In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of being truthful and faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ. He warns against ignorance and urges the audience to learn from the past experiences of God's people. The preacher highlights the need to mix faith with the preached word in order to truly benefit from it. He also encourages the audience to prioritize reading and studying the Word of God rather than relying solely on books about the Bible. The sermon references verses from Hebrews and uses examples from the Bible to illustrate the points being made.

Now, a new section to your notes. Three. Two was the opening of the letter, one was the introduction. Three. False teachers are present. False teachers are present. He has just concluded reminding us that he's changed his mind about what he's writing, wants Christians to start fighting for their faith and be earnest about it. And this section, false teachers are present, under that A, their method of entry. Their method of entry. Verse 4A. For there are certain men crept in unawares. There are certain men crept in unawares. You have not noticed their arrival. Now, this is the first thing to keep in mind about a false teacher. You will not notice his arrival in your fellowship or in your church. They creep in unnoticed. Now, the Living Letters puts it this way, they have wormed their way in. Wormed their way in. The Amplified New Testament states they gained entrance by a side door. And they're never noticed until they've caused chaos unless a Christian and Christians know what to watch for as an evidence of their presence. Now, I remember the first occasion I was preparing these lectures. Mr. Van Dorn had actually written to me in the south of England, in Torquay, and said would I be prepared in returning to tackle the Epistle of Jude alongside James. And so I worked on those in the south of England and came back and came in to do the lecture that I'm now doing. And it was at the time we were in the other building and there's that, if you're on the platform, there's a door at the side there. And guest speakers used to come in that door to the platform. That used to be this anteroom where you prayed with a guest speaker before you led them to the platform and things like this. And so that was a side door to the conference hall. And of course, I got up and I started this business about the worms that creep in the side door. And people that worm their way in via the side door. And I could sense that the atmosphere was rather electric. You could have cut it out in blocks and built a building with it. But I just kept on going, but everything was wrong. There was something desperately wrong in the air and the atmosphere and the students, but I just kept on going. And when I finished and then went to the office, there's a knock on the door and a German student came in that I'd known for many years, preached in his father's church in Germany many times. So he could come straight to me and talk to me. And he came in and he says, was this a put up job? And I said, no, what are you talking about? He says, that lecture. I said, no, I'll tell you this for a start. I know there's something wrong in the conference hall this morning. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I know that something's going on, but I'm not sure what it is. What's the problem? He said, well, you see, in this term, there's a new student and he came from one of the overseas countries in the continent and he feels that he's got a commission from God to take the students onto a stage of spirituality that this school will deprive them of and that the faculty here cannot take them to. And the funny thing is he's been doing his missionary work behind the tree and under the bridge and over the hill and in the bathroom or shower, you know, and always with very young Christians, those that have come to Christ in recent years. And he's gathering his little clique and they're having private prayer meetings and things. And the funny thing is that he seems in himself to be so convincing that we are wavering about, well, why don't the faculty talk about these things here? And is he right? Is the faculty right? Are they sort of people that don't have all the truth like this fella has? And the funny thing is he's sitting just inside that side door. And this morning you kept talking about the worm that creepeth in the side door. And he says, and we all got the message that you were specifying this particular person. I said, well, I didn't even know he was there. I said, you should know I go through this school and if I meet 20 of them, I'm lucky. I mean, look at the people here I've never met yet. And you never get to meet them. I said, I didn't even know he was there. I said, bring me some of his material. And it was just junk, all ripped out of context. And the funny thing is if a person feels so certain that they have a doctrine, a truth that the faculty don't have, why not come and get us blessed first? Instead of the new converts, not even the older, mature Christians amongst the students. They always go to the ones that have been converted six months. But if Billy Strachan needs a blessing and you've got something I don't have, why not share it with me? You know, I can't understand that of saying, well, we won't tell them. They don't know, but we won't tell them, but we'll get the student body spiritual. So I kept it in mind. I said, well, it wasn't a put up job. I wasn't asked to come in