This sermon emphasizes the importance of returning to the power of the Holy Spirit, highlighting the decline of the church when the Holy Spirit is not central, the need for individuals to be filled with the Holy Ghost daily, and the significance of seeking God's presence and leadership through the Holy Spirit in order to overcome the challenges of the world.

Only imagine, oh God bless you, you may be seated. You know, as he was singing that song, I thought several years ago, I'd been in Burkina Faso, had 1100 preachers. One of the greatest Pentecostal churches I've ever worked with is there, right on that northern Sahara, very poor, 90% unemployed, it was just a barter country, but some of the greatest people. And for two weeks I've been there, 1100 preachers, the building we were in was a metal building, just a metal top, temperature outside was 150 and inside at least 125. I'd labored there, we'd had such a wonderful time. They honored me like the missionary there for 20 years said, I've never known him to honor a man. An old pastor died, 75 years old, and I performed that funeral. They say they never let that happen, but when I got through, I went back to Lomé, to the Bible college there, I was going then to Benin, I had another group of preachers and on a Sunday morning I was very, very tired and just about ready to go home, but I still had a lot to do. And I went out to the little chapel and I just sat down on the front seat and I looked up and they had a plaque over the platform that said, perhaps today. I never wept so hard in my life, just thinking, perhaps today, just might go home. It may be that time, he is coming, just any moment now. It is a wonderful time to be alive. There's things happening in this world around us, just got news from India, we graduated 300 students this month in that world of a thousand million people. One of our graduates had come to school anyway, his heart was bad and the Hindu doctor in the hospital told him, there's nothing we can do, absolutely nothing, you couldn't even stand a transplant if we could do it, you're just going to die, you have a very short time to live. But he come on to the school anyway and God healed him during the course of school, totally just sitting there in that school, God healed him. And when he got out, he went back to that Hindu doctor in that hospital and he said to him, I want you to examine my heart again. And he said, why? I said, I just want you to do it. And when he got through with all of the examination, Josh said the words of that Hindu doctor was, who or what did this to you? Who or what? He said, what do you mean? He said, your heart is perfect. He said, who or what did this to you? And he told him, he said, well, I've been very intense time seeking after Jesus and what's called the school of Christ. Right in the middle of that, Jesus healed me. That old Hindu doctor said to him, said, what a man have to do to get that school. And he said, I'm just sure we'll give you one of them. We have it in seven languages, seven of the major language, Hindu, Tamil, others. He said, which one do you want it in? He said, the Tamil. And so it give it to him. And now from six to nine o'clock every morning, every staff member has to go to that school. Oh, hallelujah. Praise God. What a report. I tell you, there's things happening in this world. If you measure God by our own little bitty world, we don't know anything like the brother talking about there in South Africa around the world. Things are happening, folks. Angels are looking at what's going on. I just want to tell you. I know you probably realize it. But you, you, if you don't, you need to wake up and smell a rosary. How fortunate you are to be in a place like this. Where Christ is, where the Holy Ghost is free to move. You know, you travel and you learn what's really happened to this church. I mean, most part around. It's very sad that you have to say that. But to find a place where there's reality, where people preach the gospel, where deal with your heart, where you can worship God. It is, it is, it is a very wonderful, wonderful opportunity. I want to read from second Thessalonians chapter two, verse 11 and 12. I want to preach to you tonight. I want God to help me. I've got to deal with some things going on and the answer, the answer right here tonight. We got to sing in that song. I love you, Jesus. I just said, I do love you. If you'll teach me how I want to love you more. I do want to love you more. I just don't know how. That's the only reason I don't love him more. I don't know how, but I want to. I, my message tonight, a strong delusion are given over to the flesh. Going to read from second Thessalonians two, verse 11 and 12. And for this cause, God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie. That they might all be damned who believe not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. Father, thank you. This wonderful worship for the faithfulness of this choir to be here, to lead us, to worship, to bring us to focus where we come now to hear the word of God. Let it have free course in this house, in the name of Jesus. Now the true church, which is Christ at wherever you find the true church, you see Christ. When Philip said, show us the father, Jesus said, he that has seen me has seen the father. And wherever you see the true church, you see Christ. He is the head, we're the body, and we are representation of Christ everywhere. That is the true church. Now that church has one mission on this planet, that is to express the Lord Jesus Christ. There's only one reason for a body. It's a vehicle through which a personality is to be expressed. Now we'd be in the body of Christ to express purpose for God creating the church is that his son may be expressed through it. I've said it a thousand times, probably a hundred in this church, that I can describe Pentecost in one line. God, the father through