In this sermon, the preacher talks about the challenges and struggles faced by believers in the world. He emphasizes the importance of being anointed by the Holy Spirit and refers to the story of Samson as a type of the spirit anointed man. The preacher also mentions an incident from the eighth and ninth chapters of Acts where preachers were beaten up by demons after trying to cast them out. He criticizes the practice of begging for funds and highlights the need for Christians to live holy lives in an unholy world. The preacher expresses his frustration with boring church services and calls for the Holy Spirit to bring life and excitement to meetings.

Saying that we're complete, I think of a friend of mine, and he's always quoting that scripture, we are complete in him, which is very true, very beautiful, and yet, you think again, as has been said of all the, excuse me, all the, well, what Lowry, there's a book called The Possibilities of Grace by Lowry, L-O-W-R-E-Y, Lowry, if you can get it. As a friend of mine used to say, sell your shirt if you have to to get it. I looked at it for 30 years and got it not too long ago. That is an abridged edition that the Church of the Nazarene put out, but I like the title, The Possibilities of Grace, they're so vast. Someone was talking about, now, about Rhys Howells. Well, Rhys Howells is an amazing man of faith. I never met him, but I met his son, and I think his son is a greater man than Rhys Howells. But the greatness of his life is not in some great act of faith, it's in another area completely. He's a man that shuts himself away six, seven, eight hours a day, hardly possible to see him. I have talked with him privately, and he's a wonderful man of God. God has his way of putting us on exhibition. Again, you'll see one man who is striking by his humility, you'll see another man who is obviously a giant of faith, you'll find somebody gifted with an extraordinary analytical mind, you'll find somebody else in some other area. One of the great Irish ladies, I preached in her church there, if that's what you call it, there's a little tin shack, and this precious little dignified lovely lady, she was looking down from a picture at the back of the pulpit while I was preaching there, and she went out to India, and went out the old-fashioned way. You know, in the olden days, missionaries did not have furloughs. They went out to die. The furlough is comparatively a new invention. He said, you have to come on every four years or five years for this, that, and the other. Well, they didn't used to do that. And this precious little woman was, she founded a Donovore Fellowship. The name was Amy Wilson Carmichael, you should read every book if you can get it. My son Paul down in South America, I think, has every book she's written. He followed a pattern to some degree. He came home once in 10 years from the mission field, stayed five weeks. And going back, when I said, well, his mummy said, I think when do you think you'll come back? He said, maybe never, I'm not sure I'll come back. And I said, well, that's all right, we'll see you in eternity. I've often said, I'd be happy if my boys die on the mission field, I'd be embarrassed if they died on the battlefield. Let them die for Jesus, great. Whether they do it sooner or later, that's all right. But she, to me, is a remarkable example again of patience and love. That she had 350 children that she cared for, that's quite a lot. Some of you ladies have driven up the wall with three, so how would you do with 350? And never asked anybody for a penny. I like that kind of faith. These boys are always screaming over TV, they have a great program and telling you, you know, they can raise the dead, but they can't raise funds. They've got a God that can do anything except supply their need. They quote it, my God shall supply all your need. And then they say, beg, beg, beg, beg, beg. You know, faith and begging gets you a long way. So God produces men and he sets them up, as it were, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. And again I say, whatever excuse we, whatever excuse you make for failure in your life, I'll tell you one thing, if you ever work in a factory like the one I worked in, they never made any excuses for Christians. You can make every excuse for your weakness, they say, you're supposed to be like Jesus Christ. Those men would tell me that. I'm itching my nose on the day, sorry. But they don't make any excuses for us. They just expect that we are his workmanship, that we are going to be a reproduction of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you say that because you and I often sing, let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me. All right, Jesus here begins the Sermon on the Mount with this blessed, blessed word, blessed. And you know that's what God intends to do, that's what God loves to do. It says that after God had made Adam and given him dominion over the beasts of the field, he blessed him. And it says that Noah, when he came out of the ark and he started off with his family, God blessed him. It says concerning Abraham, God blessed him. The first psalm begins, doesn't it? Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. The great 84th psalm, which is about the tabernacle of God. How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts. And then it says, blessed are they that dwell in thy house, they will be still praising thee. Verse 5 says, blessed is the man whose strength is in thee. It finishes the 12th verse, the last verse says, O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee. Somebody once asked Aristotle, you know that great teacher, how much blessing is there for man? And he said, oh to be blessed is a very, very unique privilege. In blessing you have no hardship, you have no difficulty, everything carries you away. You live in an exalted state, you have servants. Well that was his idea of blessedness. It's for a very limited number. Jesus has the disciples in front of him and he says, blessed, and he's talking to us as well. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. You've got to keep away from certain things. Paul says, flee from youthful lust. Don't mess around with them. Flee, get out of the way. Don't sit gazing and tempt yourself, get out of the way of lust, get out of the way of certain things. It's an interesting thing, I think if you check you'll find that in the, again in the vocabulary of the Romans they had no word for meekness. Jesus comes, what was the first thing he says? Come unto me, I am meek and lowly at heart. Meekness is something the Romans didn't know anything about. They strutted, they were arrogant, they were the most dominant, powerful people on earth. They'd set up their mighty empire. And here's a man has no crown, no soldiers, no possessions and he's rivaling the great Roman empire. I mean it's absurdity. Well how many people do you think woke up this morning, even in this area, thinking of Julius Caesar? Huh? Or Tiberius Caesar? Or Caligula? You didn't know Caligula, maybe thought it was a kind of a catheter or something. Well he happened to be one of the great Roman rulers too. Or did you think a word about Hitler this morning? Not a word. What does a king have? Well he has a kingdom, but his kingdom is not visible, it is invisible. What does a king have? Well he has a throne. When we were children in England, one of the hymns that we always seemed to finish our Sunday night service was by singing a hymn of John Ellington's, a lovely hymn, The day thou gave us Lord is ended, the darkness falls at thy behest. And even when I was a little boy I used to stick my chest out a little bit more and hang on to the pew in front and sing as loud as I ever could. And the last stanza, So be it Lord, thy throne shall never like earth's proud empires pass away. Isn't that a statement? I'm glad I wasn't raised on lots of these flimsy choruses that put an itch in your feet and make you want to dance. As I say again, songs make you happy, but hymns make you holy, if you digest them. So be it Lord, thy throne shall never like earth's proud empires pass away. Thy kingdom stands and grows forever till all my creatures all my sway. Well that's Hebrews 1 and 6 isn't it? Thy throne O God is forever and ever. A sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. We misquote sometimes, we say the kingdoms of this world. The scripture doesn't say that. The scripture says the kingdoms. But whatever, whatever other things there are, here's this world and inside of it you've got all kinds of kingdoms. Big ones, little ones, lust, visible, invisible, devilish, all inspired. These are the kingdoms of darkness, the kingdom of darkness. He brought us not out of the kingdoms but out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his own son. Earth's proud empires pass away. You didn't think about the Roman Empire or the Medo-Persian Empire or the lately collapsed British Empire this morning. No, no. But you woke up with the joy of the Lord in your heart. You're part of his kingdom. He's already begun a work of grace in you. You used to think of him a while ago, years ago, king of my life I crown thee now. You see in England we've got a, well we don't have a king, it's a sign of the last days we've got a queen. You've got a king in the British Empire. Normally you have a king. But then you have a PM here, a prime minister. And this king or the queen right now doesn't really have much voice. Or if he does, they, whatever the prime minister and the government decide, they bring it and she puts her initials on. You see now ER, Elizabeth Rex. That's it, that's official. It goes on the book of the British Empire. The queen says it. But she didn't formulate it. She's not the boss. Because I think that's true in many lives. I want Jesus Christ to be king but I want to be prime minister. I want to make plans, you bless them, because Lord all my plans are good. I'm not going to get drunk, I'm not going to do this, that and the other. I just want to, you know, like I hear people say some day, you know, you know my wife and I, we decided to take the Lord into partnership. Isn't that wonderful? You decided to have a little bit of something that he had a million years before you came. Aren't you gracious to let God come into your business? God doesn't want to be in partnership. He's not interested. But what does he want? Ownership. Because you can be a partner in a business and boy your voice doesn't carry too much. But if you have the ownership, boy you're on the top of the pile. You dictate the policy. Now is Jesus Christ king of my life? Really king? Has his kingdom come into me? Has he set up his kingdom? The kingdom of God again is within you? You know the church is really a very beautiful thing. This isn't borne out completely and maybe I don't like analogies like this, but let me say here. What is the church of Jesus Christ? Well one thing I think it is, to think of its outworking, is that the church of Jesus Christ is really an armory. Isn't it? You know we're so generous. People come and get saved and you say now look my dear, I know you've been a harlot, I know you've been a prostitute, I know you've been a jailbird, I know you. I want to tell you something else. You're saved and not for the years of time alone but for eternity. And these are what you get for just five minutes of weeping and saying you get eternal life, a mansion on main street, a free ticket to the marriage supper of the lamb, you're going to rule over five cities and you're parried all along. And it's not all true. Why don't we whisper in the other ear, look the moment you got saved you became the property of Jesus Christ. He's the king of kings and the lord of lords. And he's called the captain of our salvation and since he gives the orders you have to live in objection. Now you're not only prospectively a saint, you are a soldier. And as soon as you step out of this sanctuary where God's people are, you're exposed to the world, the flesh, the devil, opposition, temptation, trial, difficulties. You are a tripartite being if you want to be theological. You've got three dimensions in your personality, spirit, soul and body and Satan will tempt them all. He'll tempt you in your mind, he'll tempt you in your physical appetite, he'll tempt you in your soulish life. He's going to assail you. But listen, before you get discouraged and say, my I'm not too sure I want to be a Christian. Before you face that world of hostility and a thousand things that I cannot tell you about but I know they're there. Just let me whisper something in your ear to make you feel real strong and good. You'll feel almost as though you're a child against a herd of elephants or a herd of tigers or something. But listen, you'll keep this in mind, don't forget it. You're not a Christian because you give up a lot of rotten things. As I say, I do not ask people now, are you saved? Everybody's saved now, fashionable, from the White House to God's house. Billy Graham said the other morning on the last Gallup poll that 70 million people in America are born again. Well brother if that's true, the salt's lost its favor, hasn't it? How could you have 70 million people, that's a third of the population nearly, born again? Oh that's dreadful. So you don't say to people anymore, are you born again? Don't say, are you saved? Oh they nod their head, yeah I went, I made a decision and said, no, no, no, no, forget it. How do you know you're saved? I've given up