and counteract this heresy. And I shall find out from the principal if that's what he had in mind when he asked me to do this epistle. He had no idea this was going on either. And so I went back into class the next lecture and was talking, and they had challenged him, his little disciples, to tackle me. And so, of course, he sort of tackled me from the student floor. And so I had little wordy words with him and told him I was most interested in his doctrine. And if there is such a tremendous blessing in what he says, I want it. So I invited him to come after lunch to the office to teach me these things, but don't bring your literature, bring your Bible. Well, he packed up and left before lunch and went back home overseas. And you see, you don't have to worry about it. But you see, it's possible even for people around here not to know that such things are going on. And he was taking people down the grounds. And the Holy Spirit never has to do his work underground. He likes the whole world to know that it isn't the Holy Ghost. I never have to do it under a bridge and round a corner and up a tree. I can do it everywhere to let people know this is a work right of our God. The Holy Spirit's not in secret service. He's declaring to the world the truth of God. There is no mystery. But this is the method of entry, worming their way in. I don't know if you've ever watched a worm. But if you just concentrate in the front of it, you think nothing's happening. It's just sort of looking at you. But what you don't know is that behind it, the rest of it's contracting. And from a thing sitting on the ground about a year long, it's contracting. It doesn't move the front end. It slowly pulls the rest of his body up behind it until you've got a little fat thing. And when you're least suspecting it, this part just moves straight forward. You ever watched it? And this is the method of entry. The false teacher doesn't sort of barge in and say, I've come to get you all converted to a new thing. No, he sort of pops his head into the group, gets the welcome, the fellowship, come in. Another member to our congregation, welcome to the family. And he's sort of in the door, as it were, to your fellowship and you think nothing's happening. He's just one of us. But you don't know what he's gathering behind him. And he's very subtly just waiting for the next opportunity to move that little bit further into the group and move another little bit in. And before long, they're in leadership. And before long, they're destroying faith, not building faith. So this is their method of entry. They always creep into your churches unnoticed. Now, that's why it's an absolute essential that you are able to determine the indications, the signals to look for in a person's life that will show you clearly whether or not this person is a true Christian. Now put B down. B, their behavior. Their behavior. Verse 4B, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. Their behavior is evidenced in three ways. Number one, ungodly. Now ungodly means ungodlike or unlike God in behavior, in attributes, in character. They are ungodly people. Number two, they are turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness. That is, they are untruthful. They are untruthful. And they're taking those great riches of God's grace that are for the church and telling you to use them any way you like. You're no longer under law. You're under grace. You can get away with anything. These are the people who perpetrate the justification of sin as a Christian. And they do it by twisting the truth of God about God's grace. They are untruthful. And thirdly, they are unfaithful. Unfaithful, denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. Their entrance is made easier, you see. This is the thing. Now let me tell you this. If you want to go back to your church after Bible school and put it to the test to see if there's any false teachers in your fellowship or your church, you know all you have to do is go back and face the congregation that first Sunday morning and look around and pick out anybody that's ungodly, untruthful, and unfaithful. And you say to yourself, oh. And the tragedy is, you see, that there are so many Christians that are ungodly, untruthful, and unfaithful. Now you see how easy it is for them to come in your fellowship. You see, a false Christian, one who does not possess the Holy Spirit, one who is not indwelt by the Spirit of Christ, one who has not experienced rebirth, by nature that person is ungodly, untruthful, unfaithful. So the thing is, there's no strain on the nervous system, mental system, physical system of an unconverted person to try to be ungodly, untruthful, and unfaithful. That's what he is. But if he comes into a church where each member in the body is walking under the control of the Spirit of God, being ruled by and governed by Jesus Christ in their life, to the extent that the behavior pattern of the believer is godly, truthful, faithful, the minute an ungodly person enters the room, he will stand out like a banana among cucumbers. You will not miss him. You will be able to look at that person and say, now just hold on a minute. There is somebody that's certainly not like us. Look at his behavior. He's like a fish out of water. And you'll be able to see him. And this is one of the reasons Jude is saying, you Christians ought to start doing something about this faith of yours, about this tremendous relationship you have with Jesus Christ, because some of