In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the need for the power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit in order to truly impact the world. He argues that human accomplishments and promotions are insufficient and that the world is longing to see something that can only be explained by God's power. The preacher also highlights the importance of recognizing the foundational truth that all the events happening in the world are a result of the fall of Adam and the subsequent struggle between truth and lies. He warns against underestimating the appeal of ideologies like communism, as many people are convinced that man is solely responsible for his own destiny and that eliminating those deemed a threat to the race is morally justifiable.

There is only one revelation of truth that God has given to us, and that is contained in the Bible, this wonderful word, which is an exposition of all the counsels of God from the eternal ages of the past until the eternal ages that have come. And prophecy, as it is popularly called, which concerns the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, is simply part of the eternal progress. Whatever truth God brings to us in his word, it is designed to lead us to the person of the Savior and to glorify him. The Lord Jesus said of the Holy Spirit that he would lead us into all truth, that he would take the things that were his and show them unto us and glorify him. So that any exploration into the word of God that fails ultimately to bring us to the person of the Lord Jesus and to a fuller recognition of his sovereignty in our lives is of little value and is likely to grieve his spirit and frustrate the purpose of God in giving us this revelation. No matter what area it is in which we explore in the word of God, we must inevitably anticipate that the Holy Spirit will confront us with the person of God's Son. I'd like to read to you a few verses from the second chapter of the second epistle to Thessalonians. Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 1. I'm reading from the Amplified New Testament, but relative to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, and our gathering together to meet him, we beg you, brethren, not to allow your minds to be quickly unsettled or disturbed or kept excited or alarmed, whether it be by some pretended revelation of the Spirit or by word or by letter alleged to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has already arrived and is here. Let no one deceive or beguile you in any way, for that day will not come except the apostasy come first, that is, unless the predicted great falling away of those who have professed to be Christians has come. And the man of lawlessness, the man of sin is revealed, who is the son of doom, who opposes and exalts himself so proudly and insolently against in the bubble that is called God or that is worshipped, even to his actually taking his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming that he himself is God. Do you not recollect that when I was still with you, I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining him from being revealed at this time. It is so that he may be manifested in his own appointed time. For the mystery of lawlessness, that hidden principle of rebellion against constitutive authority, is already at work in the world, but it is restrained only until he who restrains it is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one, the Antichrist, will be revealed, and the Lord Jesus will slay him with the breath of his mouth and bring him to an end by his appearing at his coming. The mystery of lawlessness, that hidden principle of rebellion against constitutive authority, is already at work in the world. When you think of Antichrist, don't just conjure up in your mind ideas about a monster who one day will come. It is perfectly true that the time will come when he, as the man of sin, the man of lawlessness, will be revealed, manifested, and will be identifiable. But don't imagine that the Antichrist is something that concerns only the future. The Antichrist, when he is manifest, will simply be the final, full consummation and incarnation of that mystery of iniquity that is already at work. That is why you can never relegate the study of prophecy to one pigeonhole, one department of Christian exploration. For one would never understand the manifestation of the man of sin, the Antichrist, unless one goes right the way back to the beginning and discovers who it is, what are the motivations, how it has all come about. I don't believe that we shall understand the significance of the Antichrist and his appearing unless we fully understand what it was that happened when man fell into sin and why it happened. I don't believe that we shall have an intelligent grasp or appropriation of the events that are crowding in upon us with such alarming rapidity in our own own generation unless we recognize that the things that are happening are the inevitable evolution of a principle, the inevitable evolution of a lie that was first perpetrated in Adam when he fell into sin. I believe this to be basic of all spiritual truth, but you can never step in, as it were, on the third