Whose Report Will You Believe?

The Las Vegas Faith Center
“Whose Report Will You Believe?”

by Tiger Todd - Sr. Pastor - Church Sermons

If you can cut through the excuses many people give you for their lot in life, what it really comes down to is choices. Beyond the biological makeup of the species man, your life is really just a series of choices, choices you make based on the situations that you are presented with.

A good friend of mine is now in his late 30’s, yet unable to advance in any technical job, all because of a choice he made in his teens to do what was entertaining to him, and not what was profitable. A choice was made not to pay attention in school when learning was easier, and now, every day has become a memorial to that choice, as he is stuck in the rut of a low-level job with people half his age.

“Life is luck” should be stricken from your vocabulary. In fact, from the Garden of Eden, we find the first man was faced with a choice: will I obey the will of the God who gave me this this life and its responsibilities, or will I choose what looks good or appeals to me? The choice Adam made in the Garden of Eden is still following men today, and that bad choice will continue sending men to Hell, men that is, who have yet to receive God’s antidote for sin, the Savior Jesus Christ.

All through scripture, we find man is constantly pressed to make a decision between life and death, choosing that which brings good, or that which brings evil. As you can see from the mouth of God, your life and it’s success or failure is entirely your choice:

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live. Deut 30:19

I did it my way

The biggest tragedy in a wrong choice is that it separates us from God. How many parents have watched a child rebel because he wanted to do things his way, to be his own person? Well darlin’, if the way the child was rebelling from was the right way, can you see that the only way the rebellious kid can then go will be wrong? Let’s look at the truth:
Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. this wisdom decendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish…But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. James 3:13,14,15,17

There you have it- there is no such thing as my way or his way or your way or her way! According to James, the brother of Jesus, under inspiration of the Holy Ghost, man has never had an original thought. You are either operating in the wisdom of God, or the wisdom that is contrary to God’s, the one the bible calls a lie. My life became so much simpler when the total number of wisdoms on the planet went from over 6-billion to just two! Now these other scriptures should become more real to you:

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. Proverbs 4:7

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

James 1:5

God gets the blame

The word blasphemy doesn’t show up any where else in conversation except in the Holy Bible. Dictionaries have defined it as, saying, “something bad about God”. However, as I was into an intensive study of many language roots, I found the word blaspheme simply means to blame. Certainly if you blame God for something He did not do, that would include saying something bad about Him.

And the man said, the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. Genesis 3:12

There it is in the Garden of God, when confronted with his wrongdoing, Adam blames his actions on his wife and on God! How different is it in the church world today? ” If it wasn’t for these kids, I could have really been something.” “God must not have wanted me to go or my car would run.” “God wrecked my car so I would get closer to Him.” I tell you church, what a mess! We’ve blamed the God who is Love, for the tragedies in our lives, rather than repent for the bad choices WE MADE!

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Galations 6:7

The Phillips Translation says it this way: “A man’s harvest in life depends entirely upon that which he sows”. Let’s rule out the variable that it is God fault, ONCE AND FOR ALL, and re-solve the above situations: You chose to have kids, and besides, there are people right now having great lives who have kids! And what about that car? Think back to how you could have driven it nicer, and maintained it, so that it continued to be reliable. And if the car didn’t run when you needed to take the kids to school, do you blame the car and not get your kids educated, or do you take authority over your circumstances and find another way?! And finally, when you got all banged up in that car accident and you found God- like He was lost or something- did you know that there are people all over this planet right now who are finding God before they wreck their cars or lives?

All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. Matthew 12:31

Don’t panic just because you’ve blasphemed the Spirit of God. Sure, it is probably making sense to you now why it seems your life has been far from the, “Peace on earth, good-will toward men” that God has offered to you. Why do you suppose this is unforgivable, or unpardonable? Pay very close attention to what I am about to show you:

If you were told by your employer, or even by your parents, to do something, and you didn’t do what they asked, but rather blamed someone or something for that job not getting done, can you see that although you indeed were guilty, you have sent the only one who can forgive you away from you? In fact, the only way that a person can be forgiven is to confess their wrongdoing:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I John 1:9

Many fathers and sons are separated right now because one or the other- or both- of them didn’t just say, “I’m sorry, I screwed up. Please forgive me.” Look at the words of Jesus:

But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses. Mark 11:26

Blasphemy cannot be forgiven because you are blaming someone else! But just as soon as you come to your spiritual senses and take responsibility for your own life, blasphemy will be abolished and the forgiveness of God flow freely, cleansing you from all unrighteousness! Glory be to God!

“How do you think he’ll turn out?”

You are probably all familiar with the phrase, “Like father, like son.” Have you ever stopped to think where we got that? Think spiritually with me for a moment. Although we have had young men on the planet who grew up to be just like their dads, good and bad, there was one who grew up to be just like his Dad- his Heavenly Father. Of course I am talking about Jesus, the first Son with a Dad good enough to imitate. He was such a good son, that even on his worst day, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he still chose not to do his own will, but the will of his Father.

Father, if thou be willing remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. Luke 22:42

Wow! What a son. Do you remember him telling the disciples, if you see me, you are really seeing the father that sent me? But there is a still greater truth for us:

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. Romans 8:14

As we pay more attention to the wisdom of the Spirit of God, and less to the wisdom of the world, we grow up as the sons and daughters of God Almighty, and our brother Jesus is the pattern for this wonderful relationship with the Father!

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed in to the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. II Corinthians 3:18

I’ve sure preached myself happy!

If it raised Jesus from the dead, your problems are easy

Remember that it is the same power that works in us that worked in Jesus (Eph 1:19,20). We have the same Father with the same goals. Just do like Jesus did. Take responsibility for your own life. Don’t delay any longer. And begin enjoying the privileges that belong to the family of the King of kings!

This message was transcribed and edited from the original audio message.
© All Rights Reserved. - Las Vegas Faith Center Church.

Un-Known Tongues

The Las Vegas Faith Center
Message from Sunday, June 13, 1999

“Un-Known Tongues”
by Tiger Todd - Sr. Pastor
(EDITED VERSION)

I realize that I’ve made my own road more difficult where this body of believers is concerned by helping empower you to become more than just sheep; by helping you to become shepherds in your own spheres of influence. Many of you have already seen that what you’ve learned here has affected how people perceive you out there. Although it would be easier for me, as your pastor, to just lead you around by keeping you as simple sheep, (and it would certainly create a larger church body), I’m still compelled to push the envelope for your empowerment, and believe God that you will complete all of your Jedi training.

No leading edge tool box of our Christ-empowered trade would be complete without knowing about every possible size and shape of prayer. We need to have a prayer arsenal that will prepare the groundwork for the power of God in any situation. We need to know the prayers that leave no stone unturned; ones that reach into every nook and cranny, so that nothing can harm us, discourage us, derail us, or stop us.

I want to begin in the Book of Ephesians, Chapter 6. I’m going to read this verse from a number of different translations. I’ll begin in the King James version, Verse 10. We’re talking about a spiritual arsenal, and also, about the whole armour of God. That’s pretty much summed up in Ephesians, and also in the Book of Colossians. Finally my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And having your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

I used to stop there, thinking that described the whole armour of God. But the next verse, when you read them together, implies that this is the thing that makes the armour work. Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; So, prayer is an integral part of the armour. That’s why I’m going to read from a couple of translations here, because it talks about different types of prayer. Let me read from the Amplified Bible. Pray at all times on every occasion, in every season in the Spirit with all manner of prayer and entreaty. In the New International Bible it says, And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. All kinds of prayer.

That starts us thinking about some of the different types of prayers we already know. We know that we don’t pray the prayer of baptism when we want to heal the sick. But if we don’t know the prayer, we just say, “Oh God, I’m sick”. Right? We’ve got to learn about this arsenal. Just because you have a gun or a sword or a knife, and you’re going into battle, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be a very good soldier. It doesn’t mean you are going to be able to defend your country, or your family, or whatever. So we need to know about these things, and how to use them.

As we go through the prayers today, I just want to get to the ones that go straight to the top. In pushing the envelope, in pushing the threshold of how much you can take, and how much you can do, I just decided we ought to flat out push.

Turn to Matthew Chapter 6. It contains what we know as the Lord’s Prayer, but of course, this body realizes that it’s not the Lord’s Prayer, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…....It was actually the prayer Jesus taught the disciples to pray. It’s the disciples prayer. The Lord’s Prayer is in John Chapter 17, when the Lord prayed. But as you’ll see here, Matthew 6:9, After this manner therefore pray ye: If it was his prayer, he would have said, “I pray”. At the very tail end of this prayer, it lists…“and forgive others their trespasses” so God will forgive you. That’s proof that Jesus could have never prayed this prayer, because Jesus never needed forgiveness. It wasn’t his prayer.The Church just called it the Lord’s Prayer. It was the one Jesus taught the disciples to pray. The disciples asked, How should we pray? Jesus said, YOU pray this way.
We do have a record of the Lord’s Prayer, which is actually found in John 17. “He lifted his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, bless those”...And notice, it wasn’t a requisition prayer- a prayer where he needed something. It was a statement prayer.

I want to discuss this prayer to give you an idea of how NOT to pray, because apparently, people pray wrong. If you didn’t think there were differences between how other people prayed, then you wouldn’t need to call specific people to have them pray certain things for you. You could just have anybody pray. You could just flag someone down in the Mall, and say, “Hey pray for me”. That person would have no idea of what you were talking about. So obviously, there’s something about not just the prayer, but who knows the prayer. And you definitely want the person who knows what to pray, to be the one praying the prayer for you. Obviously!

Matthew 6:5. Jesus is speaking here. And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.

One no-no in prayer is praying so that other people will see you: meaning, praying on-purpose. In this case, Jesus was alluding to people praying based upon what other people were going to think. “They’re thinking, “I’m really looking holy if I pray right here, right now”. It goes on to say, Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. Now wait. This prayer worked, but the reward they got was not spiritual, because the prayer was not spiritual. Lots of people pray. The reason why prayers don’t get answered is because God is a spirit, and He only answers the spiritual prayers. Do you understand that? God doesn’t send me a paycheck, because paychecks come in money form from physical sources. Physical sources supply physical things. Spiritual sources supply spiritual things. So if I’m praying a carnal, or natural, or physical prayer in order to be seen of men, or to be heard recounting what someone else prayed, then I don’t have any chance, or any hope whatsoever that God is going to answer that prayer.

Do you recall the prayer we brought up in Acts Chapter 2? Or at the tail end of Acts Chapter 1? The disciples were gambling to see who was going to be the next disciple, and Peter, casting his lot along with the others, is praying, Lord, show us which one it is. God didn’t answer. The lot fell on Matthias. Well Peter had the lot in his hand. It was already there. God didn’t change the lot. Peter’s prayer was not answered, because it was a carnal prayer. Jesus was talking to these very same disciples when he taught them to pray, but of course, that was about three years earlier. A lot can happen in three years.

Verse 6, But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. As a reward, I’d rather have the answer to my prayers, than to care whether or not people thought I was holy. I could care less if people think I’m holy if I’ve got all the goods, the answers, the health, and if everyone I touch gets healed, and the dead are raised at my hands. I don’t care what they think of me. I do care what happens to other people. So apparently, the carnal prayer is having your mind on yourself. The spiritual prayer is having your mind on others, or on God.

But when ye pray, verse 7, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Have you ever heard someone praying, and they just went on and on and on? You felt you had to interrupt them so that Jesus didn’t come back in the middle of this lengthy prayer!

If you pray over food, that’s yet another type of prayer. Do you actually know the reason why you should pray over food? The Bible said that whatsoever you call blessed or sanctified, IS blessed and sanctified. And since you have to put food in your body, the number one step in being a good steward over your body is to bless the food you eat. It would be hard to eat stuff that wouldn’t be good for your body if you were saying, “Oh God, Bless this 12 pack of Bud”. If we prayed about the stuff we put in our bodies, we’d think a little differently about what we were actually putting in. Anyway, you pray over your food to bless the food. It’s that simple. Then you eat!

But when you pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do. Do the heathen pray? Yes! And we’ll find out later who the Bible calls, “Heathen”!

Verse 7, For they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knows what things ye have need of before ye ask him. In one of the requisition prayers, Jesus said, Whatsoever you ask the Father in my name, He will give it you. That’s a form of prayer. It’s not the “Our Father” type prayer, or the praying over the food type. That one is going to God on behalf of the sacrifice of Jesus and what it produced, and saying, “Father, in the name of Jesus, I have need of this”. Well, does it say that God knows you have need of that before you pray? That’s not exactly what it says. It says, He knows WHAT you have need of. You might not know what you actually need. When you pray that prayer, YOU might be praying for something that you think you have need of, but the Father doesn’t think you have need of. God says He supplies all of our needs according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. So when you pray and submit yourself to that prayer, and aren’t concerned about what other people think; when it’s just spiritual communication between you and God, you’ll actually get in line with your real needs.

For so many years, I had no idea what I needed. I always thought I had the same need - a million dollars. Does anyone else have that need? I thought that was my need. But then I sold some stock in a corporation and got the money I thought I needed, and it was gone within a month. Apparently, I had a problem much bigger than that bunch of money I thought I had a need for. God knew my need before I prayed it, but I’m not going to get it until I end up praying the right prayer. Oh, I got the money I prayed for. God will give you what you want. He’ll warn you, “You don’t need that. That will ruin you. You’ll be in the same boat, and now you’ll have less yet”. And if you don’t heed the warning, you’ll get it. Oh yeah!

Don’t think that God won’t allow us to have stuff we desire that is not His will. He may advise you against it, but God will give you the stuff you pray for that is out of his Will. He did it for Israel. Remember? Samuel the prophet goes to God and says, “Israel wants a King”. God says, “It’s not my will for Israel to have a king”. Samuel says, “Yeah, but they want one, just like the Samaritans, the Amorites, and all the other -ites. They want a king”. God said, “It’s not my will. Go get them a king. It’s not my will”. He probably said that three or four times in that passage in First Samuel. They anointed Saul in First Samuel Chapter 10. Go pick a king. Here’s a guy. It wasn’t God’s will, but they did it anyway because people pressed and pressed and pressed him. God will give you what you need, but….take a deep breath…. the idea is to put yourself, spiritually, in a position where God can change what you know in order to get in line with what He knows, so that you then know what you REALLY need.

After this manner, therefore, pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Now I always change this, because I cannot read it exactly the way it’s written. I always have to add the word “you” because it is a pronoun for “our Father”. We don’t pray to Jesus, we pray to Our Father. So I always add the word “you” to the prayer. It’s amazing what the word “you” does, even though it’s implied anyway. But it changes this sappy prayer into something powerful, full of faith, just like Jesus would have taught it. It changes the faith in it; it doesn’t change what it means. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now I add the, YOU give us our daily bread. (He said He would.) YOU forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. (That’s true.) And YOU lead us not into temptation. God does NOT lead anyone into temptation. The Book of James says, Let no man say when he is tempted, he is tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man. So, it couldn’t be that Jesus prayed, “Oh God, don’t lead me into temptation”. God wouldn’t! This, rather, is a faith statement. You DON’T lead us into temptation but YOU do deliver us from evil. For YOURS is the Kingdom, Father, and the power and the glory forever. Amen. NOW it becomes a prayer you can pray with some gusto! But if it was just a bunch of vain repetition, like the heathen pray…...Do you see what we’re talking about?

The churches are full of heathens. Sorry. They’re praying “Our Father” sooo fast, they don’t even know what it means. It’s vain repetition. They never stopped to find out it was a prayer, because they had made it so repetitious. Every now and then you need to change your morning program so that your body responds. We know this from working out in the gym. You might do the same workout for three weeks, but all of a sudden, you hit this plateau and things just aren’t working as well any more. Well, that’s the time to change your workout. That’s the time to frustrate your muscles so that they can grow. With too much vain repetition of the body, it just adapts. Sometimes we have to do something different. If something seems to get repetitive, it’s time to change it. When that get repetitive, it’s time to go back to the other thing, so it will be all new again.There is no power in vain repetition.

And YOU forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And YOU lead us not into temptation, but YOU deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and glory forever. Amen. For, if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Let’s get into some other types of prayers. Turn with me to the Book of James, Chapter 5. This is our “heal the sick” prayer for the church. It’s the “call on the elders of the church” prayer. This prayer says “if there is someone among you- you in the church, not outside in the world, and you are under attack by sickness or demons- then if you follow these instructions, you will be made whole and any sins will be forgiven”. The Bible has given a whole toolbox of tools, expecting us to learn about both the tools themselves, and the things that need to be fixed with those tools, so we can quickly use the right tool on the appropriate job.

It’s sort of like, I’ve been working on cars with this Craftsman tool set, and there are metric wrenches and SAE wrenches. You get used to using the right tool for the job. But if you’re working on someone else’s car, and say, “Do you have a 13 mm open end wrench?”, and they say, “Sorry”, and then hand me a crescent wrench, because that’s basically their whole tool box…sort of a one size fits all deal. Well, that crescent wrench doesn’t really fit “all”. I mean, it’s handy when you’ve only got one wrench. And the “Our Father” prayer may have worked a few times. It may have been handy to have, but it’s important that we possess all the new tools, especially where prayer is concerned. I saw Bob Vila on the Craftsman TV show demonstrating this new wrench that gets tighter as you turn it. That wrench, I believe, is the equivalent to the prayer I am going to show you today. It is the way to pray. This prayer is the right-tool-for-the-job wrench, in natural terms, in our tool box.

Verse 13. Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: Notice that it is not the anointing that does the job. It says here, verse 15, And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. The prayer of faith is a great prayer.

For years, my Assistant Pastor and I used to wonder why people didn’t get into the “faith movement”. There are so many elements to the faith movement….the just shall live by it, without it it is impossible to please God, all things are made by it. When a saint gets sick, that’s an attack from hell itself. That’s not just a heathen out there simply reaping what he’s sown. That’s an attack. This kind of prayer can not only remove the sickness, but if he has committed sins, it can cleanse, free him from them. That prayer is actually in Mark Chapter 11, so let’s turn there.

Verse 22 And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. This is the faith of God. The prayer of faith is not “Father, in the name of Jesus”.... The prayer of faith is speaking the results of what you want with the faith of God to the thing, and then it comes to pass. That’s why when you call on the elders of the church, and they anoint with oil, and pray the prayer of faith, most of the time, it’s not, “Oh God, heal this body”. That would be a requisition prayer, not a prayer of faith. A prayer of faith is, “You’ll be made whole in the name of Jesus. I call you whole”. That would be just like when Jesus told the fig tree, Be thou plucked from the root. That would be like he told the mountain, Be thou removed. Be thou cast into the sea. And it should obey you. We know this is the prayer of faith because it concludes with the very same bonus plan that James Chapter 5 said it did. Verse 24, Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. And when you stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any; that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. We know that the prayer of faith shall save the sick, the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they shall be forgiven. This is an awesome prayer. It works, however, when someone comes to you and relinquishes their authority. They open the door when they say, “Pray for me”, or “Heal me”, or “Deliver me from this thing”. That’s how this works. That’s why it says you have to CALL on the elders. As an elder, you can’t just go up to someone and say, “Oh I see you have leprosy, sir. Let me just pray the prayer of faith for you.” It won’t work. It’s not the right prayer.

We know that there are prayers of intercession. One of the greatest intercession prayers is on our tape, “Take the Blame”. I won’t talk about that prayer now, because we have that tape available to listen to. But that’s a form of intercession, when you were put yourself in the place between God and someone else because, obviously, God is not connecting with them. You become the conduit with which God’s power flows. That is intercession without you having to physically be there. That’s another form of prayer. I think the number one intercession prayer is the one on “Take the Blame”. We call it “the secret weapon” prayer.

Now look at the Book of Jude, verse 17. But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. Hint: this is the prayer of the mature church. Constantly, throughout scripture, we see things like “harvest”, and the “fullness of time”, and in Galatians, where it talks about “the works of the flesh are manifest which are these”....and it listed mature fruit, ready for harvest. In John Chapter 4, Jesus said, Say not there are three more months till harvest, but look with your eyes, The fields are white with harvest. This is a “last time” prayer. That means, the fullness of time; meaning, you’re not just taking baby steps. You should be advanced, full, ripe fruit for picking, cutting up and making apple pie with it. This is the level of prayer mentioned in the Book of Jude. Whenever you see “last times”, it is not going to be an early dispensation “weenie” prayer like, “Our Father, which art in heaven”. This is a serious prayer, and that’s where we’re getting ready to push the envelope.

When I was taking math in school, we learned a step for doing calculus in Chapter 1, then learned a different step in Chapter 2, then another in Chapter 3. But in Chapter 6, we learned the short form which would have made Chapters 1-5 a breeze! Why don’t we just get to Chapter 6, or in this case, Chapter 7…...and just get right to the one that works! That’s not to say we won’t need our other tools, but let’s just get right to the advanced prayer!

These things are to whosoever will believe. The object is to get your “believer” up to a place where you can see yourself doing it. It’s not that the prayer is beyond you, it’s just that you need to become, just like we became first grade. Then they moved you on to second grade. If you didn’t make second grade so well, they kept you there until you got there. Then came third grade, and you moved on up. Well, we’re moving on up, and the key is move on up, but know that it’s the truth. See, most of the church world gets so whacked out, for lack of a better word, over really heavily spiritual things. They think that only the disciples and apostles were allowed to do those things, and all the while, Jesus was trying to make everyone disciples and apostles. Jesus said to the disciples, “Go ye and make disciples of all nations.”