God, the Holy Ghost, displaying God, the son through a vehicle called the church. For that reason, Pentecost was given that Christ may be real. Now express to express Christ who is truth. The church must become the truth that she is to express, not just a knowledge of something, but actually becoming the truth that God has called her to be. Every time God called a man in the Bible, and since God never changes, it always remains the same. He began immediately to make that man, that woman, that people, the message that they preached. Not enough for us to say words. We must be what we're preaching. That is the key to it all. Now, therefore, from her birth to her rapture, there must be this continuing moving toward the image of Christ. That the purpose of the church to be fulfilled, that must be ever the progress of the church. This can only be accomplished as we behold him in the spirit. The imperativeness of the Holy Spirit has been lost in our time. This is not an optional thing. It is as imperative that born again believers be filled with the Holy Ghost as it is for unregenerate people to be born again. Impossible to fulfill the mission of Christ apart from the Holy Ghost. It's as we behold him in the spirit that this transformation is taking place in our lives. Now this can only be accomplished, but to behold him is not only to see him, but to see the path to what he is. We must see that. We've lost sight of the path and we're trying to invent new ways into that image. But let me remind you of the journey of Jesus to that immortal triumph. Remember the garden where he sweat blood. Remember Pilate's hall where they put on him a purple robe and smote him. Remember the experience with his closest disciples as they all forsook him and fled. Remember how they nailed him to a cross. Those six awful hours, the hiding of the father's face. Remember the darkness. Remember the surrender of his spirit in death. This was a path that Jesus took to immortal triumph and everlasting glory. And as he is in this world, so are we. It's not always going to be easy is what I'm telling you. This pathway is not always the pathway of the least resistance. There's a devil out there and it's a foolish theology that makes you believe you can tiptoe around him. The desert's not a thousand miles off your pathway. It's straight ahead. You just keep on walking. The sand's going to burn your feet somewhere out there. If you walk with God, you're going to have to face the devil. Any willful intrusion of the flesh will not only stop this movement toward the image of God, but will reverse the order and produce the opposite of what God is after. Anytime we allow the natural hand to touch that which is spiritual, we'll not just stop it, we'll reverse the order. And the result is too horrible to contemplate. The dark ages were the results of that church born at Pentecost turning from the leadership of the Holy Spirit to the scheming dark and carnal mind. That's what brought about the dark ages. And as sure as you live, they'll repeat themselves when that church becomes other than what God intended. Now the strong delusion spoken of in our scripture was the end result of losing the love of truth. I just wrote a few things down concerning truth that I'd like to leave with you. Truth to be understood must be lived. It's impossible for you to understand truth without living it. That Bible doctrine is wholly ineffective until digested and assimilated. Jonathan Edwards preached the message, sinners in the hands of an angry God, 100 times before it broke that congregation and brought revival. It must be assimilated and digested. It must become what I am if it's going to affect our world. The essence of my belief is there's a difference, a vast difference between fact and truth. Truth in scripture is more than fact. A fact may be detached, impersonal, cold, totally disassociated from life. Truth, on the other hand, is warm, living, spiritual. A theological fact may be held in the mind for a lifetime without it having any positive effect upon the moral character. But truth is creative, saving, transforming. It always changes the one who receives it into a humbler, more, holier man. Not facts, not scientific knowledge, but eternal truth. Truth delivers men and the eternal truth became flesh to dwell among us. This is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent. Now, what are the axiomatic truths upon which all human life may rest with confidence? Fortunately, there are not many, but here are the chief ones. Only God is great. Only God is wise. Apart from God, nothing matters. Only what we do in God will remain to us at last. Human sin is real. With God, there's forgiveness, and only what God protects is safe. That is a truth that must grip us every moment of our lives. Christians today, in many places, are being brainwashed. One evidence is that increasing numbers of them are becoming ashamed and profound unequivocally on the side of truth. We hedge. They say they believe, but their beliefs have been diluted, so it's impossible to really know where they stand anymore. It's come to a place that you, like a politician, will talk all the way around the world before we ever come to what ought to be said. Truth is a person. Jesus said, I am the truth, the way, and the life, and no man cometh to the Father but by me. Truth, we have a book, but that book is a person. Jesus not only declared himself to be the truth, but he's declared that he's the only way to truth. There's no other way to truth but by the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 2.21 opens up the only pathway to the will and the purpose of God. Christ, he said, left us an example that we should follow in his steps. That's 1 Peter 2.21. Now, those steps that we're to follow are defined very clearly throughout the word of God. There is no pathway. Christ came from heaven to earth to show me the way to get