In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of truly knowing and experiencing Jesus Christ. He compares our relationship with Jesus to old spinster ladies who only play around on the piano without truly learning to play. The speaker encourages listeners to get acquainted with Jesus and recognize that He is the truth. He highlights the need to have faith in Christ and to spend more time in His presence, allowing the Holy Spirit to teach and guide us. The sermon concludes with a declaration of victory and freedom in Christ.

Jesus, in the flesh, disappeared. And then suddenly he appeared again in the hearts of his disciples as the fountain of life, as their righteousness, their indwelling new man. And that is the spirit of truth. It's Christ himself. He had to go through that dark valley. He had to break through the veil to make the way open for every human being to be reconciled to God. And it's a great mystery that Jesus had to appear in the flesh. God manifests in the flesh. God speaking to us by his Son, speaking his own word, the word that was God, came and dwelt among us and quickened humanity. Now, he says, the spirit of truth, when he has come, will reprove the world of sin. And that sin is the sin of unbelief. Now, it has been said that faith must come from the word by which ye are born again, the word of life. What does Peter say? The word of the Lord endureth forever by which word ye are born again. When the word is preached and understood, it becomes seed that brings forth fruit. If thou shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead presently, there comes the revelation, the appearance of the Son of God in the human heart. The thing that science has been looking for for centuries is revealed to us by his spirit. That's why Jesus says you can't understand him now, but when he, the spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth. The light doesn't dawn upon us until we're filled with the Holy Ghost and until we reckon with the Holy Ghost. That's why it says he that believeth on me, as the scripture has said, or he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, because I go unto the Father. Believing on him means to recognize him, is to know who he is and what he is. That's why the Lord has always dealt with us about seeking to know him and the power of his resurrection. Everything else is a waste of time. You can never know anything and you can never be anything, but you can know Jesus and you can be for Jesus. He is the life. Why do we bother at all with self? Why? It's because we love ourselves so much and because the enemy is working overtime to divert our minds and our attention from following just Jesus. And the devil has so many ways of doing that. And some ways look very wonderful and very spiritual. That's the reason people run after every Tom, Dick and Harry that claims to be an apostle. And behind a lot of that is the effort of the devil to divert the attention of people from the fountain within their own hearts. I must believe that Jesus Christ has come to live out his own life within me and make room for him. And if I believe that, if I believe that Jesus is all the Bible says, why, he will lead me to perfection. He, the great shepherd of the sheep, whom God brought again from the dead, will work in me that which is well-pleasing in his sight, making me perfect in every good work to do his will. And all my foolishness and all my staggering along the way have ceased. And now he takes over. He takes charge. And the Spirit of God will always convict us of that sin because we don't believe on him. We don't let go and let God. Why, Jesus Christ says, you've not chosen me, but I have chosen you. I ought to settle at once for all that I don't belong to myself. I have no right to live my own life any longer. And yet we all do, you know, more or less, until that light of internal recollection, that wonderful light of the indwelling of Jesus Christ is received. But it's because we don't fully believe. Just think what would happen today if every one of us could honestly and truly believe that Jesus Christ is the fountain of life within me. It doesn't mean immediately that you're going to raise the dead or open the eyes of the blind. But it means that you have him, that you delight yourself in him, that he is able to reveal himself in the little duties of your daily life. And it will be no more you, but it'll be Christ. And maybe you wouldn't have a single gift and people wouldn't see anything extraordinary in you, but you would see something extraordinary. You would draw from that fountain, it would be Jesus and not yourself. And when Jesus here teaches his disciples to pray in his name, he says, I say not that I will pray for you. He speaks of that mystery, which so few people apprehend. You can almost always tell when people get the light. You can tell by their praying. They stop this baby talk that so often disgraces our prayer meetings. And they'll, they begin to talk definitely and personally. And they talk to God as if God was