Be a disciple. Be a disciplined one. Follow me as I follow the Lord. Learn the best prayers. If you don’t get them right away, don’t worry about it. You’ve got other prayers. You’ve got me. You’ve got a bunch of people that pray this way. But start practicing. There will come a day when you know them. Have some fun with this, and don’t be embarrassed. There’s coming a day when you are going to use it, and it will just come out of you. You’ll say, Wow, I’m glad I knew that! That’s a whole lot better than saying, Wow, I wish I‘d played around with that when Pastor told me to. I really could have used that prayer today.

Verse 18, How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit. Mockers who don’t have the Spirit. Who mocks us today? I’m not asking who mocks Christianity. Who mocks people like me? Christianity! OK? That’s who mocks me. We found out in Romans Chapter 9, it says, Not all those of Israel are Israel. Do you know what that means? Not all Jews are Jews. And it was a parallel to get us to understand that not all Christians are Christians. The parallel goes, There are carnal, natural flesh, natural Israel, who are Jews after the flesh born to a natural lineage, just as there are natural Christians born to an ideology. But they are not spiritual, i.e. those who stood in faith to become what God wanted them to become. None of them ever took a stand of faith. As you continue to read in Romans Chapter 9, (and also in James Chapter 2) it explains why Abraham, Isaac, and then Jacob, who became Israel, became what they were. They stood in faith, and so fulfilled becoming who they were. That’s what made them spiritual.

It’s talking about there being mockers out there, and most of them are self-professed Christians.They would be considered by the Bible as carnal Christians’-natural Christians walking after the natural system of Christianity, and not in the relationship with God. They would be the ones praying to be seen of others…and on down the list of all the other scriptures we’ve discussed today. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit. But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost. How do you do that? By praying in the Holy Ghost.

If you are going to look for an example in scripture of who prayed more than anybody else in the Holy Ghost, it would be the apostle Paul. In fact, there is a scripture that says exactly that. Turn to First Corinthians Chapter 14. Verse 18, I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all: because starting in Verse 1 it says, Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts; well, that’s what the King James says (with italics), but if you go to the literal Greek, it says, “desire spirits”. What the Bible calls “praying in the Holy Ghost”, is praying with the Spirit of God in you. It’s not praying with your mind, which would actually make you carnal. It would make you the natural man, because we’ve just discovered that you really are your soul. Regarding John the Baptist, in Luke Chapter 1: the angel says to his father, Zacharias, He will be filled with the Holy Ghost in his mother’s womb, and he will walk in the Spirit of Elijah. So, what spirit was in John the Baptist? The Spirit of Elijah! Who was John the Baptist? John the Baptist, OK? So if John the Baptist prayed in the Spirit, it would be in the Spirit of Elijah’s speaking and praying.

Praying in “the Holy Ghost” is praying with the spirit of God in you, and it can pray! Jude calls this “most holy faith”, and is the best defense against mockers, those that are carnal, and as we’ll find out later, wicked spirits. Now, the prayer to save the sick doesn’t have anything to do with wicked spirits. In this case, It had to do with an attack on that person, but we weren’t dealing with spirits directly. “Our Father, which art in heaven” doesn’t deal with that. Praying over your food doesn’t deal with that. We have a specialized prayer to deal with the enemies of God, and who better to deal with them than God in you. Who better?

There have been reports on what praying in the Holy Ghost, or praying in tongues, is all about. Should we, or should we not pray in tongues? Our Assistant Pastor pointed out something about the verse where Paul says, I thank God I pray in tongues more than you all. He said, Do you know that the apostle Paul received, penned, and wrote down nearly two thirds of the New Testament? Two thirds! I thank God I pray in tongues more than you all. Most of Paul’s life was spiritual, wasn’t it? Most of his Christian life wasn’t carnal. He didn’t thank God that he had built the biggest church, or that he had a good youth program and three vans and two Ford Explorers. He thanked God that he prayed in tongues more than them all, and that God spoke out of him more than anybody else. Today, I can look at those carnal Christians and the mockers, and I can say, “Thank God I pray in tongues more than you all”, because it is the spirit God gave me in here speaking, which is why we’re on par to do something like 13 books, including The Bible for Dummies. We’ve got all kinds of revelations spurting out. Well, these were just letters to the churches, but they have become the inspired word of God.

What do you think comes out of us when God speaks? It’s the Holy Ghost in YOU. So if we never speak in tongues, if we never pray in the Holy Ghost, God never gets to speak out of us, does He? You might get a word, and keep it quiet. So part of it is giving the spirit of God inside you the authority to do it.

Why are we to pray in the spirit? Well, we read one of the key things in Ephesians Chapter 6. We want to pray in the spirit because we don’t wrestle with flesh. We wrestle with spirits, so we needed a spiritual arsenal to deal with principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and wicked spirits in high or heavenly places. We needed this as part of the arsenal.

Hold your place in First Corinthians 14, and turn to Chapter 2 of First Corinthians. Verse 4, Paul is still speaking, My speech, and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, (i.e. principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, wicked spiritual rulers) that come to nought: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, that’s why it’s called speaking in an “unknown tongue”, because it is supposed to be mysterious to your mind, which is really part of you. We might have a physical organ, the brain, but the mind is really what makes up you: the contents of your mind, your experiences, what you know and remember, it’s really, pretty much, you. The key is to allow your mind to get out of the way, and let God speak. And that’s hard for us to do, because we are so rational. We want to know what we’re speaking. And one of the keys to speaking in the spirit is, you don’t need to know what you’re saying, you just need to speak. Once that happens, the knowledge will slowly make its way into your natural mind, and as in Paul’s example, come out on paper, and become two thirds of the New Testament… or whatever else you’re supposed to do. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Well, that’s good. Christ in you, the hope of glory. God ordained the body of Christ to be able to do that, because when you get a spirit of Christ, (Christ in you, the hope of glory), it will stay a hope unless that Christ gets to do some stuff…unless it gets to speak…unless it gets to go and do…unless it gets to have the Spirit of the Lord upon it. In this case, we’re going to find out which spirit. Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. There is Christ in me, the hope of glory, but Jesus is the Lord Christ of glory. He’s the top, he’s the King of Salem, the Lord of Lords, right? So who are the other kings and lords going to be except those other Christ-ians that have a Lordship? They don’t have the TOP Lordship, but he is the Christ, the Lord of Lords. Did you get that? Paul would have been a Lord to Jesus, the Lord of Lords, wouldn’t he? And the wisdom is so that when you speak and pray in the spirit, the spirit of Christ in you allowed to pray, the principalities, the powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, the wicked spirits, the devils, have no idea what you are doing. But God does, and if that spirit’s in you, you will. Therefore, they won’t be able to entrap you.

I’m going to send out a questionnaire… Would you like to know more about how to keep your kids off drugs? Would you like to know more about how to build a better marriage? These are all wonderful things, and great things you should preach, but if I can teach you tools to avoid all the traps of life, then none of those things might ever happen. Only when you can know the future, can you see a trap. And most of what happens to people on this earth, especially Christians, is that they fall into one trap after another. But if we could just be free from traps, we could be free.

One of the promises Jesus gave in his prayer, starting in John 14, through 16, was that he was sending the spirit of Truth. The Spirit of Truth is going to do several things. He’ll not show anything of himself, but is going to show us God, the Father, he’s going to lead us and guide us into all truth, and he said one more thing…he’s going to show us things to come. It dawned on me that most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, is the Spirit of God inside of you communicating with the Spirit of Truth that the Father sent.

How many of you here pray in tongues right now? Now, you’d agree that when you pray in tongues, you don’t all sound alike. You might sound similar, but you’ll each sound a little different because you each have a unique spirit of Christ in you. You’re all parts of the same body of Christ, but you each have a unique vocabulary.

If you’re going to pray in tongues, you’ll have to consider it to be something like a second language. And one of the things about a second language is, you can either speak that language with your head, or with your heart. Tongues work when you get to the “heart part”. You may have to start with the head part, your mind, but your goal is to get tongues to come out of the heart, where the subconscious mind is. That’s where the spirit of God lives. I’ll explain the difference between heart and mind.

In Spanish, you’ll learn, Hola, que tal? Bien, Roberto. Es tu? Bien! That’s speaking Spanish with your head, right?
And then you have French. “Bonjour, mon ami. Comment allez vous?” But if you truly speak French with your heart, instead of “Bone jo-er”, you go, aah aah, and utter a growly bonjour, and pretty soon, you’re French in your heart. And that’s really the difference - imitating! You’re imitating the spoken language by getting yourself off your mind. So stop being so studious, and get into it! If I’m into it, I could speak English and still sound French. So when you’re praying in an unknown tongue, just as you would be in a known tongue, French, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew…you have to get the “heart part” started.

I’ll read this passage in First Corinthians, and then we’ll go back to Chapter 14, Follow after charity, (or agape love) and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that you may prophesy. Now, I thought prophecy was forecasting the future. Prophecy literally means “speaking for God”. Well, we have this idea that God’s way out there, and all the while, Jesus says, Know ye not that your body is the temple of God, that he is in you?

Prophecy is when God, who is living in you, speaks out of you. It can speak the future, because the spirit of Truth, who invokes the spirit, that communication with heaven, that main line, does show you things to come. So, yes, prophecy, a lot of the time, speaks to things in the future. But he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: the spirit of Truth for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries. But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort. He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church. I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophesied: for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues, except he interpret, that the church may receive edifying. Now, brethren, if I come unto you speaking with tongues, what shall I profit you, except I shall speak to you either by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine? And even things without life giving sounds, whether pipe or harp, except they give a distinction in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped? For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air. There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification. Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me. Even so ye, forasmuch as ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the church.

Should you speak in tongues all the time? NO! Tongues are for your own edification. Tongues are for you to deal with wicked spirits, not to be heard of other men. Paul said, When I come unto you, should I speak in tongues or should I speak with words and doctrine? Well, if you guys didn’t know what I was speaking about, it wouldn’t do you any good, would it? Therefore, that’s when NOT to speak, or pray, in tongues. Here’s another example: say you’re gathered together, and someone says, “Pray with us”. Well, if they aren’t speaking in tongues, you ought not to speak in tongues, because they wouldn’t know what you were praying. Any time you cause hesitation, faith starts leaking out that very same hole. And we need all the faith there is. So you pray in a manner where you can continue to keep their faith up.

Now, just like praying in secret, so is praying in the Spirit. Some of us went to the new Faith Center building one night, and God just asked me to start praying in tongues. So I started to pray in tongues. Now, we are all part of the body of Christ. We’re all members; different fractions of the whole. That spirit that is in there each has its own voice. If you have a spirit of Christ in you, and it hasn’t spoken, it just means that it hasn’t spoken. And I had to inaugurate that gift in the others. I had to inaugurate it in me long ago. I was pretty rebellious awhile back, when people asked, “What do you think about tongues”, and stuff like that? I’d say, “I endorse it”. Whatever you’re against, I’m for. But this is what happened to me. I was listening to a tape of someone speaking in tongues, and I just started imitating what I heard. That’s the best way to learn a foreign language, isn’t it? Total immersion. Most people learn Hebrew by going to Israel for three weeks and living on a kibbutz. They have to communicate, so they immerse themselves in the language, and pretty soon, they get it. That’s how our children learn to talk. We send them to school later to learn the wrong way. OK? But total immersion is what works.What worked for me is, I just kept playing a tape of someone else praying in tongues. I didn’t know what they were saying, but it got me to start imitating them just like I imitated Pepe Le Peu in the cartoon. Everyone can sound French by imitating Pepe Le Peu. Well, anyone can sound like they’re speaking in tongues, but what that’s doing is kind of like warming up for the real deal. Imitating tongues is inaugurating the gift; it’s opening the door and letting the spirit of God know that He can speak through you. Because sometimes we get tongue-tied.

Let me mention one more thing before I give you an example of the how-to’s and the what-fors of speaking tongues. The Bible says that when you pray in an unknown tongue, your understanding, or your mind, is unfruitful. That’s because of that strange little thing about the way we are made up. Your mouth always overrides your brain. It always overrides your mind. James Chapter 3 talks about the tongue. With the same mouth procedeth blessing and cursing. The mind/the understanding won’t work, because whatever you say overrides every other part of the system. The Bible says the tongue has tamed all flesh, all animals, all whatever. It says every beast in the field has been tamed by the mouth. By mankind. By his tongue. It is inferred in James Chapter 3. So interestingly enough, you could have something on your mind, but if you speak something out your mouth, the understanding stops. It has to. Let’s do the little test. In your mind, count from one to ten. Begin now. l - 2 - 3 - 4 - Now speak your name out loud. Your counting stopped, didn’t it? It had to. As soon as you speak, your thinking ceases.That’s how you can tell when a preacher is talking from his spirit, or just rehearsing something that he’s heard and heard and heard. In other words, he’s just running a program.

Your mouth makes your mind, or your understanding, unfruitful. Well, that’s a good thing in this case, because God has an answer, and He usually downloads it in about 100 times the quantity that you could probably handle. So if you want something solved in a day instead of 100 days, tongues is the way to go.

Quinton, Ron, are you up for this? Please join me. I want you guys to get in close proximity, because I’m going to speak in tongues. Jude called it praying. We’ve listed prophesying, and we’ve listed the spirit of Truth evoking something in tongues. Different processes. But some people would get offended if I just blurted out something in tongues. They’d wonder, Did God make him do that? No, I made me do that. But if the spirit of Truth wants to say something, he can make me do that if I have given him the authority. People just don’t just start prophesying in tongues if they haven’t already yielded to it, and are doing it on purpose.

Do you remember the prayer of faith? You believe you receive what you pray for, when you pray. That’s the prayer of faith. You say, “Mountain, be thou removed. Be thou cast into the sea.” And when you say “Amen”, you believe that mountain is removed and cast into the sea. That’s the prayer of faith. Then if Jude says the “most Holy Faith” is praying in the Holy Ghost, then you would be believing you receive whatever you prayed for in tongues. You’d have no idea what you prayed for when you prayed it. It could be mysteries from God, or the future, or answers you’ve been looking for.

I practiced this in Millie’s class last year. We went to teach a business class at Community College, and as I was on my way there, I thought, What a good idea for me to be prepared!! You can be prepared naturally. In your carnal thinking. You can pray, “Oh God, make sure that I don’t mess this up. Please make sure that Millie speaks to me again”. But rather, I used the most holy faith, and said, “God, I expect to know everything I need to know tonight”. From the point where I started driving to get to the college, I had no idea what was going to be happening in that classroom. It was a mystery at that point. So I used a mystery prayer,and said, “Spirit of Truth, I’m going to pray right now that what I’m praying for is the answer to every question the students have. I will know what their needs are, and I will be completely prepared for that class tonight. So I just let it out. Nonstop tongues from door-to-door, and then, Amen. When I got to the class, I knew who was dating who, among other things. I spooked them like they couldn’t imagine, because God had revealed all the mysteries to me. I didn’t know what I was praying, but I knew what I was praying for. My most holy faith was believing I knew, even though, in my mind, I couldn’t possibly know. So when people wonder how I can “read their mail”, how could I possibly know about..whatever, well, I cheat. OK? I pray first.

Remember the demons, where the disciples said, These ones won’t come out. Well, the Bible said they come out with prayer and fasting. But you’ve got to do this specific prayer. The disciples had the wrong prayer for the job. You’ve got to stay one step ahead of the principalities, the powers, and all the stuff like that. Anyway, I knew what businesses those students were in. Then they started with all kinds of extra questions that kept me there an extra two hours. I knew all the answers for those extra two hours. If they’d kept me there all night, I would have gotten into all their business.

So let’s do something real, on purpose, and what I want to show you is two-fold. Again, I’m teaching you how to do something. This is what Paul said you ought to do in church. But if you have a prayer where you’ve got a mystery you need solved, then you should, on purpose, pray in the holy ghost either somewhere else, alone, in a prayer closet, or with a bunch of other people that pray in tongues. One of the neatest things about tongues is, when you speak in tongues, anyone else that has a spirit of God in them (who has probably already inaugurated that gift), can’t help but have their spirit come alive too. Their spirit gets stirred up, and they start going off on stuff. It’s just this really neat thing. It’s spooky, if you’re afraid of it, but it’s really cool if you understand what’s happening. It’s like the fellowship of the saints at a spiritual level.

Let’s pick a mystery. OK. Will Y2K affect us? Will it matter? Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to pray, and if it’s only like a two word answer, if it’s that simple, we’ll go for something like, Will I be elected President? (We’d be here for four hours praying in tongues.) We’re going to ask that to be the prayer that comes out in tongues; something that our minds don’t understand, and we’re going to believe that we receive the answer when we pray. Most likely, before the day is out, pieces of the answer will be revealed to our minds, That’s how it works. Shall we just do it?

Remember, you are yielding authority to the spirit. It’s kind of like, if you are walking in the Spirit, you won’t fulfill the desires of the flesh: meaning, you won’t do what your tongue wants to do. You’ll do what the Spirit wants your tongue to do. Are you with me?

Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus, right now I want to pray the most holy faith. I want to know, In the year 2000 with computer systems all over the world, will Y2K affect us? Will it affect the people in this body? I will expect that we’ll know by the time we’re done with this prayer. We will know who it will affect, how we are supposed to change our lives so it doesn’t bother us, and what we are supposed to do in the meantime. We expect to know all this, and know it right now, I yield my body to you to pray in the Spirit.

I praise you that the answer was so short. We believe we receive the answer to this now. We thank you, God, for it. Amen.

As I prayed in tongues, everyone else praying in tongues just started to speak in a like manner. It just started activating. If you haven’t prayed in tongues, what you need to do is first get alone, so that you don’t think you’re making a fool of yourself, because your heart is part of getting your mind off of it. I had to be alone in my truck to listen to my tape. I’d rewind it over and over again, and tried to imitate the tongues.There’s nothing wrong with doing that to practice. If I hear a tape of someone speaking Spanish, I may not know what it means,YET! but pretty soon, I’ll start sounding like I’m speaking Spanish, and I’ll start feeling comfortable speaking the language. Just let the thing go. How do you know that it’s not just gibberish? Well, it absolutely is gibberish to your mind, but had the princes of the world known that it wasn’t just gibberish, they would never have crucified Jesus and gotten their butts kicked. That’s the bonus to it.

