In this sermon, the preacher discusses the concept of glory and its connection to God's intentions for humanity. The preacher explains that sin led to the introduction of hereditary principles and the punitive element in human existence. The sermon also highlights the story of Joshua and the conquest of the Promised Land, emphasizing the importance of immediate action and obedience to God's commands. The preacher encourages listeners to live in total abandonment to the Lord and to seek understanding of the gospel's primitive truths.

And, um, we see this tremendous truth in the twentieth chapter. Oh, sorry, no, I'm wrong there. That's still Abraham. It's Isaac I want. After he's married. Twenty-six, is it? Thank you ever so much. It's because my eye fell on a Vimelick. Isaac dwelt in Gerar, verse six. And the men of the place asked Isaac of his wife, and he said, She's my sister. For he feared to say, She's my wife, lest, said he, the men of the place should kill me. For Rebecca, for she was fair to look upon. And there the same thing repeated itself. Forget your father's house. And this is what happens. The sins of the fathers are repeated in their sons. Behavior patterns are set. How careful we need to be. How careful we need to be. I find this again and again. Young people come to me, and I find that the same things that have happened in their parents are happening in them. Same thing. They repeat the things that their parents have done. They may not set out slavishly to do so, but the same things come out. You can witness them, trace them back. The same weaknesses, the same sins, the same tolls, the same bearing. And it's there. It happens in my family. It happens in yours. We're all somewhere along our line of heredity. We've all got murderers, blackguards, drunkards, twisters, fornicators, wicked people, if you go back far enough. All a lot of us. Isn't that right? I mean, you may not know your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. If you go back far enough in your history, you'll find that you're related to a dishonest gardener who got the sack for stealing the fruit, got turned out of the garden. He's named Adam. If you all go back far enough. You see, this is the whole thing. This is where we had our beginning. In league with Satan. Let's go back into the New Testament, shall we? Although it's really moving on. And we come into the Gospel according to John. Good old John. Chapter 8 of John. See? Chapter 8 in John. Notice the consistency. It starts off with a woman taken in adultery. You get the same cowardliness taken in the very act. Then I'll ask you a question. Where was the man? Where was the man if they were taken in the act? No, they bring the woman. There you are. You're ashamed of yourself, you men. Let's all be ashamed of ourselves. The woman. And they bring the woman. And it's in adultery. You know the whole story. Bless the Lord. He said to her, where are thine accusers, woman? Woman, where are thine accusers? You love and trace through this use of the word woman, and trace through the use of the word Mary. It'll be a blessing to your heart if God gives you spiritual understanding. Woman, he said. Where are those thine accusers? Doesn't any man condemn thee? She said, no man, Lord. And the only man there was on the earth. They'd all, the others had cleared out anyway. He said, neither do I condemn thee. Hallelujah. You see? Glory be to God. This man, the man, he hadn't come to condemn. Bless him. Goes down the chapter. All right. We come to the chapter, and we read these words. Um, oh, I don't know what's, where, I don't know where to break in, and where not to break in. I think we ought to read. Um, we be Abraham, see verse thirty-three. And were never in bondage to any man. How sayest thou you shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, whosoever committed sin is the slave of sin, and the slave abideth not in the house. Here we have it again. He's on the house. Abideth not in the house forever. But the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free. Indeed. Hallelujah. Praise him. This is a thrill. I know that you're Abraham's seed, but they were the seed of that which connived a lie and sowing fear. That's what they were the seed of, on the flesh side. They weren't the spiritual seed. This is the great truth that God wants us to see. I know that you're your seed of Abraham. He said, I know all that. But you seek to kill me because my word hath no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with my father. You do that which you've seen with your father. See, that's it. That's the law that governs it. Here's the law of heredity. Amen. Coming in, they answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus said unto them, if you're Abraham's children, you do the works of Abraham. If you're God's child, you'll do the works of God. That's the implication. You'd better let the implication sink in. You do the works of your father. Let's go on. But now you seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth which I've heard of God. This did not Abraham. You do the deeds of your father. Then said they unto him, we be not born of fornication. We have one father, even God. Jesus said unto them, if God were your father, you would love me. For I proceeded forth and came from God. Neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do you not understand my speech? Even because you cannot hear my word, you're of your father the devil. And the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there's no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, you believe me not. Praise God. I'm not praising God, because naturally we're of our father the devil. Every one of us, in our first birth, come down from that line. Every one of us. And until we are born again, we cannot stop doing the works of our father. That's going right back to Satan. And we cannot help repeating the works of our forefathers, as we've inherited the original satanic seed, as it came down to us through the particular branch of the human family of which we've been born. And this is the whole truth. Behavior patterns are set. Glory to God, I'm glad they're set. I'm glad they're set, because they're set in Christ. I'm glad there's no whimsy behind this. I'm glad it moves on eternal law. I'm glad that once I've been born again from on high, then the life is eternal, and the behavior patterns are set, and the glorious spiritual laws are going to work out in me, if I will be obedient. If I will believe God's word. If, and only if, I will continue the way I began. The way I came into my eternal life is the way I must continue in it. All the glorious simplicity of it all is caught us in