This sermon emphasizes the importance of seeking the glory of Jesus in our lives, moving from old covenant legalism to new covenant transformation by the Holy Spirit. It highlights the need to focus on knowing Jesus intimately, allowing His glory to change us inwardly, leading to a life of godliness, humility, and love. The speaker urges listeners to discard masks of pretense, seek the Lord directly, and experience a gradual transformation from one degree of glory to another, reflecting the character of Christ in all aspects of life.

So we will continue to see what the word of the Lord is for this minute, this closing minute in human history. The church is a body, and like different parts of our human body have a different function, we can say the hand has got a particular burden, the eye has got a burden to see, the hand doesn't have any burden to see, the ear doesn't have any burden to see, it's got a tremendous burden to hear, the legs have got a, feet have got a tremendous burden to walk. What's wrong in all of us having different burdens? Many Christians haven't understood it. My observation is that the vast majority, I would say more than 90% of believers don't have a clue about what the body of Christ means. They hear somebody preach something, and they get that burden. They go somewhere else, somebody else preaches something, they get that burden. They are like plants that never grow up, tossed by every wind of doctrine. I want to encourage you, my brothers and sisters, when you are young, I can understand that, you know, you can easily push a child down, and when you are a babe, you are swayed by winds of doctrine. You can be 70 years old and a babe swayed by winds of doctrine, but you should gradually become steady knowing what God wants you to do with the one life he gave you, what God called you to be in the body of Jesus Christ. You won't know it, I mean, I didn't know for about 15-20 years after I was born again, what my particular calling was. It was gradual discovery, but I'm so thankful that I discovered it. Because once you discover it, you become rock steady. Many many people have asked me, why don't you do this, why don't you do that, why don't you do the other thing, why don't you get more involved in evangelism, why don't you get... He doesn't shake me. The wind and the storm can blow, it makes absolutely no difference. If somebody can move you in a direction God doesn't want you to go, then you know you're a child. So we need to say, Lord, what is the burden that you're giving me? The burden God gives you is an indication of God's will for your life. Please remember that. You know, someone like Mother Teresa, I believe she was a member of the body of Christ, even though some of her doctrines concerning Mary and all were wrong. But her heart was right. Head, doctrine is a matter of the head, life is a matter of the heart. Many people who have their head right have got their heart all wrong. I have never heard, I mean not heard, I've never in my lifetime known of any Christian who is so free from the love of money as Mother Teresa. She's the exact opposite of today's charismatic preachers who claim to know the Lord so well. Their doctrine is right, their heart is wrong. Like Jesus said, their heart goes after their covetousness. In emptiness they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men because their heart goes after their covetousness. What I'm trying to say is Mother Teresa had a burden to care for the poor. She said in the faces of the poor I see Jesus and I would help them. And that is a very Christian thing to do. It's not my burden and I don't get convicted and condemned because I'm not doing what she does. Just like the eye never gets convicted and condemned because it doesn't do all the things that the hand can do. You know, if you read a lot of things about Mother Teresa and you suddenly say I'm going to do that, brother you don't know the Lord. God has got a different function for each of us in the body of Christ. And I praise the Lord for those who have another burden. I praise the Lord for those who do something else. I praise the Lord for those who do evangelism. I praise the Lord for those who do social work, provided it's done out of love for Jesus and not for money or honor or anything else. So we need to know what our particular calling in the body of Christ is. It won't happen in one year, but over a period of time you must come to know what your burden is. And don't try to be everything. In the world they have a proverb which says, jack of all trades but master of none. Jack of all trades but master of none. You know, a little bit of plumbing, a little bit of carpentry, a little bit of electrical work and a little bit of this and a little bit of that and you can't do one thing properly. No. Even in the world they specialize, a plumber specializes in plumbing, a carpenter specializes in carpentry, an electrician specializes in electrical work, he doesn't know a thing about plumbing and they're quite happy. They seem to have more light than many people in the body of Christ. A lot of Christians try to be jack of all trades and master of none. There's a particular calling God has for you in the body of Christ. You know, some people are called to a ministry of prayer. It's really true. I really believe that. Some people can pray in a way I can't. And if I read a book written by them, I don't get condemned. Have you ever got condemned by reading a book on prayer? I used to when I was a child. I've become a man, I've put away childish things. I don't get condemned by somebody expressing his burden. I praise the Lord for it. I don't get condemned that I'm not picking up people from the gutters in Bangalore like Mother Teresa does in Calcutta. And I don't get condemned if somebody tells me he spends six hours in prayer every day. Great. That's probably his ministry. And equally, I don't expect anybody else to preach like I do or to have the ministry I have because I realize that's my burden. You know, I found the biggest criminals are evangelists. The biggest criminals in this area are evangelists. They expect