True Worshippers

The Las Vegas Faith Center
Message from Sunday, January 10, 1999
“True Worshippers”
by Tiger Todd - Sr. Pastor - Church Sermon

Today’s message is kind of difficult to put into words. It kind of poured out as little revelation spurts.
To begin, I’d like you to turn to Proverbs, Chapter 4. Joseph really likes when things flow together. If they don’t flow together, I guess it’s time to go to another church! Because if it’s just us, the Bible clearly states that we want the excellency of the power to be clearly of God, and not of us. Rock stars have power of themselves, but if you want healing, if you want freedom from poverty, if you want whatever the 6,000-7,000 promises are in the Book freeing your life, it’s going to have to be from God.
Proverbs, Chapter 4. Today, we really need to be caught conscious of how we read what we read. Inflection is crucial. Keeping track of pronouns is crucial. What comes out preached is different than what you would write to read. You even find that with the Apostle Paul. It takes him three chapters to just get the point across, because he says, “Now you know bretheren, it is important that I tell you this. And he is getting ready to tell them what it is, and says, “Because as you know, I went…..” and he goes on for three chapters until he finally gets back to this. That happens because, based upon who is in the room, and who needs what from God, God is trying to define it for every man to hear. Then he can finally get down to the point. So, please listen carefully. Many times we lose track of pronouns, and they shift halfway through the verse, and if you are not conscious of it, you’ll still think we are talking about the initial subject, not the subject God is trying to introduce us to.
Here in Proverbs 4, we’ll pick up in verse 20. It says “My son attend to my words. Incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes. Keep them in the midst of thine heart, for they (my words) saith the Father of the Son. Out life unto those that find them and health (Hebrew cross reference says medicine) to all their flesh.”
The reason why I began with that? It’s like, Why am I here? Why am I in church? What is the point? And even the people that once knew the answer may have forgotten the answer if they don’t go back and find out exactly why…Do I feel better? Do I like to hear the pastor make a
fool of himself singing a Sinatra song? Do I like to….whatever it is. What is truly the reason why you are here?
As in any job, any profession, any vocation, the more you understand about that job, the more of that job you will be able to walk in. Usually, it also directly correlates to a pay raise, to an increased benefit package, etc. A lot of people working at Taco Bell are not engineers due to a lack of understanding of engineering, right? So if a lot of people in the world are not living life to the fullest, it’s most likely because they have a lack of understanding about life. We have the instruction from the Bible that says, “My son attend to my words” because if you listen to these words, these are the only words in the universe that bring life to those who find them. And, (the other thing you can’t get at Taco Bell), health to all your flesh. Now, I don’t mean any disrespect to Taco Bell, I’m just saying that the only place you can get life and peace is in the Bible.
And he says, “Attend to these words”. If you are not healthy, get in the Word. GET IN THE WORD!. I was walking down the drugstore aisle looking for band-aids, and I saw Robitussin, and all these other cough syrups, and I saw “expectorant”. Well, I’m “expectorant”, I mean, expectant. We ought to have our own little faith bottles of stuff. When you need to get your faith up, when you need to expect for your healing, then you need an “expectorant”.
The Bible alludes many times to the subject “restoration”. It guarantees, in the last days, that there will be the restoration of all things. And up until this last week, I thought it really only meant natural things. “Oh, I remember when that dirty dog stole from me back in l9-whatever.” “I remember when I didn’t have this, I remember when this thing was taken from me”, and so on. And so we are looking for the restoration of all “things”. But I believe, just as Ephesians Chapter 3, Verses 1-5, says that, ” In the last days certain mysteries from God will be revealed”. And in the last days, Joel Chapter 2 says, “The Spirit of God is going to be poured out upon all flesh”. So we are going to have a lot of other types of restoration coming up, and this, I believe, is numero uno on the list.
Don’t think this is just what the minister does, or the minister doesn’t say, ...I remember calling up the Meyers one time and saying, “Boy, you’ve just gotta make it to Thursday night. This is the message of all messages”. And that was two years ago! But it seems like we are on a track where, if you go to our web site, and take a look at our book list, every week we write a new book that the rest of the body of Christ seemingly has no idea about, yet the content is all through the Bible. And as we talked about last week, sometimes we have to not do the Christian thing and do the Bible thing. Because sometimes, they are diametrically opposed to one another.
Who has a Christian emblem, a fish symbol, on their car? I saw one the other day, and this is actually what tipped this thing off. Again, I’m not picking on Taco Bell today. I’m not picking on Christian fish. I was driving along last week, and I saw this fish that had a “Jesus” within it. As I saw it, a scripture was immediately quickened to me….just came alive as it happened. Without reading the scripture to spoil the ending- I mean, we DO have a schedule to this thing- It dawned on me that Jesus would be nothing except what was defined by his relationship to the Father.
Think about the ministry of Jesus without the Father. Can you think of what there would be? Now this is interesting, because I saw on this fish emblem that Jesus had been glorified. And I could not find a scripture where people were ever supposed to glorify Jesus. That bothered me. It bothered me so much that I realized when we had “Jesus” stuck on the side of the van… and again, please know, Jesus is my Saviour, I have chosen Jesus as my Lord, and I have the highest respect for Jesus. As many of you know, throughout the years, I have already been criticized by my preacher peers throughout the country for not really talking much about the blood of Jesus and all these wonderful things.
Well, we have extracted things out of the Bible from the theme of this thread of God which moves through the Bible, not just from traditional slogans. And there are a lot of slogans in the church…so many slogans that it is hard for me to even want to talk about one, but I keep thinking you’re going to think it’s the same old slogan you’ve heard. For instance, “every head bowed, every eye closed”. I can’t even say that without laughing anymore. It’s become such a repetitive thing, that it’s not even holy any more. And that’s sad, because it’s a wonderful thing to have you head bowed and your eyes closed. We recite jingles, “Yo quiero Taco Bell”. We get these slogans all over. But we don’t need them in the church. All we need is some power in the church. If you want to find out where the real church is, we need to see Christians lay hands on the sick, and we need to see the sick get up well. We don’t need to have healing lines when people fall down, but then get up sick. They can fall down if they want to, but we want them up, and well. I come from the standpoint that if we were doing it right, it would work every time, that is, every person that laid hands on the sick, every one of those sick people would be well, just as it said in Mark 16.
“You will lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover”.
So I’m constantly pressing to try to do things right, because God has done it right. So it must be something that I’m not doing right if it’s not working the way He said it would if I did.
Turn with me to Exodus, Chapter 20. The Jesus emblem brought up this scripture. The Children of Israel are finally out of Egypt, the law of commandments have been passed down, and here’s how they read:
God spake all these words saying I am the Lord thy God which is brought thee out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage.”
How many of you guys would like to get out of any house of bondage?....bondage to any addiction, sickness, disease, I mean, you are bound.
#1 Thou shalt have no other Gods before me. That’s a fair request.
#2 Thou shalt make unto thee a graven image (or any fish for your car, or any cross around your neck. Don’t get mad, ‘cause I’m not saying that’s wrong. I think it’s right. I’m all for people wearing crosses, and I’m all for the fish emblems. But now we have a problem with the scripture, don’t we. We’ve got a problem with graven images. We’ve got a God against graven images, but all images, but all of a sudden, we’ve got Jesus fish on the car. How about this? This was not Jesus talking…it was God talking. Thousands of years before Jesus was even born. Well if we treat Jesus as God, and the Bible says God called him God, (which means he has to be), would it be inappropriate to put Jesus before God based upon the scripture “Thou shalt have no other God before me”. Now I’m just trying to make your heads hurt. We need to answer these questions. I don’t think we should leave these things as mysteries. I think we should find out exactly what’s up. What I don’t want is a person in the world , that doesn’t know anything about the Bible, but is a good reader, to bring this to me and tell me this is why I’m full of….....bunk. And that’s exactly what they would do if we don’t have an answer.
The Bible Code. A wonderful book. It’s an insight about how they found hidden codes in the Bible, and the author, Michael Drosnin, and his ability to predict the future based upon a hidden code within the Bible. The “code” put certain events that happened a couple thousand years after the Bible was penned, (or the first five books were penned), and predicted future events within this code. Well if you go to the World Wide Web, and you type in “Bible Code”, you get all these hits where they find that all these assassinations were also in works such as Moby Dick and War and Peace, so some have made a big game of this thing. Well, I don’t want someone to come to me and tell me that his God is a big white whale! And that’s what they’ll do. They’ll laugh at my Book and call it literature. And I know that this Book has saved my life. You know that this book has saved your life. So you know there is something else, but we need to be able to explain the “something else” and not just go to the world with a slogan. Is everyone starting to see where I’m coming around to?
What is this thing about idols and graven images? If the scripture were true, and the emblem was false, why didn’t we burst into flames when we put a cross around our neck? Children of Israel? It’s funny for them, but not ha-ha funny. Why didn’t our Lexus turn into a goat when we put a Christian fish symbol on it? I mean, it could happen! These people heard the law and when a few thousand stepped over on Moses’ side, the other ones went down with their “holy cow”! So there must be a difference.
Turn to John, Chapter 4. Verse 22. Now read this carefully, and look at this carefully.
You worship you know not what”
Oh, I love that! You don’t even know what you are worshiping.
We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews.
The words are in red in your Bible. You know, when they’re in red, that’s Jesus talking.
But the hour cometh and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
True worshipers are separate from worshipers that don’t have any clue what they are worshiping. They are worshiping, but they don’t know what they are worshiping. And because they don’t know what they are worshiping, they end up after the preacher is gone, making golden calves. Mark Chapter 4 talks about these are they that heard the word and immediately received it with gladness, but they didn’t have any root in themselves. They personally rooted in God. They were rooted in somebody else who was rooted in the Gospel. And so they only endured but for a time. But Jesus is saying that there IS a place where you can become a true worshiper.
I have wondered what that meant. I wanted to be part of that militia…the “Jesus Seals”...or whatever they call them. I wanted to be part of this, but I didn’t know how. Notice the two things. A true worshiper, worships (1), in spirit, and (2), in truth. I suspect that if we find out something about the spirit and something about the truth, we’ll find out something about true worship.
How many of you have prayed, and it didn’t seem like God answered. That bothers me too. And your Christian friends might have told you, “Well sometimes He answers prayers, sometimes He doesn’t. And God always answers prayer, I’ve seen this in some preacher handbooks where it says, “But He sometimes says “yes”, sometimes “no”, and sometimes “later”. Hey! “Later” would have been what the people who were worshiping the golden calf would have asked for. “OK. Just give us a little more time here”. But God is not a “later” God. He’s now. He’s the “Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”, as Hebrews 11:1 says.
Well, those that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth, and now look at the next line. The Father seeketh such to worship him. Wait a second. If I had a problem and I needed a prayer, I needed an answer from God. I needed Him to move quickly, dramatically, drastically. How many of you know that we’d be in good shape if it was God seeking me out to get the job done instead of me running around saying, “Oh God, Oh God.”..... and God is saying, “WHAT??? What’s the problem. I heard you the first time”. The Father is seeking a certain type of worshiper. Does anybody here want to be that type of worshiper? I think this might be the first time this has ever been found out. You know this message. But if we really KNEW it, our Christian radio station would have a different voice. If they really KNEW it, people wouldn’t just keep losing legs, and saying, “It’s just my cross to bear”, they wouldn’t just keep evolving downward. And then there’s the Christian story,....when the tires wear out on the car, you’re done. I mean, when you’re driving on the rims, and the rims wear out, you’re done. Or, you’re done with the rims when you try to stop at a stop sign. THEN you’re done, OK? So, there comes a time when you can only wear out. I mean, when your shoes wear out, and you are down to your feet, what happens when your feet wear out? And, boy, if the Father is truly seeking, then something must be up with somebody’s worship.
Let’s see if we can pick this apart. Turn to John 5, because part of the problem we have is not understanding this thing about Jesus. Remember we talked about, that if the Father wasn’t around, Jesus would have had no ministry. John Chapter 5, Verse 17. Jesus answered and said (he just got done healing another guy on the sabbath day. Oh what a tragedy. He got someone healed in church. You’re supposed to wait till the work week). So the Pharisees, the people in church were actually giving him a hard time, but Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.
He said, “My Father works too.” Remember, “Our Father, which art in Heaven”...remember that Jesus taught the disciples to pray that prayer? Well, why didn’t the Jews go stone his disciples? They said, “Our Father which art in Heaven”. Why didn’t they go and stone the Catholics? Why didn’t they stone the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, and on down the list. How many people have prayed the “Our Father”. You just, all of a sudden, got numbered with Jesus. And this is important, because no one has a sticker of me on the back of their car, yet I’m doing the same thing.
How about last week when we found out what persecution was all about? Are you really being persecuted for the Word’s sake, or are you being persecuted because you were stupid? It’s one thing to flub up and be persecuted. It’s another thing to do something righteous and stand up for it and take the persecution.
Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.
OH! Do you see what they did in their heads? Well, we’ll get there.
Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do; Say,“the Father”. Every time we read the word “God” today, we need to be thinking “the Father”.
For what things soever he (the Father) doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth; and he will show him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. Verse 21 - For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.
Do you believe that? The words are in red. Jesus is talking about church. Your Christian symbol is still in good shape.
We have no trouble with Jesus, we have no trouble with the Father, but here’s where this thing gets kind of backwards in our worship, and it’s how I think we’ve missed this.
Turn to John 3:16. Maybe you won’t even have to turn to it because I believe it is the most quoted verse in all of Christianity.
For God (the Father) so loved the world that He (the Father) gave His (the father) only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Now if Millie were to give me a gift, I mean, we’re friends, and she said, “Oh, I just want to bless you, Tiger” so she just gave me her car. Millie has given me the gift. We’ve been friends for years, and what happens….I take the car, and she never sees me again! She hears reports of me driving the car all over the country, the western world, I’ve even driven to Paris (somehow). I’ve had it repainted, new wheels put on, I’ve done everything for that car but have never spoken to Millie again. Wait a second! The Father gave the gift. Would that be a wrong thing for me to do? Would it be wrong to take that gift and worship the gift instead of the gift-giver? Well, isn’t Jesus the gift? God so loved the world that he gave Jesus, Right?
So why don’t we have “the Father” stuck to the back of our cars? I love these good questions! How did we get off worshiping Jesus at the expense of the Father? I mean, Jesus came. He said, “I don’t come doing anything that I don’t first see my Father do”. The disciples came up to him in John 16 and said, “Show us the Father”. Now, wait a second. For someone to come up say, “Tell me about this Christ thing”, implies that they’ve heard me talk about this “Christ thing”. But the disciples ran up to Jesus and said, “Show us the Father”, which leads me to believe that Jesus constantly, incessantly, and only, preached “the Father”!
How do we glorify the Father? Let me show you. You see, in the Old Testament, they had no idea about the Father. They knew “God”, but they didn’t know him as their Father. The Jews even stood up and said, “We have Abraham as our Father”. But Jesus came, and said, “NO, the Father sent me because you had no clue about the relationship He wants with you”. So in trying to imitate Jesus, we didn’t imitate Jesus, we glorified Jesus. Let me just close off that scripture. You’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. I haven’t done anything that God didn’t tell me to do. I haven’t done anything that God didn’t show me what to do. When I laid hands on the sick, it was the Father that told me to do that. I have tried to show you the Father. Why is it so important to send Jesus, a gift, to you, to show you the Father? Another good question. Because part of the purpose of the Bible is to bring many sons to glory. Jesus even went to the disciples and said, “Hey, when you pray, just pray “Our Father”. God, the Father, sent Jesus, not to glorify Jesus. He sent Jesus as an example of HOW to glorify the Father. You’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. You’ve seen me, you’ve seen how I worship the Father. You’ve seen me, you’ve seen how I pray. You’ve seen me, you’ve seen how the Father deals with situations. You’ve seen me all so you can glorify the Father. Not Me! (meaning Jesus). In fact, on one occasion, Jesus went out wrapped in a towel and just went down and washed the disciples feet just to show them that it was NOT about Him, it was about the Father. Jesus was the son of God. But doesn’t it say in Romans 8:14 that, Those that are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God?
Jesus was the only begotten son, but not any more. The Bible refers to Him as the first born among many brethren. Do we have any brothers and sisters in this room? Sure, we do. Now, one is not worshiping the other. They’re brothers. They’re on the same plane. Jesus was the heir of all things, right? Does everyone know the scriptures, so everyone kind of gets this relationship, without going to them? It says that we are supposed to be joint heirs with Jesus. Heirs to what? ..the inheritance of the Father….joint heirs, not sub-heirs. If I go ahead and put “Jesus” on my car, I guarantee that Jesus will go ahead and put “Tiger” on his car. It’s only fair. He’s my brother.
Well, let’s knock over some more sacred cows. Don’t misunderstand me. Jesus is wonderful, but the glory is supposed to go to the Father. I was driving along, and we were just having a little preach-fest (with someone in my congregation), and we were starting to say, “We are going to change the world”, I mean, all this revelation just started to flow. And I said, “Every knee shall bow”, and he said, “Even Madonna?” And I said, “Yeah!’. Dennis Rodman? “Yeah!” And every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord… and we stopped. Because the verse says that every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. And we glorify Jesus. It’s cool. Jesus is fine, but we’ve missed out on God,the Father, seeking out our situations to fix them. The Bible says that God does not look upon sin. When he sees me, he sees his righteousness. But if I am misdirecting my prayers, I mean, Jesus said, Whatsoever you ask the Father in my name he giveth you. But if your motive and intention is thinking about Jesus, and again, there’s nothing wrong with thinking about Jesus, but we are trying to build a Father/Son relationship. He’s been trying to build it for two thousand years. But instead, we’ve got a Father/Son relationship with the Son. I’ll claim that most of the body of Christ are a bunch of grandchildren. They think their Father is Jesus, and Jesus is the son of God…the only son….the only one with the heirship privileges.
Let’s see what more we can dig up here. John Chapter 14. John, by the way, please read through it again, and look at “the Father”. We’ve come up with all these little assumptions on why certain things happened. Of the eleven remaining disciples, ten of them died a martyr’s death. They chose to be crucified, a couple of them upside down. “Please chop my head off for Jesus”. I’m wondering if they got the message. Jesus said, My life is mine to pick up and lay down and no man can take it from me. Well, are we going to believe the words of Jesus, or the martyrdom of a saint? We’ve got to believe the words of Jesus Christ if we are even going to have a doctrine called Christianity. I know it’s tough when you follow the acts of the apostles and they are not the words Jesus spoke! Nonetheless, the words that Jesus spoke, well, He was the only one that plainly showed us “of the Father”. Isn’t it interesting that John, the Gospel writer of John, 1 John, Book of Revelation, John is the only one that did not die a martyr’s death. And its not that they didn’t throw him in hot oil. He just got back up. Read through the book of John, and you’ll see that he, indeed, had a revelation of “the Father”. I don’t think that the other disciples did. In fact, if you read their gospels, they didn’t.
Turn to John, Chapter 14:8.
Phillip saith unto him Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?
Well, Jesus could be telling the church that for the last two thousand years. Have I been so long with you…......Have I been so long with you and you still don’t know me? .... he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; You know what that means. All those people spouting off Jesus never really saw Jesus. They saw a slogan, an emblem. They saw an outer representation. They’ve never really seen Jesus, their brother, or if they had seen him, they would have seen the Father”. Keep reading. Oh gosh, I’m backing up now.
How sayest thou then. Show us the Father? He said, he that has seen me has seen the Father. How saith thou then (verse 9 still) show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. I’ve got you under my skin, don’t you know what’s going on here???
A lot of people, even Christians, when they are coughing sick and stuff like that, say, “Oh,don’t come in. I’ve got something”. Well, do you think Jesus would say, “Yuck, I’m sure glad you told me! I could have caught that! But you know, Jesus laid hands on the leper, and he wasn’t afraid that leprosy was going to come on him. Why wasn’t he? He was just filled up with the Father. Leprosy wouldn’t have room to fit! And I believe that more and more as we become more “Father minded”, taking Jesus not as our God, but as our example of what we are supposed to be. Again, this sounds like stuff we are supposed to know. Well, let’s see if it jibes with the rest of the scripture.
Turn to Ephesians, Chapter 3. Look at verse l to start,
For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles. If you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God (the father) which has given me to you-ward How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words, Whereby, when ye read. ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ.
Did you see that? He’s talking about the Father, but he said the mystery of, he said first “the Father”, but then he says “Christ”. Well, I thought “Jesus Christ”. No. Jesus was Jesus Christ because the Father was in him. The Christ is the Father. The Christ is from the Father. It is a spirit from the Father. It’s not Jesus’ last name. It’s not his lineage. It’s what happens when Jesus of Nazareth leaves Nazareth and meets God. He becomes Jesus Christ.
But we cannot associate Christ with Jesus all the time, because Jesus,... we’ve already screwed up by worshiping Jesus. And we worshipped him because He always had God attached to His name. Christ. But you have to separate it as best you can for a moment so that you can see that Christ wasn’t just meant to stick with Jesus. Verse 5. Notice, it has been a mystery, but the mystery has been revealed.
Which, in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. That the Gentiles should be fellow heirs,
Fellow? Not pawns in the big chess game of heaven. No fellow heirs….
And of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel. Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power. Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ;
And it sounds like we are talking about Jesus, but hang in there, because we are not, anymore than we are talking about Him being the gift that the Father gave to get this work done.
And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God (the Father), who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God (the Father) according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord: (the Father is not the Lord, Jesus is Lord) In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him. Wherefore I desire that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory. For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Because God gave a gift. God is ready to reveal this mystery. ln other ages, no one knew about this thing, but now, because people have been able to see the difference between Jesus and the Christ, they have been able to know the Father. For this cause I (Paul says) bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ but keep going….of whom, of the Father the whole family in heaven and in earth is named. What does that mean?
Well, in Acts, Chapter 8 they called them first CHRIST-ians in Antioch. That was the way they said they saw people like Jesus. By Acts Chapter 8, some of the disciples had got on it… they started acting like Jesus acted, and showed everyone the Father. And so they were called CHRIST-ians. And they said, “Here comes Vicky Christ, and here comes Peggy Christ, and they look like Jesus Christ. They are acting like Jesus Christ. They’re showing us examples of Jesus Christ. And here comes Dani Christ and Millie Christ”. Is that too hard to imagine?
Turn to Philippians, Chapter 2. They must have had trouble believing this in the church of Philippi, or Paul wouldn’t have had this written.
Let this mind be in you. Philippians 2:5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
This is not about making yourself a God, it’s about giving glory to the Father. But we have been so afraid of people calling us “gods”, we’ve been so afraid of even walking in that area, that we have just played around with our gifts and left the Father to think….“Well, there’s another kid that only wanted my keys”. It’s no wonder He wasn’t seeking us. We weren’t seeking Him. It said, “in spirit and in truth”. Jesus actually said when some Jews who did believe came up to Him, I believe in John Chapter 8, and said “Thy” (talking about the Father) “Thy word is truth”. Well, we found that in Proverbs 4.
“My son, attend to my words incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them; and health to all their flesh.
Well, the spirit is a Christ, the spirit is what was in Jesus. The Spirit of Christ.
Turn to 1 John, Chapter 3. I should go have some “Father” emblems made. In fact, I declare for the Faith Center for 1999 that this is all about being a true worshiper. This is all about seeking the Father, glorifying the Father, and just seeing what….Maybe this is the secret to 24 hour miracles….to the way of life where…”.Why did it take so long for that mountain to move? God, is this too big for you???” No. It’s because we need to learn something. 1 John Chapter 3. Now here’s where you have to pay very close attention to your pronouns and your subject, predicate, object, and prepositional phrase.
Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, (are we the “us”? Sounds like us.) that we should be called the sons of God: (We’re being called the sons of the Father, aren’t we?) therefore the world knoweth us not, (they’re too busy with Jesus.)
People are too busy throwing Jesus at people instead of throwing themselves at people as a servant of God, as in washing their feet. They are throwing, “Well, if you don’t know Jesus, you don’t know my God.” Well, you obviously don’t know Jesus, because the Father sent Jesus to give the example of someone who washed a foot, not beat someone over the head with a fish emblem!) Every time you see “the Father”- say the Father- every time you see the word, “God”, say the Father.
Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God, (the Father). Therefore the world knows us not because it knew him (the Father) not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God (the father) and it does not yet appear what we shall be but we know that when He (the Father)...Oh. boy, does that blow the whole rapture argument for that scripture out of the water….“Well, when Jesus returns, we’ll be like him.” Hey, if you aren’t like Him, He won’t be coming back for you. No. He said, As He is, so are we in this world. And the Father is saying, “and you had about two thousand years to get it right”. Well, I don’t know, that’s what it said.
Beloved, now are we the sons of God (the Father) and it doth not appear yet what we shall be but we know that when he (the Father) shall appear, we shall be like him (the Father). No wonder those Pharisees threw a fit when Jesus said “Our Father” because he made himself equal with God. But Paul said, “Hey, Let this mind be in you which is also in Christ Jesus who thought it not robbery to be equal of God. It’s his idea! It wasn’t my idea. “Who do you think you are?” Well, as Jesse DuPlantis says, “Well, how much time have you got?” Holier than thou? I AM holier than thou. That’s what its about, kids. The Father.
Colossians Chapter 1, and Ephesians 2 at the same time. When he shall return (He, the Father). OK. What’s up….The Father returning. I didn’t hear anything about the Father returning, did you? Did you hear anything in the Bible about the Father returning? Is the Father supposed to return? I thought Jesus was supposed to return! And we would rule and reign with him. Well, let me show you how the Father is going to return, and why this is such a big deal.
First, we will read from Colossians Chapter 1…about verse 24. Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh Oh! There’s going to be Christ in your flesh. Better be. That’s how you become a son of God. That’s what being born again, or born from above is all about. The literal Greek says “born from above”. You get a new spirit in there. A new creature with a new feature. And fill up that which is behind of the affliction of Christ in my flesh for his Body’s sake, which is the church. Now it’s interesting, we’re talking about God here, we’re talking about the Father…whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God. Fulfill. Fulfill!
Ephesians Chapter 2, Verse 18. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone. Do you begin to see what this is like? OK. Verse 21 In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord. In whom ye are also builded together for an habitation of God (the Father) through the Spirit
Now wait. Imagine for a moment, that I have a cinder block here, a standard size cinder block. If you are going to build a house with cinder blocks, chances are, they will need to be the same size Chances are, you’ll want them to look the same. Don’t bring me some little red brick, put it next to the cinder block, and say, “That’s my little red brick. All of it. Only one I’ve got”. The house won’t stand. Jesus is the chief corner stone, which means that all of the other stones that build this house that the Father wants to dwell in better be the same size….better look like Jesus, better act like Jesus, better treat the Father just like Jesus did, better glorify the Father just like Jesus did.
Flip over here to Ephesians, Chapter 4. Verse 14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, but the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. But speaking the truth (oh, in spirit and in truth) in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: Now in my King James, the word “even” is in italics. That means the translators didn’t think when they translated from Greek to English, that it read well enough. They just added that word in there. But they didn’t have a revelation of Christ. They didn’t have a revelation of the Father. They called King James “sovereign”. But now read it without the italicized word. From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, (every brick the same size) maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. And I missed verse 15…But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. He’s not the only Christ, he’s the head Christ. If He is the only Christ, I mean,God can’t dwell….“which side of the brick do you want me to stand on, Jesus?”
He’s trying to live with his people again. He’s trying to walk with Adam in the cool of the day. He’s trying to walk with the animals. The Father is trying to come back to the planet like he was in the beginning. The Father is trying to live for eternity with his kids, but the kids are grand kids. “Well, we are just paupers, we are unworthy”. Well, you may have been unworthy, but He who knew no sin, Jesus, the gift, was made to be sin for us that we, the unworthies, could be made the righteousness of God. He wrote it. I didn’t. Just agree with it, and start working on getting your block to start acting, looking, glorifying, and preaching the Father. The Father! Jesus made it available, but I’m not going to spend my life on Jesus. These guys already did. I’m supposed to take up the mantle of what Jesus did to free me so that I am able to reconcile people unto their Father.
I wish we had time for one more scripture. OK. Luke 15, Verse 11. The story of the Prodigal Son with a new twist. He (meaning Jesus) said a certain man had two sons. The younger of them said to his Father, Father give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in the land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself (when he finally came to himself), he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be ;called thy son. But the father said to the servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry. Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant. And he said unto him, Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound. And he was angry.
Now wait, this has been about the Prodigal Son, the one who lived rampantly, and then came back to his father, and said, “I’ll just be a servant to you. I’ll work for the Kingdom of God.” The sons that were seemingly in the Kingdom of God, in this case, this son, look at this….And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out, and entreated him. And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet (or a good thing) that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.
Now, what is so interesting about this Jesus thing in the church, in Christianity, and again, I have no trouble with the Jesus thing. You should have no trouble with the Jesus thing. But we need to rightly divide the word of truth. There are going to be a lot of “Jesus people” coming out of the woodwork thinking they know their Father, and the Bible says they don’t, and isn’t that the message of the Prodigal Son? The ones that have come together in the Faith Center came from all over the place, coming to serve. And they found out about their Father. The son that lived with them all along didn’t even know that all the stuff the father had was theirs all along. He didn’t even know his own father.