the beginning. And if only we would walk in that simplicity of spirit, of perfect trust, utter abandonment. There is no cost. None. Not, we, it will stain what we are when we're a true child of God. There's no price to pay. None. Hallelujah. It's all gift. You only think there's a price to pay because you're conscious of flesh, and conscious of human beings, and conscious of worldly advantage and gain. That's why you think there's a price to pay. There isn't any price to pay. Hallelujah. It's all a gift, but people won't have it. They get into their minds. That's right. They start to think, and they always think themselves up into a blind alley, or else a maze, or a spiral chute down into the depths. One of the two. Go round and round. Instead of living in total abandonment unto the Lord, Lord help me. If I understand the gospel, it's all based upon these primitive things. Amen. The two things that God is expecting of all mankind, irrespective of nation, of creed, of breeding, or what it be amongst men. The thing he is, that he's expecting us, of us all, is in Romans 1. These two invisible things of God were expected to know, basically. We who have had the gospel are more responsible than those who have not the gospel. But each one is in the measure that God finds them responsible to God. Here it is, 20. The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. Here are the two things, his eternal power and Godhead. Amen. Now, if we'll remain conscious of his eternal power and his Godhead, that puts everything right. You may say, that's oversimplification. It may be to a complicated mind. Clever minds can't bear oversimplification. But simple beings love it. That's right. Real simplicity. Eternal power. Glory to God. And his Godhead, for in him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily in our blessed Lord. I'm conscious of his eternal power and Godhead in a new and glorious and remarkable way that the unborn again ones are not conscious of. And we, yielding up to these basic things, beloved, shall become the glorious creatures that God wants us to become. This God brought off the primitive revelation, for that's the primitive revelation. Doesn't matter who they are. Worldwide, steeped in ignorance, they know perfectly well that that slab of stone didn't create the weather. They know that some totem pole didn't put that sun in the sky. They all know that. Hallelujah. And God will hold all heathen responsible for that when they come to the great white throne. He won't judge them on how they've treated Christ if they've never heard, but it's your duty to make them hear about Christ. But he'll judge them on these two counts, every man and every woman, providing all things are equal and they're not born autistic or something, as we speak about it. Though, God, I want to tell you, beloved, where was I not so long ago? First one I'd really met, God met an autistic man, completely schizoid, and I don't know what he didn't do for him, apparently. God can do all sorts of things. It's a marvellous thing what God can do. We're moving in the realms of eternal power and his Godhead. Amen. This is marvellous, isn't it? And God is bringing us through on these great levels of truth, beloved. You being born again in Father's house, are you? Has the Son made you free, really free? And are you forgetting that old Adam? You see, the real tragedy oftentimes with people is that they, I mean, it's been said to me since I've been here at Clifton's time. Someone came to me and said, but you see, the old Adam isn't dead. The old Adam isn't dead. And when I reaffirmed that he is dead and buried, and that's that, I said, oh, but who's which empire? I do this, I do that, I do the other, and on went the terrible unfolding of this. But my beloved brothers and sisters, the Bible says that our old man is crucified. Let's have a look at it. Surely I haven't got to tell you where to find that. That should be a well-fummed place in your Bible. All right, I'll say it. I won't look at any one. It's in Romans chapter six. You see, when you read through Romans, as I pointed out, I tried to yesterday, very quickly, introducing ourselves to this whole subject. I started in Romans and pointed out how the Paul there, writing to Gentiles, didn't go back to Jewry or Israel, he went back to nature. When you're dealing with heathens, don't try and deal with some subtle point out of the tabernacle. The whole wonderful truth, beloved, is that God will approach them on this very human natural ground, and he knows how to do it. And so you'll find that he doesn't deal with Moses. He does mention David, but he deals with men like Abraham, chapter four. And in chapter six, he deals with Adam, you see. In chapter seven, he deals with the wretched man. See? That's right. Put it down, it's all there. And when you get to chapter nine and ten and eleven, and he's moving through those passages, he deals with, who are, the old man that replies against God. He's dealing with the rebellious man coming from the carnal mind. It's all there. Make notes of it, you preachers. These are great subjects for you to explore and expound and see the way that God moves in his revelation to mankind. And in the sixth chapter, we're told so, so clearly, beloved, verse six, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not be slaves to sin. Glory be to the name of the Lord. Isn't that marvellous? Now, every one of us, outside of Christ, we've got to acknowledge that old Adam was our old man. Now, this is why nobody should call their fathers the old man. It's most disrespectful. I hope you don't refer to your father as the old man, and your wife, sorry, your mother as the old woman. What a most disrespectful way to talk about them. Our old man, and we've all got to sort of have some real share in this, he belongs to us all. He was crucified. Now, listen. It's because you will persist in talking about my old man that you're in trouble. You can't see what God's done. You're really tied up with yourselves. He's our old man. Glory. I don't mind saying this. Old Adam is our old man. Yeah. Now, listen. Jesus Christ slew him. Slew him. God in Christ slew our old man. That's right. He did, and he not only slew him, crucified him, but he buried him. How about that? He buried him. That's what it says in this chapter. Glory be to God. We've been baptised into death. Amen. Now, if you've been baptised into Jesus Christ, beloved, know this, that you were baptised into him at the point of death. Boom. You weren't baptised into him at the point of his sufferings for sin on the cross, but it was in the moment of his departing that you were baptised into him. When he released his spirit, there was