smoking. Well you could give up smoking for common sense. That doesn't mean you're saved. Give up drinking, give up lusting, give up this, so on. No, now you drop all your old language and don't say are you born again, or if you're theological, are you regenerate? Go to someone and say, hey, does Christ live in you? You'll be amazed how many people think twice before they answer, that isn't that what Christianity is? Yet you say to people, oh my dear, you get saved, and listen, listen, here, look, God's got something here, this is it, this thing here, you see this? This is pure God, this is eternal life. And when you get saved, he breaks a bit off and says, there's a bit of eternal life for you, there's some here, there for you. Why? Because we interpret it this way, the gift from God is, no he didn't say that. It is not a gift from God, it is the gift of God. That God comes and sets up residence in my personality. That's what Paul says, it is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now if somebody comes to you today and says, does Christ live in you? Maybe you'll think twice, because somebody will say, well, I'll tell you what, that Christ lives, does some pretty ugly things. And he says some pretty nasty things at times. You see, I need quietness every morning, so do you, to get still with the Lord and say, now, now Lord, this is the way I want to live, before I go out to this dirty, unclean, filthy, terrible world and so forth, I just want to let you know that I want to show the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ in this ugly world in which I live. I want the beauty of the Lord to be upon me. And somebody said to a Chinese scholar some years ago, you've read the Quran, the Vedas, sacred books, have you read the New Testament? Ah yes, I read the New Testament, now three times. Oh, he said, you've read the Quran, you've read the New Testament? He said, yes. Well, what is different about the New Testament? Is it a greater book? Yes. Well, what impressed you most? Oh, he said, the Christian thought, well, I know what impressed, I know what impressed him most, the virgin birth, the physical resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The little Chinaman said, the thing impressed me most is, oh, are you Christian? Yes. You are the most wonderful people in, oh no, no, I'm, I'm a, you know, I'm a failure, I'm nothing. We, we, we love to exalt the Lord by saying, telling everybody he's made a mess of us, don't we? I mean, you haven't done a very good job in me, Lord, I'm still carnal and critical and selfish and so forth. Oh, come on. The Chinaman said, you are the most wonderful person in the world. Why? Oh, in Ephesians, that book of yours, at the end of Ephesians, it said, you are the habitation of God. The Koran don't say that, nor the book say that. Habitation means dwelling place. You are, your God lives in you. No other religion does God live in a person, but in you, your God lives. You see, Christianity isn't morality on its tiptoes. It's the indwelling of the Spirit of God. Paul doesn't hesitate to say, Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Well, again, it would be very, very difficult for the Romans to, to, and the other people to, to listen to Jesus, and Jesus talks about meekness. You know, there's a wonderful, excuse me, um, word, where is it? 1 Peter, is it? Let me look. I think it's in 1 Peter 2. I got a reference I put somewhere on, about this. Let me tell you these things, if you want to put them down, what, what the Lord says about meekness. We don't have the time to go through them. He says we're to walk in meekness in Ephesians 4.2. It is characteristic of our life. Walk with, with meekness, Ephesians 4.2. We're to put on meekness in Colossians 3.12. We're to follow after meekness in 1 Timothy 6.11. And then that beautiful verse in Galatians 6.1, if a man be overtaken in a fault, let him which is spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, lest you fall in the same mess you'd like to be treated, wouldn't you? Would you always like people to treat you as the same as you've treated them in that circumstance? In Psalm 25 he says he will guide the meek in judgment. Oh, we need that, don't we? Oh, if there's anywhere we need meekness, it's when we're judging. You know, you hear people say sometimes, well it's easy to judge. You know, that's about the most foolish thing I think we ever say, though we say a lot of foolish things. It's easy to judge. It's the hardest thing in the world. It's easy to misjudge. It's not easy to judge. A big soldier comes home and, and he sees his gorgeous wife and he says, well what's, well what's, what's the matter with you? You look distressed. She said, yes, you know that beautiful man you brought here who's supposed to follow the religion of the Holy God. Well, he happened to come into my bedroom last night and if I hadn't have screamed, oh, something terrible would have happened. Is that, she says, here, look, whose coat is that? Well, it's Joseph's. No questions asked. Bang him in jail. He was as innocent as Gabriel. But when he refused to get fouled up with a woman, she snatched his coat as evidence against him. No evidence against him. She judged, or he judged. No, he misjudged. God says he will guide the meek in judgment. Somewhere, as I say, I can't find this reference right here. What did I do with it? I, I still think it's in, um, in first Peter, you know. I can't even remember the verse to tell you the truth. I know it's about meekness. What, what is it? The meekness of a, um, the adornment, I think it is, the adornment of a meek and quiet spirit. Where is that? Thank you. I thought it was in Peter. Yeah, that, thank you, that's it. All right, he's talking here about submission for the ladies here and then he goes on, uh, about the ladies in verse three, the adorning, let it not be that of an adorning of the patting of the hair, the wearing of gold, putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden man of the heart. It's saying that to women. Women have to have the hidden man of the heart because there's no sex in soul anyhow. The hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornaments of a meek and quiet spirit. Now listen, here's the value of it. It's much, what? What does it say? A meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God of great price. There is a version of the scriptures. Dr. Tolga told me he only liked one version outside of the King James Version and that was a, uh, an English version actually. There is a New Testament, but it was translated by Williams of Chicago. But this is not by Williams of Chicago, this is Charles Kingsley Williams, you know, the great English writer Charles Kingsley. This man's called Charles