floor and hope to have an intelligent grasp of what is involved. Ultimately, the struggle that is at present in operation is between the great truth and the great lie. This isn't a new sin. It has been in action from the very beginning. You see, when God made man, God made man for himself. He made man to be inhabited by God. Indeed, it is the fact of God in man that makes man, man. Now, unless we fully understand what man is as God intended man to be, we shall never understand the nature of the man of sin and what he is intended to be. Because, you see, the Antichrist, as the man of lawlessness, as the man of sin, is the final prostitution of human personality to the great lie that was first perpetrated by the devil in Adam. When God created man, he gave him a body and he gave him a soul, but he gave him something more than a body and something more than a soul. He gave him a human soul. It might surprise you if I were to say to you that had God only given man a body and a soul, man would have been in common with the rest of the animal creation, no more than an animal. But it is not the possession of a soul that makes man, man, as opposed to being animal. It is the fact that God created within him as a deliberate act of creation, a spiritual capacity to receive and to enjoy what God is. And that spiritual capacity that God gave to man, that enables him to receive and enjoy what God is, is called the human spirit. In the book of Zechariah, and in the 12th verse, we're reminded of this then, Zechariah 12.1, the burden of the word of the Lord to Israel saith the Lord which stretches forth the heavens and layeth the foundation of the earth and formeth the spirit of man within him. The God who created the universe, who stretched forth the heavens, who laid the foundation of the earth, he is the one who by a deliberate act of creation formed the spirit of man within him. In the book of Proverbs, chapter 20 and verse 27, the spirit of man is described as the candle of the Lord, the lamp of the Lord. A very beautiful definition, because contrary to popular idea, a lamp doesn't produce light. One of those fancies that a lamp produces light, because that is apparently the effect of a lamp. But a lamp doesn't produce light, a lamp simply receives that which working in it and to it produces light, that's why you have electricity there. What the electricity is to these lamps, oil is to other lamps. If I were to pull the master switch in this building, all these lamps would cease to produce light. They'd go out, but they'd still be lamps. So the lamp by virtue of being a lamp doesn't produce light. A lamp by virtue of being a lamp simply has that capacity to receive that upon which it is totally dependent for the performance of the purpose which it was created. That of course is why the Holy Spirit likens himself through the whole scripture to oil, because what electricity is to these lamps, what oil is to oil lamps, is the Holy Spirit to the human spirit. And it is only what God is in man, indwelling him in the human spirit that God has given to him, that makes man, man. If you turn with me to the book of Genesis, and the first chapter, and the 30th verse, Genesis chapter 1 and verse 30, we read that to every beast of the earth, and to every flower of the earth, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat and it welfare. In other words, to all these forms of created life, the beasts of the earth, the fowls of the air, and to everything that creeps, God said I have given vegetable life. Vegetable life said God has been provided for animal life. But it's interesting to note that the expression used there, wherein there is life, is the Hebrew word that means a living soul. Exactly the same word that is used for the soul of man. Exactly the same expression that is used, for instance, in the 7th verse of the 2nd chapter of Genesis, where it says the Lord God formed man at the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And the living soul there is exactly the same word that is used to describe every beast of the earth, every flower of the earth, and everything that creepeth upon the earth. So whether we like it or whether we don't like it, however much it may be unflattering to our sense of dignity, the fact that we possess a soul is not in itself that which distinguishes us from the animal creation. Your soul is simply your motivating mechanism. That means whereby you function as an animal, as opposed to a vegetable. We won't enlarge upon this, for it isn't my purpose to say it is. But a tree, for instance, doesn't get irritated with its neighbors. That's one of the advantages of being a vegetable. But on the other hand, a tree doesn't fall in love with the young bush over the wall. That's one of the disadvantages of being a vegetable. What differentiates animal life from vegetable life is that animal life has a motivating mechanism, a mental and an emotional and a volitional capacity to calculate, to react, and to decide. And in varying degrees of development, all forms of animal life are capable of those functions. So that your body and your soul is, in point of fact, the animal part of you. That which distinguishes you from animal is your