This message was transcribed and edited from the original audio message
© All Rights Reserved. - Las Vegas Faith Center Church.

Idle Words

The Las Vegas Faith Center
Message from Sunday, February 28, 1999

“Idle Words”
by Tiger Todd

I think there have been some people who believe I make this stuff up. We thought about something related to that during our “Upper Room” discussions on Tuesday night. I said, Look here in John 20. Jesus had just resurrected, he comes to the disciples, breathes on them, and says, Whew! Be filled with the Holy Ghost. Everyone is looking at their Bible, and thinking, What??? Because that event was weeks before Pentecost. And there it was, sitting in our Bibles all this time. It’s like God just stuck it in there, or Tiger just pasted it in when you weren’t looking. What I’m trying to lead into is this: many things have been popping out this year that we hadn’t seen before, and I’d like to talk about one such a subject.

I’d like you to look at Matthew 12:36. Jesus is speaking here, But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. Every idle word. Does anyone know what we thought that meant? You probably thought it was a word you didn’t mean, or a word that had no substance to it. The word “idle” comes from a Greek word, word 692 in the Strong’s Concordance. It means a negative particle, something that it is inactive, for example, unemployed. But two words struck me that I hadn’t seen before. One of them was “lazy”, and the other was “barren”. It’s a “lazy” word. A “barren” word. Let’s concentrate on the word “lazy” for a moment. A lazy, or inactive word. What are some of the characteristics of a lazy person? You might respond, big, a TV watcher, a procrastinator, someone sleeping when they shouldn’t be. Ooh, I like that. Why sleep ye? Rise and pray lest you fall into temptation. That’s a good one.

We’ve talked about this before, but lazy words are words that you don’t pay conscious attention to when you’re saying them. I’ll give you an example. My wife leaves me a note, or comes up to me and says, “Honey, I love you”. And I say, “I love you, too.” She knows I love her. But my response just popped out, as in lazy. I didn’t really stop to think what was behind the words “I love you”. I didn’t take any time to say, “I will nourish and cherish you all the days of my life.”

As I was dissecting things, and trying to rightly divide the word of truth, I came across some other things that Christians say a lot. For example, when people sneeze, most of us automatically say, “God Bless You”. We’ve conquered this in our church. We touched on this a couple years ago, when we talked about “Bless”. What does the word “bless” mean? Bless really is a word that empowers you to prosper. We’ve gotten discernment on that one. But when you say, “God Bless You” when someone sneezes, what are you really trying to say? Did you mean, I noticed you sneezed and it interrupted me while I was talking, and would you not do it again? That’s what I used to think it was, but really, what you’re referring to is, was the reason why they sneezed because they’re sick? I mean, assuming the cause wasn’t just a bright light, a photoelectric problem, or maybe something in the air, or they did like I did when I fed the horses this morning. The horses moved around, and stirred up all this dust action, and I sneezed. “God Bless You” really means that if you sneezed, I want God to heal you. Well, God empowers you to be healed of whatever caused you to sneeze. I believe that’s really where the root thing came from. But we don’t think of that when we say “God Bless You”. Now we can all think something different.

I want you to start thinking about the laziness of automatically responding without a thought. Here’s a different example. I walked around a lot at the Homeless Outreach, and when I sat down, and I sort of sighed, Uhhhh. Why did that have to come out? It really didn’t hurt to sit down, I wasn’t that tired, but it seemed like something was connected. That response automatically bypassed all thought, it bypassed my heart, it bypassed my intellect, it bypassed everything. I had just made all this noise that I didn’t need to make.

Lazy. Barren. “Love you too”. “God Bless You.” And here’s the worst- “Praise the Lord”! Now wait. What did you mean by that? Let’s take a few examples. Here comes the sacred cow tipping. “Praise the Lord.” That’s probably our best slogan in the Christian church. If you think of others, please let me know, and I’ll be sure and cut those up, too. When the prophet Elisha healed Naaman, the Syrian, of leprosy, do you think Naaman ran out there and said, “Thank you Jesus. Praise the Lord!” Naaman had no idea who Elisha was the day before that event, let alone Jesus, who hadn’t even been born yet. So when we say “Praise the Lord”, we’re trying to attribute some sort of credit to Jesus, aren’t we? If you start breaking it down, step by step, you’re trying to say, “Thank you Jesus”, when really, Jesus wasn’t anywhere around.

Is anyone here Jewish, by natural descent? Well, while you’re here in Matthew 12, flip over to Matthew 15:21. It says Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a woman of Canaan (a non-Jew) came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; (she said, Praise the Lord) my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. (Undoubtedly, the woman kept saying Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord. Help!) But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Are you of the lost sheep of the house of Israel? No? Then Jesus was not sent for you. Sorry. For all our listeners on the tape, let’s let that sink in for a moment. If you are not one of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, Jesus was not sent to help you. He told that to the Canaanite woman that very day. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs. Then he called the woman who followed him “a dog”. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.

Well, something else happened, didn’t it. I’m not going to preach this message yet, because there is another one “in the works” on the “be made whole” message. Whole-ing vs. healing. He said, I cannot help you because I am only sent by God. My whole mission, the Christ in me, the hope of glory for the Father out of me is only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Now you can be aware that when you said “Praise the Lord”, it had nothing to do with the Lord Jesus.

Let’s say a guy off the street gives you $l0.00, and your response is “Praise the Lord”. You’ve just called him your Lord, haven’t you? Am I right? Without knowing it, that’s actually what you’ve done. You’ve called him Lord. Well, he’s probably big enough to be Lord of you over the $10.00, but he ain’t big enough to be “Lord”. The Bible does say to call on Jesus as Lord.

I think we need to settle this right now before we go on with the message, so turn with me to Romans 10:13. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Ok. But he’s talking to the church at Rome. These guy she’s talking to aren’t Jews, are they? They’re not from the lost sheep of the house of Israel. They’re Romans. They’re Italians. How many Italians do we have in here? So the Italians can be saved! No, that’s not what he was talking about. Look what happened, Verse 1 Brethren, My heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. Well, that’s why Jesus was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. i.e., neither does the church, if they go after Jesus that way. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, He’s about to explain to us what being ignorant of God’s righteousness is. Well, if we’re ignorant of God’s righteousness, I don’t believe the righteousness of God will do us any good and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.

Jesus said to the Canaanite woman, I can’t help you. I’m sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Still, she sought the righteousness which is by faith, so it was faith that was able to get her daughter delivered, not Jesus. Just as he said to the woman with the issue of blood, just as he said to the Roman Centurion, just as he said to the leper, “Your faith has made you whole.” You don’t praise the Lord, you come and follow, you take up your cross, i.e., your Christ, and follow me. You do what God wants you to do, now that your faith has made you whole. Don’t just come and try to imitate me, because I’m only sent for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. If you imitate me, you’ll have a ministry only to the Jews. They’re going about establishing their own righteousness. But the righteousness which is of faith, verse 6, says this, But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise. Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above). Or who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead).

In other words, don’t call on Jesus Christ, don’t try to bring him back physically to do the job. But what saith it? What does the righteousness which is of faith say? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, Isn’t that what the Canaanite woman did? She spoke some sort of word, and God saw what kind of faith she had. She said, I can get healed off your crumbs. I can get healed from you walking by. I can get healed because I understand that it’s not you that do the works, but the Father in you, Jesus. I know you are Jesus, but hey, that is the righteousness which is of faith, and that is the faith that saves. and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; This is important. We want to make sure we understand this. That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

Now Jesus is Lord, certainly, but when you praise something that a man or woman of God has done in the spiritual realm; healing, for example, you’re not praising Jesus, you’re giving glory to the Father. You might be thanking and giving honor to the man of God. Jesus was always Lord, he never stopped being Lord. But if he was always Lord, then why was someone sick yesterday before we laid hands on him if Jesus was still Lord yesterday? He is the same yesterday, today and forever. What was the difference? A different person came into the room, a person called by God in this age. What we need to realize is that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, but not much else is.

We’ve gotten this idea that because it said Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, that the Bible was the same yesterday, today, and forever, that other things are also that way. Well, go grab your old high school pictures and tell me if you are the same yesterday, today and forever. Jesus is! Period. We’re talking about the gospel of Christ.

Turn back to Romans l:16. because I want you to understand this. Jesus did not preach the gospel of Christ. Why? Because he was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He had a gospel, he had good news, but it was only for those that were the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He didn’t have good news for the Canaanite woman. Do you understand that? He told her he couldn’t help her. That’s not good news to the woman who’s got a daughter vexed with devils. But God would not leave those people out. Because she wasn’t a Jew, Jesus was not her man of the hour. If you were a Jew, he was your man of the hour. In Elisha’s day, Elisha was the man of the hour. In Elijah’s day, Elijah was the man of the hour. When Israel was in bondage to Egypt for 400 years, Moses was the man of the hour. When Moses lived out his 120 years, Joshua became the man of the hour. Do you understand what we are talking about?

What I want to present to you is that there are different gospels. Look at Romans l:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: The gospel of Christ is a new gospel; new since Jesus, and new because, it says here, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. This gospel of Christ includes the Canaanite woman, as well as the Jew. It includes the Greek, it includes male and female. It includes the sinner, it includes it all. It includes it all because It is a new gospel. What Jesus did made the way, he made the gospel available, but it is still a new gospel. I want you to follow me here. You don’t have to agree with me yet, but make sure you are following where I am headed. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written. The just shall live by faith.

I have a little list here. I don’t think we’ll even read these scriptures, but if you want to write them down, you can look them up later. One of the first gospels in the Bible is the gospel of circumcision. That’s what Galatians 2:7 calls what God did with Abraham. But contrary wise, when they saw that the gospel of uncircumcision was committed unto me as the gospel of circumcision was given unto Peter. This means that the Jews had a certain cut in the flesh. It was the gospel of circumcision. There was good news to Abraham that if his seed was circumcised, they would have all the rights and benefits of God in their age. But the new gospel said it didn’t matter if you are circumcised. It’s a different gospel.

Deuteronomy 28 lists the blessing of the law and the cursing of the law. If you obey my commandments, if you keep my statutes you will live, you will be blessed in the city, blessed in the field, blessed going in, blessed going out, above only and not beneath, you will be the head light, not the tail light. If you don’t, you’ll be cursed in the city, cursed in the field, all kinds of stuff. Forget about the curse part, just do what he says. But this is the gospel of deliverance that God gave Moses for his people. During that age, in the wilderness, if you obeyed these statutes and commandments, you would live. It was a gospel of deliverance. All the gospels were gospels of deliverance, but they had different ordinances. And they had different people that instituted that gospel.

Genesis Chapter 3:15 is where the gospel of the Messiah began. God tells the serpent in the garden that there would be one coming “who is going to do the hokey pokey on you”. The gospel of the Messiah is preached all the way through the prophets, through Jeremiah, through Isaiah. Surely a virgin will conceive and bear a son. And really, the prophets were the ones that continued to keep the gospel of the Messiah alive. Even through 400 years of bondage to Egypt, they still heard about this gospel… that there is one coming. Do you know who their messiah was? It wasn’t Jesus, it was Moses who was their deliverer. That’s what messiah means… a deliverer, a saviour. Deliverer means saviour. The word Joshua and the word Jesus is the same word, it’s really Joshua. So there was one Joshua, and there is another Joshua in Jesus. That’s how the system works. It’s the gospel, it’s good news that God has someone in mind to help you.

Luke Chapter 3:2. This verse talks about the gospel that John the Baptist preached. Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness. And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. This was the gospel at the time, and John the Baptist was the man of the hour. John the Baptist said, If I’m going to preach this message to you, and you will come and get baptized, your sins will be remitted to you. And the Bible says that the Lord went before him to see to it that everyone lined up to get dunked. Pharisees, scribes, all kinds of people wondered, What are we doing this for?, but they did it anyway. There was something on John the Baptist’s ministry for that gospel. Jesus wasn’t around, he wasn’t in his ministry yet, until the last day of that dispensation, if you will

I want to make sure this is clear. We’re not talking about what churches have said was a dispensation, we’re talking about what God said was a dispensation. Obviously, the message is going to be different to Israel when they are in Egypt than when they are out of Egypt. It’s going to be different when they are in the wilderness than when they are in the promised land. It’s going to be different when you have enemies to fight than when you don’t have enemies to fight. Things actually work a lot better today than they did in Jesus’ dispensation, because back then, if you were not part of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, you were in trouble! You didn’t have a saviour. As Ephesians 2:12 says, you were without hope and without God in the world. Why? Because you were strangers in the covenant with Israel, a promise, you were strangers from the seed.

Luke 3:2 says the gospel of baptism and repentance is what John the Baptist preached. Then we have Jesus’ gospel. Matthew 4:23 says Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom. The gospel Jesus preached was the gospel of the kingdom. That reminds me of Mark 4:1 which says He began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land. And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine, The gospel of the kingdom of God was Jesus’ doctrine. He was the first one to show us, So is the kingdom of God as if a man should cast seed into the ground. It was the gospel of the kingdom, and Mark 4 is filled with “and so is the Kingdom of God” over and over and over. It is the gospel of the Kingdom.

Please turn back to Romans 2:16. We were at Romans Chapter 1 where Paul said, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto deliverance. Verse 16 of Chapter 2: In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel, Paul had his own gospel. It wasn’t the gospel of Jesus. God gave Paul his own gospel. It wasn’t for Paul’s glory. It was Paul’s gospel, because he was the one uniquely designed by God to introduce it.

Here’s what I’d like to present to you, and we’re not off the message. We were talking about idle words, and about slogans. I present to you that the gospel of Christianity that is preached today is a combination of John the Baptist’s gospel and Jesus’ gospel, not the gospel for today, and that’s why it doesn’t do any more saving than it does. 99% of the words preached today, then, are idle since they are based upon a message for a particular group or era that has been completed. These words are idle- or empty of power- and worse than that, those that preach these obsolete powerless messages are against anyone, well it’s getting better now, that speak about faith. And the message of faith was the only message that could supersede those two gospels when they were preached in their proper age! If the Caananite woman hadn’t exercised some faith, her daughter would have died. And we’ve got plenty of daughters dying out there in Christianity today.

Remember, the words defining “idle” were lazy and barren. Why were they lazy? Did we read our own Bible? OK, we read it, so think about this. As easy as it is for me to say “God Bless You”, wouldn’t it be more effective to be saying, “By his stripes you are healed”? I mean, come up with something. Pray for them. Just say, “Is everything cool? Do you want me to pray for you?” Don’t just use that lazy response, the one that doesn’t take any thought.

For many years, I heard from God, who told me to buy bicycles around Christmas time to give to people. One particular Christmas, I had bought a bicycle, and it had been in the back of my truck for weeks. Christmas came and Christmas went, and I didn’t get a word from God on what to do with this bicycle. Hey, God, who’s this bicycle for? One day, I was driving down Sunset near Eastern, and saw a Hispanic man standing there with a couple of kids. God said, “That’s who”. I guess God didn’t know I had to be somewhere at 3:00, and that I was running late. I’d been trying to unload this bike for a long time, and now God wanted me to give away this bike when I was in a hurry. Really,it all came down to how much time I had, because I knew you couldn’t give a gift from God without giving the word of God with the gift.

God’s not just trying to dump bicycles on people. He’s trying to change their lives with a gift. We see that in Proverbs 16: A man’s gift maketh room for him. God had said, “That’s who”. There they were, I was running late, but I needed to do things the right way. I turned around, and spent the entire afternoon with those people. I missed my original appointment, but I found out about that family. They had already left Christianity for another religion because their gospel wasn’t working. See, if you just look in Bible and see the word “gospel”, you could get the idea that everything between the two covers is the gospel. But no, there are different gospels in here. There are different gospels, and if we allow these slogans to come up, they’ll work on us, and we won’t be able to rightly divide the word of truth.

I think we need to go back to Matthew 6:9. This is the famous prayer, Our Father which art in heaven. After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Why did that come? Because Jesus preached the gospel of the Kingdom, and Jesus did his job. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive us our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine (yours, Father) is the kingdom, and (yours, Father) the power, and (yours, Father) is the glory, for ever, Amen.