everybody in the church to be an evangelist. They don't have a clue. Even God Almighty doesn't force everybody to be an I.O., everybody to be here, but these criminals want everybody to be an evangelist because that is their burden. It's like if I say, all of you must preach like me, you think I've gone off my head all of a sudden. But that's exactly what I think of all these evangelists who say that everybody should be an evangelist. Everybody must be a witness for Christ and there's a million miles of difference between a witness and an evangelist. You know, I'm not an electrician, but a few little things in the house I can fix perhaps, join two wires together. There's a difference between witness and evangelist, it's like that. So we need to ask the Lord, what is the burden? But I'll tell you something, all of us should be servants of the new covenant, whatever it is. You know, if it's not in the new covenant, then it's no use. If it doesn't ultimately lead to the building of the body of Christ and glorifying Christ, then it's a waste of effort. So let's turn back to 2 Corinthians in chapter 3, we were looking at, you know, where I said there's a difference between the old covenant and the new covenant. And I believe this is a great need for this time, because when I see the confusion and the chaos, you know, recently, if you know, sometime earlier this year, about six, seven months earlier in the United States, there was what people claim to be the greatest revival of recent times, where some guy was preaching for a hundred days of revival, etc., etc. I saw him for, very first time, I saw him for about two minutes in some TV somewhere, and I said, this guy's fake. But people discovered it after three, four months. Even great charismatic leaders went and anointed him, and people who call themselves apostles and also blind as a bat. And then it was finally discovered that the guy was fooling around with women for a long time, and he finally divorced his wife, and he was a drunkard in between sessions. And I said, I didn't know all that, but I could listen to him and say he's fake. Can you make out that? There's another very famous woman preacher who's on television. We have a lot of admirers of her right here, sitting here. Well, I have nothing against her, admiring her. A lot of what she says is true. But what surprises me is that CFC people can't gauge her spirit. I could gauge her spirit the very first time I heard her. Only later on I discovered that she built million-dollar homes for her, all her children, by making them all board members of her ministry. I didn't know all that, but I could make out there's something wrong in that spirit there. Why do I say this? When people who have heard the message in CFC for years can't gauge a person's spirit, I say they deserve to be deceived. They deserve to be deceived because they go by the letter and not the spirit. But they say the letter is all correct. I agree the letter is all correct, but the letter kills. Do you know that the letter kills? There's no use the letter being correct. It kills. It's the spirit that gives life. For years, I have said this, when you listen to a man, listen to his spirit, not his words. Unfortunately, many of us still don't know how to do that. And that is why your own life is shallow. That's why your home life, you're still defeated by sin because you're going by the letter. That's why you're so hard on people. That's why you've made yourself, some of you, self-appointed prophets when God never called you to be prophets. That's why you prefer to condemn people rather than encourage them. That's why you imagine yourself to be spiritual when you should be crying out in your knee. Do you know that there are elder brothers and sisters in our churches whom others can see so clearly, they are legalistic, they are hard. We find it difficult to go to them, but they themselves don't know it. They think they are the top spiritual people in India. Deception. They deserve to be deceived because they haven't heard the word which says, the letter kills. Dear brothers and sisters, we need to discern the spirit in our time. 2 Corinthians 3, we read in verse 6, the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. Even if it is the letter in the New Testament, it will kill. You can take a word in the New Testament and kill people with it. You can take verses in the New Testament and kill people with it. Do you know that? It's the spirit that gives life. We need to gauge the spirit. I remember when we were meeting in our home, that's before 1981, somewhere before we had a meeting hall, before we even knew that we would have a meeting hall. We didn't even have the money for it. We didn't have the money even to buy a bit of land. I think it was way back in 79 or something. Some of you who were there may remember this. I had a dream. Now, I've had very few dreams in my life that are from God, maybe 15, 20, perhaps. That's all in my whole life. I get a lot of dreams, but most of them are you eat too much at night or something like that. It's not from God. Or you're thinking a lot during the day about something, and that gets all mixed up and comes out as a dream. But a few dreams in my life have been from God. And one of those was very significant, where I saw myself preaching in a hall, and we never had a hall. And I saw a couple of other preachers who had also come there, were sitting with me. And then I spoke, and then they spoke, and then I spoke. And then I said to them, these two people who were sitting there, they were not from our church. They were visitors. I said, now, I'd like you to, let's criticize each other's preaching. You criticize mine, I criticize yours. So they got up and criticized me that, you know, some places my grammar was not correct or they were probably better in English than I was or some few things like that. I said, fine, I agree. Then it was my turn. And I did not speak to them. I spoke to the congregation. This is my dream. I said, brothers and sisters, whenever you listen to a person, listen to his spirit and not the words that he speaks. And then I saw myself