spiritual capacity to receive and to enjoy what God is. The lamp that God built into you as man, as opposed to any other form of creative life. And when God created man, he came and he occupied by his divine spirit the human spirit. And man became man by virtue of what God was in man. That was the only thing that distinguished him from any other form of creative life, as animal. And God indwelling the human spirit by the Holy Spirit instructed his mind. He knew God. He didn't just know about God. He partook of the divine nature. He was twice alive, physically like an animal and spiritually like God. God is love and all that God is was imparted to his emotional capacity. His affections were flooded with the very nature of the God who made him. So that his will was exercised under the influence of a God-taught mind and God-controlled emotion. So that all his activity was an expression of the God who made him, who lives within him, and who expressed himself through him. Man was the vehicle, the human vehicle of the divine life. And it was to that end he was created. What is man without mindfulness? Thou hast created him to have dominion over all the world of thine hand. Man by virtue of his manhood was to exercise a divine authority. But it was an authority that he was to exercise only by virtue of his moral relationship to the God who made him. A moral relationship which we may describe as a faith-love relationship, for God is love and only love can requite love, and you cannot demand or compel that. I can't go to somebody and say, I demand your friendship. That's impossible. I can woo their friendship, I can desire their friendship, but I cannot demand. Inherent in the capacity to love is the capacity to choose. And that is why God gave to man a moral capacity to choose, so that he could reciprocate to God the love that God expressed to him. And man's love to God was to be expressed by a recognition of, and a submission to, his total dependence. God would express his love to, man would express his love to God by an attitude of total dependence upon God. By virtue of whose presence alone within man, by the Holy Spirit within the human spirit, man was man. For it is God in man that makes man man. And the moment man loses God, he ceases to be man as God intended man to be. He is less than human. He is sublime. We need to understand this. For in this way we shall more fully understand the implications of the cross. We shall see that Calvary goes far deeper than just trying to get you to heaven, and to save you from the punitive consequence of your sins. We discovered the cross of Jesus Christ was designed to restore man from sub-humanity to full humanity, to restore man to his manhood. How did man fall from his manhood? By the perpetration of the great lie which found its origin in the devil himself, the spirit of antichrist, the demon spirit who now still works in the children of disobedience. The mystery of lawlessness, that hidden principle of rebellion against constituted authority which is already at work in the world, and is restrained only until he who restrains is taken out of the way, the Holy Spirit. Isaiah 14 and verse 12. Isaiah 14 and verse 12. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morn? How art thou cut down to the ground which did weaken the nation? For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend in the heavens, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like thee most high. Now this was a satanic boast. This was the spirit of lawlessness, that hidden principle of rebellion against constituted authority. I will be like God. The devil repudiated God's sovereignty, and he perpetrated this lie that repudiates God's sovereignty in Adam. So God has made it abundantly clear to man as God created man, that he was man only by virtue of what God was in man. He said, I am your life. Without me you would have not that quality of life that makes you man. You would be animal. Therefore in the day that you lose me, you lose life. The quality of life that makes you man. And when a person loses life, he dies. For when life goes out, death comes in. So said God, if you repudiate your love for me and your dependence upon me, if you repudiate your need of me, which is sin, you will die. Because you will lose what I am. I will withdraw myself from you. In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou will surely die. Satan came along, the spirit of antichrist, and he said, has God told you that you are what you are as man only by virtue of what God is in you? And that if you lose sin, you lose life. If you lose him, you lose everything. That is childish nonsense, said the devil. You are what you are by virtue of what you are, and not by virtue of what God is in you. You are self-sufficient. If only you have the moral courage to step out of this theocratic tyranny, if only you are prepared to shake off the shackles of this civility, you will discover that you can lose God and lose nothing. You don't need God to be man. You are man by virtue of what you are, as the highest form of animal life. And you don't need God. Why not give it a try? Why not stand on your own two feet? Why not become master of your own destiny? Why