Based on this verse, how much glory should Jesus get? None. According to that verse, Jesus should never get any glory. Now here’s lazy. How many churches have preached and prayed the “Our Father” and then sang a song that said, “Glory to the Lamb”? We did it. But not any more. We want to make this thing work. How about “The One and Only Son”? I sang this song on the Sea of Galilee. God got all over it, and it was just an amazing, miraculous thing. But now I’ve learned some things. The end of the song says, “Jesus, the one and only son”. But wait a second! As I stopped to slow down before words escaped my mouth, I realized that he is not the only son. The Bible says he is the first born among many brethren, that those that are led by the spirit of God, Romans 8:14, they are the sons of God. It says no more servants, but sons, and if sons, then heirs of God, and joint heirs with Jesus. He’s not the only begotten son anymore. He died so that we could bring many sons to glory. He paved the way for the gospel of Christ.

Now we’ve got a man named Paul who comes and preaches the gospel of Christ. Peter was supposed to have preached it, but what did Peter do? Peter preached the gospel of Jesus. It had already been done. It was a Jewish gospel. In fact, in Galatians 1:7, Paul tells the church how Peter, in the words he used, has “perverted the gospel of Christ”. The perversion began when Peter preached what Jesus preached instead of preaching what he was supposed to preach. “Oh just give me a little log cabin in glory”. Well, wait a second. Jesus said, In my Father’s house are many mansions”. If you want a little log cabin in glory, you won’t be anywhere near the Father’s house, i.e. you will not be a son.

Idle Words. Once you know something, I mean, we’re going to have to stop and think before we speak it. Well, let’s read Mark 16. Jesus has resurrected, and he’s telling the disciples what they’re supposed to preach. Verse 15, And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. You could think that’s the gospel that Jesus preached, the same thing. Well, wait. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; Wait a second! That’s not what Jesus preached. Jesus preached “So is the kingdom of God as a man should cast seed into the ground and sleep and rise night and day, etcetera, etcetera.

Wait a second. Which gospel is it that produces “saved”? Here’s a hint: I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16). Do you see it? He told them which gospel to preach! He said Go ye into all the world, (that should be your first clue, you’re leaving the Jews, OK, I sent you in Luke 9, I sent you in Luke 22, I sent you to go to the house of the lost sheep of Israel. Go two by two to their house. Take nothing with you. Do you remember the commission? But now we’ve got a new gospel because I am resurrected, because I did what I did. Now it’s your turn. You are the men of the hour. Go preach THIS gospel. Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. These signs shall follow them that believe;

Look at the things that happen in this ministry. It was Jesus who said, In my name they shall cast out devils. Can you see that when you’re preaching the gospel of John the Baptist, and the gospel of the kingdom of God, and not the gospel of Christ, you will not see devils cast out? I believe this is the reason why I have been so effective in casting out devils and healing the sick. “They will speak with new tongues (Mark 16). The apostle Paul was the only one in the Bible that said, I thank my God. I speak tongues more than you all, and he called the Gospel of Christ his gospel. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. That’s the gospel of Christ, not the gospel of Jesus. It’s not the gospel of the kingdom of God, it’s not the gospel of deliverance from Moses, it’s not the gospel of the Messiah coming. The Messiah has come. Look at Israel. You don’t see those things happening in Israel, because they even stopped short of the gospel of baptism.

Well, that’s interesting. The gospel you believe is the one you’ve got to live with. I think we need to turn back to Matthew Chapter 12. Now that we transcribe these messages, I’m trying to fill you in, define the terms, and then let you go back and read it straight. So this is important. If I send you guys a letter talking about something we talked about today, you’d read it, and say, That was great. Did everyone get your “love letters”? If I sent you a letter, and you had attended that service where we talked about love, you’d know what we talked about. That’s why I wrote you the letter. And you’re saying, Yeah, I remember that. That was great.

Well, the gospel of Christ is contained in two thirds of the New Testament. Two thirds of our “Praise the Lord” book was written mostly by the apostle Paul about the gospel of Christ. Yet today’s church world can’t read a letter as if it’s a letter to them. These are letters to the churches at Ephesus, Corinth, Galatia, and Thessalonika. Letters. But we’ve got all these seminaries saying, “Well, he really meant this, brother”. That’s because they’re trying to translate it based upon the gospel of baptism, and the gospel of the kingdom of God. But I should be able to write you a letter, and if you are able to understand the gospel of Christ, much like you understood the message on love, when I send you a letter about love, you’d say, I know exactly what you mean. Just read it straight. You don’t have to get out your Thesaurus or your Strongs Concordance, Greek and Hebrew etc. etc. You just need to read it straight, and go, Yeah. Uh huh. Yep.

That’s a letter to me. So, doesn’t that lead you to believe that if the people in the church world cannot understand those letters without having to decipher them, without having to talk back and forth, and argue, then the letter is not to them. They have believed the wrong gospel, and they have believed them because their words became idle. They said, Praise the Lord, God Bless You, and didn’t stop to think about what they were saying. They read right over the Lord’s Prayer and gave glory to Jesus.

I’ll give you another example. The rich young ruler slid up to Jesus, and said, “Good Master”. Jesus said, “Why are you calling me good? There is nothing in me good but the Father. Don’t give me glory.” It’s all through the Bible, but they hallelujah’d at the message. they Amen’d, they did all the stuff I can’t do with my body because I am white. But while they did all that stuff, they still didn’t get it. They wondered why they fell out in the healing line, but couldn’t get back up. They were supposed to have gotten healed. They were supposed to have gotten delivered. It was the gospel unto deliverance. It’s the “I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ”. But the gospel of baptism wasn’t for deliverance, it was for repentance. The gospel of Jesus was to show how God does things. But it was only meant for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

We’ve read this stuff without thinking about it, before we let it come out of our mouth. Look back at Matthew 12:31 Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. Well, we know for sure that that wasn’t the Holy Ghost that came on the Day of Pentecost, because the Day of Pentecost hadn’t come. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit. In other words, if you’re bad, you might as well just be bad.

Jesse DuPlantis has a wonderful message called “Why are you going to hell going to church”. There are a lot more fun places to be than church. If you’re going to hell, you know it. You don’t care about anything, and you’re just going out there and trying to fit in. So what are you doing going to church? You should be out on the houseboat, or in a lot of other places, but not here.

Jesus is saying the same thing. Either make the tree good, and the fruit good, or make the tree bad. Jesus said that in Revelation to John on the Patmos. He said, You’re either hot or cold. But why even walk in this lukewarm wine here? I mean, coffee’s not good lukewarm. Milk is not good lukewarm. Nothing is good lukewarm. He said, “I will spew you out of my mouth”. These guys here are accusing him of being satan, and satan means “accuser”. Do you see why you’ve got him on “idle words”? They didn’t even know what they were saying. They are accusing him of casting out devils by the power of the devil. They were accusing him, or “sataning” him, in the literal Hebrew and Greek, of being satan. Pretty funny. And pretty idle. They didn’t stop to think before they said it. Either make the tree good, and his fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt; for the tree is known by his fruit. O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

We’ve got some lazy words coming out of our mouth, and it will mess up our heart. Didn’t it say in Romans Chapter 10, For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto deliverance. In the Gospel of Christ, faith has got to be in two places- your heart and your mouth, so you can’t afford idle words. We’ve got to stop and watch the lyrics to the songs we sing. When I started understanding that my words meant something, I started thinking about a lot of songs I sing. I can sing straight through all 273 of my Sinatra albums, but I started singing some of them one day, and the words caught me. I realized that I can’t sing some of the lyrics any more. There was one on the Count Basie/Sinatra album, something like, he’s out for revenge because his woman left him. After I came to myself, I realized why the woman had left him. She should have! Good girl. Way to go. But then I heard the lyrics, “I want to be around to pick up the pieces when somebody breaks your heart”. It’s a catchy tune, and I was getting excited about it, but, “Wait a second.” I realized that’s why it happened to me. By the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, and confession is made unto whatever you are going to have.

Did I take the shout out of the meeting? A good man, out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things. And an evil man,out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth evil things, but I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment for by thy words thou shalt be (a) justified, or by your words, (b) you will be condemned. Condemned by your own words. The gospel of Christ puts the authority of your life, of your future, of your everything, up to you. The gospel of Christ made it so. All we can do is teach you what to do, how to do it, and what to look out for. The one that hears it sooner and does it faster is the one who won’t have to go through any tribulation.

We were talking yesterday about how something just “leaked out”. I said, Where did that come from? What’s that still doing in there? I thought my heart was pretty darn clean, but all of a sudden, something just leaked out. I said, What was that? So I immediately took control. It’s sort of like when I’m getting a little too carefree, (I’ll call it out of control), if I start approaching 50 mph in a 45 mph, or change lanes into the left lane, but kind of move to the right just a little fast. I’m generally very faithful. I do 45 mph, and that’s it! If I just sell out to 45 mph, and if the light’s green ahead, I just prepare to stop. I take the time to realize that I’m not going to be pressured into anything, because pressure is really when something leaks out that you don’t want to leak out. It happens when you’re squeezed.

You can eliminate a lot of pressure in your life and practice walking without pressure by just taking the pressure off and saying, I don’t care. I started doing that, and catching back up, and finding out that that kind of thing was leaving doors open. Those things were letting stuff in that I didn’t know would leak out. And I don’t want to be condemned by those words. I want to be justified by every word. I want to speak a word over someone’s debt, and I want to hear, tomorrow, that everything has turned around in their life. I want to lay hands on the sick, and know that tomorrow, everything has turned around in their lives. I want to hear about it that minute, but I’m not looking for that. I’m not interested in a sign to determine whether God is working or not, I just want to be confident that I’ve got good stuff in here, so that good stuff comes out. Good things come to pass by my hands because I have made a conscious effort in what goes in my heart and what comes out my mouth.

So we sing the praise and worship songs, but we need to give them some thought. I had to apologize, but I had to walk out of the praise and worship at Kenneth Copeland’s place once I knew about some things that we’ve discussed about glory. I love Kenneth Copeland, he’s my father in the faith, but they’re out there singing the songs, and they don’t even realize what they are singing. Apparently they didn’t stop to think about the scriptures when they first wrote the songs. As we think about them, if something comes up regarding singing, and praise and worship songs, and you see somewhere in the scripture where it doesn’t work, just bring it up to Joseph or myself and we’ll be the first ones to change it.

Jesus said, If you were blind, you’d have no sin. But he says, Because you say, We See, your sin remains. So there is no sin if you didn’t know it wasn’t a truth. It wasn’t sin to those singing at Kenneth Copeland’s. It was robbing them of power at their ministry, surely, but it wasn’t a sin. It’s just that God couldn’t work the way He wanted to work, because He only works the way He said He would work. But now that you know it, it will be a sin for you to continue in it.

Finally, turn with me and we’ll let Hebrews 6:l-8 do the talking:

Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this will we do, if God permit. For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God: But that which beareth thorns and briars is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned.

This message was transcribed and edited from the original audio tape message.
© All Rights reserved. Copyright 1999.

The Reproach for Christ

The Las Vegas Faith Center
Message from Sunday, February 7, 1999

The Reproach for Christ - Church Sermon
by Tiger Todd - Sr. Pastor

In today’s message, just as in my previous messages, I promise I won’t use all thirty of these scriptures today. Actually, I have about thirty other scriptures to use today! We can’t seem to preach just one message on Sunday any more. And we had two great keys come out of our Thursday service, which focuses on money. As these keys come out, I can preach through the key almost to the end of the message, but then the following week, it seems we need to continue the message in order to review, and bring us back up to speed. So that’s what I am going to do again today.

Does anyone recall where we left off last week? For those of you who might not have been here last Sunday, it’s good that we can go over this again. Last week’s message was entitled “Lord + Christ=Glory”. We know from Colossians 1:27 that it is Christ in you, the hope of glory. “The Christ” was not talking about Jesus. Actually, sometimes it was, because Jesus was the “Head Christ”, but the Book of Nehemiah lists lots of Christs, it lists a bunch of deliverers, a bunch of anointed ones. So, when Paul is talking to the church and saying “it is Christ in you, the hope of glory”, God is trying to find out what’s in you. Your glory is going to be different than the hope of glory where I am concerned, because I am supposed to walk a different course, do a different thing than you are. Samson’s hope of glory was to free Israel from the Philistines. When he was walking in his Christ, i.e., the scheduled plan of his Christ, which was designed to destroy the enemies of Israel, to free Israel from bondage to the Philistines. He was what Nehemiah 9:27 calls a “saviour”. The name Joshua actually means, “saviour”. When Joshua brought the children of Israel into the promised land, he had to save them from the Amekelites, the other “ites”, and the people in Jericho. He was called to go and deliver the people.

Moses was the first deliverer, and was probably also named “Joshua” by his mother. Remember, the name “Moses”, an Egyptian name, came from Pharoah’s daughter. Moses means “drawn forth out of the water”. So, as we follow what each of their particular missions were, they were all different, but the hope of God getting the glory in their life was when they did exactly what they were supposed to do. Unfortunately in the Bible, we have just too few of them doing what they were supposed to do.

We’re going to get to something today that joins the messages, and it’s something that ought to make you see the Christ in you more easily. We have a line drawn here on the chalkboard, and as you can see, it’s called “A day in the life of a Saint”. The word “saint”, loosely translated, or “saints” plural (translated 61 times in the New Testament), is the word “holy”. Half the time they translated it as “holy”, and half the time it was translated as “saint”.And it really messes up our interpretation of the holy spirit, because we find out that there are lots of “holies”. But in the “Day in the life of a Saint”, we are going to call this one days worth of work, and this line would represent the Christ in you. But we found that if you walked in your Christ, when you’re doing what you are supposed to do, not what you want to do, then the spirit of the Lord comes upon you, and you get one hundred-fold.

We found out that Samson was merely Samson, just hanging out with the boys, having a great time, until something came against him, i.e., a Philistine. And as soon as the Philistines came against him, the spirit of the Lord came upon him, because that’s what his Christ was designed to do. On one occasion he ripped the gate off the city and threw it on them, because it says the spirit of the Lord came upon him. Well , everyone’s Christ is different. My Christ is not to destroy Philistines. The Christ in me is to answer questions, to troubleshoot. My Christ is wisdom and understanding. It’s a pretty basic type of Christ. But if I want the spirit of the Lord to come upon me to produce glory to my Father, then I have to walk in what the Christ is in me. It won’t work effectively for me to be walking in someone else’s Christ. I can’t be making myself chief of music, because our chief of music has a Christ in him for music. I can’t even play chopsticks. But my chief of music sure can. The spirit of the Lord will not come upon me if I’m trying to be chief of music, but if I did try, I’d have just a mere mortal day regarding music. Samson was a mere mortal, except he had a Christ in him. It says this in Ephesians Chapter 2, It says, Wherefore at that time you were without Christ being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel or strangers in the covenants of promise, (he had a covenant with God and he was part of Israel, which means he had a Christ).

Now, Gentiles can have a Christ in them by getting born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible seed by the word of God. So, we can utilize the same thing today. We can have you in one day doing something else, but you can be doing what God wants you to do and make it seem like a hundred days in one. We’ve all experienced something like that. So the key is, if you really want to glorify your Father, walk in your Christ, or as Romans Chapter 8 says, walk in the spirit.
One of the key points to Thursday night’s message on “Money Matters” is that you’ll never get so spiritual that you’ll stop sin or distraction in your life. It can’t happen. You’ll never get so spiritual that you’ll get all the prosperity and all the promises in the Bible.

Turn to Third John 2:2. It says Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. If you have a cross reference, you’ll see that the word “wish” is poorly translated. The better translation of the word should be “pray”. The disciples and the apostles of the land did not go around “wishing”, but it says Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. That’s a key prayer of the apostle John, that you prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers. It doesn’t have anything to do with your spirit, it doesn’t have anything to do with your Christ, and it didn’t have anything to do with the spirit of the Lord upon you. Your prosperity is a direct result of your understanding, which is what you do with your soul, your mind, your will, and your emotions. You understand more, and then you prosper more. But notice it is a continual process, the verb means “as you are prospering in your soul, you are getting healthier in your body. As you are prospering in your soul, you are getting more prosperous financially. As you are prospering in your soul, you are getting more prosperous socially. And as you are prospering in your soul, less and less negative spiritual stuff will occur in your life. But we have been trying to go from this spiritual thing to fix our soul, and all the while, we were supposed to deal with the soul, and then fix our spirit.

Now, do you think the spirit, who is you, can’t be more valuable than your flesh? (Or else the first person that lost a finger or an appendage would die). Jesus put it this way in Matthew Chapter 6. Why take ye thought for rainment? Why take ye thought for food? Is lunch at Wendy’s more valuable than you are? No. So we have a value thing here. If the Bible also tells us, ” faithful over little, master over much”, and if we learn how to be faithful over our bodies and our souls, then our spirits will be in good shape. So it’s not about, I wish…..no, no, no, you just have to be willing, obedient, and continue to put yourself in a position to understand more. It can mean understanding more about anything. You could be understanding more about cars, and learn better how to walk in the spirit. It doesn’t matter what the understanding is. It just means the fact of understanding….as your soul prospers, you will prosper, the real you, the spirit in you. And by the way, that was there for no extra charge.

Turn to Romans Chapter l:16, please, and get ready to underline a word here. You know, it really peeves me when the spirit of the Lord does this to me in the middle of a well-prepared, well thought out, well prayed-through message when I have to go and do something different. Look at the word “ashamed” in this verse. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Underline the word “ashamed”. How many of you have ever been ashamed? Have any of you ever handed out that little teddy bear to a homeless person? Then you’d be ashamed. How many of you know that if some monstrous big homeless guy came running back to you with that teddy bear, he, too, would be ashamed. OK. I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.

Now wait a second. Do you remember what Jesus preached? Do you realize that Jesus did not preach the gospel of Christ? Why? It wasn’t his gospel to preach. He preached the kingdom of God. Remember Mark Chapter 4, it says, “He began to say unto them in his doctrine” He preached the kingdom of God. Well, John the Baptist preached a totally different gospel, too. He was called to preach baptism and repentance. But the Apostle Paul had been given a whole new thing. Look at Chapter 2 in verse 16 the Book of Romans: In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel. Whoa! The apostle Paul is feeling pretty proud here, huh? He’s calling it his gospel. Well, it was! That’s what his Christ was supposed to do. Now, they stoned the apostle Paul to death about five times, but he’d just get up alive, dust himself off, and go back into town and finish his message. Do you think he could do that without the spirit of the Lord upon him? So that produced some sort of glory, didn’t it. We have two thirds of our New Testament penned by this man, the apostle Paul, according to his gospel. Jesus had his own gospel, and it was to establish the kingdom of God and then, only to preach to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Well, that would leave us out, wouldn’t it, if it wasn’t for Paul’s gospel. It even freaked out Peter in Acts Chapter 10. It said, Of a truth, God is no respecter of persons. Peter was saying, “I have no idea the Gentiles could get what we got!” Bigot. He was! The angel came over there and said, this Italian, Cornelius, needs to get filled with the spirit and he is doing all this stuff, and Peter said, “No way”.

Turn to Mark Chapter 4. Let’s attack this hundred-fold situation. But I need to lay the groundwork to get to this stuff. By the way, the Upper Room is a wonderful place where we have no notes, because truly, which holy spirit was supposed to lead and guide us into all truth? The spirit of Truth!. That’s what he was called. We thought it was the Comforter, because the King James Bible capitalized “comforter”. But Jesus said, “Another comforter”. Well, that means there is at least more than one, so we’ve been kind of silly in our reading. That one leads us and guides us in all truth. And I’m telling you what, he is all over the Upper Room, because we start to read one thing, and all of a sudden, he ties up the package. What if you were just reading scripture, and I’m not just talking about, “Well, let’s learn a little about love, let’s learn a little bit about patience, let’s learn a little about long suffering”. No. He’s telling us when Jesus is coming back. He’s telling us about what our next step is. And we’re talking about some really important, valuable information. The world is doing all they can with technology to try to find out the very information that shows up at the Upper Room. It’s a wild night when you have no prepared notes, and God just gives us what we need to know.

Mark Chapter 4:13. We’re going to read part of the parable of the sower. He said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables? We’re going to understand that if there is anything about the kingdom of God, if there is anything about the second coming, if there is anything about the Father returning, if there is anything about Christ in you, the hope of glory, it will have some sort of relationship to the parable of the sower. He says, The sower soweth the word. And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts. These are they likewise which are sown on stony ground; who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness; And have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time; afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word’s sake, immediately they are offended. And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the word, And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. And these are they which are sown on good ground; such as hear the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some thirty-fold, some sixty, and some an hundred.
The first thing you need to know is that there was only one sower. But he only had one time where he sowed, where he got thirty-fold, sixty-fold, or hundred-fold. The other times, the same sower got nothing. And it reminds me here, we have a day in the life, and, you know, I’m not getting ahead, I’m not getting any further, I mean, I was five years nursing the same $193,000 debt. Years! I was working day and night, trying everything, but obviously, it wasn’t the right stuff. No harvest. Three months after I changed some things, I was completely debt free, and really had no natural way of understanding how I had gotten there.