you are just so lax in your living that you are not utilizing the power of Jesus Christ to enable you to be godly, truthful, and faithful, to the extent that you are the opposite of what you ought to be as a Christian, and you are living as a group in the body of Christ, and truthful, and godly, and faithful, and so those other people have every right to come in and feel at home in your group. And you'll never notice them if they're behaving like the Christians. And it's no strain for them to behave like rotten Christians, because they are that rotten by nature. But you don't have to be. You don't have to be. And yet it so very often is the truth that Christians just don't really care about the way they live. And their behavior is ungodlike. And it is untruthful. But we don't call it lies, we call it situation ethics. We call it the best thing in the present circumstance. We call it love, and not wanting to hurt people. And at times too, you know, we walk around churches and there are people who will sit on everybody that will smoke and drink, and they'll fight tooth and nail about those things being the big issue, while they never think twice about twisting scripture to make it mean something more spiritual than it really is, and forget that they're lying. Every time a person takes the word of God and tries to make their own doctrine and their own truths, and turns the truth of God and twists it around, they just seem to think that's as bad a sin as some of the other things they condemn in other people. And it's amazing the lies we tolerate in the church. It's amazing the hypocrisy in lies that we will accept without question in the church. Whereas if we were prepared to say, now look, this is the book, this is the word, this is the foundation, and I don't care if it's the pastor and all the deacons and the whole church, if I find that they're not living according to the words of this book, I'm not joining them. Of course, you won't get friends. You'll be very lonely and out in the cold, but that was something Christ went through. He always told the truth, and they crucified him for it. Are you ready for that? But this is the thing, there is an essential for us to start watching our behavior, to fight, to utilize the power of Christ to make sure that our behavior is godlike, that we are being truthful and handling the word of God rightly, and that we're being faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ. Because if we're not, we breed the ground for these people to enter in and have a great time. We give them room to live. Put down C, their ignorance, their ignorance, verses 5 to 7. I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. False teachers base their success on the ignorance of the church. Their success is totally dependent upon the ignorance of the church. They themselves are ignorant, but too often their ignorance becomes truth, foundations, doctrines, because the church is just as ignorant. You'll notice that Jude said there to the Christians, I will therefore put you in remembrance, though once ye knew this. He said, you know, you've forgotten. You have forgotten to remember God's dealings with these people in the past that try to get away with this kind of shoddy living as his children. But the trouble with Christians today is they cannot remember God's dealings with these people in the past because they've never read it. They've never built it in. And I remember one Christian coming to me when I was in college and saying to me, how do you know the Bible like that? I said, I read it. I said, how long you been a Christian? She said, 12 years. How much have you read? Matthew, Mark, John, Luke, John, Acts, John, Romans once and John. That's about it. In 12 years. Starved. Yeah, but have you ever thought of reading the Old Testament? Why is it relevant? Is there anything in the Old Testament of value today to the Christian experience? Of course there is. Of course there is. It's a whole book. And Paul said to Timothy, even if they take the New Testament away from you, they've left you enough when they've left you the old. Remember the things which thou hast learned and been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them, that as from a child thou hast been taught the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be furnished and perfected unto every good work. It's all there. Every part of the Old Testament is profitable. Because if you read the Old Testament and see how God dealt with these people in the past, you won't make half the mistakes you make today, but the trouble is we can't remember the past because we never read the past. Remember the second channel? Have you fed it in? You will never remember the Word of God that you've never fed in through the eye gate and the ear gate. Now we've run in book room here. We make money in our book room here, like any bookstore. It's not the done thing to say if you want to make profits, but it would do you good to buy less and read more of the Word of God. We have to be honest about it. There is such a tremendous upsurge of the production of books about the Bible by people who have read the Bible rather than you going and reading the Bible. And if you'd only realize it's like eating pre-digested food. How will you react if you go into lunch today and sit down? And Miss Irene Skelly marches in and places before thee a large bowl with some soupy-looking liquid in it. And you look at that and you say, excuse me, Miss Skelly, what's that? And