at the end of that dream casting out demons from these two people. I shared this with that little group that met in our home, this was the beginning of the church those days. I said, this is what the Lord has shown me. And I have tried to stress that for nearly 30 years now. Listen to a person's spirit. Don't just say his doctrine is right. Do you know that the Pharisees had all their doctrines right? Jesus said that in Matthew 23, verse 2 and 3. Whatever the Pharisees tell you to do, he told his disciples, do. Do you think Jesus would have said, whatever Gautama Buddha said, told you to do, do? Or whatever Confucius or whoever, I don't know when he lived, was he before Christ? I don't know. But anyway, whoever were the religious leaders before Christ, whatever they said to you, do, do? No. Did he say what the Sadducees tell you to do, do? No. But what the Pharisees say to you, do, do. It was Jesus' certificate. Yet everything they say is right, but their life is all wrong. They were right according to the letter. And I believe that many of us, if we were listening to people who had a wrong spirit but were absolutely right in their doctrine, would have been fooled in Jesus' time if we were living then. What is it that the Holy Spirit has brought us? The ability to discern spirits. What is a spirit? Do you believe, let me ask you a very simple thing. Do you believe that a man or a woman who loves money and who wants to take money from poor people by preaching to them, can have a word from God? You tell me that. Not from the God I believe in. I don't believe that such a person can ever have a word from the Lord. Can they speak what is right? Yes. Even an atheist can get up and say here, 2 times 2 is 4, 2 times 3 is 6, 2 times 4 is 8, 2 times 5 is 10, 2 times 6 is 12, and he can go all the way down to the 12 times table and he's absolutely right in what he said. Not one thing wrong. Did it edify you? You think truth always edifies? Supposing I repeated the multiplication table here, would it edify you? Supposing I went on to chemistry and said H2 plus O is water, etc., etc., will that edify you? It's truth. It's truth. You can say, oh, what he said was absolute truth. That's right. H2 plus O is water. He said that. And A plus CL is sodium chloride, that's salt. He said it. This is the type of stupidity I find among some CFC believers. Oh, brother, but what they say is right. They actually said 8 times 8 are 64. You know that? Uh-huh. And you got edified by that, is it? Look at your life, defeated by sin. How much did that person edify you with all that truth they spoke? Zero. It was as good as their repeating the multiplication table. How much does the multiplication table bring spiritual life to you? It's truth. That's what I mean. The letter kills. The spirit gives life. And it's so important in our time, in the last minute in human history, that those who take upon themselves the responsibility to preach God's word in our churches, minister life. And by life, I don't mean excitement. You can't beat the Pentecostals and charismatics in excitement and emotionalism. Don't try it. You cannot beat them. They are masters at it. But you can beat them in life. Life is not by shouting and yelling and, you know, exciting people who are running around up on stage with a mic in your hand. I can't picture Jesus running up and down the stage with a mic in his hand and trying to speak the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the poor in spirit. No. I can't imagine Jesus like that. This life, life doesn't come with all this excitement and noise and shouting and raising your voice and... No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You cannot duplicate the Holy Spirit. You can produce an artificial fire like Nadab and Abihu produced a strange fire, but that's not the fire of God that changes people, that convicts people, that goes home to people's hearts. Remember, dear brothers, every one of you who gets up to speak God's Word, the letter kills, and however accurate that letter may be, it'll kill. You need the power of the Holy Spirit, and one of the fundamental requirements to have the Holy Spirit's power is humility, humility. You got to keep your mouth in the dust. You got to say, Jesus kept me from falling, not I got victory over sin. You got to say, Jesus builds His church, not I build the church. When I was a man, I put away childish things. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. That's what I mean. When a man's filled with the Spirit, he becomes free from the love of money. It's one pretty good test whether you're filled with the Holy Spirit. A lot of people say, what's the evidence of being filled with the Holy Spirit? 99.9% of Pentecostals say speaking in tongues. I say being free from the love of money. How about that for a sign, infallible sign of being filled with the Holy Spirit? Every one of these tongue speakers will fail, most of them anyway, because they are some of the biggest lovers of money I've seen in Christendom. Why is that? How is it that so many Christians are fooled by somebody who speaks in tongues and babbles something and loves money like anything, and you think he's filled with the Holy Spirit? With Spirit. The letter kills. They may be good eloquent speakers, they say, boy, Brother Zach, they can hold an audience spellbound for one hour. I'll tell you politicians in Tamil Nadu especially, who can hold you spellbound for two hours. Yeah, they're amazing eloquent speakers among the politicians. Two hours. Two hours. And they're not boring like some Christian preachers who bore you in 15 minutes. No. Eloquence is not anointing. Their eloquence at the end of two hours, you don't become more spiritual. You go home and your life is not changed. The letter kills. The Spirit gives life. And I don't mean just those who preach from the pulpit. All of us are using our mouth. Unless you're dumb, you speak many words during the day to many people. Even if you never preach in a pulpit, you speak to your husband, you speak to your wife, you speak to your neighbor, you speak to lots and lots of people every day. You