room now for you to be baptised into it. Glory to God. And the whole tremendous truth lies here, that we were baptised into his death. Alleluia. And we were buried with him by baptism into that death. Glory. That's a marvellous thing, isn't it? The old man is crucified, and he's dead, and he's buried. Christ finished him. And you say now, well, what's all the trouble I have in this? What's all this business of, where did it all come from? Simply this, beloved, it's ever so easy, really. Turn into the Galatian letter. It's because people do not understand the Bible, and that in its turn is because they don't read the Bible properly. This is really our trouble, beloved. I cannot impress this on you too strongly. You must take hours and days and weeks and months and years, and you must read your Bible. And you must read it carefully. If you can't read the Bible, and this is one of the dreadful stories I hear, talk of people, they say they're saved, they're baptised in the Spirit, and they can't read the Bible. Doesn't make any sense to me. I want to know what kind of a baptism they've had. I don't understand these people. Well, you know what I mean. I don't know their experience in the sense of understanding. I don't know their experience at all. Glory be to God. You haven't all got to be Bible expositors. That's not the point. But you should be able to read this book, and just sanely take in what it says, and what it means. It's God's word to you. Whatever's the use of the Bible to you then? Why didn't God not give us a Bible? If he gave us something that was double-dutched, tied up twice, and you have to stand on your head to begin to read it, why did he give us the Bible? Amen. And it isn't because it's in archaic language. It's in the language of the Spirit. That's why people don't understand it. That's the real trouble. Now listen, beloved, you've got to get down and read your Bible, and read it carefully and prayerfully. And we'll turn to Galatians 2 and verse 20. And Paul says, I am crucified with Christ. Now he's not talking about our old man. Now, I mean, the very language tells you. Here's your distinction. In Romans 6, our old man was crucified, dead, and buried. That was the end of him. Hallelujah. If Christ couldn't kill him, then we're all lost. If it isn't true, beloved, what's the use of this gospel we're preaching? It's done. But, beloved, see here. It's I now, as distinct from our old man, me, I myself as a human being. I am crucified with Christ. But now you won't find a tomb here. There's no grave here. I'm crucified, but I live. Here, I'm always on the cross, so I live. I'm permanently crucified, me, I myself, this horrible man named North. And when you discover yourself, beloved, even after Christ has dealt with the old man of sin in you, you're pretty rotten. Well, ugly rotten, let me put it that way. You're not all glorious with it. This is the whole tremendous thing, beloved. You see, brothers and sisters, I want to impress this on you. Let me plead with you. The root of everybody's trouble, beloved, is self. They want to blame the devil, or they want to blame the old man. Oh, it's self. It is as near tea time as that. It's a quarter to five. Oh dear, what time's tea? Oh, all right. Pardon? Amen. Let's go on. Now, people want to blame the devil, or they say it's old Adam, because they don't believe the Bible. And the last person they'll blame is themselves. After God has dealt with the old Adam, there's still I myself to be kept crucified. There's no tomb for me. There was a tomb for old Adam, and he was buried in it by the power of Jesus Christ. But I've got to be constantly on the cross to live no longer I. Nobody can live off the cross, nobody. You die off the cross, you live on it. They took him off the cross as old Adam, and buried him. Hallelujah. And that was it. But it's I myself, with my aesthetic tastes, my perfectionism, my this that I love, my ethos, my ego. I can't blame old Adam for that. It's me. You see, I happen to be born as the last child of a man named North, and a woman named, I don't know, Caroline Eliza Johnston. I've got some Scots blood in my veins. I don't know, that should cheer up some people. I don't know whether it should or not. But I was born as the last child, you see. And I bring in the impress of the North, and it's horrible. Horrible. Beloved, what transpired in the garden has gone to its extreme of perversion and twisting, as successive generations have been born. Amen. That's what's happened. They've gone to the extremes, you see. And you'll find people so emotionally unstable. And you'll find some people, they're always wanting to break down and cry. That's not a sin, it's a weakness of the personality. There are some people, they think they're born to be. I had a woman come to me not so long ago. You're not surprised afterwards in that she didn't yield to anything that was said to her, that she finished up in the local mental hospital. She said, she thought, she said, oh yeah, she was a Christian. She'd been saved, I don't know how many years. And she thought that God had brought her in and would be a great joy-bringer. She said, I'm always making people happy. I'm always making them laugh. I said, if you don't stop it, you'll go to hell. I'm saved, I said, what from? You tell me what you're saved from. If you aren't saved from sin, then you're not saved. That's all there is in it. All people want to do is to make Jesus a sort of an insurance policy, saved from going to hell. It's a terrible place, I don't want to go to hell. Jesus is here to save you from sin and self. That's the greatest, one of the greatest miracles of all, be saved from self and be changed into his likeness. That's what it's all about. It's not only the basic nature change at new birth where the old man is dealt with. So I'm brought into another family and into father's house. It's the change into another personality as well, so that I have the loveliness of Jesus, so that I have the strength of character of Jesus, so that I have the balance of Jesus. That's a fruit called self-control. It's given in Galatians 5, 22 to 24. So that I have the peace of Jesus. See? So that I have the joy of Jesus. Glory be to God. That's it. So that when the pressure's on, and when the terrors of hell are gathering round you and trying to get hold of you, and Jesus spoke of that, you know, in Pentecost, in Acts 2, when Peter quotes, he quotes from his very psalm that talks about it. So that when these pressures are on, and when everything's breaking down, and everybody's forsaking you, and all right has gone wrong, and everything that's good seems to become evil, and there's no hope, and there's no ray of