she smiles graciously at you and says, that's your lunch. You say, well, what is it? And she says, well, there's soup, some water, and there's roast potatoes, string bean, beef burger, there is custard, and plums, coffee, and then after dinner, mint. And you look into the bowl and you say, where? And she says, it's all in there, I can assure you. How do you know? Well, I chewed it for you first. And I regurgitated it into that bowl for you. There's your spoon. Enjoy your din-din. I think you will feel you have every right to say to her, excuse me, Miss Skelly, but I have my own teeth. I have my own stomach. I have my own intestinal tract. And if you don't mind, I prefer to chew my own. If there's any vitamin, protein, calorie, nutriment in that, it's already in you, I'm only getting what's left. You got the blessing, not me. Now, the funny thing is, that would be a perfectly normal reaction to physical food for a physical body. But we have never been like that about the word of God. And don't ever forget that every scholar that takes time to write to you that which God has shown him from the word, that when he puts it down, he got the blessing. You're getting the titbits of vitamins that slip through to you on reading what he's regurgitated onto paper. And you've got to be careful. You've got to be careful. Because God speaks through this word. And we know that it's helpful to read books by people about the Bible. But the tragedy is, we often read the books and go and see if the Bible agrees with the books. We never read the book and go and see if the book agrees with the Bible. And so if we read the Bible and find it contradicting the thoughts of the particular lovely writer that we enjoy reading, we reject the word of God and accept the writings of the reader. How many arguments are attempted to be won on a theological basis on the idea of what he said? But didn't you read what Dr. So-and-so said? I don't care if he said it. Yes, but I've heard so-and-so preach. I don't care if he preached it. But do you not know that the speaker that was on the platform before, I don't care about the speaker on the platform before me. I don't even care about me. I already told you not to trust me. This is the book. This is the foundation of truth. This is the word that rectifies a crooked, perverted, denigrated, depraved life, brings it to salvation, takes it on into the presence of God, perfected, blameless, spotless. This word, the living word. But our tragedy is, we just will not get down to reading this book. And it serves you right for all the chaos that comes into the church because we listen to sermons. We never feed ourselves. There's nothing more boring than going to a restaurant and watching somebody else eat. If you don't do your own eating, you leave starved. You leave starved. Ah, yes, Billy, but I mean, do you read all that stuff? Yes, I do. Even Leviticus? Yes, I do. Do you ever get anything out of it? No, I don't. And do you read Chronicles? No, nothing out of that for me either. Yes, I read it, but I don't get anything out of it. Do you actually read Chronicles? Yeah, and I used to think they called it Chronicles because it was chronic. You mean, you actually, every time you read the Bible, you read Leviticus and you read Chronicles, yeah? I mean, do you get stuff out of the whole of this Old Testament? No, I don't. Do you understand all of that Old Testament? No, I don't. Have you preached from all of the Old Testament? No, I don't. What do you read it for? Because it does me good. Even if it doesn't taste nice. I have children and you bring Dixon in and you put him in his high chair and he's starving and he says, you can see he's hungry. So you go to the kitchen and you get the Heinz baby tin and there it is sitting there on the front and lovely paintwork on the tin, a fat, pink, happy baby. And you take the tin in and you show it to the baby and you say, din, din. And he goes, you see? And you say, it's got rice and mince, plums and custard all in there. Lovely. And the juice is running down his chin. You then go to the kitchen and you open it, lift back the lid and look into a baby food tin and you go, ooh. And you turn it upside down and you put it into a pan and there's just this dollop, you know, swinging around in there. You sort of flatten it out with a spoon and you heat it on the pan. You can't stand the sight of the stuff and you march in and you try to convince him, it's marvellous. And you say, have it. And you can tell he's not interested. He shuts the mouth. And so you hold the nose and when he takes his next breath, you put it in. You whip out the spoon and leave it in there. You can tell he doesn't like it. He spits it back in your eye. And so you take the spoon and you scoop it out of the eye and you hold the nose and you put it back in. You take it off the wall, back in. Off the furniture, back in. And the amazing thing is that if you persist in giving them milk, if you persist in giving them this porridgey stuff, insist in giving them this unappetising, uninteresting looking baby food, over the weeks, although it's uninteresting, you suddenly find they grow. And there comes a day when he has his own teeth and says, excuse me, daddy-o, do you mind if I chew my own? And you must admit there's nothing nicer than chewing your own meat. And of course a baby doesn't understand how milk, I sympathise with my kid having, as a baby, when he'd eat all that mush. I hated feeding him this stuff. But the thing was, it