have to minister life. Every time you open your mouth, words of life must come forth. Not letter, letter, letter, letter. One of the great tragedies I see with some of the young people, fine young people growing up in CFC is they are becoming legalists. Because they are following other legalists, thinking that legalism is holiness. It's not. It's a letter. Pick one letter. Why are your disciples eating grain on the Sabbath day as a letter? Master, Moses commanded us to kill this woman who was caught in adultery. Here's the chapter. Here's the verse. You think such legalists are not found in Christendom today? We have got them right in CFC. They got a verse. They got a verse in the New Testament. They don't understand the spirit. And the tragedy is that other younger people are following these legalists. And some of, they are fine people, but they missed the part. That's why it's so important for us. You know what it's called, this ministry? Verse 7 of 2 Corinthians 3, a ministry of death. Do you believe you can have a ministry of death in our churches? Yes, I've heard it. A ministry of death. I don't mean excitement and emotionalism. That doesn't fool me anymore. Ministry of death in the midst of all the emotionalism and excitement there is. The ministry of death came in letters engraved on stones and came with a certain glory. Who can write on a stone? It was God himself who wrote on those two tablets of stone. There was, I mean, you may have a doubt about the Bible being God's word, but nobody could have a doubt about when Moses came down on those two tablets. No, Moses could never have carved that onto a rock. How in the world? No human being could do it. More God sizzled lightning down on the rock and wrote those Ten Commandments. And it says here, that brought, isn't that a terrible thing to say? That the Ten Commandments brought death. Isn't that what it says? The ministry of death in letters engraved on stones. It came with a glory, sure. It was such a glory that the face of Moses was shining. Yeah, there is a glory in legalism, but it brings death. It's the ministry of Moses. It is the ministry of the law. It has been abolished. It is obsolete. It is a ministry of the Holy Spirit that's been going on now for more than 1,978 years. And the glory is greater. The glory is greater than the glory that Moses had. The glory is greater than what John the Baptist or Elijah or Elisha or any of those prophets had. It's a greater glory because it's the glory of Jesus. Are you gripped by it? Are the people in your church, in your home, gripped by what they see in your life, what they hear in your words, that every time you open your mouth, you bless them in your home? Maybe you only speak only two minutes, but you bless them because there's something glorious there, something wonderful. I remember hearing of D.L. Moody, who was a great evangelist, and in his lifetime, there was another great man of God who was his contemporary in the 19th century called A.B. Simpson. A.B. Simpson, I think he was a Presbyterian preacher who got sick and tired and finally met with God and was baptized in the Holy Spirit. He became a different man, and boy, his ministry became completely different after that. And I'll never forget what D.L. Moody said about A.B. Simpson. He said, everything that man says blesses him. This was not a young believer saying, it was D.L. Moody, the greatest evangelist of his time saying, everything that man says blesses him. You know that you can be like that. He may not be a preacher. Imagine you can be a wife like that or a mother like that in your home, that, yeah, all children will rise up and praise their mothers on their birthday or husbands will praise their wives on their birthday, wives will praise their husbands. That happens even among the heathen. Everybody is saintly that way. But I mean real blessing. Real blessing where your words bless your children, your words bless your husband, bless your wife. The words that come out of your mouth are a blessing. You may speak just two minutes. You know, that's what we should long for. There's a glory in this new covenant, and it's primarily to come through our tongue. That's why on the day of Pentecost, God put those tongues of fire on people's heads saying, I want to get a hold of your tongue. My dear brothers and sisters, this is what God's saying to you today. I want to get a hold of your tongue. He's saying, you have been the master of your tongue for long enough. Will you finish with that in 2008 and let me be the Lord of your tongue in 2009? Let me put that tongue on fire for me. You can't expect the Lord to put your tongue on fire in the pulpit if it's not belonging to him the rest of the day, the rest of the week, all the time. You can't rent out your tongue to the devil and then suddenly ask God to use it at some time. No. It has to be his all the time, the letter. You know, the old covenant person speaks words, and the new covenant person speaks words. But there's a difference. One is letter, and the other is spirit. Well, one, you know, stirs people, draws people. The other just is truth. You know, you've heard me use the illustration of, you go to the meat market here in Bangalore and you see the meat hanging up there with all the flies sitting on it. You don't even feel like going anywhere near it. But somebody buys that chicken and roasts it on a fire with all the masala and all, and if you're walking outside that house, you feel like going inside and eating it. What's the difference? The same piece of chicken, but it's on fire. It's on fire. That's the difference. And there's a lot of difference between the same word and the word in the power of the Holy Spirit. I remember hearing of an actor, I think it was many years ago, an actor once told a preacher in England. He said, the difference between me as an actor and you as a preacher is this. When I act on the stage, I act about something that is totally untrue, but make people really believe it's true, that I am like that, I'm doing that. But you, you preach about something that's really true, but you preach it in such a way that