to deliver us from our sins. He died to deliver us from sin itself. And that's the victory life. Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me? Well, I'm sorry, but you'll have to carry it to the grave. He doesn't say that. What does he say? Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Do you remember what he says triumphantly? Well, the law can't do it. And willpower can't do it. And fasting can't do it. Belonging the holiest club in the world, a Pharisee of the Pharisees can't do it. Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Huh? I thank God, he says, through Jesus Christ my Lord. But wait a minute, he says, but with my body I serve the law. What? The law of sin. See, you're not right. Oh, yes I am. God said that because all sinned, everybody has to die. And this body of mine can be as sanctified as God can make it, and be as pure as his blood can cleanse it, and be as occupied with the spirit as it's possible, but I'm still going to die and serve the law. That's the law of sin. By man came death. Did you notice that? Didn't come by God or devils. By man came death. By man came also the resurrection from the dead. In Adam all died. In Christ shall all be made alive. When? When we shall plunge this mortal to our knowing even now. The body of this death. You see, this was one thing. A man can shoot himself, a man can drown himself, but a man can't crucify himself. Even if he hammered his feet into the cross, and hammered that hand to the cross, what's he going to do with it? And so Paul said, I am crucified with Christ. You see, this is what, when Jesus Christ died, Romans 6 says this, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, and henceforth we should not serve sin. We misquote that so often. We say our old man was crucified. It's in the present tense here. Why? Our old man is crucified, and you'll stay dead as long as you want to be crucified, and when you violate God's law, you'll spring up again with carnal life in you. When Jesus died on the cross, I died with him. Our old nature was crucified with him. That's what it says. I didn't write it. But we've been very weak on this, haven't we? We said you can have all your rotten, dirty sins forgiven, and have promised to join the church, and be baptized, and pay tithes, and you're through. And you've been struggling with pride, and jealousy, and carnality, and enmity, and stubbornness, and unwillingness to be submissive, all the traits of a child. You know, there are a lot of wonderful analogies in the Bible, if you meditate. And I'm going to close. But Noah built an ark. We mentioned this a few times this week. And after the flood came, what happened? Well, he opened a window, and he let a bird out. I'm sorry it was a raven, because I can feel tied in with it nearly, but it was a raven that he let out. Boy, that raven enjoyed himself. Everywhere he looked, there were carcasses, bodies floating. He got enough food for a thousand years. You've seen those type of raven. A crow is a type of a raven. You're going down the road, somebody's hit a rabbit, or a deer, or something, and you see the bird swoop on it, and they're eating it. And as you drive up with your motorcar, they go off, and then they swoop back. They don't steal the grain out of your garden. They won't steal the seeds out of the ground. They just go for flesh. And when he put that raven out of the window, he said, man, I got it made. I need the tiger this afternoon, all the flesh I need. And a few days after, he opened the same window, and he put a dove out. Dove says, I'm getting tired, I better settle down here. No. You see, a dove will die before it will eat flesh. It only eats pure things. And it was going to settle on this carcass, I'm telling you. Oh, no, that's death. I wouldn't touch that. Well, I'll try. Oh, there's death again. Well, I'll go. Oh, there's death again. What did the dove do? Went back to the ark. Why? Because there was no place to settle except on corrupt flesh. The Holy Spirit comes into a meeting like this. He said, I'd like to invade that heart and dwell in it, but there's corruption, and I'm not going in there. Carnality. There's pride in that heart. There's bitterness in that heart. There's envy in that heart. There's covetousness in that heart. There's stubbornness in that heart. There's a man being a Christian so long, and he's still only six months old. Why? Because he's never matured. He's never put on the whole armor of God. He's never digested the strong things of the Word of God. He's still a babe. And the Holy Spirit, like a dove. As I said the other day, the dove's got nine main wings on each, nine main feathers on each wing, you know, nine gifts of the Spirit, nine fruits of the Spirit. But do you know another thing? A dove has no gallbladder, no bitterness. And if the Holy Dove comes in your life, you'll have no bitterness. You won't retaliate savagely and bitterly and carnally, and I'll give her as much as she gave you. Wait till I see her. I don't care if she's singing in the choir or teaching Sunday, boy, I'll wait outside. She'll remember me. You don't need any grace to be a tiger, do you? Or a cat? You're babes. God said, I'd like to share. I'd like to give you a vision that would break your heart and turn you out of your successful career and turn you out of this ambitious thing and let you die on a mission field. Wouldn't that be nice? I'd like to get out of your golf habit or some other habit and get you into a prayer habit where you go and stain the rug with your tears or wear it through with your knees. But babies don't do that. What's the answer? There's only one answer. I told you the other day and I'd finish with it. Nicholas Bengal, this tall, colored giant from Africa that had about every miracle in the New Testament, asked me to work with him and I said, well, I wish you'd come to America, work with me. And he said, you come to Africa, work with me. I said, well, what kind of meetings do you get? He said, well, the small for the first week, I don't get more than six or seven thousand. But he said, they get big. I get 30, 35, 40 thousand. And he had all the success that any he could out. Oral Roberts isn't in the picture. And he raised up churches and he saw all the miracles. And he said, you see why? I'm full of the Holy Ghost, speak in tongues, interpret, see all the miracles. And then, as I told you, he decided he'd come to America to get some degrees. And when he was here, his wife was taken ill. He got the cablegram, come home, your wife's terribly sick. She was stricken with tuberculosis. So was his idol, his beautiful, big, black son, about six foot one. Sick. So was his daughter, sick. The man that used to get banner headlines all over South Africa, Nicholas Bengu, is in town. New Testament days are here again. 25,000 listened last night, 40,000 crowded on Sunday afternoon. They begged him to become the prime minister of one of the states, go into politics. He turned it down. And he's all his success. And then his wife is sick and he's called home with a cablegram to Africa. And he prayed and his wife didn't get healed. She didn't get healed. And the banner headlines now were not saying signs and wonders and miracles. They were saying Nicholas Bengu can't get his wife healed. She's dying in hospital. This is her second year. She got into her third year. And he said, I'm at home. Once the famous preacher that they sent the carriages and cars for, I'm at home washing my own shirts, making my little meals. What happened? He said, then one day I decided to have it out with God. And he said, I went in the room. I like the way he says it. Always thrills me. It melts my heart to tears nearly. The big Nicholas Bengu, the prophet, the apostle Paul of South Africa. And he says, I went into that room, but I never came out. What do you mean he went in and never came out? He must be out to be standing in the, no, no, no, no. The ego in him, the self in him. The Lord said, you've been taking credit and glory. People have said you're the greatest man that this country has ever known. Yes. Well, thank you. It's all of the Lord, you know, and they give you some more credit. But all the time you were saying, of course, it's really Nicholas Bengu that's done all this. And he said, I went in that room, but I never came out. I died. Nicholas Bengu died in that room. And when I came out, I was a free Nicholas Bengu. You say, but you'll be yourself all, surely you will. You'll be, you'll be a personality as long as you live. You'll have an ego as long as you live. But you see, while you have a self and you're an entity, you don't have to have self-seeking and self-glory and self everything else. All the hyphenated things, self-righteousness, you know, self-glory, self-seeking, self-promotion, self, self, self, self. You can be a preacher and a successful preacher and a popular evangelist and be as brittle. And somebody says, did you hear what so-and-so? Oh, well, do you know, I had, I'll tell you why I had that. And boy, the preachers loved to downgrade each other. They spit at each other. They ridiculed each other. You wonder we have no refinement. Yeah, babe. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?