to heaven. There's absolutely no other pathway, nor the footpath, no other way to God that must be declared in shouting. At the time of the birth of the church, Rome had a thousand gods, and they welcomed the competition of the gods. They would have been happy if the apostles had thrown Christ into the ring with a thousand gods. But they come out of that upper room shouting, there is no other god. All others are imitations. Their intruders is one name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. And these steps of Christ, listen to them, to overcome the tragedy of the fall, which rendered Adam and his race unfit for the purpose of God. There had to be brought in a new race of which Jesus, the Bible said, was the firstborn. The firstborn of a new race of which you and I are. Now for Jesus to become the firstborn of God's new race, which race we are, he had to be born of the spirit of God. That's the first step on the pathway to what God wants. No man that hasn't been birthed of God, no matter how good, how intellectual, how religious, the first step along this pathway is to be birthed of the spirit of God. And the angel answered and said unto Mary, the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. That's in Luke 135. The new race was to become the vessel through which God would manifest himself to a universe. Therefore, it was imperative that the firstborn as the example of the whole should be baptized in the Holy Ghost. And the Bible said when Jesus came up out of water baptism, the Holy Ghost came on him in the form of a dove. He that was a firstborn had to be filled with the spirit. Why have we got so smart that we believe we can do without him in this awful hour of time? When he come up out of the water, it came on him like a dove. A young preacher said to me, why do you think he came on him like a dove and came on us as fire? I said, there's a lot to be burned up in us and he had nothing. Amen. So it just gently lit upon him. But the thing that I'm telling you, he had to be filled with the Holy Ghost. But from that moment, from the moment that dove of the spirit lit on him, he was under control of the Holy Spirit. That's the third step. Born of, filled with, led by. That's a pathway ever ascending, ever upward. You can't skip any part of it if you expect to make it. If you're in this house tonight and you haven't been born again, there's only one will of God for you. He's not calling you to preach. He's not calling you to teach. He just says you must be born again. And if you're here born again and haven't been filled with the Holy Spirit, God's not calling you to do anything but to be filled with the spirit of God. Why, before they can wait on the witness in the New Testament, they have to be filled with the Holy Ghost. Look me out, men, full of the Holy Ghost to wait upon tables. Impossible for you to function in the program of God. But you must be led of that spirit. Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. Born of, filled with, led by. That's the footprints that Jesus left that the church must follow. It was the Holy Ghost that led him to Calvary. The Bible said the spirit led him into that wilderness for 40 days, tempted of the devil. He overcame and the Bible said he left that wilderness in the power of the spirit, went to Nazareth, climbed the pulpit steps to preach, and the first words were the spirit of the Lord is upon me. Oh, hallelujah to God. This is always his life continually under the control of the Holy Ghost. How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost who went about doing good, healing all that were oppressed of the devil. Hebrews 9 and 14 said it was by the eternal spirit that he offered himself to God. All the way to Calvary he was led by the Holy Spirit. These are the footprints of Christ left us to follow. Any other pathway leads to the idolatrous worship of the creature. To the idolatrous worship of the creature. Now since the word of God emphatically declares that Christ is our example, it naturally follows that his mission, message, and method must be ours. I said it must be ours. It cannot be otherwise. God asked no man to draw him a blueprint. There is no place for the natural man. There's an embargo on flesh and blood. That man cannot, said the Apostle Paul. He said it's more, there's this phrase Paul said, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. The carnal mind cannot understand the things of God. Now this may sound strange, but it's not strange to the New Testament. It's morally fully outlined in the 1st and 2nd or 2nd and 3rd chapters of 1st Corinthians. It is man in the old creation. Sometimes referred to as natural or carnal. He has no place. Wherever these words natural and carnal are used are the meaning enlarged upon. There's always the embargo that says cannot. There is no place for the natural man in the kingdom of God. He cannot be brought into this life. It would be death to him and to allow him to come is to give the devil rights in this house. Flesh and blood. Now Paul says a natural man cannot. He may as well said flesh and blood. Now the fact and force of this embargo is fully seen in the case of the Corinthian. There are a large number in that church living on that side of their nature which had not been regenerated. They're living on that side. Their judgments, their behavior, their disposition were those of the world and its ways. They took each other to court. Amen. They got drunk at the Lord's Supper. Amen. This kind of a thing was all hence the spiritual immaturity. Amen. Arrested growth and sins in that church that Paul said wasn't named among the heathen. Simply because they let the flesh function. Wherever you let it operate you can believe its works will be there. You allow it to come. Adultery will find its way into the ranks of that church. If you willfully allow it to function because you cannot have it any more than you