not carve your own future? You can conquer the universes without God. You can have, you can have dominion over all that is called the work of God's hand without God. You can be morally adult without the need for being spiritually alive. You have an adequate capacity within you to be good without the need of having God. This was the big lie, and it was the lie that Adam believed. And in believing the lie of the Antichrist, he died by faith, by faith in the lie. You see, everybody lives by what they believe. They will be damned by faith, or the just will be saved by faith. And in the day that Adam repudiated his need after, his dependence on, and his love to God, God withdrew himself from the human spirit. And from that moment, man is described as the natural man, in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 18, as being alienated, cut off from the light of God. His mind and understanding darkened through the abysmal ignorance that is in him because of the blindness of his heart. The master switch was thrown, the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the human spirit, and the lamp went out, and the wall was plunged into abysmal darkness, and man had become empty of his divine consciousness. His humanity was now uninhabited by God. Unfortunately, his humanity became inhabited by Satan, who established within the soul of man a principle called the flesh, the old Adamic nature, a bridgehead, by means of which his mind, emotions, and will became the tool of unrighteousness. His human personality was made available to be prostituted by the devil to his own wicked end, so that man not only forfeited the divine presence which would have reduced him to the animal, but he became the tool of Satan. He began to yield his mental as instruments of unrighteousness, for he that committed sin was of the devil. Every time you commit sin, no matter what shade, or size, or dimension, every time you commit sin, it simply means that your humanity is being prostituted in that measure to the devil. That's why you can never ignore sin. That's why you can never excuse it. Every time you commit sin, you are yielding consent to the devil's claim over your humanity in defiance and repudiation of God's claim over your humanity. That is the spirit of antichrist. This is the demon spirit that now still works in the children of disobedience. This is the mystery of lawlessness, the hidden principle of rebellion against constituted authority, and there is only one constituted authority, and that's God. And every time you and I commit sin, we are repudiating that constituted authority, and we are the human vehicle of the satanic end. Our humanity is prostituted to the devil. In other words, although there will be one day the perfect incarnation of the spirit of antichrist, in every man, woman, or child born to this world, there is already the satanic agent called the flesh who represents the spirit of antichrist in you and in me. Now, the unregenerate man, of course, is not just pure animal because he is unregenerate, because there is vestigial within him the human spirit empty of God, uninhabited. That is what ultimately discerns between man and animal, even in his natural condition, in his unregenerate condition, even when man is behaving worse than the animal, of which he is very competent. Because no matter how degraded, no matter how vestial, no matter how depraved a man may be, miracle of all miracles, in the infinite mercy of God, on the grounds of redemption through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, that man can be reconciled to God, and on the grounds of reconciliation, the lamp can be switched on, and the Holy Spirit can be restored to the human spirit, and he is raised from the dead, and the Holy Ghost begins, from the point of vantage of his human spirit, to reinvade the human personality, recapture the mind, recapture the emotions, recapture the will, and re-establish the sovereignty of the risen Lord within that humanity that now has ceased to be uninhabited, and has once more become inhabited by God. Now, that's the gospel. The gospel that you and I are commissioned to proclaim is a gospel that restores man to his manhood, subhumans to humanity. But, um, supposing I believe the devil's lies, supposing I believe that man is man by virtue of what man is, and apart from God. Or, let's look at it another way, supposing I could persuade you tonight, somehow, until you were overwhelmingly convinced that two and two make five, and now in your mind there is absolutely no shadow of a doubt that two and two make five, I promise you that if I could persuade you that two and two make five, I could present to you a system of mathematics which would be completely logical, completely logical. You could come into that system at any point and find everything completely, totally, unquestioningly, flawlessly logical. But only, only so long as two and two make five. Supposing you are convinced that man is just an ant. Now, this is the basic of dialectic materialism. This is the philosophy of communism. This is the creed of Christianity. That man is an ant. There's no God. There's no hierarchy. There's no eternity. When a man dies, he dies