was necessary. There was nutriment value in it. He grew. And beware of Leviticus. Let me warn you. If you're one of those people here and you've never yet started to feed yourself on the word of God that's going to keep you from falling, and you've determined after this class that you're going to do that, you'll gallop out of here, you'll be all right through Genesis, great reading material. Joseph in his coat, Noah picking up bumblebees and sticking them in the ark, you know, great reading. Even into Exodus, all them plagues on Egypt, great stuff. You get great stuff. But beware of Leviticus. Because I'll warn you, if you start chapter one and then give up, you'll never reach Revelation. But if you will doggedly stick through Leviticus, even though you get nothing out of it, as far as you're concerned, apart from one hiccup at Chronicles, you will reach Revelation. And I've said this again and again to teenagers, and you know it's one of the things they constantly write to me about, or tell me the next time they come back, you were right about Leviticus. You were right about Leviticus. So I say it again, beware of Leviticus. Because that's where you'll stop reading your Bible. But if you'll pursue it, just read it, let it go in, even though you don't know what the nutriment value is, you will read the Bible through to the end, then start all over. And let the Spirit of God give you what he wants. And the thing is, the more you read this and see how God dealt with these people in the past, the more you're going to be able to see how to keep yourself in check today. You see, people that live on New Testament verses are bound to be in confusion, because you've already learnt in your introductory notes to the Bible the statement that states, the new is in the old contained, the old is in the new explained. You divide them and just stick to the one, you rob yourself of a complete book and have an understanding of it. Just look at 1 Corinthians chapter 10. 1 Corinthians 10. Moreover, brethren, I would note that you should be ignorant. I don't want you Christians to be ignorant. And he's writing this to a church, they thought it was spiritual, but it was making all the mistakes in their behavior, in their honesty, in their loyalty to Christ. How all our fathers were under the cloud and all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all did eat the same spiritual meat and they all drank the same spiritual drink, for the drink of that spiritual followed them. And that rock was Christ, but with many of them, God was not well pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now, these things were our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted, neither be idolaters, as with some of them, as it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed and fell in one day, three and twenty thousand. Neither let us test Christ, as some of them also tested and were destroyed of serpents. Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured and were destroyed of the destroyer. Now, these things happened unto them for examples and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore, let him that thinketh standards take heed lest he fall. A warning, Hebrews 4 1. Let us therefore fear, lest the promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached as well as unto them, but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest. The word preached did not profit them, because it was not mixed with faith in them that heard it. Let us therefore learn from these people. Let's learn from them, me that's writing, you that's listening. Here are warnings being sounded out about the necessity to understand God's dealings with these people in the past, because if we understand that, we will not be ignorant and if we're not ignorant, when the ignorant come into the company, they will be exposed and they will not get away with perpetrating their errors and that's exactly why false teachers have a great heyday in churches. The utter ignorance, the appalling ignorance of Christians on the word of God and they could come up with some beautiful stuff. They can twist stories to make it mean one thing and say another and I've gone into churches in this country where they've made even more beautiful miracles in order to destroy the word of God. Sitting in a Methodist church listening to a lay preacher talk about Peter walking in the water, because there was no miracle there and don't ever jump to the conclusion that God can do the supernatural, because really it's quite easily explained. You see it was night and the boat was nearer the edge of the shore of the Sea of Galilee than the disciples thought and when Jesus was walking in the water, he was actually walking ankle deep and when he called Peter, Peter stepped out of the boat, walked a few steps and fell down a hole and Jesus helped him out of the hole, but it wasn't really, it wasn't really a miracle, there are no miracles and kids sitting in Sunday school, oh yes, so there are no miracles, lovely. I said excuse me, you've just produced a bigger one. Why? How many people were in this little rowing boat? 12. What would be the average weight of 12 men? Well let's say most of them were about say 140 pounds maybe in ankle deep water. How do you float a boat in ankle deep water with 12 men on? Roughly 140 pounds apiece. Their weight would have been heavy enough for them to feel that the boat was touching the bottom and when it says they were toiled and rowing, all they