sunshine, and there it is, condemnations and accusations and every single thing that it seems that men and women can treacherously lay upon you, or the devil can stroke you with. It all presses in on you, so that your keepers would shake, and your back would bow, and your head would ache, and I don't know what, so that you can under those conditions, my peace I give unto you. Peace I leave with you. Ah, what a person. These things I say unto you, and you're walking to Gethsemane, where one of your own disciples is going to betray you, and you say, uh, I've said these things unto you, that my joy might, you might have my joy fulfilled in yourselves, love one another as I have loved you. Think of it. That's right. That's the person who says, it's impossible, don't you deny the faith. It's possible. Of course it is. That's what it's all about. That's what it's all about, so that you don't let flies throw cushions round the room, or stamp your heel, or if you're better mannered, sort of speak icily and walk up. Yeah, it doesn't matter what cultural background you come from, whether you came from the gutters of Bethnal Green, or whether you were born in Buckingham Palace. This is the whole truth about it, beloved. I hope you see your calling. I hope you see what it's all about. Most people would rather have power to perform a miracle, than power to put their own personality right. That's what's gone wrong with Pentecost. I don't mean Pentecost in the scripture, you know what I mean. I hope you do, anyway. Amen. A transformed person. Glory be to the name of the Lord. Break the behaviour patterns. How can it be done? The cross, you've got to stay there, and then you'll live. Where did Jesus live as a man? As the supreme man, where was the moment of his most supreme and glorious life? Where was it? Where did he live his greatest hours? On the cross. He lived on the cross. Nobody could kill him. He had to yield his own spirit up. He lived on the cross. I'm crucified with Jesus. I can bear the utmost strain. Is that right? God help me. I'm using language representatively of you. That's it. Oh, I can't put away sin. I can't atone for one lie, one act of deceit. I can't atone, but oh, if I'll live on the cross. How did that man Paul go through? I'm crucified. There comes a time when a man sees that if he, taking advantage of the new birth, uses it only to promote himself, he's the biggest cheat that ever was. And God breaks the behaviour patterns, snaps them, finishes them. See, you've got this in Romans 7. Oh, this wretched man in Romans 7. He cannot break his behaviour patterns. He can't do it. He struggles. He fights. He believes. He better believes. He prays. He meditates in the Lord day and night. With my mind, I serve the Lord. I delight in the Lord God. But he couldn't break his behaviour patterns. He couldn't do it. He was beaten. There are some who believe that this is the Christian life. Do you? The key to Romans 7 is in the first verse. You just read it. Tell you all about Romans 7. It's in the first verse. I speak to them that know law. He's a man under law. He's not a man under grace. Amen. He's not a man under grace. This is what grace says. Sin shall not have dominion over you. You're not under law. You're under grace. This is what grace says. This is a marvelous thing. Praise God. What is grace? How does grace work? Oh, I just glance at my watch. I suppose I really ought to stop. There's a tomorrow. But the whole wondrous revelation of God, beloved, is that we can come right out of that old father's house. Wretched Adam. God's his own. Amen. Jesus Christ crucified that spiritual nature, that spiritual bent, that spiritual thing that's away from God, that which always takes its leads from Satan, even under the guise of religion, that Jesus Christ slew it. Beloved, the Son makes us free. The tragedy, the tragedy of it is even that our, sometimes our Bible expositors put a shroud on. I'm sure it's true. I'm not throwing bricks in any direction, but I mean, but we're together here, and we've got to see the ground of truth on which we stand. People say, ah, they say, but you see, even when God brought them into the promised land, they were all fighting, always fighting. Out go the Anarchists, out go the Gurgashites, out go the Hittites, and so the implication is you've got to do this fighting, all the rest of life, even if you're in the promised land. Well, what a lot of nonsense that is. That was their own fault. They should have been in there 40 years earlier, but because they wasted their time in the wilderness, when they got there, they had to fight. This is the trouble. God's intention was to have them in the promised land in about 11 days. Thank God we got across there. But they waited 40 years. Look, let's go back just to Joshua. This is the trouble. Even our princes of Bible expositors have put us wrong. God forbid that I should speak in such way against any. But the tragedy of it is even that sometimes our Bible expositors put us wrong. I'm sure this is true. I'm not throwing bricks in any direction, but I mean, but we're together here and we've got to see the ground of truth on which we stand. People say this, ah, they say, but you see, um, uh, even when God brought them, uh, into the promised land, they were all fighting or fighting for that. Out go the Anakims, out go the Girgashites, out go the Hittites. And so the implication is you've got to do this fighting all the rest of life, even if you're in the promised land. Well, what the world has said is that was their own fault. They should have been in there 40 years earlier. But because they wasted their time in the wilderness, when they got there, they had to fight. This is the trouble. God's intention was to have them in the promised land in about 11 days. Thank God we got across there. But they waited 40 years. Look, let's go back just to Joshua. This is the trouble. Even our princes of Bible expositors have put us wrong. God forbid that I should speak in such way against any. But we've got to know the truth, and it's only the truth that will set us free. And it'll stop us making excuses for ourselves, and it'll shut up all the loopholes that the devil wants to use. You see, do you know, as soon as they got into the promised land, 40 years late, it says this in chapter 2, there are spies sent by Joshua. They go down to Jericho. When they get to Jericho, they are taken by a woman, a harlot named Rahab. See the woman? Again, here it comes. Never mind. I want you to build this up. I'm not going to tell you this significance. You think for yourself before God. And the woman Rahab takes them into her house on top of the wall, and she begs certain things of them. But