like a cow, or a pig, or the ants upon which you step as you're walking down the sidewalk, or the birds you shoot from the sky. He's just an ant. That isn't just a fanciful idea. This is a deep-seated, deep-rooted conviction that man is simply the highest form of animal life on this particular planet, and that by virtue of the fact that he at the moment, at the moment—and it's a fight for survival to maintain first place—at the moment, by virtue of the fact that he is the highest, most progressive, the most developed form of animal life, there rests fairly and squarely upon his shoulders the ultimate destiny of mankind, the herd, the race, and the history of this planet. This is what the devil would have had Adam believe, that man is man by virtue of what man is, and apart from God. Lose God, lose nothing. And you believe it. Just suppose you believe it. All right? That if fairly and squarely upon your shoulder rests, as man, the ultimate destiny of the human race, then the whole of life becomes a struggle for existence. Supposing you are firmly convinced that certain forms of society are a pernicious symptom of a social disease. Supposing you happen to believe that capitalism, for instance, is a symptom of a diseased society. Just suppose you are totally convinced of that fact, and that as a symptom of that disease, it is calculated to put in jeopardy the ultimate future and the ultimate destiny of the herd. You're completely convinced of this. That there is absolutely no hope for the survival of the herd if this disease is not somehow eliminated. What would be your moral duty? What would be your moral duty, at all costs, to eliminate the disease? Now, of course, in the process, some people may get hurt, but that's a price that must be accepted. There's no eternal loss to the animals who die in the process, the animal men. And obviously, in the ultimate interest of the herd, it is only right, moral, and proper that certain members of the species should be done to death in order that the prospects of the herd may be salvaged. So that if there happens to be a relapse, an outbreak of this disease in a certain area that before had been, it was thought, cleansed, such as in Hungary, then immediately it becomes, upon this basis, entirely moral to march in with tanks and destroy what ultimately is setting into jeopardy the ultimate prospects of mankind. Supposing, supposing we firmly believe that religion is a symptom of an inherent disease in the race called man, which jeopardizes his chances of survival. What would be my moral duty? Well, supposing I was keeping cows, and I bred a diseased member of the herd, what would I do? It's true. Supposing I kept chickens, and I had hatched out some three-legged chickens, what would I do? Bring them in. Would it be immoral? No, of course not. And if I believe that religion is a symptom of a diseased humanity, then the first thing I must do at all costs is to cure the disease. I must try to brainwash people out of this hallucination, because they are a danger to the race, they're a danger to the herd. And if I cannot cure them, if they are incurable in the name of humanity, I must destroy them. And I would be failing in my duty if I did not do so, for I would be allowing statements to warp mankind of his future. We must once and for all in the West get out of our heads that communists are just bloodthirsty thugs who do what they know is wrong and delighted doing it. They don't. They do what they believe to be convincingly imperative, because they happen to believe. With intense, impassioned fanaticism, the lie that man is man by virtue of what man is, and not by virtue of what God is. Now, of course, you saw this climbing expression nationally as opposed to international communism, which is international in terms of Adolf Hitler Naziism. The only difference was this, that the outbreak of Antichrist, the outbreak of this satanic lie, was particularized to a particular nation. You see, Adolf Hitler believed that the German people were the Herrenbruch, that they were the master race, that of the human herd there was one particular breed upon whom rested the ultimate responsibility for the final destiny of humanity. And therefore, in that he believed with fanaticism that his people were the breed within the herd upon whom rested the ultimate responsibility for guiding the destiny of the world, leading it through all its troubles in the final emancipation, the one thing above everything else that was imperative was to keep this particular breed pure. And any blood that might be infused into the breed that would weaken its effectiveness would be an immoral thing. And therefore, while he was sweeping the prostitutes off the streets of Berlin, he was feeding tens of thousands of Jews at the gas station. And to Adolf Hitler, both activities were equally moral, because he was protecting this particular breed of the herd from the damaging effects of the prostitutes and the damaging effects of Jewish blood in the interest of the ultimate destiny of mankind. Because you see, two and two makes five. If we just imagine that communists are bloodthirsty studs who are doing what is wrong knowing that it is wrong, then it is very