Kingsley Williams. And Dr. Tolga told me it was the only version he enjoyed outside of the New Testament. And this verse here, uh, let it be the hidden man of the heart which is not corruptible after the ornament, even the ornament of a meek and, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. And Charles Kingsley Williams, I made a notice on the side of my Bible here, translates that the undying beauty of a quiet and gentle spirit. Isn't that lovely? The undying beauty of a gentle meek spirit. You know that's one of the most beautiful things it's possible to have, a meek, gentle, quiet spirit. Now let's get this straight right here, because in our thinking we usually identify meekness with weakness. And there is opposites as opposites can be. If you go back into, uh, didn't check this, I should have looked this up. All right, Numbers chapter 12, verse 3. Now the man Moses was very meek of all the men which were upon the face of the earth. Very meek. Was he very weak? Could a weak man have led a million and a half or two million rebels out of Egypt into the, at least nearly to the promised land? He wasn't weak, he was meek. And you know, strangely enough, one of the great ingredients of meekness, you know what it is? Anger. Now I hear people say sometimes, you know, you've a bad temper and you need to get sanctified and get rid of the temper. No, you don't. What you need to do is get your temper purged. The trouble with most of us, we get angry over nothing and, and don't get angry over things that ought to make us mad. Jesus got angry, didn't he? Didn't he go into the temple and whip them out? Paul goes down the main street of the intellectual capital of the world at that time, which was Athens, and he saw the street lined on either side with temples to strange gods. And the sleepy Elizabethan English said his spirit was stirred. But if you read the, uh, if you read the Amplified, it said he was angry. Why? He saw, he saw millions of money invested in temples to strange gods. He saw people do things we won't do. I remember I was out west once and there was a, a notice in the newspaper that a, a, um, Greyhound bus was coming down the road. There was a Mohammedan on it. Then he, he suddenly rushed up to the driver. He said, stop, stop. And the man put on the brake and said, what in the world is wrong? He said, it's time to pray. What? You stopped the bus on this road? Yeah, yeah. Please wait, wait. He took his mat, his little prayer mat, and he knelt at the side of the road and he did his alms to Allah and he prayed and he prayed and he went right through it. And the bus man said, well, at least I admire your convictions. No, no, uh, Christian never stopped to pray. Of course, we've got to cover up for that. You don't do your alms before men. But by the same token, I wonder how often. Like a friend of mine was in a big hotel out in California where some celebrities came in. One of them, you know by name. He'd written some famous songs. We ordered one of these great big fancy dinners and, uh, when the steaks were brought and the other things, this, this famous man took his glasses off and did this and started eating. And my friend's friend said, why don't we take this? I just said it. When? Well, when I did. Oh, come on, you wanted everybody, you didn't want people to know you were saying grace, you were ashamed. That's why you took your glasses off. It's convenient to have glasses now and again. Take your glasses off and then you're rubbing your eyes. So this brilliant man said, all right, you say grace. So he took his handkerchief out and put it on the floor and he knelt down in this hotel. He says, father, he said, shut up, shut up, he said. Isn't it easy to sit in church and sing, I'm not ashamed to owe my Lord or to defend it. And we say, Lord, I'll go to the mission field. And you dare not say grace when your relatives come. Or you dare not say no when they offer you something. You know what they said when Pilate said, uh, well, you have a custom. I've often thought I'd like to preach on that. You have a custom, give out Easter eggs in honor of what? Well, Astor, a pagan, uh, godless, evil queen, that we happen to have tied into Easter. Have a, have a Christmas tree. Why? Because the Druids had them in England before Christmas. They're all pagan. They're all unholy. Some of our folk got mad when I told them about Christmas trees. Why do you paganize your home? I think of a man one day turning to his boy when he was about 14 and he was indignant. He says, there's one thing you'll have to say, uh, I don't care what you do. I never told you a lie. He said, Father, you told me hundreds. I told you a lie? Oh yeah. I mentioned one. You told me a fat man used to come down the chimney at Christmas with a bag of stuff and there never was one anyhow. You lied to me for years. We don't, we don't think about that. It's a custom. We have a custom to do this and a custom to do that. But dear friend, we, we don't belong the customs. We belong the King. I like that translation. One translation I really like, not because it's English, but I like J.B. Phillips in so many things. And he says in Romans 12, 1 and 2, I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. All right. Be not conformed to this world. You know he translates that, don't let this world press you into its mold. Huh? Don't we become victims of custom, habits? We do things because it's time to go to bed. Maybe that's the time you should be praying. We do things out of sheer custom and mechanics. All right, just skip over this meekness. There's a very wonderful quality. I was saying a minute ago, what is the church? The church is an armory. We put on the whole armor of God. As I say, you'll have grown up at agape. Somebody listening out there, you tell the chief, he's not around just now, I'd say you'll have grown up at agape when you have a special room open 24 hours a day for intercession. When you learn that there's a power, as I said yesterday, that you've got the world here. You've got the world here with all its iniquity. Right above it you've got an evil world because it says we wrestle against principalities and powers. And then above it you've got one who is seated above all principalities and powers. So whatever power this world has on here, we have power over principalities and powers. You see that's why we're going to be embarrassed at the judgment seat that we availed ourselves of so little. We're all getting clicks. If you're not careful, before long somebody will say, oh I know where they're from, they're from agape. Oh I know where they're from, they're from a certain Bible school. They think the same, they talk the same. Now it isn't my job as a teacher to try and brainwash you. My job is to provoke