need to do is stick their oar in the water and they'd find that hey fellas, we're on the bottom. So all you do is step out and walk and watch for the holes, but in order to destroy one miracle, you've produced another, you've managed to get a boat to float with 12 men on it in ankle deep water. Do you always destroy Sunday school lessons? No, but I know the truth and it staggers me to see people twist and twist and twist the word of God and make it prove something, make it say something that it doesn't say. And because we're ignorant, we sit there and we just take it all in. Oh yes, he says he's a doctor isn't he? So that makes him valid. That means he's the buy-in of all knowledge. And so we trust him hook, line and sinker and lead around the street and up the creek and into any new doctor that comes along and most of it's ignorance. Ignorance. You put a child on an island and teach him that one in one is five, by the time he's 20 he'll have worked out a whole set of mathematics on that premise that one in one is five and you'll give him any sums and on that premise he'll work out right answers to himself. But if you bring somebody in from outside and whisper in his ear that one in one is two for the first time in his life, he'll discover that for 20 years he's had a wrong set of mathematics. All you have to do is keep them on ignorance. It's the catholic church that has said give me a child until he's seven, you tell them anything you like after that, you will not destroy what we've built in. By our teaching, by our hammering away at the young brain. And that's one of the reasons that church has tended in the past to keep its people in ignorance. If you keep them in ignorance and poverty, you'll get them to do what they're told, they'll believe you hook, line and sinker, they'll never question it. I have a friend whose son completely went off the rails, had never really professed a genuine conversion, his father was a famous preacher, decided to marry a catholic girl. But you see, morning by morning he'd hated the idea of having to read his bible. But out of sheer politeness to pretend to his parents that he was christian, he faithfully read a portion per day. Never meant anything to him, but he went to take lessons to become a roman catholic. In the first lesson the priest said something, and suddenly right into his remembrance came something from a reading he'd read. So he questioned the priest on it and brought this verse up, and the priest was shattered, didn't know how to answer it. And it got that every lesson they went to, he was having all sorts of stuff flash in that he never knew was there. And before long he and his bride-to-be sat down and started reading it at home and skipping the lessons and they both got converted. But what did he owe that salvation to? What did he owe that getting him back onto the straight line? To the fact that although he didn't know the value of it, he'd been reading the word of God and the holy spirit was doing his job and building it in. And if you're doing your job and building it in, it's his job to bring it to your remembrance. But you stay ignorant and don't ever complain about being pulled in the wrong path. Don't ever tell God you failed to keep me, you failed to do your own practical part in keeping yourself, feeding and reading the word of God. You see every time you go through the book people say but you see Billy I read it in the morning, I get nothing this morning. I read 10 chapters almost but screaming to heaven to show me something. Serves you right. It's an insult to tell heaven to show you something. Jesus said when the holy spirit comes into your heart he's your teacher. But he knows what lessons you need and what you need to get. He hasn't said he'll tell you something every morning but I'll tell you if you read through that book from Genesis to Revelation you might come out the first time with three verses, three promises of the word of God you'll never forget the rest of your life. The next time you're going through you'll pick up three or four more things that you never saw before and so that will mean you've got seven and the next year if you go through you might get six more and you'll get more and of course depends how greedy you are and how fast you're going through the word how quick you can build things in and you're building things and you know nothing about. I remember one occasion going to speak at a teacher's graduation banquet in Mankato Minnesota. They'd written to me six months previously and said would you come and give your testimony and I said fair enough. So I went there to give my testimony and when we got there the place was all done up with sand on the floor and seashells sticking out of it. They had a galley and up on the platform with a speaker's table each table was made out like a little island with a palm tree on it and a theme right across the top launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a draft and when I sat at the table with Wally Schoon who's in Sweden and if any you go there you can check the story out with him and Wally sort of sat there and nudged me and says now what do you do? I said what he says they've got a theme. I said well I'll cut that into my testimony somewhere and that'll cover it and then came a part where Wally sang and then somebody had to give a reading reading prayer a quartet was going to sing and I was going to preach and the fella got up to do the reading after Wally sat down next to me and he read