listen to what she says. Verse 8 of chapter 2 Before they were laid down, she came up unto them upon the roof, and she said unto the men, I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint, melt away, actually, is the word before you, because we've heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea. Hallelujah. You see, immediately the land was wide open to them. They all melted, failed. But because they hung about for 40 years, they had to fight when they get in. That's the trouble with so many people. That's the trouble. And so people preach it as a law now that you've got to fight, because they don't even understand the Bible. They should have gone straight in. Hey, Ben. Straight in. Not all this struggle. And I go, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear. And they're ready to take this place. And I say, well, it says there they went over already armed. Well, of course, God's not silly. Of course, he prepared them already armed when they'd hung about for 40 years. He still loved them. Didn't he feed them with manna in the wilderness? He still loved them. He didn't say, oh, I'm packing up with you. He still fed them, even though they were sinfully wandering. He still gave them shoes that didn't wear out. He still gave them clothes that never wore out in the wilderness. He came and dwelt amongst them in glory even in the wilderness. But I shall undo a more excellent way. That's the truth. And few there be that find it. I've got to stop because we're right launched on something now. I'll leave it there. If Norman gets a chance to preach tonight, I won't preach to you about these things. The whole tremendous thing, beloved, is that God is, I hope he's opening your eyes. I hope he's opening your heart, too. There are those who build up doctrines of deliverance upon what the giants are going to be cast out after you're born again. You see, they can find it in the Bible. Well, the devil could find ground in the Bible to tempt Jesus with. Don't you see? It was a misapplication of the thing. That's what did. God, oh, beloved, this life, wow, praise God. Old Caleb, you know, he had the same spirit in him that he had when he crossed Red Sea. Come on, let me go up there, he said. Ah, but you're 80. He doesn't know about that. Hallelujah. Look at my mediator when he was 120. His eyes hadn't dimmed. Come on, give me this mountain, he says. Everybody's quaking about the anachans up there. You know, anachans means long necked. Got great big long necks. Giraffe necked people, you know, up there. And they looked ever so high, but it wasn't only because they got a long neck. If their neck had been ordinary, they'd have been all right. They'd have been more or less the same size as anybody else. That's what the word anachan means, long necked people. And come on, give me this mountain, he said. Why, this is what the scripture says. He'd got another spirit in him. He'd wholly followed the Lord. It's the Caleb's you've got to look at. These are the people that tell us the truth. These are the people that show us the thing that's right. So God makes these things clear. Nevertheless, there is a word for us all who suffered in these personality defects and these quirks and twists and the patterns that have been set in our lives. There is a way, and tomorrow, if you come at three o'clock, we'll look into that. Now, I've sent you away with some flagons and some cakes of raisins. You're all right. You can go to your tent, but still send you away hungry. Let's pray. That's right. That's right. Don't struggle to get in. You'll be fighting him off. Hallelujah. Just believe him. Amen. It's so simple, beloved. So simple. Glory to God. You listen to Paul. It's one of the bit, one of the most wonderful things he ever said in the Bible. You may not think so. He said, you're dead. He wrote, he wrote some of it. He said, you're dead. You're dead, he said. That's right. Now, good job too. Praise God. Your life is hid with Christ in God. Oh, hallelujah. Now, you've got to be in the spirit, unless you'll never know anything about that. Would you try to think that out? He hides it from the wise and the prudent. He only reveals it to babes. Amen. Hallelujah. So now, you know, I'm a baby. I've become a baby to know this. I've become a baby. You can't know anything. Hallelujah. Now, I want to live what I know. Do you? God help me. You pray for me. Let's all pray for one another. Let's all love one another, shall we? Hallelujah. Praise God. Get your miserable self off. That's right. Amen. You take your hands off your children, you parents, and you cut your apron strings, all you big boys. You're not mummy's darlings now. You've been loved by Jesus. Amen. It's marvelous. Amen. I tell you where Father puts the darling on the cross. That's where he put him. Hallelujah. Behold the man. Bless him. Isn't the Bible lovely? Shatters all these sentimental things and sets us free. Glory. Between the divine and the human, but glory be to God, it can be unified into one in Christ. Amen. It's the old Adam nature that's got it. The human is there. That's the thing that's got to be dealt with. Praise the name of the Lord. Truth that sets us free. Amen. Glory be to God. Revelation. You're finished with everything else. Amen. Paul said, this gospel I preach, I got it by revelation. That's how everybody else has to get it too. He didn't. No man can teach you. It's the Holy Ghost teaches you. That's right. And he teaches by revelation. Always. Hallelujah. That's right. Hallelujah. The only use of people like me is that we can sort of put it into words. But if words form veils, if they form veils on your eyes, there'll be a winding sheet round me. And that's the dreadfulness of being able to preach on one side. The glory of it all, beloved, is that the Spirit should make the revelation to hearts. That's the wonder of it. Amen. Now, I suppose we ought to stop. It's quarter past five. All right. Now let's go to the scriptures, shall we, beloved? And I would think this afternoon we should start in Jeremiah. And you will know that this particular chapter that I am going to read, or the part of it, is really the sort of main theme of the Epistle to the Hebrews, really. Or at least it's the sort of basis of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Jeremiah 31, 27. It's a marvellous thing. Now, I want you to notice the consistency of scripture. Please don't get tired of hearing me say this. I want you, and God wants us all, to love this book. Because you see, beloved, if we're not careful, there is a certain kind of a move afoot that goes with what might be called the charismatic movement. I don't know why they should call this phrase. In a few