you to think. I may hurt you sometimes, I'll even try to do that. I'll shock you sometimes to wake you up because you take so many sedatives. But anyhow, they're not sedatives you swallow, they're sedatives of other people's teaching. Am I smarter than the others? No, I can only tell you what God gives me. Any teacher can do that. You've got to assimilate it, it's got to get in your bloodstream. I'm not going to stand here and tell you anything I haven't been through myself, otherwise I'm a philosopher. I'm guiding the traffic, go say, that way for blessing, go this way for gifts, go that way for something else. That's not difficult. We're going to be embarrassed at the judgment bar. Isn't there a poem, I can't remember it now, but it's something like this. When I get to heaven, I don't want to get there without any notches on the blade of my sword. You know, the more you use a sword, it clips bits off the fine edge. Or if you want it in an old hymn, must I be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, while others fought to win the prize and sail through bloody seas? Are there no foes for me to face, must I not stem the flood? Is this vile world a friend to grace, to help me on to God? We were in a very fashionable church when we were in Atlanta, the one that Peter Marshall used to have. And it was jammed, it was packed to the rafters. And I was preaching on a subject I liked so much, on Samson as a type of the spirit-anointed man. Then I referred to the fact again that, you know, in the what, eighth, ninth chapter of Acts, where those fellows jumped on a man possessed of devils. They tried to get the devil out by reciting demons, by reciting a formula, and the demons came out. Then they jumped on the preachers and beat them up. I think they gave a marvellous testimony. You know, demons have testimony meetings too. You know what the demons said? Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who in the world are you? I never heard about them. You may disagree with a lot I say, I'm sure you will. That doesn't worry me. I'm convinced that one, and two, and three, right down, I think that the devil has a danger list in America. He has the ten most wanted men in this nation. And I'd rather be the last of those ten than be the first above Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, anybody else. I'd rather be on the devil's list than my name in Westminster, I'd be anywhere. If I'm not known in hell, I'm not much good. That's my simple solution. Are you known in hell? Do you aspire to be known in hell? Where else do you want to be known? Oh, I'm hoping I'll make a record, I'm really wanting to make a record that will sell a thousand. So what? You can sing your head off, I don't think you'll scare the devil. These kids can make more noise than you anyhow, and sell more records. I'm not against that, you can write books as far as that goes. But when it comes down to warfare, as I say, the colleges, Bible colleges send their choir on tour. I never heard of a Bible college sending a prayer meeting on tour, did you? Kids make records, okay. You ever heard a man putting his prayers on records? If I put my prayers on records, sometimes our people say, Brother Adrian, please put your prayer on the record, on the tape before you preach. Sometimes you're better at praying than preaching, that's all right, I don't mind that. But supposing I put my prayers on records, what would you say? You're not Raiden Hillsden? Well, what's the difference between a prayer and a song anyhow? If it comes to that, I think people get a lot more help out of prayers very often than out of singing. But I'm just saying this, where do I really want to be known? Just as a showman, the pulpit's a show place. Show yourself off, strut your knowledge, dress your personality up, let people come and sign autographs, ask for autographs, that's great, feed you, pure nonsense. Took me a long while to reverse all my thinking as to who is the greatest in the Kingdom of God. We're going to be shocked when we get there. I don't find it difficult anymore to find where the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Again, some of God's choicest saints are hidden away. They never surface, do you know why? Because they're married to His will and they've learned to live in the secret place of the Most High. And we're going to be fascinated one day when the Lord parades the greatest saint. You know, we kind of think the Lord's just looking for a few choice people today to make up his bride. Look, he's been making up that bride for 2,000 years and some of them had their heads chopped off. And some of them didn't have it as comfortable as that. They had one finger cut off and then two fingers and then their arm and they were dismembered bit by bit. And I think because God's blessed me so much and I've written a few books and if I had a Rolls Royce and I mean, after all, I'm one of the great people around. People know it, they call me, they want me to preach. What a lot of balderdash. When I think of some of the saints this morning in the Gulag Archipelago, I refuse to live a day without praying for saints in the Gulag Archipelago. Carter never talks about getting them out with his human rights. He's bending backward to be friendly, bending backwards or bending over to be friendly with China that murdered at least 40 million Christians plus maybe 10 million others. And amongst them there were saints martyred for Christ's sake. We won't all be the same in heaven, sure we won't. We won't all wear the same clothes. If I say to you, well, you know, you should be up early in the morning and pray and get about business just when God opens his business. You say, God isn't in business, isn't he? You see, we live in a day of cheap, everything's cheap, everything's given away. God will give you repentance, God will give you mercy, God will give you salvation, God will give you gifts of the spirit. He gives, you can't buy anything from God. Well, you better read the book of the Revelation. What does he say there? I counsel thee what? To buy. Buy what? Gold. Buy what? White raiment. Now that can be the garment of righteousness, that is a gift. But I don't believe our garments will all be embroidered the same. After all, how many are going to rule over ten cities? How many are going to rule over one city? There'll be as many distinctions in heaven as there are on earth as far as I'm concerned. I don't expect to sit on a throne. After all, people say, we still have apostles today. Well, I'll tell you what, they won't have a throne up there, there's only twelve thrones for the twelve apostles. Now, I know you can overthink that way and you can think too little the other way. It'll be fantastic to be in the kingdom at