OK. Today we are going to pick on Eli. Suppose today that Eli has glanced at Muscle and Fitness Magazine, and has found out that a new Corvette and $50,000 goes to the winner of a contest, the person where the most change occurs in their body in three months. But Eli finds out that the deadline is tomorrow. Uh, Houston, we have a problem. Well, what if this principle were in operation? You think that’s silly, but Samson was just a man, and everything he did was just like a standard man, until the spirit of the Lord came upon him. But when it came upon him, a thousand men were not too many to not only knock down, but to kill. To destroy. So this is not far-fetched. Now, look at where you’re going to prosper as your soul prospers. You’ll need to bombard your thinking with these kinds of ideas before you will ever prosper and walk in these ideas. But people such as Samson have walked in them. WE have walked in them. The problem is, we did it by accident. I want to walk in it on purpose. Jesus was the only man that walked in it every minute of the day. It says, he never sinned, he was never out of the will of God, and therefore, the spirit of the Lord was always upon him.

I sense someone still has trouble with the spirit of the Lord vs. the spirit of Truth. Does anyone remember how the spirit of Truth arrived on the Day of Pentecost? It arrived as a large, rushing, mighty wind. As fire sat on each of them, it went into them. Does anyone remember how the spirit of the Lord landed on Jesus? Like a dove. And then, there was a voice from heaven, and from that moment on, the miracles in the life of Jesus began. There were no miracles for the first 30 years of his life. He obviously had a great father, Joseph, teaching him things…he taught him building, he taught him the Bible. Jesus amazed people at 12 years old with his understanding. But there were no miracles in the early years, I mean, if you bumped into Jesus in the school yard, you didn’t get healed. They didn’t have big healing lines in first grade. No. Only when the spirit of the Lord came upon him did things begin to happen. He had a specific Christ. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, he said, to preach the gospel to the poor, to set at liberty them that are bound, recovery of sight to the blind, fix broken hearts. The spirit was upon him to do that.

The spirit of the Lord is upon me to do something different. But, if we are the body of Christ, and we get our body together, do you realize that I can preach, and recovery of sight to the blind can occur because I am part of Jesus’ body. He is the head. If I have an anointing for wisdom and understanding, you can have wisdom and understanding beyond your years, beyond your age, and beyond any intellect you could possess. It’s because we are part of the body. Someone might have an anointing for prosperity. Money just can’t stop chasing them. You could walk in that. Of course, the spirit of the Lord won’t come upon you to walk in that if you’re doing it to spend on your own lusts. It won’t come upon you to do that if you ‘re looking to get “things”, but he will come upon you to do that so that you can get a voice, so that you can be a blessing to all nations of the earth. That’s why the body is so important. The head, he’s Jesus. He’s the head Christ. He’s in Chapter 4 of Ephesians, it calls him “The Head Christ”. The King James Bible adds the words “which is” in there, but not in the original text. It says Jesus is the Head Christ. But it means just the head without the body. He can’t say, “I don’t have need of you”. He needs the body. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen heads rolling around, but they’re not very mobile without bodies attached to them.

Turn to Deuteronomy Chapter 30. While you’re getting there, I want to discuss the second point from Mark Chapter 4. Notice in the parable of the sower, Jesus said, thirty-fold, sixty-fold, one hundred-fold. Didn’t it sound like it should have been 90? Thirty, sixty, ninety. A typo, maybe? A translator poor at math? Well, there are many understandings of this, and I believe they are actually all true, but the one I’d like to present to you today is that some came up thirty times. Let’s say you are planting apple seeds, when you plant them and get a hundred-fold, are you going to get a hundred apple seeds? No, you are going to get a tree with hundreds of apples, with lots of seeds in each apple, so, you are going to get “monster-fold”. I want to present to you that one hundred-fold does not mean one hundred times. Specifically, it means optimum or maximum return. If you were breeding cows, and you’ve bred them with hundred-fold seed, would that give you a hundred calves? I mean, you’d kill the poor thing. So, hundred-fold means optimum or maximum results. So, when we’re trying to get more out of our day, it doesn’t matter if it was a thousand Philistines, or only one lion, it still manifested as maximum results, it was what the job required to be more than enough.

Remember Psalm 23? My cup runneth over. We need it running over. Constantly and consistently running over. And there is a way to walk in this thing.

Well, let’s read out of Deuteronomy Chapter 30. We’ve read verse 19 a lot, but once again, I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: We’ve preached the hint on life and death, actually it’s one of the stories on the web, but look at verse 20. That thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, (Say, “He is my life”.) and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them. Notice the separator between “He is your life”, and “He is the length of your days”. I always thought that meant, you will live long, be old, and have a full life. Last week I even made the presumptuous statement that the key is not to get old, not to be 90 years old, and decrepit. The key IS to see how much stuff you can do within your 90 years. The key to a life is not just getting an award at the end, where everything was covered, everything was a safe place. No, the key was not to get to 90 and die, but what could you do in your lifespan.

Turn to the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 3:13. Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the man that understands more, these are going to be the benefits. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour. Well, that sounds like Third John 2, doesn’t it? Beloved I pray above all things that you prosper in health, even as your soul prospers. As you understand more. But now back up here to verse 1. My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments: (Just like we read in Deuteronomy) For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee.

Do you think that Solomon in all his wisdom and understanding understood that this was talking about a longer day than normal? Sure, the clock only ticked off 24 hours, but the amount of life you got out of this one day was a hundred-fold. A hundred-fold! Who wants to get more out of a day? If you got paid a hundred times more than you did in a standard day, you’d be all right, wouldn’t you? Ron and I have documented a number of things over the years. Have you ever known that you’ve done something, but it seems you’ve got the hundred-fold? Sharon does it when she’s transcribing my messages. There is no way, without the spirit of the Lord upon her, that anyone could transcribe my messages, let alone do it in a couple of hours. I mean, we’re writing eleven books, and I’ve got one book with X-amount of words. Well, did you know that one message from a previous Sunday, I think it was “Wild Kingdom”, was one third of a book? Our disclaimer should be, “Due to the intense nature, Sunday messages from the Las Vegas Faith Center may not be suitable for small children, the learning impaired, or just anyone who cannot hear more than 1500 words per minute.” In a nutshell, you have to have something working upon you to make that thing happen. And it happens!

When I was in the audio business, I was doing a home in this subdivision, and my customer suggested I go down and see his neighbor. It seems he wanted a big system. And I remember him telling me that the guy had just won the lottery, or megabucks, or something like that. When I went back a month later, working at my customer’s house, I looked down the street, and saw a “For Sale” sign on the winner’s house. And I said, What happened to your neighbor? He replied, He lost his job. The guy had been working at K-Mart when he won the lottery. He didn’t show up for work, and then could no longer qualify for his home loan, because he didn’t have a job. They don’t pay you all at once, it’s like $82,000 a year. So your job is your qualifier. The Home Loan Commissioner probably was saying, “Reapply next year, buddy when you get your next check. Taco Bell is hiring.”

You see, there is a temptation there. I think the greatest temptation Jesus resisted was in the Garden of Gethsemane, not because it was the Garden of Gethsemane, and sweat came down like blood, but because he had already gone 3 1/2 years constantly sticking to what God said, in spite of his own will. Jesus’ own personal will was saying, “Hey, is there another way?” But he still said, “Not my will, but yours be done, God. For this cause I go to the cross.” I present to you that if you knew you could do this on purpose, you’d be less likely to not show up for work the day after you win megabucks. Because megabucks is coming. Hey, it’s in the Book. There’s a reason for it. There’s a reason why Coca Cola is not as good a product as the spirit of the Lord, yet Coca Cola has evangelized the entire world and the Christians still haven’t. It doesn’t have anything to do with their product! It has to do with their money. That’s how the way it works, so just work it. Don’t say, “Well, I don’t need any money”.

You’re married. Do you know, that the Bible says your body is not yours. It belongs to your husband. His body is not his. It belongs to you, his wife. Are you born again? Your Bible says you have been bought with a price, that you are not your own. So, what does you not needing money have to do with your life? If you are not your own, you need to find out what He wants! You don’t feel like doing that? Well, sorry, that time has passed. If you think that anything about you on the planet will allow you to be completely independent, I mean, people just trying to hide out and be alone and saying, “I’m not going to be a servant to anybody”, is fooling ONLY himself! You can’t! You just can’t! You can’t get paid on the planet without somebody else, you can’t be taught anything without somebody else, you wouldn’t have lasted four hours on the planet after you were born without somebody else. So where do we get this independent operator mentality? You are not independent. All you can do, your only right, is to choose who you will serve. That’s why Deuteronomy said, “Choose Life”. Choose the one that brings life. Choose the one that brings understanding and wisdom, so that if you choose this side, you get blessing, not cursing. You get life, not death. You get length of days and riches and honour. Don’t say you don’t need any more. Just say, ” OK, fine.”

Repeat this after me. “Show me the money”. That’s what you say. Don’t get so spiritual. Deuteronomy 8, I believe verse 18 says that God gives us the power to get well…to establish his covenant in the earth. Some people are thinking, “Well, I just need enough for me and my little family.” Hey! I didn’t see you and your little family in that verse. It didn’t have anything to do with you and your little family, it had to do with the one who owns you. The one who owns you will gladly pay your way. It says the husbandman is always the first partaker of the fruit. You have every right to your harvest. But you don’t have the right to do with it what you want to do with it. Go ask God what He wants to do with it.

I don’t have a right to judge what you do with your harvest, because it’s your harvest. You are God’s steward over your life, and I am God’s steward over my life. It’s a wonderful thing if you just understand it, and just say, This is the only way I can really seem to be as free as I want to be. Everyone else is out trying to do that, and they are slaves to everything, to drugs, to this and that, to people, to the love of money, to the cares of this world, to CNN, to the news, and all the while, they’re trying to be independent operators. And all the while, they’re slaves to the stock market, or whatever. Choose Life! Start jotting down things about your Christ. And that’s not even the message.

Turn to Hebrews Chapter 11. For years, I have called this the “Faith Hall of Fame”, and although it’s still the “Faith Hall of Fame”, there’s something else in there that makes it different. Hold your place, and turn also to the Book of Mark Chapter 10. We are going to read out of Hebrews first, but we’re going back to Mark, and flip between the two. Hebrews Chapter 11:3. It starts out, Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, and by faith, Abel, and then by faith, Abraham, by faith, but look up here at verse 24, By faith, Moses, when he has come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharoah’s daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasure of sin for a season; Underline, circle, and put stars around the words “for a season”. How long is a season? Spring, summer, they’re about 3 months? How long is a football season? OK. I just wanted you to read that with some understanding. Now look at verse 25. Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasure of sin for a season; Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.

It starts with talking about faith, but then it talks about something other than faith here. We’re not talking about choosing Door #l, Door #2, or the box. Instead, Moses chose this lifestyle, he chose suffering for a season, thinking it was more valuable than what was behind Door #1, Door #2, or what was in the box. Do you see that from the scripture? Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasure of sin for a season; Reproach for Christ. Well, that was thousands of years before Jesus was on the planet when Moses was going through this, so we’re not talking about Jesus. We’re talking about what was in him that got inaugurated the day he saw that burning bush, the day he got his commands, and God says, Go tell Pharoah, Let my people go. Moses chose to suffer that, rather than be Prince of Egypt, rather than go through the whole thing and be whatever he would have been in Egypt at that time. He chose to believe, This is going to pass. And when I have made a declaration to walk in my Christ, although it might be a desert experience for a short period of time, although I might be taking ridicule….He chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God.

Abraham had to go around as a 99 year old barren man introducing himself as, “Hi. I’m the father of a great multitude. Hi. I’m the father of many nations.” You’ll get reproach for that. I’m going to read a couple of definitions of reproach: Suffering, shame, being taunted, chided, reviled. It implies someone calling you names. That sounds like the whole Christian church world. It sounds like what people think of Christians. They’re already calling us names, so we might as well give them something serious to talk about. We might as well get some, “I can’t believe he’s got so much money”. As we speak, they’re talking at Desert Springs and Saint Rose Dominican about the dead being raised, and about people that were going in for surgery for broken bones, but not having to go into surgery because they were healed after Vicki and I left. They were healed while we were there. They’re going to say some things, so we might as well get the greater works moving. We might as well just go all out and get the riches and honor, and all the other stuff. Don’t just get all quiet and humble and stay alone, and not get any riches and honor, and have no dead raised. If I looked like a homeless person, I wouldn’t even be allowed in any of these places, right? They’re going to ask me for my insurance card. “If you don’t have any insurance, we can’t help you.” So get the riches and the honor.

Suffering is not to be confused with the suffering for sin. Mark it down, even though we’re not going to go there. Deuteronomy 28 verses 14-on talks about all the things that Christians say they suffer for God, but those they suffer for disobedience. Remember that thing about disobedience, that you have to choose life so that your seed may live? This is a different kind of suffering. This is shame, this is humiliation. But if you lose sight of the reward….

Now turn here to Mark Chapter 10. Hold your place in Hebrews, because we’ll get back there in a minute. Here we have the story of the rich young ruler, and I’m going to read it kind of quickly to cut to the chase, verse 17, And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God. Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother. And he answered and said unto him, Master, all these have I observed from my youth. (According to our scriptures that’s probably how he got the riches). Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions. And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, Now that would be like me talking to the rich young ruler over here, and turning to you guys and saying, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! And you guys are going, Excuse me? You were just trying to tell us that we were supposed to have money. And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! So what was the one thing the rich young ruler lacked? He trusted in the wrong God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved? And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible. Then Peter began to say (until the Lord cut him off) unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee. I believe that Peter told the truth. I don’t think Peter lied here. Jesus didn’t cut him off and say, “You liar. You’re carrying that big money belt, you’ve got that Rolls Royce donkey.” It’s only rich people that get offended when someone says that rich people can’t go to heaven. And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, (but wait, there is a comma, and he goes on to say), But he (anyone that does) shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, (The rich young ruler came asking about eternal life, but Jesus didn’t answer eternal life, he said, If you are faithful over this life, you will be made master over the real life. If you learn that this life is but just a vapor, and it’s not yours anyway, and you don’t limit God working through you, then you’ll get the eternal life, but it’s faithful over the little) But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.

You ought to have houses in every city you want to have a house in. You ought to have a boat, a ship in every port, and you ought to have people who have the spirit of the Lord upon them to run them. I am a steward over a number of things that I don’t own, and that stewardship really helped me to understand this thing with God. With God there are no owners, there are just stewards. And He likes to bless you. Once I worked on a gentlemen’s house, and he trusted me as a steward because of the faithfulness I showed over his house. He gave me the keys to his 55’ houseboat. He lives in Palm Springs, and he’s here one day a year, Which means that for 364 days a year, I have a houseboat. The beauty of stewardship is, all I have to do is return it in the same condition that he left it. I don’t have to pay the insurance, or the slip rental. I don’t have to pay for the engines. I’m a steward, and if we could just start shifting this thing, we could start enjoying the hundred-fold now, in this time. And not just hundred-fold in possessions, but in the thing that is the most valuable, your life. It’s your life! You lay down 40 plus hours a week for a job, and you turn it into money. Your 40 hours of life is gone, but you’ve got it in your hand. Now, what are you going to do with your life? It’s your life. And we upgraded this thought on Thursday night in church, because it’s not always your money. John Avanzini puts it this way, he says, Money is your life handed back to you in a greater form than which you laid it down. But it’s really not, because there are a lot of people that live off someone else’s money. Money is always someone’s life. That’s why when tithes and offerings and gifts come into the ministry, someone has done something for me. I know that’s their life. And the more you prosper your understanding and start thinking about it, the more you will start having a greater respect for money. God will start seeing that you are getting serious about those lives. People will start seeing how serious you now are about your own life. After all, it’s your life, or you wouldn’t do it.

Back to Hebrews 11:24 By faith, Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharoah’s daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward. Do you recall what happened to the treasures of Egypt? Do you recall that God told the children of Israel to go borrow all the treasures of Egypt from everyone? Do you recall that all the people that owned those treasures chased after the Israelites at the Red Sea to get them back? Do you recall that the children of Israel made it through the Red Sea, and the sea closed back in, and all of the people they borrowed from were now dead? Do you have any idea where the treasures of Egypt ended up? With Moses. If we choose rather to suffer….and you know, if you decide to just suffer it, and laugh about it, it just goes by like nothing. Its like, “I know something you don’t know” The first person that tries to take advantage of you, just go up to them and smile, and say, “I know something you don’t know.”

First Peter Chapter 4:1. For as much then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; (talking about Jesus in the flesh) That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you; (reproach, for having changed) Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead. For for this cause was the gospel preached (this is the gospel of Christ) also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. But the end of all things is at hand; be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer. And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity (or agape love) shall cover the multitude of sins Use hospitality one to another without grudging. As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, (That verse just said, Don’t try to be me, and I won’t try to be you. As God gave to you, you be what you’re supposed to be. I’ll be what I’m supposed to be. We’ll all be together, doing what we are supposed to do) to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. Verse 12 Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. “I know something you don’t know.” If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, (that’s yours) happy are ye; for the spirit of glory (Christ in you, the hope of glory) and of God resteth upon you: (that’s the spirit of the Lord upon you, with your spirit) on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified. But let none of you suffer as a murderer; or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf. I tried to avoid the subject of persecution of suffering, because the only suffering I heard just didn’t jibe with the gospel. “Well, it’s just my cross to bear.” People were limping around, and it was always the church folk. People in the world seem to be well. But now we understand that suffering is not suffering, it is suffering…they’re not happy with their own life, so they’re trying to take it out on you. They’re trying to judge you, but “you know something that they don’t know. ”

When we first started getting the Mystery of Christ back last June/July, someone would come in that we hadn’t seen in five days, only five days, but in five of these days, we were a good number of days ahead of our friend, because he hadn’t been with us for those days. What if you were a year and a half ahead of the rest of the body of Christ in some understanding? What if you were five natural days ahead of the people at work? You’re going to get some reproach. But you’re also going to get paid by the boss. They’re going to be unhappy because every day, you’ve gone up to a new level of management. They’re also going to start putting greater things, more valuable things into your hands, just like they did in the case of Joseph in Egypt. He had the spirit of the Lord upon him to do that in Pharoah’s house, and he saved the entire world because of his wisdom, Pharoah included. So realize that this is not the time to put your Christian brother in a boat and send him down the river. This is the time to try to get the spirit of the Lord upon him in order to catch him up. God’s trying to build some super-men and some super-women. That doesn’t mean we’ve got to leave behind the ones that just missed us for five days. People have things to do. But get with them, and have compassion. We’re going to take reproach, but Jesus said, when he was reviled, he reviled not again. He just took it and said, “I know something you don’t know”. He said, “Lay not this under their charge.” He said, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.” I know something you don’t know.

Let’s close in prayer. Heavenly Father, in Jesus’ name, show each of us today what scriptures apply to us personally. Help stir up the spirit of you that is in us. Show us how to get on a plan where the spirit of the Lord gets upon us, so we can have hundred-fold days, full time. It’s our desire. I don’t know that there’s anyone in here that doesn’t want to get a hundred times more out of life each day than he or she was getting before. We make ourselves available to you to do so. We realize that we are bought with a price, that we are not our own. Thank you for showing us this truth, and thank you that our understanding has increased, and therefore, we will prosper and be in health, this entire body. We thank you for these things, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

This message was transcribed and edited from the original audio message.
© All Rights Reserved. - Las Vegas Faith Center Church.

Planning is not Worrying!

The Las Vegas Faith Center
Message From Our Sunday Services
Planning is not Worrying! 
by Sr. Pastor: Tiger Todd
(702) 223-1111

Many people have trouble separating the good habit of “proper planning” from the destructive habit of “worrying”. Whether the subject is the Schiavo controversy, or the mindset of the homeless in my financial class at Catholic Charities, people regularly confuse these two diametrically opposed issues.

We know that without some level of self-sufficiency, which comes from having an action plan, no life can be sufficiently lived. As Thomas Stanley so eloquently stated in The Millionaire Next Door:

“The Rich plan for three generations, and the poor plan for Saturday night!”

But we must also protect ourselves from the tendency to worry about the future, adding our own negative spin to life before it even has a chance to unfold. Some have said that it our own worry that brings to pass what we want the least and fear the most:

“That which I have so greatly feared has come upon me.”  Job

The following is a list of great quotes to help you and those you know to clearly delineate between proper planning- hopes for the future and the setting of goals- from the destructive and disempowering habit of worrying. Let us not allow worry to rob us of the power of today!
Tiger Todd, Founder

“When one door closes, another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us.”
Alexander Graham Bell

The world is filled with people all preparing to live, but never actually living.

“If you are not living your true life, you are being lived.” Stephen Covey

The past is only a guidepost to the future

“Live today as if you are living already for the second time, and you are about to act as wrongly as you did the first!”  Viktor Frankl

Some people go through today carrying the burdens of all their yesterdays and tomorrows.

“Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I never think of the future; it comes soon enough.”  Albert Einstein

Those who are mentally well have the ability to live in the present moment.

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” Jesus Christ

“Make today your masterpiece.”  John Wooden

Partaking of the Divine

©2005 The Las Vegas Faith Center
Recorded March 5, 2005

“Partaking of the Divine”
by Tiger Todd

It was my birthday last Tuesday. Although I was born in Las Vegas in 1964, I still consider myself one of the younger generation, since I understood the older generation to be made up of those who lived through world-changing events like the Great Depression and WW II. My good friend Edythe, for example, actually worked helping the wounded from WW II when they returned to the states. At 84 years old, she was honored at a black tie event last weekend for years of service to humanity along with her husband, the spry 86-year-old Gil. Gil was a Federal Court Judge whose motto was “to make the laws of man agree with the laws of God.”