difficult to explain why so many millions of people, intelligent people, respectable people, quite nice people, are absolutely, absolutely captivated by this philosophy of dialectic materialism. There's no explanation. And I want to tell you that if you go on dreaming that millions and millions of servile people are being led by the nose by bloodthirsty studs, unwillingly, then you're heading for an awful awakening, because it isn't true. Countless millions of men and women in the world today are one hundred percent, totally convinced that man is man by virtue of the fact that man is man, apart from God. And that his ultimate destiny rests fairly and squarely and only upon his own two souls. And therefore, in the interest of the race, it is perfectly moral to eliminate those members of the race that are endangering and jeopardizing his ultimate survival. Don't imagine that this is just the philosophy of the Iron Curtain. Sir Julian Huxley, biologist and author, last Tuesday participated in a symposium on the future of man in the United States. And a guest of honor welcomed him to the United States and acclaimed for his scholarship was a man who preached, lock, stock and barrel, the creed of Christianity. He didn't happen to be a communist, outwardly. He didn't happen to come from Russia. He came from Britain, but he preached communism. Nobody guessed it. Everybody clapped hands, thumped him on the back and said, sorry to touch him. Because of its significance, the New York Journal American is publishing the contributions to the Seagram symposium by seven of the greatest thinkers of this generation. Man now, said Sir Julian Huxley, is realizing that he is the latest dominant type in evolution and is responsible for the progress and fulfillment of the evolutionary process on this planet. In the coming century, his first job will be to think collectively in terms of a continuing human species as a whole. For this, he will need a vast program of research on human possibilities and methods for realizing them more fully. Already the progress of biochemistry and psychology is revealing new possibilities of physical and mental health, and educational research undoubtedly will show the way toward adequate utilization of the variety of inborn human capacities. As a result, the idea of the welfare state will be superseded by the fulfillment society. The fate of the future will be in the possibilities of the human species and the power of human knowledge to realize them more effectively. And God doesn't exist. A rousing welcome to Huxley in New York City, who preaches the creed of Christianity, the spirit of Antichrist, the hidden principle of rebellion against constitutive authority, God. Now ultimately, of course, there will be incarnate on earth in the form of a man, the one who is the final consummation of the life. That is the Antichrist. The coming of the lawless one, the Antichrist, is through the activity and working of Satan. 2 Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 9. And will be attended by great power, and with all sorts of pretended miracles, and signs, and deluded marvels, all of them lying once, and by unlimited seduction to evil, and with all wicked deception for those who are going to perishing because they did not welcome the truth, but refused to love it, that they might be saved. They rejected the truth and believed the lie. Therefore God sends upon them a misleading influence, a working of error, and a strong delusion to make them believe what is false. In order that they all may be judged and condemned who did not believe, who refused to adhere to, trust in, and rely on the truth, but instead took pleasure in unrighteousness. They loved and they harbored the lie. To him the dragon gave his own might and power, and his own throne and great dominion. And one of his heads seemed to have a deadly wound, but his death stroke was healed. And the whole earth went after the beast in amazement and admiration. And the beast was given the power of speech, uttering boastful and blasphemous words. And he was given freedom to exert his authority, and to exercise his will during forty-two months. And he opened his mouth to speak slanders against God, blaspheming his name and his abode, vilifying those who live in heaven. He was further permitted to wage war on God's holy people, the saints, and to overcome. And power was given him to extend his authority over every tribe, and people, and tongue, and nation. And the world will deserve what it gets, because church-going atheistic America, and church-going atheistic England, the church-going atheistic nations of the West, have within their own hearts the creed of Christianity, have within their own hearts the fifth column of the devil and truth. We talk about a truth. All too often we practice the lie. Devil goes to considerable ends to protect the lie. It has been evolving all down the centuries in terms of human society. At the moment, something like half the world's population is, at the moment, captured by the philosophy of the Antichrist. Dialectic materialism. Man is man by virtue of what man is, lose God, lose nothing. Don't find false comfort in the fact that Stalin was debunked. Don't