all, to be, after all, we're going to live in heaven. I'm not as sure we are. Why? Well, it says God is going to make what? A new what? Heaven and a new, and it says, and we shall reign on the, we shall reign on the earth. God never made anything he threw away, never made anything to be wasted. He's going to restore the earth like the Garden of Eden. And I believe we're going to reign on the earth as it says. I don't know we'd take flights up there into some eternity or something, that's all right. I'm, just let me get in the kingdom and start all over again. I don't know. We know so little about it, except there's a good song, you know, one, one second, one minute inside eternity will be worth fifty years of suffering and martyrdom and burn the stake or anything else. We sing it easily, just a smile from my savior I know will through the ages be glory for me. It sure will. This clock, I hate two things, the devil and the clock. So the time's nearly up. All right, what are the possibilities of grace? The possibilities are this, that however hostile I have been to God, however corrupt I am, that Jesus Christ is able to cleanse me by his blood. And then he's able to indwell me, he's able to make me his habitation. He's able to supersede any wisdom I might have with wisdom which is from above. There are two kinds of wisdom obviously, the wisdom of the scientist, the wisdom of some, but there is a wisdom which is from above. Some of the most uneducated men I have met have had far more wisdom than men with an earned PhD from the coveted school up there in Scotland. Everybody wants a PhD from Edinburgh. Okay, but let's not confuse knowledge with wisdom. Knowledge is one thing, wisdom to me is the ability to apply that knowledge or again it is direct revelation that God gives. There is a wisdom which is from above. Jesus Christ has made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification. And I've sat on committees, I'm not, I don't sit on any committee anymore. People say, would you like to sit on our board? I say, no, I get bored enough with all of them. I don't want to be on any of them. I don't have time to sit and chew and meditate. Well, we'll fly you if you'll be on our board. Listen, we'll send you a ticket. We'll only ask you to come four times a year. We'll fly you. No, no, I don't want to be on them. I don't have time to do it. You know, I've watched, I've sat on executives, I've sat till early hours in the morning trying to solve a problem and then we said, let's go to bed and think over it. And some little fellow would come up and say, you know, last night while I was praying, the Lord showed me this. And I'd say, oh boy, why didn't we turn the whole meeting into a prayer meeting? We might have got that. We were so dumb trying to work it out ourselves that the Lord passed us up. Some of God's choicest saints. Well, there's not much to them, but I'll tell you what, they have an awful spirit of wisdom. The church is like an armory we're supposed to fight. Oh, to make the devil suffer. Oh, to be able to draw a line and say, you're not coming past that area. I think one of the most astounding things out of an astounding book, do you know what Jesus said? Of course you do, I'll remind you. He said this, I give you power over the devil. No, he didn't say that. What did he say? I give you power over A-L-L. Now, you read your New Testament without that all in and you're in trouble. The blood cleanseth from all sin. I mentioned this one day and a fellow, a very lovely man in the university, sent me a lovely plaque, beautifully carved. And oh, it's so heavy. What in the world is this? And when I opened it, all it said on was A-L-L, all. He said, you got through with me and I want to remind you of it. So I have it stuck up this wall. I have one with eternity on, I have another plate with judgment on and I have this with all. Listen, this is serious. We ought to close a gappy down for a week and find out and say, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. He's given us power over all the power of the enemy. Well, how much territory have we taken from him lately? Huh? Come on now, Ed's here, he's a spy for the, you know, for the big shots here. But tell me this, are we really concerned that the agape is one of the 10 most wanted groups in America? Now, he doesn't care how far you travel or where you go sing, that won't worry the devil. He can put up with bad noises, with singing or anything else and that won't worry him. But if you get to business and pray and intercede. Jesus didn't come down into the world in a cloud, he came through the Holy Ghost working on the matrix of the Virgin Mary. What is the church today? His body. What is the church likened to? I would like the Lord to have given us a picture of the church like St. George and the dragon, you know, big man there with a sword and he thrusts it through the dragon on the floor. But the church is very beautiful, the church is likened to a woman because a woman brings to birth. So, quickly through that, the church should be an armory, we should have on the whole armor of God. Just like those Romans had big helmets and breastplates and God says, you've got the same thing, you've got the helmet of salvation, you've got the shield of faith, you've got the sword of the Spirit, he has no more protection than you have. You have greater power than he has. And then the church could be likened again to a wardrobe. I love that 45th Psalm. The king's daughter is all glorious within. I don't know why you women try and do so many improvements outside. I was in a house a while ago and a lady said, you know, I've been going to the same beauty parlor for 25 years. I thought, goodness, what were you like when they started working on you? She must have been a wreck 25 years ago, there's not much to her now and she's been repaired every weekend. She goes in for repairs every Friday to the same beauty parlor. You know, we're told, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Now, come on, the beauty. Have I got, have you got that internal beauty? Read that 46th Psalm. The king's daughter is all glorious within. All the needlework, all the beauty, the beauty that there is. And it says, the king delights in her when she's like that. Now, that's, there's not much we can make God happy with. We make him happy with our obedience, we make him happy again with our inward beauty. So, the church is like an armory, the church is like a wardrobe, we can put on the beautiful garments, can't we? It's like a perfumery. Why? Well, if you want to smell fragrant, I'll tell you how to get it. Oh, it's paradoxical, everything's opposite in the kingdom of God, doesn't make sense. You want to be beautiful? I hope you do, spiritually