One hundred years before my birth in 1864, a man named James Allen was born in Leicester, England. He lived in a time when men such as Frederich Nietzsche, Charles Darwin, Noah Webster, William James and Henry Gray were all trying to learn more about being human than those who lived before them. His first book was published when he was 38 years old, but it was his next book, “As a man thinketh,” that established his reputation as an inspirational writer. He would ultimately publish twenty-two titles whose words influenced millions in the same manner as those of Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale.

The following is an excerpt from, “As a Man Does.” When I discovered the writings of James Allen, I was delighted to hear such wisdom, but also to know that there was someone else utilizing sentences as long as mine!

“The grace and beauty that were in Jesus can be of no value to you- cannot be understood by you- unless they are also in you, and they can never be in you, until you practice them, for, apart from doing, the qualities which constitute Goodness do not, as far as you are concerned, exist. To adore Jesus for his good qualities is a long step toward Truth, but to practice those qualities is Truth Itself; and he who fully adores the perfection of another will not rest content in his own imperfection, but will fashion his soul after the likeness of that other. Therefore thou who adore Jesus for his divine qualities, practice those qualities thyself, and thou too shalt be divine.” - James Allen

Wow. Half of me was inspired to rise above my circumstances and take advantage of the divine nature of God. The other half of me wanted to criticize Mr. Allen for his heretical beliefs: “Divine Nature, in a human - really! Everyone knows that Jesus was the only human that should ever be called divine... What heresy to even think that humans can become divine, let alone encourage them to do so!” And that kind of childish, defensive tirade is exactly why I don’t do what my “nature” tells me to do, at least not very often. Like when I make some mistake and that voice prompts me to make an excuse such as, “Well, I’m only human.” Only human? Are you kidding? Somehow in our desire to become more spiritual, to discover our connection to God, some other part of us always wants to chime-in, trying to defend our right to be human, as if we are some flawed type of animal that is born to make mistakes, born to underachieve, born to fail, and born to lose. No, I am not only human, and neither is that voice that tries to convince me that I am. It is actually man’s animal nature that wants to deny us our humanness, like our unique abilities to change, to grow, and to overcome the natural world.

“So God created man (humans) in His image…and God said, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion…over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”  Genesis 1:27-28

I wonder what God thinks when he/she/they hear a human mutter, “I’m only human.”  It probably sounds just as retarded as when a homeless man in one of the classes I teach tries to tell another homeless man the right way to invest his money! Picture this, God looking down on me, shaking his head, saying, “Poor thing, such a retard.” You must admit, with all of the amazing things humans have been able to do by just exercising their dominion over nature, from building electrical power stations, nuclear submarines, to designing clothing, sports cars, and the Sigfried and Roy Show, this is no rational argument for blaming being human for any of our personal limitations.

But wait, there’s more! What else does the Bible say about being human? If we were to actually read it, we might discover that humans can “have dominion over the earth,” be “more than conquerors,” and “overcome the world” through Faith. What then makes that old animal part in humans start barking to remind us that all of those words only applied to Jesus? Do we consider ourselves less than human? Are we only advanced animals living by instincts and drives, as Freud and Darwin believed? Not to say that I haven’t seen people become animals. In fact, I was speaking at Juvenile Detention recently when a pack of hardened teenagers came up to me and said, “Yo, whud up, dawg?” I thought, “I’m too late, these kids have already become dogs!” When I left, the guards even had to put these kids in cages at night, just like animals that cannot be trusted. It breaks my heart to see people treated like animals because they have behaved like them, especially when there is a human inside trying to rise to the surface.

But I have also met real humans like Edythe and Gil, and have been changed by the words of great humans from ages past, like David, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, Nietzsche, Einstein, Frankl, Maslow, and James Allen. There is something uniquely different between these humans and those who act like animals, whether dogs, pigs, chickens, sheep, snakes, wolves, and even jackasses. Looking deeper into what is the same in all of these humans, we find the divine nature:

“To them that have obtained like precious faith with us… Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, according as his divine power has given unto us all thing that pertain unto life and godliness… Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature.” II Peter 1:2-6 abridged

I hope you don’t mind that I shortened the above verses for clarification. The unabridged version has been reprinted at the end of this message, and is also located in the many copies of the world’s best-selling book, The Holy Bible.  It is just too easy for me to get sidetracked on any number of ideas from these scriptures, so for the sake of completing this message before the next millennia, I’ll stay on target.

Look at the scripture again: “His divine power has given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness…that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature.” Partakers of the divine nature. It seems that James Allen wasn’t such a heretic after all. And neither was the Apostle Peter, who also understood something about the divine nature that resides in us. Peter’s understanding even came from firsthand experience. But why stop there?

“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.” I John 3:1

Oh no! The Apostle John was infected with the same crazy idea, that other humans can be called sons of God! While this is hard to believe, it can be proven rationally that- are you ready for this? If the son of say, a horse, is, well, a horse (of course), then the son of a God must be a…god! That’s ridiculous! Find me another scripture!

“But if the Spirit of Him that raised Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you...For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God...whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” Romans 8:11,14,15.

I’m beginning to see a pattern, and perhaps a very different message from the Holy Bible than the one that was quoted to me. In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, he actually parallels living according to the flesh with a natural- or animal- existence. But if a person wants to have an overcoming spiritual or super-natural existence while living on planet earth, then the very divine nature of God is waiting inside of us to bring us up to that higher plane of living! Think about it this way: it is up to each of us to invite, and then allow, the divine nature of God to live in us and change us into the sons and daughters of God.

Wouldn’t it be great to wake up in the morning and begin a conversation with God as your loving Father, and not as some “boss” who is always judging your failures and constantly have to beg through prayer for the things you require to live? Why not try acting like God’s children instead? Yes, we are the sons and daughters who have been given our responsibilities in the Kingdom, but we are also the kids who get to curl up in His everlasting arms!

“Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Romans 5:1-2

Thanks to the number one son, the rest of the family has been given access in the grace of God. “Dad” is saying to us today, “It’s O.K. to act like we’re related- it was My desire all along for you to be a partaker of My Divine Nature.” Of the many people searching for the missing piece that will fill the void in their lives, so few understand that the missing piece is actually looking for them. People all over the globe want to be fulfilled through a connection to the divine, but what a revelation it is to know that it has been God’s desire all along to have a connection with humanity.

“He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” Romans 8:32

Spend some time with your Father tonight. Then get up earlier than you have to tomorrow and spend some more time with Him in the morning. Make it a habit to hang out with the Role Model for your divine life, and then begin to imagine what kind of relationship you are developing. Who knows, some of Dad’s good traits might rub off on you. -TT

And now, 2 Peter in its entirety:

“To them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and (through our) Saviour Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, according as his divine power has given unto us all thing that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promise: that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption of the world through lust.”

Communion Close to Home

“Communion Close to Home”
by Tiger Todd
(EDITED VERSION)

What is communion? Communion is similar to a memorial service; kind of like a birthday party, where you remember something once a year. You could choose to take communion more often than that, but in communion, you’re really reminding God of the fact that you are still His. Secondarily, you are reminding yourself that you are still His.

What are you supposed to think about when you are taking communion?
It’s a time to remember all the great things that God has done for you because of your pact, or your covenant with him. This should help us to understand that every time communion was taken in the Bible, it was done to remember a certain pact or agreement between God and His man.

Why does the Bible talk about bread and wine?
These are the symbols for the physical body, Jesus’ body, and for his blood that was shed to pay the price for Adam’s sin. It’s like a reminder: if you knew that your body was made out of the same stuff that Jesus’ body was made of, and that his very blood could course through your own veins, then you wouldn’t have any doubt that you could do all the greater works that he did with his body.

Name some of the things that Jesus did with his body. He walked on water, he healed the sick and raised the dead, he walked into mountains. He had thousands of people gathering around him to hear what he had to say. That has to be one of the greater miracles, because this church has been speaking the truth ever since we’ve started this thing, and we still haven’t gathered thousands of people around to hear what we have to say. There were many miracles. So when you are taking communion today, think about those things that Jesus did with his body. That’s very important.

Did you know that Jesus and his disciples took communion? Please open your Bibles to Matthew Chapter 26. Jesus and his disciples had gathered together for what we know as the Last Supper. But, was it Jesus’ last supper with the disciples? No, it was his last supper with the disciples prior to his death. In communion, there are pacts, or covenants, between God and each man. We’ll find that Abraham and Moses each had a covenant with God. Jesus apparently had a covenant with God, but he’s having communion with his disciples so that they can have a covenant with God. To be accurate, the communion that God had with his disciples here in Matthew was in order to begin a new covenant.

This is called the Last Supper because during the last dinner Jesus had with his disciples before he was crucified, he wanted to let them know, through the memorial of communion, that even though he wouldn’t be with them physically any more, he would never leave them nor forsake them. Begin reading in Matthew 26, verse 26, And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. Remember that scripture in John Chapter 1, For as many as received him… the blood was shed for many. But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom. It looks like Jesus is setting up another covenant. He is establishing one, but he is setting up yet another one for beyond that time. And we’ll see that later.

Did you know that Moses took communion? We don’t need to turn there, but in Exodus Chapter 12, we have the story of the first Passover. The depiction of Moses observing Passover really becomes a better model of why we take communion today. There are many reasons to take communion, and we will learn how to take communion properly. The name of this message is “Communion Close To Home”, and in it, we will learn that communion can be done for a number of reasons, at a number of different times, without the fear of, Did I do it right?, Did I do it with the wrong people, or in the wrong place?, Did I drink or eat the right stuff? Is it really working?… without all those doubts. Communion is about dispelling doubt.

When Jesus took communion with his disciples, he was letting them know for a certainty, “I’m leaving, but you’re going to be OK”. The elements of communion, if for no other reason, are there to anchor your soul. If you truly believe that the bread is the symbol of his body, and the wine is the symbol of his blood shed for you, then each time you take communion, you will have something to anchor your soul.

Humans sometimes have a propensity to forget. Communion is there as a reminder, as a remembrance. It’s something you can take to renew what was fresh in your mind two weeks ago. It’s kind of like a refresher course of what you’ve learned in school for the past two weeks, prior to an exam. Wow, I forgot that! Well, why did you forget that? And sometimes we have these thoughts,… Well, God never forgets. True. God doesn’t forget, but the Bible says, to bring things to his remembrance.

There are some things we used to be able to do very well. I was changing the car battery yesterday. Now, if you’re used to doing that every day, you’ll have no trouble. But I hadn’t changed a battery in a long time. It’s not that changing one is a big deal, but the way I was carelessly maneuvering that battery in tight quarters, I realized I’d forgotten how careful I needed to be. It’s not like I didn’t know how to do it. It’s still in my memory, but I just needed to bring it back up to a certain level of my remembrance.

In Acts Chapter 10, we have the story of Cornelius, the Italian, who made it to the Kingdom of God. The Bible says he did it because his prayers and his giving came up “as a memorial before God”.

Do you know what a memorial is? Name some memorials. There is the Viet Nam memorial, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Lincoln Memorial, there are lots of memorials in Washington D.C. There are memorials, meaning, constant reminders, of what was done. And you will speak of something you remember, won’t you? And you will not speak if you forget about it for awhile. Then someone will bring whatever it is to your remembrance, and you’ll talk about it for the next couple of days. Then you’ll forget again. We’ve talked about that when it comes to movies. “Oh, I forgot about that scene in Star Wars”. But then it’s brought to your remembrance again.

One of the key elements to communion is remembering that it’s a memorial. You need to remember so you’ll still do it, even when you’ve forgotten, or when it’s not as strong in you. You might know in your head that there was a sacrifice for Adam’s sin, but you might also feel like you never got cleansed from sin because you had this or that problem in your past. You might still be judging and condemning yourself for those things in your heart. What you need to do is take out the bread and wine, and anchor your soul so that you are forgiven, cleansed, and free from the past. That’s what God has given us communion for.

Passover was so named because of the memorial of communion that took place that night. God was moving on behalf of the children of Israel to free them from being slaves to the Egyptians. I’ve taken communion when a debt came due: something I owed, or something someone said I owed. I took communion to remind myself that if I just stick with God, this thing will pass over.

Many things were happening on the Passover that night: the fear of death, the fear of loss. As you read in Exodus 12, you’ll see that the commandment of Moses was not just to put blood on the doorpost, not just to drink the wine, and eat the bread which is unleavened (no yeast). One of the principle things was, you had to be in your house. Now in the movie, The Ten Commandments, they were not completely accurate. It’s interesting that many of the movies done by Jewish producers are still getting it wrong. The Ten Commandments did get that wrong, because it depicted that anyone who was in the house would be safe from the Death Angel as He passed over. You couldn’t just paint blood on someone’s porch, and they would be saved. The Death Angel didn’t just pass over because of the blood. It passed over because the people had to consume the entire lamb with their family. The entire sacrifice had to be taken.

One of the requirements was that communion had to be done in your house. And we’re going to find out, concerning the apostle Paul, that he wasn’t quite so polite when he said you had to take communion at home, not in the church. We’ll see a little later where he was saying, What are you doing having communion in church? So it occured to me that the only reason, and the only way to properly have communion in church is if you teach people how to have communion. This message is called “Communion Close To Home”, so we’re going to try to teach you how to take what you’ve learned back to your house, and reestablish the covenant between your family and God. I want you to be able to reestablish it, just like Joshua said, As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. But Joshua couldn’t speak for your house, or mine. He could only speak for his own house.

That Passover night, Moses couldn’t save any of the first born of Israel unless they met the requirements within their house. So, here we go. Let’s meet those requirements within the house. Today we’re going to use these little mini matzos crackers. They’re perfect for communion. It looks like an amplified host. I decided to use matzos, because on that Passover with Moses, in that communion service that was life or death, the key was that the bread was unleavened. That means, there was no yeast in it. One of the key instructions in that communion service was to have your clothes on, your shoes on your feet, and ready to go, when you took the Passover. They didn’t have time for the bread to rise. So God said, Don’t put yeast in the bread. You are going to bake it and knead it immediately, so it’s quick-bread.

Why did God instruct the children of Israel to do it so quickly? Because God doesn’t take 40 years to do anything. The steward tip a couple of weeks ago spoke regarding, with how you measure, it will be measured back to you. If we think God will move in ten years, then it will take ten years. Maybe. It might even take longer. It might never happen, because you’ve missed that timing. God was ready to get them free from their bondage that night. So when you’re at home taking communion, or when you’re instructing other families, leading them through a communion service, you’ll want them to know that deliverance is nigh them. Deliverance is that close, as it was that night for the children of Israel. The Bible said they had their loins girded, their shoes on their feet, and were ready to go. There was no time to wait for bread to rise. There was no time for, Oh I haven’t decorated the cupcakes yet. They were ready to go.

Abram took communion. Turn to Genesis Chapter 14. I wanted to talk about the covenant God cut with Abram. The first time what looks like a communion service began was in Genesis 14 after Abram had returned from what was called the “slaughter of the kings”. These were the kings that made war against Sodom and Gomorrah, and the battle had claimed one of Abram’s family members. Abram took 300+ of his trained servants, whipped all of the kings, and took all the spoil from at least five kingdoms, and immediately… well, let’s look at verse 17, And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer, and of the kings that were with him, at the valley of Shaveh, which is the king’s dale. And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine; and he was the priest of the most high God. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all. Abram took communion after God gave him the victory in battle. He took communion to let God know how thankful he was that the great God of heaven was on his side. Abram also gave him tithes, which was the tenth part of all of his riches. God returned Abram’s faithfulness to Him with this statement. in Genesis 15:1, after the covenant was reaffirmed. He was using communion, not as Moses or Jesus did to establish a covenant, or for protection. Abram used communion to go to God and tell him how grateful he was.

Most people don’t have to come to God when they’re at death’s door, or when they have minus $500 in the bank. They could come to Him when they’ve taken all of the riches of all things because God has blessed them. In this example, Abram did just that. He had communion just to say, God, I know you remember me, but I want to let you know that I know it was YOU that kept your word. There is a time where we can take communion at home just to reestablish the great things that God has done for us.

When you do that, look at what God says. Chapter 15, verse 1 After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: You do not have to be afraid one iota. I’ve got you covered because I like the way you take communion. God says, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. It’s one thing when you have authority over angels, as in Psalm 91. A thousand might fall at your side, 10,000 at your right hand, it won’t come near you. But when you’ve got the great God of heaven saying, I’ll be your shield, personally, and I will bless you, personally…you won’t have to wait for a man to give it to you. I am thy exceeding great reward. You just have to go out and collect it. See, that’s a good deal. And I’m not sure that the church has pushed the envelope of gratitude toward God through communion like Abram did. And we should. I know, in the past, that I have. We’ve been trying to save our fat from the fire for so many years that we were using communion as a way of escape every chance we got, every time we needed to escape. But what about having communion when everything is going well, when everything is perfect? What about just getting some time with God, alone, with you and the elements, and saying, God, I am so grateful that my life is perfect, and that you are so good to me. That’s what Abram did here.

Are you ready for some more questions?

Can I receive communion like Jesus, Moses, and Abraham?
Turn to First Corinthians, Chapter 11. Verse 23, For I (the apostle Paul) have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. My cross reference says it is for a remembrance, or for a memorial. This do as a memorial to me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till he come.

In the Christian church, we have this “Easter business”. Easter is celebrated on Sunday as the resurrection. I believe the resurrection needs to be celebrated, but the only time Easter is mentioned in the Bible, it is the word “pasche” which is really the word for Passover.

Notice, here, that communion is not about showing the Lord’s resurrection until he comes; it’s about showing his death. Can anyone tell me why we would celebrate his death in this case, in communion? Well, I can! It’s celebrated because it was his death that answered the sin of Adam. It was his death that made us free. Remember, that by one man’s offence, all became sinners, so also by one man’s obedience unto death, many could become righteous? It was celebrated because of that death., not because he got back up. That was bonus time, OK? It was because he satisfied that sin that went into every single man because of Adam. That’s why, when you take communion for his blood shed, you can have a memorial to the fact that it’s been done, I don’t have to sin, I don’t have to be a slave to sin, I don’t have to bear the effect in my body, or my family’s, for the sin of Adam. What greater thing is there to memorialize? Most people think they are free, and they’re not; but when the son sets you free, you are free, indeed. That’s why it says, you do show the Lord’s death till he comes.

Till he comes. That’s the new covenant mentioned in Matthew 26. When I drinketh this cup new with you in my Father’s Kingdom. Now it’s yet another covenant. We’ve read about that in Isaiah Chapters 59 and 60.. those that have his words coming forth. Those that have God’s words coming out of their mouth. And to their seed. And to their seed’s seed from henceforth, arise, shine, thy light is come. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till he come. Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.

Now, regarding “unworthy”: I’ve heard that unless you are born again, you cannot take communion. Well, none of the disciples, nor Jesus, was born again. And they took communion. Abraham was not born again, and he took communion. Moses was not born again, and he took communion. So let’s just eliminate the “born again” business. I believe that if you want to receive communion, you can receive communion. If I show you how to do it correctly, we’ll find out what this means.

What does, “you’ll be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord” mean? What does it mean to take it “unworthily”?
You don’t want to drink the wine wrong. Maybe you’re supposed to use a straw, and maybe you’re not supposed to swish it through your teeth. Maybe chewing the bread is a problem. We really want to know what is correct. The Bible defines it this way… But let a man examine himself. Here’s how you take it worthily. You examine yourself so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation (a better word might be judgment) to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. What is judgment to yourself? This scripture will tell you what that is, too. …not discerning the Lord’s body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.

Eating and drinking unworthily is not considering your ways to find out if you’ve missed the mark in terms of, what are your requirements to God. God has some requirements you expect of Him, right? You expect Him to heal your body, to pay your bills, to put you the head, and not the tail, to be above only and not beneath, for all the things you believe for, and all the dear and precious promises. You expect him to provide all of those things. Well, what things are you supposed to provide Him? You are supposed to watch your words, use your faith, give to the poor. You are supposed to bless people, you are supposed to tithe, you are supposed to live a life of faith. You are supposed to do all those things. Therefore, when you are properly taking communion, you are to judge yourself. If you have sinned, or not obeyed, or have been lax in certain areas, that’s the time to get rid of it, because that’s what communion is for. That’s how you can be cleansed with the precious blood of Christ.

That doesn’t mean you had to be born again, or you had to go to First Church, or even Second Church. It doesn’t mean you had to be Abraham, or Moses, or Jesus. All you have to do is judge yourself, for if you judge yourself, you won’t be judged. And I think it’s a whole lot better to judge yourself, than to let the judgment of God, or the judgment of sin, come down on you. Those are the two choices. Now let me go down the rest of the list here.

So, can I receive communion like Jesus, Moses, and Abraham? Of course you can. When the apostle Paul said, “As often as you do this”, I believe he meant as often as you eat and drink. How often can you take communion? As often as you eat and drink. The Bible said, Jesus, when he was giving communion, blessed it, and gave thanks. That’s a meal they’re talking about, right? You’d think the cup of Christ would already be blessed. No, it was food. They were eating and drinking. So, take some bread, and some wine. As often as you do this, do so in remembrance of me. If you decide to take communion today, then you are taking it as a memorial to what Jesus paid for, for you. And, especially in this church, you take it as an expectancy of that new covenant. I can’t wait to do it when Jesus is in the house.