nobody can believe it's true. That's the difference between an actor and a preacher. What a, what a tragedy. Are you convinced deep down in your heart that Jesus Christ, the truth about Christ is the most important thing in this universe? That the relationship of man with God is the most important thing? That's not enough if you say, oh, my children accepted the Lord and they've taken baptism. I'm shocked. I'm absolutely shocked that believers in CFC can be merely satisfied, merely with, my children have taken baptism. They can take baptism and go to hell. Are they disciples of Jesus? Are they blessing other people? What have you brought up your children for? Just to die and go to heaven like a selfish, self-centered Christian? Or have you brought them up to be legalists or people who have an itch to straighten other people's lives? No, no, no. The letter kills. The spirit gives life. We must long, Lord, I want the new covenant life in me. The ministry of the spirit, verse 8, is more glorious. Another description of this old covenant ministry, one we call it the ministry of death. Verse 9, it's called the ministry of condemnation. Ministry of condemnation. Make people feel condemned when they hear you. When they hear you speak, they feel, oh, I'm not good enough. I'm always doing things wrong. You are a wonderful old covenant preacher or even a woman sharing the word with somebody. You need not be a preacher. But you speak to somebody in such a way the person feels, oh, I'm not good enough. And you think, ah, I got convicted in by the Holy Spirit. No, sir, you didn't. You just brought condemnation on a person. It's old covenant ministry. And I tell you, there's a lot of it going on everywhere in the world and even in our churches. The ministry of condemnation that discourages people, that whacks them left, right and center in the church and sends them home. It's an old covenant ministry. There is a glory in it, sure. And all those dumb people who don't know the difference between the old covenant and new covenant think you're a wonderful preacher. Yeah, we all did. I did it as a child. But when I was a man, I put away childish things. The Bible says in Galatians that in the old covenant, people were like children. But now we are sons. We put away childish things. Many of us in our pursuit of holiness have gone the old covenant route. Some of us have got stuck there. We got to go beyond that and see the emptiness, the debt, the condemnation, the good for nothing, all that in that and move on to the new covenant where God makes us ministers. The ministry of condemnation had a glory about it, sure, but the ministry of righteousness is a greater glory. And it says here further that we're not like Moses who had to hide his face. And that's another mark of this old covenant. These things need to be stressed in our time. Why did Moses put a veil on his face? Now, if you read the Old Testament, we read he put a veil on his face because the people of Israel were scared to look at this glory shining on him. They got scared. He put a veil on his face. But when you read in the New Testament, you read there's a second reason. And the second reason is this. That he did not want. This is in verse 13 of Second Corinthians three. He put a veil on his face so that the children of Israel would not see that that glory was slowly getting less and less and less and less every day. Underneath the veil, this glory was becoming less and less and less and less. And after about a week, he could take it off. His face became like everybody else's. So he put a veil, not just because people were scared to look at him. According to this verse, it says, because so that the children of Israel don't see this glory is fading away. And Paul says, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, this is what Old Covenant ministry is like. Sounds very powerful. But by the time Monday comes, it's faded a little. And Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, it's all fading, fading, fading. And because it is fading, it's fading in the preacher and it's fading in the listeners also. We have to put a mask. You know that most Christians live with a mask. Praise the Lord, brother. How are you? It's good, isn't it? God is great. God is good all the time. And there's a mask. And underneath, here's a soul struggling with defeat and anxiety and failure and condemnation and gloom and bad moods. But we dare not let other people know that on Sunday. You've got this little scared man living inside who wants to hide himself under this mask of being very spiritual. That's how it was in Moses, a veil, because the glory is gone. The glory is fading away underneath. And we know that if people see us as we really are, they won't accept us. That's the fear a lot of people have. You know, that's the thing I've tried to eliminate to the best of my ability in a church, in our church. Brother, sister, we'll accept you as you are. With all your failures. And even as a believer, even if you're an elder brother, you have bungled up and you've messed up things. We'll accept you as you are. Don't have to put on a mask. You don't have to pretend. You don't have to pretend with me anyway. Because very often it's easy for a spiritual man to see through that mask. You don't realize that. It's very easy. I listen to a person for about five or ten minutes and I know whether the guy is real or not. It's pretty easy after a while to find out. It's like these gold jewelers can pick out gold from counterfeit immediately. I can't. I get fooled all the time by not only that, by anything. I say, oh, that looks real and it's not. So, it's no use putting on a mask. It doesn't help you or anybody else. I'm not saying we should confess our sins publicly. I'm saying don't pretend. Don't pretend. God loves us without our masks. Moses put on a mask and old covenant people wear masks. That's another way you can find out whether you're an old covenant person. You always want to pretend that there's a greater glory in your life than there is underneath this mask. And underneath the mask the glory is fading away. Maybe you're doing