anyhow. Well, how do you get beautiful? Well, uh, isn't it Psalm, uh, tell me, uh, not Psalm, Isaiah 61, 62. He gives what? Beauty for what? Beauty for ashes. You ever seen an ashe that was beautiful? He gives beauty for ashes. Well, how do you get ashes? When you burn up everything, when everything's destroyed in us of self-seeking, self-pity, self-glory, self-promotion, when, when, when, when they're all burned up. We sang, I think, last Lord's Day morning. I will praise him, I will praise him, praise the Lord. There's a verse in there that I think is a very wonderful verse. It says, when the fire upon me, when God's fire upon the altar of my heart was set ablaze, my ambitions, plans, and wishes at my feet in ashes lay. And when my ambitions and plans and wishes have all been burned up, the divine alchemist takes all that dirt and out of it he brings beauty out of ashes. It's a good thing this sermon of Jesus doesn't begin with blessed of the pure, we'd all back off. It begins blessed of the poor, finishes up with blessed of the pure. All right. The king's daughter is all glorious within, the needlework is all fine, it's all, he takes what? Beauty for ashes, that's what he gives. I had a man coming to see me for a while and he's always saying, I don't have enough joy, I don't have enough joy. Well, the reason you don't have enough joy is you haven't had enough mourning. He gives beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for what? Mourning. Well, what is he saying here? Blessed are they that mourn. Mourn over what? My incapacity. Or mourn over the fact I've been rebellious so often, or I've been disobedient, I've been slow to obey him. And gradually he works on that. I'm beautified when all these qualities are in my life. Again, he doesn't say meekness for you and something else for you. I need all these qualities. I do not need every gift of the Spirit in my life, I need every fruit of the Spirit. I'm glad he doesn't say, well, the fruit of the Spirit is love. There's love for you, there's joy for you, there's peace for you, there's long-suffering. And when you're all together, you'll be a lovely bunch. No, he says, you need every one of those things. And as, let me think who was it, Oswald Chambers, the great Scottish preacher said. He said, you know, these qualities, these virtues, if you like, the Lord Jesus puts in our lives, this is his word, they explode in a given circumstance. You don't hang them around your neck like jewels, but you come into a crisis and everybody thinks you'll be, you'll retaliate and get angry. And instead of that, you show a meek, you have the adornment of a meek and a quiet spirit. You get in another situation and it's very obvious that you're full of meekness like the Master. And somebody's staggered by the fact of your meekness, when you could justify yourself. You know when you're meek, why? Because you've no desire to retaliate, that's why. You know, you know you're meek, why? Because you prefer somebody else to be honoured instead of you. Many a woman has left the church because, listen, I can sing better than her and she's sung four times the last four Sunday mornings. Down the road they want me, so I'm going down there, you see. Can you really in your heart say, Lord, I prefer somebody else? Not when it's a bit of dirty work, that's easy to prefer somebody else to do the dirty job. You prefer somebody to be promoted above you or respected above you? Hmm? All right, let's wind this up. I'll come back some year and finish it. I could say the church is like a restaurant because this is where we come to feed, not over there. But after all, doesn't he spread a table before us in the presence of his enemies? Don't we come here to partake of eternal things, heavenly things? You know, one day God's going to have some sane children. Most of them are insane right now, I think. Who in the world says that God, the Holy Ghost, only comes at eleven o'clock Sunday morning to a fellowship and leaves at twelve and comes back seven at night till eight and then you don't need him till Wednesday night? That's the most arrogant, stupid thing I ever heard of. Dr. Tozer said to me one day, just the two of us together, he said, Len, I won't live to see this, but you will. He said, you'll find that people from heathen countries will come to America to tell us what Christianity is all about. And that's what they're doing right now. Listen to Bishop Kevengery if you see him around. Or if you can get in here, anybody ever heard Buck sing? Hear Buck sing. Where his services on the Lord's Day last anything from nine to twelve hours. They don't go for a nibble, you know. Everybody stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down, take the offering, stand up, the choir will sing. Now I wish I had time to develop my theme, but I don't. What do you, what do you have a pastor for? Yeah, get tape recorder. Play a tape. There's nothing fresh from heaven, why, why get bored? You know, the more I read of this book, I get more angry that church is so boring, people fall asleep. Why in the world doesn't the Holy Ghost come and make a meeting? Len, so whether anybody's healed miraculously or not, listen, I've seen God do every miracle under the sun except raise the dead in our own ministry. Now I'll tell you the greatest thing that God can do. The greatest miracle God can do is to take an unholy man out of an unholy world, make that unholy man holy, put him back in that unholy world and keep him holy. That takes all the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. There is nothing to exceed it. Or as it says in the book of, what is it, says in Samuel that he lifts the beggar from the dunghill and makes him a prince unto God. All right, I said beginning, let me finish with it, that the number one problem in the human race is what? What's the number one problem in the world today, what it was in the days of Jesus? The number one problem in the world is a problem of human relationships. We can't live with each other. Very often in our homes, in our communities, in our nation, if everybody lived the Sermon on the Mount, no churches would ever split. If every Christian couple lived the Sermon on the Mount, there'd be no divorces. You see, we want to live on little tidbits, we want to live on little songs and nice little ditties and even sermonettes on cassettes for Christianettes very often. Instead of getting down to the Word of God and eating it and digesting it. The Sermon on the Mount, no man can live the Sermon on the Mount apart from the Grace of God, totally impossible. But by the Grace of God he can live it. And again, by living the Sermon on the Mount won't bring you in the Kingdom because you can't live the Sermon on the Mount. What you do, you get