their father. It's Christ in them. Christ somehow has come to be revealed inside of them and they are no more praying. It's Christ that prays in them. And he always addresses the father and he does it with a definiteness and with a faith that allows of no question mark. I remember how Mrs. Robinson used to pray. She would stand and instead of hanging up her family wash, she would say, I ask father so-and-so. And that was that. And then it would happen. That's the prayer of faith. You shall ask in my name. You shall see me again. I will come again and your heart will rejoice. And when Jesus comes again, he comes to be my life. And oh, so many people think of Jesus as outside of them. And they'll talk about having a vision. I got up one day in Ridgewood and spoke about seeing Christ. Seeing Christ is an act of the Holy Ghost that fills your whole soul with the knowledge that he has come with the sight of him. It's something that only the Holy Ghost can do. That's why he says, none of the princes of this world have known it, but unto us God has revealed them by his Spirit. How do you see yourself? Well, you can look in the mirror and all you see is dust and ashes. But you see yourself by being conscious of your mind, your will, your thoughts, your intellect. You see yourself by knowing who you are, by being conscious of the function of your Spirit. But you don't see your Spirit. You never see yourself with your natural eyes. The apostle Paul says, we look not at the things that are seen. We don't know Christ after the flesh anymore. After I got through talking about seeing Jesus, a woman got up, and I'm sorry to say it was someone that should have known better, and talked about how she saw Jesus with her natural eyes. She had a vision. Lots of people have visions. Lots of ungodly people have visions. Catholics have visions. They see the Mother of God, and they see St. Alfonso, and they see all kinds of things. And they do see them. And that doesn't make people spiritual. But to see Christ is an act of the Holy Ghost. It means that the Spirit of Christ has come to dwell within you, to unite himself with your Spirit. He that is joined unto the Lord is one Spirit. That's the truth. The truth is that I'm not dead anymore. Reckon yourselves dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God. That's the truth. And the Holy Ghost of truth has been sent forth by Jesus Christ. In fact, he is Jesus Christ himself. And he has come to make me conscious of it, and to make me know that Jesus and I are one, and that he is the one. And that as I let go, it is Christ within me. That's the mystery that God desires to reveal to his saints, and has been hid from ages and generations. That's why he says in Galatians, we were under the law, and the law was our schoolmaster, and we were no better than slaves, until faith came. But now faith has come. What is faith? True faith always relates to that indwelling of Christ. True faith always opens your eyes to see the truth. Oh, hallelujah, how long have I been a slave? How long have I struggled with myself, and struggled with mine enemies? But I struggle no more. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Hallelujah, it's done. What the law could not do, God did, by raising again that great shepherd of the sheep. Now I am no longer a sheep that's gone astray. But now I'm in the fold of my shepherd, and I have life and have it more abundantly. And when he leads me out, he goes before me. And that shepherd will perfect that which concerneth me. He will make me perfect in every good work to do his will. I need to know Jesus like that. I need to know the truth. I need to study the Bible in the light of the Holy Ghost, or I will never have faith. Faith can only come by the word of God. That's what the word is sent for. That's why Joshua was commanded to meditate there in day and night. And that's why the righteous loves the law of the Lord, and he meditates there in day and night. The reason we haven't grown more fully is because perhaps we have not been planted by the rivers of water. We don't study that word. We take a little morsel here and a little morsel there, and we run off with it, and we please ourselves like a cat that's got a fish in his mouth. You don't get any place that way. God is dealing with you. God is giving you Christ. We need to know the Bible thoroughly. We need to know the New Testament. We need to meditate there in day and night. We need to get still over the Bible until God, the Spirit of truth, can guide me into all truth, and it'll come in a wonderful way. And the wonderful thing is that the very simple-minded are invited to come and receive this wisdom. If thou liftest up thy voice and criest after knowledge, thou shalt find the knowledge of the Lord. And I tell you, one of our greatest sins is our self-inflicted stupidity. Nobody is stupid by birth. We're stupid by choice. We choose to be stupid. We choose to be dumb. Instead of choosing, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And when I choose the fear of the