can allow the Holy Spirit to work and not have the fruits of that spirit. If you allow that flesh in you will have the works of it manifested in that congregation of people. Amen. Hence as far at the far end of that they were worshiping the creature more than the creator. Listen to it. I'm a Paul. I'm of Sivas. I'm an Apollos man. Paul's answer says it all. Is Christ divided? Was Christ crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul? It all speaks for itself. Once you lean to that side in any way it's not long till the creature become more important than the creator. And we're quibbling about what preacher that we're going to follow. It isn't preachers we follow. It's Christ or we're going to wind up in the wrong direction. At the new birth by the Holy Spirit we believers the Bible said are baptized into Christ. First Corinthians 12 13 says for the one spirit or we all baptize into one body. Whether we Jew or Gentile bond debris have all been made to drink of one spirit. Now having been placed in Christ by the miracle of the Holy Ghost you and I are commanded to abide there. Doesn't matter what men say. You can get out if you want out. A man of the Bible never would have commanded you to abide there. If it wasn't possible for you falling out of faith with God. And so we're commanded to abide. Now first John 2 and 6 tells us what it is to abide. He that saith he abideth in him ought also to walk even as he walked. First John 2 and 6 to walk as Jesus walked is to walk in total submission to the Holy Spirit. Making no provision for the flesh. That's how he walked all of his life. I do nothing but what I see my father do. I say nothing but what I hear my father say. I have no will of my own. I seek no glory of my own. It was a life totally under the submission and control of the Holy Spirit. And to walk as he walked. I must be ever moving toward that. That is a lifetime of education. But it must be my goal in life. To be totally under the control of this blessed Holy Spirit. Now for every attraction in one direction. There is in the nature of things. There's a counter action in the other. If one is the flesh the other is the spirit and vice versa. Amen. If I begin to move toward that flesh. If I'm full of the Holy Ghost he'll deal with me. I can turn back if I like to. If I'm walking in the spirit. You can be sure that flesh is going to come against me with a counteraction. So a choice is forced upon me. And the leadership of the Holy Spirit then boils down to the choices I make in life. All along this trail. Joseph 20 years old. Young. A very strong man. Very lonely man. And a beautiful woman trying to seduce him. Amen. He's got to make a choice now. He says how can such a man as I sin against God. He never run from the woman. He ran from Joseph. But God gave him that when he made the choice. No power never comes till you make the choice. But if you make the choice God will enforce that choice. You don't have to commit adultery. You don't have to go back to that world. There's always along this line. There's always that flesh is coming. But there be the counteraction of the Holy Spirit. You make the right choice. My life. Your life. All along this line is made up of choices. Every every temptation that comes to you has one thing to get you bring you. You have to make a choice. Am I going to stay in God or am I going to move in myself? Now the moment you make that choice. When those Hebrew children told Neb all of heaven is watching. Amen. They're watching. No choir. No pastor. Nobody said. Something good's gonna happen to you. They're total silence. They don't have but one thing. The word of the living God. They're standing there heaven and hell witnessing. And when they said we don't know whether we burn or not. But we will not bow. And in that moment God said to Jesus. Get in the fire with him. Amen. It's all right. They made the right choice. Had they not made that choice. They would have burned in the fire of hell. A choice. Amen. Forced upon and it's always the same. Am I going to walk in the spirit or am I going to walk in the flesh? All the blessings of God are contingent upon my abiding in the Lord Jesus Christ. Making the right choices all along this line. Whenever things come up. Whatever it is. Making that right choice. Now if you abide in me and my words abide in you. You can ask what you will and it shall be done. Any willful attempt to produce spiritual results by carnal means will bring a curse. It cannot happen. Abraham was our first example. Thus saith the Lord. Cursed be the man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh in arm. Whose heart departeth from the Lord. Jeremiah 15 and 7. The Bible and history are replete with examples of the curse brought on God's people. Willfully departing from the Lord and turning to the flesh. Believing they could do in the flesh what only the Holy Ghost could do. I was in California this last January in the annual camp. I'm out there every year in that camp meeting. And that night there must have been 50 people down there seeking the baptism. And at least 150 behind them praying with them. Every one of them. 150 getting refilled. There's three little girls, five, six, seven years old. Dancing, speaking in tongues, worshiping God. And the roar of the camp could be heard all the way downtown Chino. I said to the pastor, why in the name of God would we turn this off or trade it off for a program? Why would we leave this for some stupid program of religion without life? Here, men and women being transformed. Filled with the Holy Ghost. A joy unspeakable. A grip in a whole congregation of people. Amen. But yet we turn to the fleshly foolishness of the flesh. History is replete with Abraham attempting to help God. Brought a curse on us that we still live with today. Moses tried to deliver the Israelites in his own strength. It cost him 40 years in the desert. King Saul in