in the Kingdom and then the Sermon on the Mount is a natural element in which you live because the Kingdom of God is within you and then there's an outflow. As I said yesterday using my simple illustration again, that if you have a tap here, here's a tap, here it is and there's water coming out there and you've got a cup under there, as long as that water is coming in and there's billions of gallons of water, you never exhaust it, as long as that water comes in there's an inflow and then there's an up and then there's an overflow. Well if there's an overflow you're not going to see the vessel, all you see is the overflow. That overflow is going to stay as long as that cup stays. If you take the cup away then you lose the overflow. So God wants to inflow us and overflow us. All right, I think the Puritans were wonderful, I like reading Puritans. The only thing is they never come out on the victory side. It's all death and despondency and you carry the old man to the grave. You know a lot of us could be good Mohammedans, we've no more victory over sin than the Mohammedans. If you say to people that a Christian doesn't sin, they'll say, boy that's heresy. Well you tell God that when you see him because that's what he said in his book. I didn't put it in the gospel, in the epistle of John, John put it there. He that is born of God does not commit sin. You say it's impossible to sin, no I say it's possible not to. And the normal Christian life is victory over sin, but if we sin, if you slip, we have an advocate with the Father. What's the difference between the sin of a Christian and the sin of a man in the street? All right, a Christian man gets fouled up, he commits adultery. Any difference in that adultery to that man's adultery? No. What's the difference? That as soon as this man discovers this adultery thing, he's heartbroken, he mourns, he weeps and he seeks God and he gets cleaned up and by the grace of God he doesn't do it again. That man does it every day and enjoys doing it. That's the difference. It's a difference in attitude. But whatever corruption there is, God is able to cleanse it by his blood and indwell us by his precious blood. You know there's an old story there in Greek mythology. One of the things that the Greeks wanted was a golden fleece. And they tried all kinds of ways to get it. There was a, let's put it this way here, if it helps or not, but anyhow. Here we have say a lot of jagged rocks sticking up in the sea like this. Here's where the current comes past, this is where the boats come and these men all come sailing down here in their boats, you know, boats like this. And when they get so far, there are a ambulance goes through town, it's wailing, it has a siren. Well that comes from those women that used to sit on the rocks there, the sirens. They had marvellous voices and they enchanted all the singers and men would steer the boat and the boat would get on the rocks and rip the bottom and then they looted the boats. So on the way for the golden fleece, nearly every ship got wrecked. So there's a fellow, what was his name, Ulysses, do you remember, wasn't it Ulysses went? What did he do? He said, my men are not going to be robbed, my men are not going to be destroyed, they're not going to get our treasure. So as he got nearer to the place, he put wax in their ears and then he tied the crewmen to the masts on the boat and they sailed past under great misery, they made it. All the other boats didn't do it that way, not every captain was prepared to tackle his crew, they might slug him. So one day there was another man went along and was it Jason, Jason that went along and they said, you mean that you're going after the golden fleece, do you know the hazard, do you know how many boats have been destroyed? There's a report that one man Ulysses got past there but he filled their ears with wax and he tied them to the mast of the boat and they made it, they say. He hasn't come back with the stuff yet, they say he made it, what are you going to do? Are you going to do the same thing? No, no. You're not going to tie the men up? No. Not wax their ears? No. What are you going to do? Well, he said, I'll tell you. Do you know who the most famous singer is right now, plays his lyre, got a marvellous voice, Orpheus. What are you going to do? Well, he said, when we get near the enchanted island and these women start singing and instead of I'm going to say to Orpheus, come on now, and Orpheus is going to stand there and he's going to play, he's going to play and it works. Because the enchantment, the fascination of the music of Orpheus was greater than what the women had there. Now, what does God say? He says, I know you live in an enchanted world and many a man has said, I can get through by my own energy and resolution and determination and he's crashed like everybody else. In any case, there's something in you that's going to pull you towards all that enchantment of lust and everything else. But I'll tell you what, I can come in there in the person of my son by his spirit and this to me is a great triumph of it all. Because he says, greater is he that is in you. This isn't a decalogue, it isn't something you put up here and write it out. I think it was Bishop Gore of England that said, this is not the credenta. You know, we people have a creed, the Apostles Creed, the Athanasian Creed, all the creeds and the creed is what you believe. But he says, the Sermon on the Mount is not the credenta, it is the agenda. It's not just what we believe in, it's what we do. It's the spirit of meekness and the spirit of love and the spirit of gentleness, the spirit of purity. Isn't that something? I often shake my head when I hear all the talk these days about ecology and purity. I wish we'd clean up our theology like we clean up our ecology, at least try to. There is no religion in the world, there's no system in the world that can purify the heart of man and let him be indwelt with a power that can keep him above the world and keep him in the hour of temptation and keep him in victory. But greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world. We're the children of the king, we already have the kingdom of God within us and there's already a kingdom that's going to come because not the kingdoms but the kingdom of this world with all its different channels and all its different little cells, corrupt as they are, they're all going to be put down and the kingdom of this world is going to be cleaned up, destroyed, purified with a baptism of fire and the kingdom of this world shall become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ. Do you wonder that Mr Handel got excited and wrote a chorus that says and he shall reign forever and ever king of kings and lord of lords.