years' time, they'll have another gimmicky phrase to use. But, you know, what we do, we all come together, we only praise, and we use our gifts. We have body ministry. We get little snippets and waffles of nothing. And the Bible, if we're not careful, is being put aside, as though, oh, you know, that's bondage, and we don't have that. And of course, as soon as you get that, you find all the other things that the Bible says you mustn't do are also set aside as bondages. And away people go off the ground of truth. The only right mixture in this realm is the gifts and ministries of an availability for everybody to minister, and the solid, glorious exposition of this book. Somebody said to me, because this has passed in between lunch and now, somebody was speaking to me along this line. Uh, if you will pardon me making reference to this, but, please excuse me if I do, but it was sort of a reference to the way the meeting ended up this morning. What a precious meeting that was, beloved. Hallelujah. This morning, wasn't it? Wonderful. Glory be to God. I thought it, and God came, and, you know, and I got away in prayer. Somebody commented on this, you see. And I said to that person, now, that's what it all began with, in a city called Bradford, where God visited us as a little company of people. It was that. And all the revival, and all the power, or whatever you want to call it, that came, and in which, by God's grace, I've been privileged to move since. It was about the, um, solid exposition of the word, and that kind of praying. And I haven't spoke to my wife since, but if I said to her, dear, did that remind you of Bradford? That's right. Oh, God used to come on us, and we would, everything, the flesh is rent to see, and then the heavens are rent, and everything happened. It was combined with hours and hours of exposition of the book. Didn't come by body ministry. It came by, I'm only telling you what I know, came from that. And we'll forsake our heritage if we get off it. Hallelujah. So, I want you, and God wants you to love this book, and notice its marvelous, inherent truth. All right? In Jeremiah 31, 26, do you read that verse? It came out of sleep. Where did Eve come from? Sleep. Adam slept. Now, here's the sleep, and what, now, what's coming next? You must read the chapter if you want to. We haven't got time. Here it is. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, I will sow the house of Israel, and the house of Judah, with the seed of man, and with the seed of beast. It shall come to pass that like as I have watched over them to pluck up, and to break down, and to throw down, and to destroy, and to afflict, so will I watch over them to build, and to plant, saith the Lord. In those days they shall say no more. The fathers have eaten the sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge. Everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, I'll make a new covenant. That's where it came from, the great new covenant, from the sleep, you notice, came after the sleep. Every time. You see, there's an inward consistency. God never deviates. And I would like to say a word here to ministering brethren, be careful how you use the typology and the pictures of the scripture. You must not take them out of their scripturally consistent use. You must always hold them to unless the greater, deeper truths, by far the greater and deeper truths, will never be unfolded to those that listen to you. Although you may adapt it to something you want to say, you must let it mean what it means in scripture, and then the deeper thing that present is hidden from them, they will come to realize when they see how the thing inheres, and it consists everywhere, and it always is unfolding one invariable truth. Here we have, as you see, a glorious secret, just to notice that. And what you must do when you get these things is let them burn in you until your whole self takes fire on the thing that the Lord is revealing to you. Then you'll be a preacher. Whilst I was musing the fire burned, I went forth and spoke. That's David. Anybody who speaks from anything other than fire ministereth death. In those days they shall say no more. The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth shall be set on edge. Listen to it. This great law of heredity that Freud got hold of, you see, it was enunciated by God. Everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Every man that eateth a sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which my covenant they break, although I was a husband unto them, saith the Lord. But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no man every, no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord, and I will remember their sin no more. I mentioned earlier that the writer to the Hebrews took this up and applied it in the eighth chapter. We won't turn to it at the moment. I hope that you will retain it in your mind or write it on a bit of paper that you've got there if you need to, or if you've got a good reference Bible, it will give it to you anyway. And this then is the whole truth, that God's making a new covenant. It has nothing to do with a covenant wherein a principle of heredity has been outworked. That fathers eat sour grapes and that children's teeth are set on edge. This, beloved, is a tremendous law of heredity that operates. And when God gave the old covenant, the ten commandments, you remember that one of the things he said was this, that he would visit the sins of the fathers unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. Amen. The law of heredity was intended by God. It went wrong at the fall. All right. And the principle of heredity is inherent in the human race and cannot be stopped. God intended it to be that way. Think of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It is said of Jesus, going back to Hebrews, or going on to Hebrews, that what you've got to do is to get a Bible that automatically opens at the right places. You see, my Bible automatically opened at Hebrews. And it's a new one, too. And I'll let you into a secret. Listen, I'll share a secret with you. When I was in India, some people thought that to have my Bible and my Testament would be about the biggest thing I could bequeath to them. So I left my Bible and my Testament in India and came home naked of the Word of God, and nearly that, anyway, in clothes. I left a lot of those behind, too. And I get home to England, you see, and I haven't got a Bible. I go to a place called the Long Cross. You've never heard of the Long Cross, I'm sure. I went to the Long Cross, and I sat talking to a friend whose name's Norman Meaton, and I was just passing on this, you know, I've got to get a