his impatience took things in his own hand. It cost him his kingdom. The prodigal wasted his substance, which was the life of God, with riotous living. But instead of returning to the altar, he knocked on the world's door for help. Leaning on the arm of flesh, the young church winds up in a hawk pen. All because they tried to do spiritual things by the means of carnal means. All of it is that. The path that leads to this strong delusion is the intellectual acceptance of error and the incorporating it into the message, mission, and method of the church. Amen. Intellectually accepting that which is not right and incorporating. Once these delusions are accepted intellectually, I promise you the emotions are going to confirm it. Amen. I've had to deal with it in the church. They come down all kinds of crazy ideas. I said, you, that's not God. That's not the word of God. Oh, pastor, it feels so good. I know. I know. Yes, it does. In a hell seat, it feels good. Amen. The emotions, once you accept it intellectually, the emotions will confirm it. Now we become a feeling people instead of people of truth. Amen. Even our songs move away from theology a lot of times into a pathway that become feeling words instead of believing words. We must know this. We must understand what's happening to us. The church has now moved from the infallible word of God to the feelings and desires of the flesh. Two things now mark our progress. One, if it feels good and works in a way that man calls, it must be right. Oh, it must be right. Two, the end will always justify the means. Now that is a terrible, terrible thing that's come into the church of God. These two things mark it. This use of fleshly resource in our effort to produce spiritual results will produce converts to religious enterprises, but will not populate the kingdom of God. You listen. I said, they will not populate the kingdom of God. Everything produces after its time. Once we move to the flesh, we no longer produce Isaac. We only produce Ishmael's and we wonder why we're having trouble. I said, we wonder why we're having trouble. We're not producing spiritual people. We're producing religious fleshly people that you got to beg to come to church. That'll kill you if you turn against them. I learned one thing from Judas Iscariot. He's always been a dilemma. How he ever got into it, I never knew. Well, there's several things, but one thing he taught me was no matter how good you are to that flesh, if it ever is its advantage, it'll turn on you like a rattlesnake. Pastor, I paid their rent. I paid their taxes. I pulled them out of holes. Then they'll leave me day after tomorrow. Yes, sir. Just when they think it's their advantage, they'll walk off and leave you. Amen. That, as always, I've learned that, ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you. That flesh, it's not sanctified. It's only looking for its own desires, its own will. And once you turn against it, amen, they use, amen. We produce Ishmael's and not Isaac's. Amen. Such converts are marked by the obvious. There's no connection in them between believing and behavior. None whatsoever. They'll come to church on a Sunday, but tomorrow in that office, they'll live like the devil. They're religious. They'll come sing their little songs on a Sunday, but Monday, they're like everybody else. They're obvious results because that's still what they are. They just added Christ to what they are. They haven't been born again. They use a friendly church. It's not a product of the 20th century. It's as old as civilization itself. Amen. When the church in this downward spiral reaches the point when it thinks more of numbers and of its number of its converts than the truth itself, then at that point, it accommodates itself to whatever will bring the people in. Once it's more important to have a number than it is to have the character of God, you have lost it at that point. Amen. At that point, it's over with with that house. Amen. It's going to be a flesh spot from here on in. Amen. In the corporate world, it's called expediency. The utter, felicious principle of the end justifying the means. In such an environment, the preacher disregarding his vows make the cause to which he's consecrated subservient to gain. Amen. Everything, everything now is to gain all over. What do you think a man wearing the title of ministers of Christ who devote all their energies to everything but Christ? Amen. Everything but Christ. The church who's involved, the spirit of expediency is entertained, utilized by worldly church in order to gain success. Most of what is false in the church is a product of expediency. You know, the world has to do a lot of things when the net begins to go down, when the monies are not coming in. Then they have to resort to a lot of things and the church has come into the same. Now, what do you, you know, most of what is false is expediency. Speaking to the leaders of such thinking, they'll tell you that they take nothing away from truth, but simply have adapted. Oh, I hate that word. We're adapters. That's what we are. Said they have adapted new thinking as a means to an end. Now the new thinking is to adapt Christianity to the passions and habits of a people in order that they may more readily accept what you have to say. Right now, this moment, Jesus is at the right hand of the father represent you. And I, he does not misrepresent you. He doesn't try to flatter the father about you. He says this, this and Clinton, and he's a long ways from being what you want him to be, but he does love you. And he loves me. And I'm his Lord. And I want, I'm recommending him to go on. Amen. He represents me exactly like I am. But I, you and us, we represent him in a planet that rejected him. He walked this earth, what he is. He lived what he was. He spoke his message. Amen. And they rejected him. I represent him in a world that represents that, that, that