the portion from Luke 5 about launching out into the deep and letting down your nets for a draft and did that and then the quartet sang but before the fella the quartet sang the fella prayed and he prayed and thanked the father for the way that I would reveal to them what this word meant and so I sat down and Wally leaned over while the quartet was saying say now what do you do smarty pants and I turned around and I said to Wally, Wally God knows this bit of the word and I've read it often enough though I've never preached in it so you get a pencil and he said yeah and I looked down and I just underlined seven things that I'd never seen before stood up and preached for an hour well when we finished people sort of said oh thank you good night kind of thing you know and they probably thought well he'd had six months to prepare it ought to be good I got it into my car and switched on the ignition to drive home while he was sitting next to me and he reached over and switched the key off and I said hey we're going home I switched it on and started up and he switched it off I said what gives he said they might have got nothing but I'm not satisfied I said what do you mean he says they thought you'd six months to prepare that and I know tonight that you didn't know until you stood up what you're going to preach about I want to know God like that I want to know how you did that and we're not leaving this spot and he held the key in his hand he said until I know God that way because they might have not seen the miracle but I saw the miracle how do you know that I said well the thing is Wally I've been faithfully read it thank the Holy Spirit that it's his business to teach me and he said that it's his business to bring to my remembrance the things that are for me and although I've never preached on that section I didn't have to panic because I knew I'd been faithful in feeding it in although I never preached it out and so if he was there and I needed the help and so I just sent up a prayer it's over to you you know I've been faithful to read it and he said good so there's the points and I've used those seven points one a night ever since various places have gone for a series of convention bible teaching meetings it's never left me but how do you get that you're doing your part that's what he's saying nail your colors to the mass start getting serious about your faith do something about it you won't be ignorant and these ungodly unfaithful and truthful people won't get creeping in unawares and twisting the word of God and ruining your church if you're founded on the word of God if you're buried deep down into the truth of the world you've nothing to worry about and that's what somebody said to me just before Christmas he said you know I haven't been to Caponry for 22 years until this year he said in around our area and around our district and even in the country wherever I go everybody's on this super spiritual kick singing in the spirit and all these blessings and all this stuff he says and I came into Caponry to come into this conference hall for a rally just before Christmas this year one of the visitors and he says and I went in there with my heart like a lump I thought now I'll tell you something if Caponry's gone all twisted in his vision on the word of God and the gifts of the spirit and the holy spirit and all that stuff I'm really going to have to get blessed and go in full pelt for this holy spirit business because if that place has got it I've got to get it and he said you know it just filled my heart to come in here that from that platform they were still opening the word of God and faithfully teaching and preaching that Jesus Christ is enough that Jesus Christ is the foundation that Jesus Christ and the cross is all a man needs he says and you know if you're holding on in the face of all these pressures for 28 years in this country and still sticking to the word I went out of the door and said thank you father I will too and so he just got so much what you do because it just takes a person in a position a place in a position just to give one squeak of error and people will follow your teaching right down the line because they trust you that's why you have to nail your colors to the mass doggedly saturate yourself in this word so that you don't have doctrines based on ignorance you're based on the truth of the word of God that sets you free and anybody that comes around knows the quality of the word you're going to preach and knows that you're not going to deceive them and leave them up the garden path false teachers are already present and they breed on ignorance stop being ignorant let's pray father we want to thank you for your word and we ask your forgiveness for the way that we've mistreated it and just looked about upon it as our bible our book and we've never really valued it as spiritual meat spiritual drink the very stuff and essence of what we need to maintain our faithful walk in your son and how to get to know him and know all that is in him and we pray that if never before you'll teach us today to be deeply concerned about our diet on the word oh god we so often spend so much time on a physical diet and we never think for a minute about looking after the spiritual one maybe if we looked after that the other would take care of itself forgive our stupidity and our ignorance and teach us to feed in what we can remember that will keep us from making the mistakes that people made in the past and for thy name's sake amen