things today that you would not have done when you were first converted many years ago. Are you like that? Are you committing sins today which you would not have dreamed of committing when you were converted five years ago, ten years ago, fifteen years ago? Tell me, fifteen years ago when you were converted, would you have watched internet pornography? No. Oh, you were serious when you first got converted. What happened? What happened? Glory is fading, but you better not let anybody know it. You know what you need, brother? Not condemnation. I'm not saying this to condemn you. I want to tell you, Jesus loves you. He wants to deliver you from this mask type of life. He wants to bring you to reality where people can catch you off guards by surprise in some situation and they'll find you're spiritual. Where people can surprise you and open up your mind and they'll find you're thinking about spiritual things. You want that type of life? Or you want a life where you're always on your guard? I often think of a dog being told to always act like a cat. Meow, meow, meow. I mean, you probably can train a dog to do that. But once one is really angry, it's a no meow then. See, that's how a lot of believers are. We train them in church to behave like this, talk like this, talk like this. And then all of a sudden something happens and the real self comes out. That was their real self all along. You see that? Get rid of the mask. I'm not saying confess your sins publicly. No, I don't believe in that. Confess your sins to God, but hate hypocrisy. Hate pretense. Hate living a double life. Be willing to be known as you are. Don't pretend that your marriage is glorious if it's not. I'm not saying confess your sins. No, no, don't misunderstand me. But don't pretend in any area. If there's a glory fading underneath, go to God and say, Lord, that's old covenant. How is it with Jesus? How should it be with a Christian? How should it be with one who has the Holy Spirit within him, which Moses did not have? Do you know that you can have something Moses did not have? He did not have the Holy Spirit within. It was outside, a glory on his face. That slowly faded, faded, faded, faded, faded, faded. And after a week, he was just like anybody else. I've seen that. Believers who were radically converted, you see them five years later, they are just like any unbeliever. So much for this false teaching of once saved, always saved. They're just like any unbeliever. But they become double children of hell because somebody taught them once saved, always saved. You're going to heaven, brother, even though you're living in sin. That's what the false prophets told the people in Israel. Peace, peace, everything is okay. I'm not going to be a false prophet and tell you a lie. I want to tell you, brethren, if you live according to the flesh, Romans 8, 13, you will die spiritually and go to hell. He's not talking about physical death, because everybody dies physically. Even Jesus died physically. But it says if you live according to the flesh, you will die. Take it seriously. It's like a doctor telling a person, you smoke another cigarette and you're going to die. You take some more alcohol and you're going to die. And they take it seriously. The Holy Spirit says, if you live according to the flesh, you'll die. We don't take it so seriously. It's very serious. We need to really repent if we find the standard of our life today is worse than what we were when we were first converted. I mean, if you know less after five years in school than what you knew when you, the day you joined the kindergarten, something's wrong with that school. Definitely. So there's where we need to. Now, let's turn to what the ministry of the Holy Spirit's like. The new covenant. Here it says, verse 16, when a person turns to the Lord, you can throw away the veil. You know when you can throw away this veil, this mask. I wish all of you would throw away your masks before you go away from this conference. Say, Lord, I'm going to throw away my veil. I'm going to throw away my mask. I want to be known as myself. It may not be very great, but that's what I am. And I'm becoming better. When you turn to the Lord, and by the way, the Lord here is the Holy Spirit. It's the only place in the whole Bible where the Holy Spirit is referred to as the Lord. It says in verse 17, this Lord I'm talking about is the Holy Spirit. When you turn to the Holy Spirit and make him Lord of your life, you can throw the veil away. So if you've got a mask in your life today, what I'm trying to tell you in Jesus' name is the Holy Spirit is not Lord in your life. And if you're under some delusion that you're filled with the Holy Spirit because you babble some syllables, I want to deliver you from that delusion. Is the Holy Spirit Lord in your life? Then even if you didn't speak in tongues, you are filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus never spoke in tongues. He was filled with the Holy Spirit. New covenant type of filling, not the old covenant type of filling that Gideon and John the Baptist had. New covenant type of filling with the Holy Spirit, Jesus had, and he never spoke in tongues. I believe in speaking in tongues. I believe it's a very good gift. But I don't believe that's the mark of being filled with the Holy Spirit. I think one of the clearest marks of being filled with the Holy Spirit is that you stop loving money. And that you can love your enemies. That you can bless those who curse you. That you can do things in secret. Without other people knowing about it. For the Lord. Those are the evidence I look for. It says here, when you turn to the Lord, the Holy Spirit, you throw the veil. And then, without this veil, you go around with an unveiled face. You know these in western weddings. The bride comes in with a veil over her face. And then, I don't know exactly when it is. But finally the... Is it the bridegroom? Or somebody takes off, removes that veil, and they see each other face to face. Ah! I found my bridegroom. There's something symbolic about that. I've seen Jesus now, I don't need a veil. Are you like that? Have you