rejected him. I must not misrepresent him. I must not modify that Christ to make him acceptable to a devilish world out there that just wants to be religious. I must preach this Christ as he is. I must say to men, there is no other pathway to God, but through him. Amen. The new thinking, amen. But the moment good men look outward to superficial triumphs, to the disregard of inward purity that moment, they set this, they accept the seductive lie of the ages. The end justifies the means. That's come into the church. Now the progress of Christianity was slow for the first 200 years, except for those first years when there was such a move of revival. Amen. The first books of Acts, of chapters, you have thousands coming into the kingdom of God. But at the end, Paul is preaching in house churches. Now I can tell you those houses wasn't big as your living room, but the church was there. Life was there. And he was pushing the gospel. So the progress of the church was slow during those first 200 years, except those times and when the power of Pentecost was so evident. But how rapid it progressed when it adapted the rude barbaric mind or to the degenerate people of the empire. When that church adapted itself to the environment about it, it exploded. I said it exploded. It has made the state church. All you have to do is come in. They took the statues and idols of Rome and made them saints. How popular and widespread are those religions, which we regard most corrupt. The third voice in this nation is a man that totally polluted himself. How difficult it was for Moses and the prophets to keep the Jews from idolatry. What caused the rapid eclipse of faith in the antediluvian world? Why couldn't Moses or Noah rather establish and perpetuate the doctrine among his own descendants? Why was Christianity itself most eagerly embraced when its truth was obscured by fables and superstition? Why did Protestantism die 50 years after Luther delivered the message? Why is the simple faith of the primitive Christian so obnoxious to the wise, mighty, and the noble? Why is modern literature and thinking, when fashionable and popular, so anti-Christian? What makes the most insidious heresies so acceptable to the learned? It's because as men become advanced in learning and culture, they are theologically wiser than God. They know better than God how to move a church, how to build a church. So however thing that's real in this Bible is thrown aside. Everywhere it's the frivolous, the corrupt, the false, which seem to be more prevalent and more popular. Everywhere, just move across this land, amen, I can tell you, we've arrived at a point, I said we've arrived at a point where John said, they are of the world and the world hears them, amen. You reduce it down to the passions of a society and they'll come. They'll come because all they got to do is add what they are to what Jesus, add Jesus to what they are. Do men love truth? Do they readily accept it when it conflicts with passions in their interest? Is any truth popular when arrayed against the private reason? When has pure moral truth ever been fashionable? Where in history has it ever been fashionable? Amen. Yet we act like we're the only people that ever faced such a problem. When has it advocates not been reviled and persecuted? Wherever that truth comes, the lower the scale of pleasures, the more they're sought after even in Christian communities. A few years ago, Mr. Falwell and his people, all of those call themselves evangelicals, were going to sue the Holiday Inn. They're going to sue them, they said, because of those X-rated movies they're selling. Holiday Inn said, we invite you to do that. Do it quickly because we're going to show you that we sell more of them at a preacher's convention than anywhere else. When? When? Everywhere. It's darkness or light, which the world loves. This is a uniform of history of the race everywhere in all ages. Everything in Christian communities shows that vanities and falsehood are more sought after than truth is. Amen. Everywhere you see the fascination with error, so it seems to be almost as vital as truth itself. I appeal to history. You can't get around this truth. Men left to themselves will more and more fall into ruin. Amen. If this poor pit doesn't hammer at you, you will fall into ruin. Sheep have to be led. Amen. That's the reason God called a man like this and a lady like this to deal with a church. I can tell you, you need to be happy that there's such a people still preach and still tell you that when you're right or wrong, because without a voice, without a voice, you will fall into ruin. Just as sure as you sat here. It don't matter how earnest you believe yourself to be. Amen. What is true of secular history is true of spiritual. When the life source of the church become the flesh, the bottom is that there's no bottom to its depravity. Amen. There's a church in Los Angeles. When the people come, they strip completely naked in the vestibule. They said that's the way they were in Eden. And they say there's absolutely no lust in the church. I'm sure there isn't a man. My God, can you believe such? But that's the end results of the flesh. They can hold to that spiritual church that is given over to the flesh. And there is no bottom. I said there is no bottom to the depravity of such. Look at the converts produced by this so-called buster generation. Not to tell you what that is. There's a movement in the Pentecostal. They call the builders. That's me. That's us folks that ought to have been dead a while ago, but still here. We're the builders. Then there were the boomers. Now it's a buster. And they say the buster generation cannot relate to God in the same way the builders do. Has hell ever told a bigger lie? The Bible said seek the old path. Go back where you come from if you're going to be right. Amen. You haven't found a new path. There's only one path. Go back and