Lord, I will want to get acquainted with Jesus. He has come to dwell with me. The disciples didn't know who he was, yet he was among them. And then when he helped them out of their dilemmas, then they said, What manner of man is this? Couldn't this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that also this man should not have died? Sure he could have, but he had a lesson to teach them. And it was a very painful lesson. They had to sit by the bedside of Lazarus and hold his hand and feel his pulse, and see the life ebb away, and see the agony, and see him writhing on his bed of pain, and then give up the ghost, and then they had to go to the funeral. That isn't an easy thing. When everybody cries and everybody weeps, and then to see that poor boy laid away, and all your praying to Jesus availed nothing. And then when he came, he had lain in the grave four days already. It all was necessary for them to learn that one lesson. Not a lesson about their own faith, but a lesson about their own Almighty Jesus. And those are the lessons Jesus Christ is striving to teach you and me day by day, because He is today the life-giving Spirit. And oh, what does He rather, what would He rather do than teach you and me that lesson? Ye have not so learned Christ. I tell you, we're too slow, because we don't believe in Him. If I believe in Him, I'll reckon with Him. And when a time of testing comes, I'm going to say, Hallelujah! I know my Lord will lead me in triumph. And I will get down at the feet of Jesus and say, Lord, what hast Thou to teach me? What lesson do I have to learn? But we go through life like some of these old spinster ladies, when they, when they feel their youth is gone and old age is creeping on, then they begin to sit down at the piano, and then they want to become Paderewskis. And then they hammer around on the keys of the piano, and they never get beyond the first stages. They just shut their ears, and they think they're playing wonderful music. And that's the way we are. We hammer around on the piano, and we talk about Jesus and all that, but why don't we get down and get acquainted with Him? He is the truth. This is the truth. Christ is the truth. Christ is within me, thank God. I am made for Him. I am to be a vessel unto honor, sanctified and meet for the Master's use. The Lord is my light and my salvation. I'll never shine otherwise. Why don't I let Him shine? Well, we're satisfied to shine a little bit, to kindle our own light. We're satisfied to be a little bit spiritual and to talk spiritually. And that's why we put on a spiritual wine when we pray and when we testify. We want people to think that we are very, very spiritual, you know. And oh heavens, what hypocrisy, what nonsense. Let me be filled with the Holy Ghost. Let me learn my lesson. I have a wonderful teacher, and my teacher is the Holy Ghost. But I need to spend more time in His presence. In fact, I ought to redeem the time because the days are evil. It is appointed unto man once to die. And when I die, the chapter's closed, the lesson's closed, and I'm going to reap what I have sown. And some of us are likely to miss a great deal of what God had in store for us and had in His mind for us if we had fought the fight. How many people failed when Pentecost came because it was a tremendous fight. And rather than fighting the fight honestly, they chose an easier path. God asked them to live by faith. Why? That was a terrible fight to fight. It was so much easier to join an organization and to get a job and get a salary. And the great bulk of people did exactly that. I've had my discussions with young men, and they didn't like it because Pentecost, it was not organized. It was not offering salaries to their ministers. And they wanted to get married. And of course, when you have a wife and raise a family of children, you've got to have something to buy your margarine with and God knows what else. You can't live by faith entirely. But look at Lillian Trasher, went into Egypt. She had nothing. She didn't even have her fare when God called her to go to Egypt, but she had God. Look what God did with her. Look what God did with Gunnar Vindgren in Brazil, with Salter and Burton in Africa, and many others that dared launch out on God. Salter and Burton went to Africa, and the first thing that happened to them was that they took fever and were deathly sick. And they were advised by their best friends to go back home. And Salter's grave had already been dug, and they were going to stick him in. But they stuck it out, and God met them. And God raised them up, and to this day, look at Elder Brooks. What a fight he fought. What a marvelous victory. That man won, and he never got through fighting until he went to heaven. And he was called the Fighting Elder. And what he's doing today, we don't know. I think he's preaching to the angels. Hallelujah, I have found him. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. You've got to look within and find your friend within, and then let go and let him be the one. Praise the Lord.