new Bible. I want to get a new, new Testament. Oh, it's just here, it's year 45, you see. And he went out and he pulled out this marvellous book. He knows the Bibles I like. He likes them, too. Now, he was a heathen. He started on other sorts. God's converted him. And he pulled this up. Now, I knew perfectly well all about it, but I didn't say anything, because we've operated on this principle before, you see. He goes inside, pulls out this Bible, and gives it to me, you see. But you can't do anything like that with God. He'd hardly given it to me when somebody else gave him one. That's the waves. This is a principle. So we've got twin Bibles. We're twin spirits anyway. And we nearly talk alike, from what I heard him preaching last night, and so on. But here, then, is the glorious secret. Already, you see, this Bible knows its way around, and it opens at the right places. Hebrews 1. God. I often say, if you want to know the author to the Hebrews, it's the first word. God wrote the Episcopal Hebrews. In Bible colleges, they can't make up their minds who did. But it tells you, if you'll read it, God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us in a son, actually, is the Greek. He's spoken to us, really, in sonship, by son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds, or fitted the ages together. Tremendous. Who, being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his character, substance, person. You see, the son inherited from the father. He was the exact expression of the father's character and substance. Amen. So that when he was on earth, you remember, he said, when they said, oh, show us the father. It'll be sufficient for us. Let's see this father you keep talking about. He said, well, if you've seen me, you've seen the father. This is it. We are one. Spiritual identity. Substantial union. Glory. And this, then, is the marvellous thing. And God intended it, because it was so in the Godhead, so it is in humanity. He made it in his own image. Now, when sin had run its course down through the centuries, till the time the law was written, God enshrined, he gathered together the principles of heredity that have to do with the constitution and makeup of a being, and he brought it into the punitive element. And he said, I will visit. I will do this about the inequity of the fathers. I'll do it upon the children, and to the third and fourth generation. You see. But it is the heredity side which is the truth about the father eating the sour grape, and it's the children's edge, the teeth of the set-on edge. That's on the heredity side. So far as the legal side is concerned, God, using the principle of heredity, made the punishment, if you like, ride upon the principle. Have you got that? I want to be very careful, because somebody said to me yesterday afternoon, they hadn't been able to sort of get through on some of the things I'd been saying. I noticed that person isn't here this afternoon. I don't blame her. But this is because you really need a fortnight or a month of afternoons, and one tries to compress so much into so little, and we come to the principle of multim in power. We've got to get much in little, in these tremendous things. And God made this thing. He wasn't being spiteful, saying, well, I'll visit the sins of the fathers for the third and fourth generation, and they are poor unborn children, and blah, blah, blah. You see. But God was merely following natural law, and he made his law move upon this basis. Obviously, it's the sort of thing he would do, really, when you come to see it. But he said he would show mercy on the thousands of them that love him and keep his commandment, you see. And now, it's upon this principle of heredity that so much in humankind can be understood. For instance, how much disease used to, if not so much now, travels along this line of heredity. To take the days when tuberculosis was rampant in England. Well, if the parents had tuberculosis, so did the children. They just inherited the weakness that was open, sometimes born with a tubercle in them. I'm not a medical man. I shall have to get Brother John here to expound on this. But I do travel with medical men, and I had one for six months in India, and I sucked his brains a good bit. He sucked mine on other, oh, he sucked my spirit probably in one of my veins. But you know what I mean. I've got no brains at all. I leave that to my university friends. The whole business about that, beloved, is that you see it, amen, and it works out. And not only that, but you see character quirks working out. That's right. I, how often have I dealt with ladies, perhaps. I don't know, some ladies. I see a lot of ladies coming to me. I think they seem as a bit of a father figure, with my white hair and the long nose and all sorts of things like that, and so on. And I'll say to them, did your mother used to have depressions to love like you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You see? And I'll say to them, these sort of troubles, what did your mum or what did your dad that used to sort of get these things? Oh, it was my mother. Yeah, she used to be like that. Or my grandmother. I can remember my grandmother, you see. And away it goes then. And this great law of heredity is working. That parents eat the sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. Now, nobody's going to die because their teeth are set on edge, but they're suffering because of the sour grapes that have been eaten and gone down into the belly. If you think I'm going to get vulgar here, well, you'll just have to put up with my vulgarity. And the children were born from the womb, which in Hebrew often is belly as well. Same word, bowels, belly, womb. It's all in the same spot. And the whole glorious truth is here we have it. And the children are born with their mouths open. They're born raw almost. I shall never forget the story I once heard. At the moment I'm not inveighing along these lines, I'm only illustrating. I may come having time to talk about these things a little more later on, but I think probably tomorrow afternoon we should be using the River Derwent for a baptism service. So we'll see how things go. But I shall never forget hearing how the mother once took her baby to the doctor because she couldn't stop it crying. It was forever crying, forever crying, and nothing could stop it. The doctor had given it its medicines and I don't know what, and all the midwives had advised all their advice, and all the friends had advised their advice, and the mother said she was nearly transient with the baby, never stopped crying night and day. And while she sat there, the doctor put his hand across his neck and picked up a cigarette from