pat yourself on the back with a self-congratulatory, I told you so, when Khrushchev goes to jail in three months' time, if he does, or is banished to Siberia, like Molotov and the rest. Don't nudge your neighbor and say, there you are, it's all cracking. No, no, it isn't. That's the strength of communism. Because, you see, there is only one lie. There is only one lie. And the devil can't allow people to become Stalinists when they ought to be communists. He can't afford to allow people to become Molotovists and not communists. He can't afford for people to become Khrushchevites and not communists. That's why he hates the title. What was the first mark of carnality in the early church? What was it that brought about the deviation from the truth? The personality part. I am of Paul. I am of Apollos. I am of Cephas. I am of Luther. I am of Calvin. I am of Jarvis. I am of Klingley. I am of Mennon. I am of Hutter. I am of everybody but Jesus Christ, the truth. You will discover that the strength, the organizational strength, the loyalty strength of every movement, of every denomination, of every Christian organization is ultimately the weakness of its founders. What makes a Calvinist a Calvinist as opposed to a Lutheran or a Wesleyan? The measure in which Luther diverted from the truth, the measure in which Calvin diverted from the truth, for none on the perfect, the measure in which Wesley diverted from the truth. Had they all been on beam on the truth, we wouldn't have known the difference between Calvin and Luther and Darby and Mennon and Hutter. We wouldn't have known the difference. We would have been devoted to the truth. But there there are those who out Luther, Luther, and those who out Calvin, Calvin, and those who out Hutter, Hutter, and those who out Mennon, Mennon, and those who out Darby, Darby. The devil knows this. The devil knows this. He's not going to allow his lie to be abused and prostituted, as we've allowed the truth to be abused and prostituted. He says the moment Stalin begins to attract people to Stalin, I'm going to liquidate him. I'll debunk him. And the moment Khrushchev begins to attract people to Khrushchev, I'll debunk him too. But I maintain the purity of the lie until my man, the man of sin, the man of lawlessness, the final incarnation of the lie that defies God and blasphemes his name and vilifies the inhabitants of heaven until he comes and demonstrates that I will be like God. That's the spirit of Emerson. And the strength of communism is that it doesn't need its leader. The devil will inherit. I don't know whether communism will be the final and ultimate expression of the satanic lie. Possibly not. I don't know. All I know is that ultimately by the evolution of the lie, it will find its full and final incarnation in a man of lawlessness, whom only Jesus Christ himself will slay at his appearance, at his coming. But if you are baffled at the dastardly wicked things that men can do, in the name of promise, remember to them it is entirely moral. Because two and two make five. They do not need God. They are not dependent upon him. The ultimate survival of the race rests fairly and squarely on their own two shoulders. And any price must be paid. Just a minute. Oh, that might be very interesting. But we might shrug our shoulders and say that has nothing to do with me. Or it has. Because you see, you're a communist at heart. Now don't get angry with me. A communist is simply one who subscribes to a certain political creed which he probably all unwittingly yields his allegiance to, unaware of the fact that the political creed is simply a political expression of a satanic lie. You've received Jesus Christ as your savior. You're redeemed. You have become re-inhabited by God since you were regenerate and the Holy Ghost came to occupy your human spirit and Christ came to dwell within you. Then you are a very dangerous man, a very dangerous woman to the devil. Because it is very likely that the very power of deity will be released through your humanity. The moment you become re-inhabited by Jesus Christ, it is all too likely, so far as the devil is concerned, that the very deity of Christ will be demonstrated in terms of your human personality. How can he neutralize your effectiveness? How can he put you out of action? Very simply, just by inverting the lie. He persuaded Adam to believe, lose God, lose nothing. You have received God back. He can't now avoid that. You're redeemed. But he can cause you to believe and invert the lie. Receive God, receive nothing. Clever, isn't it? And don't you see that as a Christian every step you take except in total dependence upon Jesus Christ is a repudiation of your need is an affirmation of the satanic lie and gives consent to the fact the devil's right and God's wrong. Every decision that you take in business, every responsibility that you assume in church management, every time you teach a Sunday school class, every time a pastor gets up into the pulpit and preaches, other than in an attitude of strong dependence, total and complete, upon the one who has come to re-inhabit our redeemed humanity, is a repudiation of our need of God and is a subscription to the Adamic lie. We have the