find that path. But they're saying that we can't relate to God like people like myself. They will continue to sit under and support ministers and ministers that are beyond a doubt corrupt and immoral. They're wholly void of conviction. And when you speak against it, you're a legalist. Oh my, legalism. You know, I've been looking for them people. Amen. For the most part, I know what legalism is. If I told you tonight that I'm not saved because I don't cuss and fornicate anymore, that's legalism. But if I tell you I don't do that because I'm saved, that's spirit led. Amen. There's a whole lot of difference. I don't do that because there's something in me don't want that no more. That's not what I am. I'm a new creature in Christ. Amen. All of this, listen, they're totally void of conviction. And if you deal with them about sin, you'll hear it for a little world against such converts would vote for antichrist. Do you promise them 25 cents an hour more? He's got them. Don't ever worry about it. We witnessed that for eight years in this country. I said, we witnessed that. And it doesn't matter what he is. There's no way to calculate the tragedy of the church turning from Christ to the flesh. No way. The nowhere is a tragedy more demonstrated in the life of Mohammed, the founder of Islam nowhere, Mr. Lord in his gleams of history reckoned to be one of the most authentic historians in in those books he wrote. And I, as I was reading this, I had to lay it down and weep as he wrote about this man, that he is a very handsome man. He married a rich older lady, very intellectual and had a great desire for God. Amen. He was very turned off because he found the idolatry among his own people, the Arab people, the terrible selfishness of the Jews. It wouldn't let anybody else in and the awful corruption of the church in the sixth century. That's a reason God let Islam overrun it. Just like he let Nebuchadnezzar overrun Jerusalem. He let Islam overrun the church because it was so corrupt, but he found all of this. None of me could fit in. So it began his own religion and he preached all of it. His first messages come right out of the law of Moses. He dealt one wife, a moral man that you have to be honest, everything, but they run him. He had to leave Mecca and go to Medina because the Arabs are going to kill him because of what he was preaching. But he got into Medina and only had after two years, about 10 converts and the devil come, that user friendly devil come and told him, if you will just bring this to fit the passions of the society, then you can get them in. Let your doctrine, amen, accommodate the passions of the culture. You can get them in and tell them about this one God. That's what he did. I said, that's what he did. He invented that heaven of 70 virgins. The minute you die, though, he said, women didn't go to heaven yet. He said, you're going to have 70 up there when you get there. Amen. And all of that come out. Listen, you know, the reason I wept, you know, the reason I wept because here in the sixth century is a card. My God. Then there's nobody to talk to. No Peter, no church. Bolingbroke one month before the Wesleyan revival broke, said, I've searched for London in vain for a gospel church. Folks, you found one. Don't leave it. Don't let some petty gossip, some sheep talk, some silly person. Oh my God, don't let them take you away. I can tell you, you look long and hard. You look long and hard to find it. Amen. What then is the hope of the world? Amen. We're driven to this answer that if truth in itself is not all conquering, then the power of the Holy Ghost that came into that truth in the book of Acts is the only answer. Amen. The only answer, the power that came into that truth, the letter of the Bible said kills. It's a spirit that makes that letter alive. You cannot make the Holy Ghost optional and overcome the evil of our times. There's no way of church with his little doctrinal issues is going to change anything out there. It's the power of the Holy Ghost permeating, filling, moving, flowing like a river in that church. It's going to make a difference in the world. We live in making the baptism of the Holy Ghost optional more than any other action brought about the corruption of the Pentecostal church. There isn't anything so chilling, so disheartening as a man without the Holy Ghost preaching on it. That's the most disgusting thing on this planet is a man will preach on this Holy Ghost that's not baptized in this Holy Ghost because he's ultimately going to make this spirit what it isn't. This, this was an open denial. Amen. Listen, 30 to 40 years ago, the Pentecostal, the largest Pentecostal organization published in her Sunday school quarterly that we should not be so dogmatic about the baptism of the Holy Ghost that we offend non-Pentecostal preachers. That's the last quarterly I bought. Never bought another. That's way back in the 60s. I never bought another. I said to that Sunday school class, I said, those Methodists are going to sprinkle with the Bible says immerse or not. Those Baptists are going to preach their eternal security, whether you like it or not. And I'm going to preach this baptism of the Holy Ghost. If it hair lifts every one of them. Amen. This is a truth of God. When we made it optional, we lost our way. Amen. From that point, the trend was downward, but without it's all search and I, what do we have? What do we have? We have murders, fornicators, liars, and thieves functioning in the church. You don't have to shoot a man to be a murder. Just be angry with your brother without a cause. You don't have to go to bed with another man's wife to be a fornicator. Just look on her with lust in your heart. Amen. All of that is there without the Holy Spirit to reveal what's going on. That perfectly functions in the church without the Holy Ghost. All of this has flooded our church. Therefore, the answer to the question, what