seen your bridegroom? Have you seen Jesus? With unveiled face, we see the glory of Jesus. Moses saw that glory in the mountain for 40 days. And it could not get inside him. It could not get inside him. It was only on the outside. He saw the glory, he saw the glory. It was there, shining, shining, shining, shining, shining. He came down and it had shone on his face for about a week. But now, in our hearts, we see the glory of Jesus. And this glory comes inside. Not like on Moses' face. And from inside, it gives me that same glory inside. And then it begins to be reflected on my face. Not like a light, like Moses only had a light. This is the glory of Jesus. Full of grace, and truth, and humility, and love for unlovely people, and perpetual joy in difficult circumstances. Good moods, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The glory of Jesus. It doesn't matter whether the face is shining or not. It's the beauty of Jesus. That is this new covenant glory. It's not even preaching. It's a glory that's gripped us inside. And how does it come? We see the glory of the Lord. We spend our time looking at Jesus. How did it come in Moses' face? By looking at God for 40 days. But he still could get it only on the outside. But now the Holy Spirit shows us the glory of Jesus in the Bible. You'll never see it if you don't read the Bible carefully. I believe, you know, Sadhu Sundar Singh, I told you about in the last message. He wasn't a great Bible teacher. That was not his calling. He didn't plant churches. He was primarily an evangelist. That was his calling in the body of Christ. But, and he didn't even, I don't know, but I don't think he understood much about the teaching of the epistles of the new covenant and the body and all that. But he lived the new covenant life. Boy! I don't know if anybody in India lived the new covenant life like he did. He may not have been able to communicate it to many others. A lot of people think they can be like Sadhu Sundar Singh just by dressing up, wiping him and put a turban on the head. It's not that easy. They think that's old covenant stuff, imitating somebody on the outside. It's an inward thing. It's an inward thing. But the thing I heard about Sadhu Sundar Singh was that he mainly read the Gospels. He mainly read the Gospels and he saw what Jesus was like. And I know that's not the whole New Testament. We need the whole New Testament. But I would really encourage you read the Gospels. I've been reading the Gospels tremendously again and again the last few months. And I'm still in Matthew. I got to about chapter 20. You see something about Jesus. You see the glory of Jesus. And it says here the Holy Spirit makes you like that. And the difference is in this case, in Moses' case it was from one degree of glory to a lesser degree, to a lesser degree, to a lesser degree. Over a period of week it disappeared completely. Here it says it's the opposite. Verse 18, from one degree of glory to a higher degree, to a higher degree, to a higher degree. Boy, there's no end to it. It's a wonderful life. I mean I'm so excited when God shows me something about my life which is unchrist-like. Boy, I tell you honestly it absolutely excites me. Lord! That's amazing. I never even knew that unchrist-likeness in my life for so many years. Why am I excited? It proves that I have taken one more step closer to God. That's why I got light on that. Otherwise I wouldn't have got light on it. If I was in the same place, I would just get the same light I have already had for the last 20 years. But I got light on something that I never knew in 50 years was unchrist-like. I get light on it. I'm excited. Have you got some light on yourself this year? Let's take the whole year. That you never knew about yourself. Can you tell me something specific? Don't say yes. Say in this particular area. I could tell you a number of areas. In 2008 where I got light on myself. I'm not talking about those low-level sins like lusting with the eyes and love of money. I'm talking about these fine, subtle little things where there's a little unlikeness to Christ. It's like these highly expensive Persian carpets where one string, one thin string out of place spoils the whole carpet. It's like that. I mean in the eyes of an expert. That's why they pay hundreds of thousands of rupees for what looks another fellow can make a duplicate and sell it to you for 2,000 rupees. It's not the same. An expert can make out the difference there. It's in those fine things. Just a little word out of place or a little expenditure that was unnecessary. Or a little wastefulness. Or a little indiscipline. Or a little carelessness. Or a little laziness. Or something which is unlike Christ in your conduct. This is new covenant life. And when this happens inside us, this is the secret of godliness. The secret of godliness is in Jesus. Not in any doctrine. It's in seeing Jesus that He lived in a flesh exactly like mine and never sinned. That in this flesh He manifested the glory of the Father. Boy! I'll tell you how many of you have understood that secret of godliness. We have preached it in the church for 33 years. I'll tell you how many of you have understood it. Those who are gripped by the fact that the glory of the Father, full of grace and truth, can be seen in my life. Do you believe that? Is it happening? Little by little by little. It says from one degree of glory to another by the Holy Spirit. It's not a question of how much you know or how much you preach. It's not a question of how active you are in evangelism, going this, that and the other. Those are all the Marthas. Marthas who are busy doing this thing for the Lord, that thing for the Lord, that thing for the Lord. The world is full of such people who try to you know, I get a lot of emails from different parts of the world of people who try to impress me with what they're doing for the Lord like Marthas in the kitchen. I made five chapatis and I made this biryani in the kitchen and I made this and I did this for the Lord and I did this and I brought an extra special type of spice. I'm not impressed. Zero. I like to listen to the