Creed of Christians, right? It's down there. Every step that you are prepared to take, other than independence upon Jesus Christ, is a step that you are prepared to take looking in his face and saying, you add nothing to me for this death. Every decision that you make, and I don't care in what area of life it may come, in your domestic, in your church, or in your business life, every decision that you are prepared to make, other than in an attitude of total dependence upon Jesus Christ, is a decision that you are prepared to make looking in his face saying, Jesus Christ, although you've come to live in me, you add nothing, absolutely nothing, to me for this decision. And there's only one person capable of that kind of blessing, the devil himself. And he operates through that principle within you which is called the flesh. That's what it means to be a carnal Christian. And the carnal Christian is the devil's pitfall in the Church of Jesus Christ. It is the spirit of anti-Christ. It's the devil's master. By which, by and large today, he has completely immobilized the Church of Jesus Christ. Ninety-five percent of church activity, missionary activity, Christian activity, is explicable other than in terms of God. And if God were to die tonight, it probably wouldn't make the slightest difference to the average church congregation next time. Nobody would know, nobody told. It would probably not make the slightest difference to the average missionary society. It wouldn't make the slightest difference as to the way you raise your family, as to the way missionaries are supported, or the Church of God is conducted. It wouldn't make the slightest difference if God were to die tonight. Because Satan has succeeded in perpetrating the inverted lie, receive God, receive nothing. And he challenges your highest and loftiest motivations. He capitalizes upon your sincerity, upon your compassion, upon your sentiments. He comes and preaches, do, do, do, do for God, sacrifice for God, work for God, preach for God, go out and preach for God. Do everything except God. Be given the chance to do anything you desire. But God says the devil, so long as you're busy for God, you're neutralized, you're useless to God, and you're useless to man. That's just what I want. So I hope you'll be very, very, very busy to the devil, very busy. And he'll send you a pack of tracts to the post to keep you busy distributing them. He'll put you on all the boards and all the committees he designs to keep you busy. Just so long as Jesus Christ doesn't have the right to be himself and do his own work through you his own way in his own time. Because the flesh, poverty, nothing. The devil doesn't. And the strength of communism in Christian America is right in the hearts of Christians, who are depending on the flesh and not upon the indwelling spirit of the risen Christ. By and large, the world is sick of religion and sick of the Christian church. It's tired of its futility. It's tired of seeing what can be accomplished in terms of dollars and what is explicable in terms of dollars. It's tired of seeing what can be accomplished in terms of human personality, human promotion, human scholarship. It's sick and tired of that. The world is crying out today to see something that is explicable only in terms of God, in the power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit. And the world will never see this until you and I have subscribed to the principle that what we are of satanic origin is fit for nothing but death. And that when God crucified his son 1,900 years ago, he not only died for it, but he took up with him and put it in the grave and left it. Because that's all we were ever fit for. That we, being buried, might become the recipients of what he is in the power of his resurrection. That our cleansed, redeemed humanity might present it to him, acceptable unto God, a reasonable sinner. That every day might be the hilarious, triumphant proving of that good and acceptable and perfect wisdom. As Christ lives on earth again, incarnate in the redeemed humanity of forgiven sin, that body that the Father presented to him first on the day of testament. What a privilege God has given to you and to me to be on earth today members of the body of his perfect man, the Lord. Now let us pray. Save us, we pray thee, dear Lord, from our own self-deception. Save us from sentiment, self-pity, or self-pressure. Save us from our own dignity. Save us from our pride. Help us to see that what we are by nature of satanic origin is fit for nothing but the cross. That only as we are prepared by faith to identify ourselves with thee in death do we really, genuinely give consent to thy verdict upon the man of sin. For we know that he has his agency within him. Save us, we pray thee, from the hypocrisy of repudiating the dead and harboring his agency and nurturing it within our breath. Bring us to the place of death, to ourselves, that we might live and behave henceforth habitually in newness of life as those who have been wedded to another, even to him who is risen from the dead. Thy dear son, I say that we might bring forth righteousness and fruit unto God until the glorious day of his atonement for his namesake.