a cigarette box and lit it, and in chatting, then all of a sudden he leaned forward and he blew smoke into the child's nostrils and it stopped immediately. And he found his mother was absolutely addicted to tobacco, you see. I repeat what I was told. I'm not a doctor. And so we see these things. What a thing, beloved, for us to understand. This grey line of heredity in which the whole thing is worked out down through the human race. Children are suffering because of their parents. I want to tell you, beloved, people, something. There's nothing, now you young people listen to this. You can't help it, we've got no chips on our shoulders. There's no use, there's no, I mean, we mustn't take the sort of psychological side of it, the psychiatric side. They tell you it's your mother's fault and it's not your responsibility, or it was your father's fault and you've got a great big chip on your shoulder. If I'd gathered together all the chips I'd had, I would have had enough chips to burn this place down when people have come to me. There's no reason for a chip on your shoulder at all. We can't help it, we were the same. I came into, your mother and father came into the world the same. Don't start laying things off to them. But beloved, we're in this great realm of heredity and nothing could stop it. And when you young people, you're going to fall in love and you're going to marry, and don't, let me say here, I want to give a word here, I wish the whole conference was here about this. When you do get married, don't I beg of you, I beg you with all my heart to come off this hyper-spiritual, highfalutin approach to something which is perfectly natural. They say, uh, some say, oh God's given me a word, I've got to marry you. And many a little girl has come up to me and told me about this big fellow in their assembly. He said, you've got to marry me, Mr North, you see. You haven't got a word of prophecy. A lot of nonsense. You fall in love with one another. You don't have to marry. You want to ignore all that. It's the same kind of thing with which girls who are too stupid to know better, or haven't been protected enough, play with glasses on a Ouija board and ask, are they going to get married and who it is. It's the same thing about, we reduce the gifts of the Spirit, God save us. It's clairvoyance that most people want to go and consult, not men of God, but don't go and consult them. We're not clairvoyants. Meet, fall in love and marry. Of course, if God says it's right, you pray about everything, don't you? You don't want special, special words, in that sense, and you come creeping up and say, this is a special marriage. God gave us a word. Is that why you got married? Well, you can see I didn't. Hallelujah. Ah, beloved. Calm off it. Nobody believes you. You're not that spiritual, and God's not that stupid. Get more concerned about doing the will of God. You'll find everything then will work out right. Now, where was I? When you get married, now you remember, there's nothing really so wonderful in this whole wide world of naturalness as a spiritual, godly home and heritage. I tell you that. Nothing. I know that there are young people who say, I heard other people's testimonies, how that they were cutthroats, murderers, junkies, and they get saved with a marvellous testimony. You see, I was brought up in a Christian home, and I was sent to Sunday school, and they're almost crying, because they haven't got a testimony. You see, getting junkies saved is popular. It's the tops, if you're working amongst drug addicts and all this. Well, all you poor normal people, I don't know why you should be so penalized. I think it's dreadful, personally. Not that junkies and perverts and all that can't be saved, hallelujah, but I wasn't a junkie and a pervert. I don't think I was anyway, not in the way that I've met since. I've met such horrible things, I didn't know they existed in the world, bless God. I was protected and sheltered by a Christian home, thank God for it. Amen. Thank God for it. That isn't to say I'm not sorry before God now that I ever did sin, anything. Sometimes it overwhelms me. But the whole glorious thing, beloved, is that it's what old Norman pointed out. There are sins which are socially acceptable, and everybody does those, such as twist the income tax people if possible, or if you don't twist them, grumble about them. And the Lord says you ought to pay your taxes, that's right. But they're exorbitant. Well, all right then, he'll give you exorbitant money to pay them with. That's all there is, isn't it? If he commanded it, he'll supply what he said. It may mean you'll have to control some of your other appetites, and not give license and reign to other things in which you've been indulging yourself, thinking that they are now the norm of life. Go out to Nepal and see what normal living is. Go out with Jackie next time, where you'll have to go and live and sleep in a long hut. She doesn't tell you these things. Privacy is non-existent. You sleep with everybody else in the tribe, all together in one hut. How about that? Any volunteers? You see, this is it. Oh, we must have our bedrooms, and is there a bathroom attached, please? I may even want to go to conferences in marvellous hotels, where you can pay twenty pound a week, and have the marvellous cuisine, and everything at hand. God save us. You see, twenty pounds, I'd better say come to Clifford and pay eight fifty, they could have sent the rest to the missionary society. Don't they see? Well, I mustn't comment, I beg your pardon. But somehow it doesn't fit in. Not with me. I don't know what it is, but I think of blood-baptised Calvary. I think of the Son of God who was laid on cold stone, slept under hedges. I think of Debussy. I remember when I said to him the first time, and I asked the poor, I said, you'll have to take me to, I've not laid on because you're here, sister, I'm always, they'll bear me witness, I talk about Debussy all over the country, and that's right, you've all heard me, some of you. And we see this tremendous truth in the twentieth chapter. Oh, sorry, no, I'm wrong there, that's still Abraham. It's Isaac I want. After he's married. Twenty-six, is it? Thank you ever so much. It's because my eye fell on a bimini. Isaac dwelt in Gerar, verse six. And the men of the place asked Isaac of his wife, and he said, she's my sister. For he feared to say, she's my wife. Lest, said he, the men of the place should kill me for Rebecca, for she was fair to look upon. And there the same thing repeated itself. Forget your father's house. And this is what happens. The sins of the fathers are repeated in their sons. Behavior patterns are set. How careful we need to be.