is the hope of the world? It is a spirit of almighty power. It's every individual in that church being filled with the Holy Ghost, but not just filled a year ago, but filled every day. Be filled. That's present tense. That's the reason you need to get up early in the morning. Talk to God before you talk to your wife. Read the Bible before you read the paper. Be filled with the Holy Ghost before you face that world. And you'll walk with God and you'll make it all the way through. There is no other way. Amen. Hallelujah. This is certainly the earliest revelation of the Bible. This is the power which Moses recognized and all the prophets that succeeded him. It's not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord. Man is nothing. His inspirations, aspirations are nothing. The universe itself is nothing without this moving, living life of God. Nothing is nothing without the life of God. The answer to the perplexing times in which we live will never be found in the fleshly programs of man. The church must return to God's altar and rediscover the leadership of the Holy Spirit. We must get the vessels full one more time and learn the leadership. God never changes. His answer was and is, if my people will humble themselves, I will. If you will, I will. That's God's answer. In closing, there's a story in your Bible where a woman that had some boys and she owed some money and the creditor said, I'm going to take them boys. She said to the prophet who was a type of the father, she of the church, she came to the and said to him, said the creditors had come and said, if I don't pay my bills, then they're going to take my boys. Amen. They're going to take my children. And the man of God said to her, what do you have? She said, well, I've got a little bottle of oil. It's enough. Get all the vessels in, bring all of them to the altar here. Amen. Start pouring that oil till everybody's full. Amen. She did what he said and then went and told him, said every vessel is full and we still got all pouring. He said, just sell some of it and pay what you owe and live off the rest of it. There was no other answer. The world knocks on our door tonight. They're saying you owe us a gospel of deliverance. You owe us a gospel of deliverance. And if you don't pay us, we're going to take your children. And if you don't believe it, go see where they are. God made it exciting to be young. Oh, yes, he did. It's wonderful. God made it exciting. I just wonderful to be young and excited. I'm excited. Oh, I sure would have been. If I knew this God when I was 18, probably tore the house up. Amen. Oh, yes. God made it exciting. And when you reduce the church to a form, they're not going to be there. But if you let that Holy Ghost come and make Jesus live, let cripples walk, blind folks see, demon possessed set free, they'll crowd you off of this front seat. The answer. Let's go back to Pentecost. Let us stand. Hallelujah. Oh, bless it. Be the name of the Lord. Hallelujah. Lift your hands toward God. Just stand in there on that aisle in that pew. Ask him, fill me with the Holy Ghost. Oh, God, refill me tonight. Refill me. Come, Holy Spirit. I need you. Come, sweet spirit, I pray. Come in my strength and my power. Come in that own special, gentle, holy, any way you want to come, just come. My God, fill us tonight. Oh, fill us tonight. Fill us tonight, Lord. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Glory, glory, glory, glory, glory. Oh, God, let the lifting up of our hands be as an evening sacrifice. Let our prayers be as incense. Oh, God, in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, fill me now. Fill me now. Jesus, come and fill me now, Lord. Oh, my God, my God, my God, my God. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Glory, glory, glory. My God, fill every one of us tonight. Help us to know this is the only answer. Glory to God, glory to God, glory to God. Oh my, thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus, thank you Lord, thank you Lord, thank you Lord. Glory be to God, glory be to God. Come Holy Spirit we need you. Come sweet Spirit we pray. Come in thy strength and thy power. Come in your own special way. Oh why don't every one of you that haven't been filled with the Holy Ghost, just come down here tonight. If you haven't been filled, just come on down here. Hallelujah, God wants to fill you tonight. Hallelujah, hallelujah. If you haven't been filled with this Holy Ghost, just come on down, come on down. If you haven't been filled, just move out, come on to this altar. Let's lift up those hands. Begin to worship all for yourself on this altar here tonight. Glory, glory, glory. Are the others here you haven't been filled? Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Hallelujah, hallelujah. Come on down. We're going to come with you here. Now all of you that are full of the Holy Ghost, come on down here and help these. Come on down here. You love God, somebody helped you. Now you come, help them. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Oh, hallelujah. Come on, folks. Come on down. Begin to praise God, worship God. Let the house be filled with God. Oh, hallelujah. Yes, hallelujah. Come on, folks. Help us hear God. Come on in this altar. Begin to praise and magnify the Lord. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Oh, hallelujah. Come on. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Oh, let's worship God, folks. He inhabits the praise of His people. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Oh, thank you, Lord. Oh. ♪ In the name of Jesus ♪ In the name of Jesus ♪ Oh God, oh God ♪ Receive me ♪ The Holy Ghost ♪ Receive me ♪ The Holy Ghost ♪ Receive me ♪ Well, worship the Lord ♪ The Holy Ghost ♪ Worship God ♪ And God ♪ And God ♪ Hallelujah ♪ Receive me ♪ Hallelujah ♪ Receive me ♪ Hallelujah ♪ The Holy Ghost ♪ Hallelujah ♪ The Holy Ghost ♪ Hallelujah ♪ Hallelujah ♪ The Holy Ghost