Marys who tell me what the Lord has spoken to them. And you'll find in the final day in the final day, that picture of what happened in the house in Bethany is a picture of the final day when Jesus sits on his throne and the Marthas will come up and say Lord, Lord, we did this in the kitchen we made chapatis, we made chicken biryani we cast out demons, we preached with this and the Lord will say you didn't have a clue about what the new covenant is about. You were distracted about 101 things. Get away from me. I don't know you. You never had any interest in knowing me. Will you hear that? I don't want to hear it. I say Lord, my passion in life is to know you. To be a worshipper. That's why how many of you got reports from me about what I've done for the Lord or what you do here and there. I mean I share a little bit with the elders in our church sometimes in our church locally, but we don't believe in that. How many reports have we sent out as a church in 33 years? Zero. How many photographs do we send about the Lord's work? Zero. We're busy listening. We're busy listening at Jesus' feet like Mary, because Jesus said, Martha, Martha, you're worried about many things, but there is only one thing that is needful. Mary has chosen that good part to sit at my feet and listen to me. I believe what Jesus said. I think 1,001 things are needful. Jesus' one thing is needful. That's what Christendom needs to listen to today. Christendom is full of people like these companies' annual reports. Coca-Cola company, this is what we did, this is what we did, and all the different companies that are talking about what all they did in the year. Christendom is also catching up with them and saying we did this and we went here and we did there. Sorry. Let's hear what the Lord spoke to you. That'll tell me whether you're close to the Lord or not. And if you're just parroting, parroting, parroting means blindly repeating what you've heard from other people for a hundred times, then the Lord hasn't spoken to you at all. Did the Lord speak anything to you directly? Or was it always through a secretary? What would you think of a wife who tells, my husband always speaks to me through his secretary, you know? Every day he speaks to me, he doesn't speak to me directly, but his secretary tells me everything that he wants to tell me. What a nice husband I have. He writes letters to me through the secretary, the secretary signs for my husband, he doesn't even sign it himself, but every day I get a letter sent by the secretary of what the husband wants to say. I say, what type of relationship do you have with your husband? You only hear your husband through his secretary. He never speaks to you directly. Something is wrong. And I believe something is wrong with many of us. You hear God, yes, but you only hear him through a secretary. You don't have a bridal relationship with Jesus. Jesus is not and if I ask you, what did the Lord say to you? Well, you imagine that the Lord told you something because you've got to pretend that he's speaking to you. It's the same old thing he's told you for 20 years. He never says anything new to you. Well, it can be the same thing if it's fresh and meaningful, but it can be dry, you know, the manna came from heaven, it was the same thing every day, but it was fresh, but you kept the manna for a few days, even 24 hours, it began to stink. A new covenant ministry is something that changes us inwardly from one degree of glory to another. I want to say to you, my brothers and sisters, don't be satisfied in this last minute of human history until you are experiencing that, that your anger is gradually disappearing. Your anxiety is gradually vanishing. Your fearful nature is gradually going away. Your bad moods are getting rarer and rarer and rarer and on the way to disappearing and your complaining murmuring nature is gradually getting sanctified, becoming a nature of praise and thankfulness. And your wife can see the difference. Your husband can see the difference. Gee, this is not the man I knew. This is not the man or woman I married. He's become different. I've met a couple of women whose husbands are unconverted who are always preaching to their husbands. I can prophesy their husbands will never be converted. A husband doesn't need a preacher. We think we're going to convert people with preaching. It says in one Peter 3 verse 1 You wives, if you got a husband who doesn't obey God's word without speaking one word if you don't believe it, go to that scripture. Without speaking one word you can convert him by your life. That is what Peter says. The Holy Spirit says. It's by our life. It's by a glory that people cannot fight against. Brothers and sisters be a godly person. People may criticize you, fight against you but they'll never forget you. And when they're on that death bed they'll think of you because you're the only one who reminded them of eternity and the God that they would have to meet beyond the grave. That's the only life worth living not by condemning people just by saintliness just the way you look, the way Jesus looked at people. It says the Roman soldiers fell back. There was something about him. Something about the holiness and purity of his face. They couldn't look at it again. You know it can be like that. That unbelievers will look at you and they'll never forget you. If you are godly. It's not preaching. It's a life of glory. Let's covet it in these closing moments of history. Let's pray. Father, as we hear the word, it is so clear that we can never live this life. We can never manufacture it. We can never produce this life in a thousand years. The eternal life has to be your gift. It has to be a gift. But we want it Lord. We want it desperately. And you have said when you seek me with all your heart, you will find me. It's easy to preach clever sermons and impressive sermons and say so many wonderful things and impress people with our knowledge. But Lord, show us the glory of Jesus and help us to be gripped by his life. Have mercy upon us. We are a needy people. Give us all grace, Father. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.