As often as you eat or drink. Now, that doesn’t mean every night. If you had macaroni and cheese every night, you’d probably get tired of it. Remember, communion needs to be special. It’s done when you have great thanks and appreciation for God, or when you don’t feel well, and you need to let your body AND the devil know that Jesus was bruised and shed his blood so you would never have to be sick again. You should receive communion when someone you know has a need, because you can stand in the gap for them. You have a covenant. They don’t. You can utilize your covenant with God. If Laban, the dishonest father-in-law, can be blessed because of faithful Jacob, then anyone you know who has a need can get help through your covenant. You should receive communion when someone you know has a need. You can bring your need to God, because you have a covenant with Him, so that He can help them like He helps you.

Aren’t we only supposed to receive communion in church?
Look at verse 20. When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord’s supper. It’s talking about the congregating of the saints. For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame then that have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. The only time this church was having communion was when they were all together in church. Well, how often do you have lunch in church? How often do you have dinner in church? Then how could you, as often as you do these things for remembrance, do it in church? So apparently, the service of receiving communion was not done nearly as often as God expected it to be.

The Book of Hebrews comments on Abram. The covenant was cut to anchor Abram’s soul. Well, how are you going to get your soul anchored if you don’t keep remembering that you have an anchor? My soul is pretty well anchored because I know I have an anchor, and I use it. I know where to go when I need my soul anchored. I go back and bolt myself right back down to that covenant.

I want to open this up for more questions prior to us actually receiving communion.
Do we actually have to use wine?
No, I don’t believe it actually has to be wine, it’s just my recommendation. Here’s where I’m at on this: First, I’ll give you this story. There was a major world-wide communion service going on for some people in an African country. The people said, We don’t have anything to drink except Pepsi Cola. They received communion with Pepsi, and apparently, what they were thinking of, and how they were judging themselves, was cool.

I was at a Believers Convention, and Jerry Savelle and Jesse du Plantis were sitting next to each other. As they were listening to this story, Jesse leaned over to Jerry and said, “Well, Pepsi’s cool, it’s a new generation.” Then Jerry leaned over to Jesse and said, “They should have used Coke, ‘cause it’s the real thing.” Anyway, I don’t believe the elements have anything to do with it. Still, in this church, Bible words are critical to me, so I won’t say, Thank you God for this cracker and this juice. I will say, “bread and wine”. I won’t change our worship service to say, There is oil and juice in Zion. I’ll be saying “bread and wine”. Are we clear? It might actually be Pepsi and a bagel, but it’s gonna be spoken of as bread and wine.

How old or how young do you have to be to first start having communion?
I believe if you are celebrating what Jesus did, it’s probably as often as you can eat bread and drink wine. If your child can eat a real meal, and is not on formula, I say, it can be as early as you want. The child will not have to judge himself where sin is concerned, will he? That’s just if you have something to judge yourself for. Now, most adults do. Little children do not, according to First John Chapter 2, verses 2 and 12. I don’t believe there is any actual age that they should start. It’s at the point where they can deal with a cracker, a piece of bread, or bread and wine.

Communion should be done in your house. I would encourage all of you to have communion services in other people’s houses, to get them familiar with taking it with their own family. If you read Exodus Chapter 12 where the Passover is described, you’ll see how that was handed down. The scripture calls it the “Lord’s Passover” because it was the Passover night that he was betrayed. The Last Supper was a Passover. Jesus was the Passover lamb. And the ones he called friends, in John 15, were in the house. It was a serious thing with Jesus and his household, and it was a serious thing on that first Passover. Jews today still celebrate the Passover, don’t they? So apparently, the instructions in those Jewish families those many years ago were passed down.

I was reading about King Josiah, the one that reinstituted Passover. King Josiah dug around and found scrolls that certain prophets had hidden away. He investigated, and started to reinstitute some of the things that had been lost. The first thing was the Passover, because Israel kept getting into bondage to another nation. Since they were slaves to that nation, they weren’t allowed to practice all the things that had been practiced in past ages. But apparently, the old ways were written down in scrolls, and handed down for future generations…like God chose Abraham, because He said, This is a man that will teach and train his children, not his church, in righteousness. So we need to institute communion in our family. We need to let our children know that when they hear that someone down the street has an illness, they can say, Mommy, let’s have communion so that we can get this thing fixed for her. We want families to know that they have this tool to remind them of God.

Galatians 6 says to do good to all men, especially those who are of the household of faith. And if you have a faith household, you’ve got all this power in reserve that you should be able to use. If it’s Christ in you, the hope of glory, well, the only hope your neighborhood’s got is Christ in you. Right?

Is it essential to use both elements, the bread and the wine?
Yes, you should always have both elements, plus instruction on the use and meaning of the elements. There are two facets to the elements. When I take communion because of something physical, I remember that his body was bruised. He took the stripes to pay the price for physical damage coming on the body. That’s one of the sacrifices of Jesus. The blood is for the remission of sin. So don’t use just half the elements, because you want both your body well, AND you want to be free of sin.

When I am taking communion regarding my body, and reminding God of my covenant, the bread is more valuable than the blood at that point. While eating the bread, I am judging myself: Am I using my body for the glory of God? Am I being a good steward over this body? God, I expect this body to to be well, because I’ve got a covenant. All those kind of things are being judged when I’m eating the bread.

When I’m drinking the cup, I am judging myself where sin is concerned. Have I sinned? Do I need cleansing from sin? Do I have the hatred for sin that I should have? Am I interested in freeing other people from sin? That’s what that wine represents. I’ll tell you what: if you are free from sin and from any problem in your body, you’re in great shape.

If you’ll all come up here and take your bread and wine, I’ll show you how to receive it.

Are your shoes on your feet? Let’s all stand for this service

The first thing we do is pray over the food. We’ll pray just like Jesus did, as if we are eating it. You bless the food, and call it good for you. The Bible says anything you sanctify in his name is sanctified. So, let’s pray over the food now.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this food. We call it blessed to our bodies, and blessed for proper nutrition. We call it safe and not harmful. We thank you for it, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

As we do that, get ready with the bread. Close your eyes and think about your body being well, that it’s getting stronger every minute, because that’s what Jesus’ body was bruised for. Be thinking about being able to do the superhuman things in your body, because you are partaking of that body. I’ll read the verse, and we’ll break the bread, and we’ll close our eyes.

In verse 24, he said, Take, eat, this is my body, broken for you. This do for a memorial to me. Now break the bread and close your eyes. Go ahead and eat it.

Now the cup: the cup is to wash us clean on the inside. You’ve been places where you can’t wait to wash something off, like after 2-hours of football, a homeless outreach, a trip to the hospital, or even day care…but sadly, sin doesn’t come off like dirt unless you get washed with the right water. In this case, the Bible says the blood of Christ will cleanse us from all sin. So this will cleanse us from all sin, our bad decisions, and our pains in our soul. When you drink it, with your eyes closed, it’s time to talk to God, and to get rid of any hatred, unforgiveness, cares, or sins we might have. He said if we would judge ourselves, then we would not be judged. When you are done drinking, you will know that God loves you, and that He will do anything for you.

As the scripture reads, This cup is the new covenant, the new testament in my blood. Do this as often as you drink as a memorial to me. So close your eyes, and drink it now.

Is everyone feeling cleaner and stronger? By doing this, you have just reminded God, and more importantly, reminded yourself, that you have a covenant with Him: just like Jesus, just like Moses, and just like Abraham. God is saying right now, I am your shield, and your exceeding great reward.

I have written down a few of the covenant promises that we have a right to say, in this position, right now. Repeat this after me: I am the head, and not the tail. I am above only, and not beneath. I am blessed going in, and blessed going out. The mountains and the hills shall break forth before me into singing. My barns are filled with plenty. And my presses burst forth with new wine. No sickness or disease will come near my dwelling. No weapon formed against me shall prosper. My God shall supply all my needs according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. By his stripes I am healed. I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me. Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world. It is Christ in me, the hope of glory.

Now put down your cups, and give some applause.

This message was transcribed and edited from the original audio tape message.
© All Rights reserved.

“BORN AGAIN” Literally

“BORN AGAIN” Literally
by Tiger Todd
(EDITED VERSION)

Do you remember when we learned about “Lord + Christ = Glory” during a recent Sunday message? We were able to understand more about the Christ in you, the hope of glory. We understood more about how the Christ worked, and about how to produce glory, on purpose. It’s not that we could just accidentally work a miracle; it’s that now we can produce miracles on purpose. We can now walk like Jesus walked, on purpose. The city of Nain was not part of Jesus’ path. He was just on his way to a meeting when he noticed a widow woman beside her dead son in a casket. Jesus decided, Well, let’s just raise him up. Jesus could do that on purpose. And that’s what we’re talking about

We’re not talking about some kind of accidental event, where we don’t know who to give the glory to. Jesus came so that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. Jesus came, saying, Do the things that I do, because I only do the things that my Father does. Today, when you see what we’re going to get into, I think you’ll see why the message is called, “Born Again” Literally.

“Born Again”, Literally. Some things are very hard to preach, because they’ve been preached so many times before. We’ve assumed that they were preached correctly, even though we knew there would be a differences between each pastor’s message. But in this message today, I want to show you that we have a living example of born again, literally. And I’m not sure this has happened on the planet since Jesus was here.

I got to do something yesterday that I’ve never done before, but if I didn’t possess this understanding, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. If you don’t understand a part of your own job, you can’t do that job; but once you learn more about your job, you can then walk in that job, and do it well. I applied this understanding to the situation I want to talk about. Let’s begin with First Corinthians 10:13. It says, There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

If you’re doing something, or if something has tempted you in order to derail you, you’ll always have that example of temptation in your life. So every time you read this verse, all you’ll think about is your own example concerning this verse. You might not really consider it for other examples of things that haven’t happened yet. Well, I’m fed up with learning the truth after the fall. I want to learn the truth before the fall, so that I don’t have to fall. Second Peter Chapter 1 at the end of ...adding to your faith all these things: virtue, kindness, patience, etc.; says, if you do these things diligently, you’ll never fall. Well, I want to learn this and understand it. I believe that once Jesus paid the price for Adam’s sin, none of us had to fall. We never had to sin, we never had to fall, we never had to miss it. And I think that just because someone has preached that you did have to fall, (which isn’t scriptural).it doesn’t mean that you have to. It just means they did. If you do what they do, you’ll end up getting what they got. It’s like the blind leading the blind. They’ll both fall into the ditch.

Jesus talked about a wise man and used this parable: A wise man built his house on the rock, and when the storms came, that house didn’t fall. The implication was, You don’t have to be wise not to fall. He was saying, all you have to do is imitate what the wise man did, i.e. you can be dumb as a stump, and do what the wise man did, and still not fall. Look at what a brilliant character Forrest Gump is. He just did things in his naivete. He was dumb as a stump, but did not fall.

The smarter ones have a harder road, because to whom much is given, much is required. Now, when I look at this scripture, I no longer look at it as a temptation to sin, or as a temptation to fall. Suppose I’m going to walk in the fullness of my apostle calling. God called me to be an apostle, one sent, “apostolos” in the Greek. That’s what my call is. I’m not a pastor, even though I pastor a church. I’m not a teacher, even though I teach. I’m not a prophet, even though I walk in prophecy.

The temptation that I have to deal with is to do all the things an apostle is going to do. When I get a call to raise the dead, there is a temptation to fall. There is a temptation not to go. There is a temptation to call the funeral home. Every minister today faces that temptation, and unfortunately, most of them succumb to it. But this scripture says to the minister, There is no temptation taken you but that which is common to man…that God will always make a way of escape. Well, what is Jesus’ way of escape in the city of Nain? He says, Boy, get up. And the boy gets up. God HAS to provide that power to raise the dead in order to keep His Word true. Plug that into your equasion. God HAS to provide that power, because He’s God. He’s not a man that he should lie. We’ve tried to come up with our own ways, but we’ve got to forget those ways and stick with the Word.

Turn to Luke Chapter 18. Verse 15 And they brought unto him also infants, that he would touch them: but when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Underline “little children”. And underline “of such”. There’s something about little children that makes up the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein. Tuck that information away.

Look at John Chapter 20. For all of you that have been following the mystery of Christ, (the first time on the planet in 6,000 years thing about Christ), we saw a verse in John Chapter 20 that people thought someone had just now pasted into their Bibles. They thought it hadn’t been there before. Now, many of you may have seen it, but it caught us off guard. Here is Jesus, in John 20, having already been resurrected. Let’s pick up in verse 19, Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus, and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. Can you imagine? They were jumping up and down, they were pulling their hair out, they were scared, and Jesus walks through the door. The door was shut. Jesus just walks through it.

So, what would you say? I mean, he’s not just saying, Peace, you all. He’s saying, Calm Down! It’s me! Peace! For fear of the Jews. Jesus was a Jew. That’s a good one. For fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he showed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.

Look very carefully at the next verses. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Where did that come from? This is 40 days before Pentecost. The Holy Ghost hadn’t come down from heaven yet. It’s time to throw away Christian theology again, because we’ve got this verse stuck right in there. Receive ye the Holy Ghost. How could they? How could children enter into the kingdom of heaven before Jesus’ resurrection? Inquiring minds want like to know.

Would you like to know? We’ve got some answers. Luke Chapter 1, without going and re-preaching the message of Christ, we’re going to establish this “born again” thing for sure today. But I’ll just give you this little bit on the Christ. First Christians, or Christ-ians: that’s what the people in Antioch called the disciples when they started looking like Jesus. The disciples started doing the same works, and started doing things that only Jesus could do before.They called them First Christ-ians, knowing that if there was a Jesus Christ, then there must be Peter Christ, and there must be Nathaniel Christ, and he must be so-and-so Christ. A Christ is a spirit of God. It’s a fraction of the whole. Jesus is called the Head of the body of Christ. He said the hand cannot say to the foot I have no need of thee, so there must be a foot Christ and a hand Christ. And there’s a Head Christ. That’s probably as simple and as quick as I can say it. The body of Christ is made up of many members.

Here’s what happened on this day. Don’t debate it, just grab it. We’ll fill it in later. We have tons of tapes that start off on the Christ-thing. Jesus breathed on them and said, Receive what I breathed on you. Now, that is wierd! Of course, Jesus is the guy that would spit in someone’s face to heal their blindness.

Hold your place here, but turn to Genesis Chapter 2. Verse 7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Now, there’s a really groovy word that comes right after “life”. Do you see it? “And”. Do you know what the word “and” really means? It means “also”. We’ve kind of treated it as all one deal. And the man became a living soul. Two different things. First Thessalonians Chapter 5 wouldn’t say… and your whole soul sanctify you wholly; spirit, soul and body, and I pray that your whole spirit and your whole body be sanctified under the Lord. He wouldn’t have separated them if they weren’t separate. So, here’s man’s body, BAM! Dust of the ground. Man’s spirit…How’s my breath? and then,... Man’s soul happened after the breath…. what we know as his will, his emotions, and his mind. I’m going into some tough territory here, but I do know what I’m talking about. The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

. Back to John Chapter 20. I love the scripture where Jesus said, I don’t do anything except I first see my Father do. I am excited about this!!! And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost; I guess I’ll have to make this statement first. Jesus gave them their Holy Ghost. Jesus gave them their Christ. He told Simon Barjonah, in Matthew Chapter 16, which Christ he’d get, right? And I call you Peter, because you knew that I had the Christ in me to give you. Right? Simon says, Thou art the Christ. And Jesus said, Because you have said this, Simon Barjonah, I call you Peter. Peter comes from the literal Greek word “Petros”, which means rock. And upon this rock will I build my church. And that rock which is Christ. I’m giving you a piece of Christ. You have your own spirit of Christ, right there. But how neat is it that Jesus had some way to carry that around, and he breathed on them, and the ones that were there, who believed his words, received a spirit of God in them.

Now look at this. Receive ye the Holy Ghost, BUT, when you back up, it says, When he had said this, meaning the words spoken were influential words. When he had said this. It’s like a communion service. If you just go grab the wine and drink it, and grab the bread and eat it, you haven’t had communion, because it’s the Word that doeth the works. So he had to send forth the words, and then breathe on them, and then this thing would happen. Now, hang on here, because we’re getting ready for the greater works. Jesus said, These are the works I do, and greater than these shall you do because I go to my Father. Jesus went to his Father, he’s come back, and now he’s breathing on people and they’re getting Holy Ghosts.

The word “holy”, by the way, is translated 61 other times in the Bible, not as “holy”, but as “saints”. Receive your saintly spirit, is what he imparted with the breath. He made them saints, because he could.

As we jump around in the scriptures, I want you to look at what John says, and realize something. If you heard me preach a message of Christ, but then you heard someone else preach a message of Christ, we’d very likely preach it differently, wouldn’t we? If would be the same truth, but they might use different words to help you understand their message, than words I’d use to describe my message. Just keep in mind that John is describing all of this, which means that when he says something like “little children”, he means little children. He means it every time he writes little children. Are you with me?

Let’s pick apart this flesh, body, and soul thing. In John Chapter 6, Jesus is talking about his body and his flesh and his blood. In effect, he told them that “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood.”...What??? Is this the latest Anne Rice novel? Eat flesh and blood? And at that time, he had at least 70 disciples plus the 12. And it says in John Chapter 6, about verse 60, Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you? And then he says, It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

I‘d like to describe something that happened to me while I was guest speaker during a college class held the other night. If you understand how valuable your voice is, you know that there are a few things that can increase the power, or the authority, of your voice, One of them is money. The more money you have, the bigger voice you have. That’s true everywhere. But I had something that was greater than money, and God said, Use It! After the lady who was heckling me got to be more than I could bear without me just casting out devils in a public institution, I resorted to my credentials. I rattled off the miracles and healings at my hands. You see, God answers my prayers faster than anyone else on the planet. He does this because I expect Him to. He said He would, and I expect Him to do it. I don’t have any doubt that if I lay hands on the sick, they will recover. I don’t have any doubt that if I speak a word, it will come to pass. It comes to pass, because He said, If you have faith, and doubt not, it will come to pass. The heckler thought she knew the Bible, but I reminded her that you do not judge a tree by it’s gift, or by the words it speaks, or by its hair color, or by the color of it’s clothing. You judge a tree by the full grown, mature fruit that it bears. And the fruit is, these people are all healed, and those people were dead, but now they’re alive. And that was a debt, but now it was cancelled. You judge a tree by the fruit it bears. Well, this heckler finally shut up, but now I had the interest of the rest of the group.

After these words, a woman in class came up to me and explained the story of a baby that was in the mother’s womb at the 8th month of pregnancy, when the mother was suddenly rushed to the hospital and died of a brain aneurysm. The baby was still inside the mother, but no oxygen had reached the baby for just short of an hour. When attempts to save the mother failed, they did a C-Section, pulled the baby out, but the baby was dead. Because the baby was complete, they used life support, a tracheotomy tube, feeding tubes, and everything they could to keep the baby alive.

This woman asked me if there was anything I could do. I inquired about the baby’s condition, and learned that the baby’s Grandma and her friend had done everything they could to keep this baby alive. They finally had to get a Home Health Care nurse to stay with her all the time…feeding her, doing whatever it took to keep the baby alive. For two years, these women have raised this baby in their home. I was asked, Is there anything you can do? I said, Of course! If I’m a minister of the gospel, I’d lie if I said no. Right? All things are possible to those that believeth. I’m a believer. So, I said, Of course. But you have to call me. That’s where I get the authority to do something. You have to call me. I can’t just go over and lay hands on you and make you well. It might work, it might not. It’s up to your resistance. You are sovereign in your own life, so you have to call me. I can’t make Jesus your Lord, I can’t heal you unless you come to me and ask me to get into your life.

I’m telling you this story, not because I’m into testimonies and stories. I’m into exhorting the brethren, but that’s not something I do. I’m telling you this, because God had me preach this message using this example, and show you the truth, every step of the way. And I’m going to do that.

The next morning, the grandmother, the one with the authority over this child, called me. We set an appointment for the following day at 4:00. I could have come right away, but she said, “No. She’s home. We’re in a routine. But we’ve heard that you can do these things.” So yesterday at 4:00 I showed up. But before I showed up, I made sure I covered every base I knew.

Do you remember, in scripture, where Jesus had given the disciples authority to cast out devils and heal all the sick, and they were running around doing it? But one, a son of a man, could not, did not, get the demon cast out. When someone is burdened with a sickness or a disease, most times it’s a demon that’s responsible. If you can cast that out, the body can be healed quickly. Casting out devils also applies to getting rid of cancer and those kinds of things.

The disciples ran back to Jesus and said, We couldn’t cast them out. What’s up? meaning, God, what’s up with your power? You said we could cast out all demons. And Jesus, in effect, said, You didn’t study, did you? Otherwise you’d know that this kind only comes out with prayer and fasting. So before you go casting out devils, you want to pray first to make sure, God, what do I need to know? Do I need to fast? I guess if there’s a demon that I’m not expecting to come up against, I might as well make sure I have complete authority, and not just 99% authority.

We haven’t gone there, but notice in that scripture that Jesus didn’t run off to pray and fast. He had already prayed and fasted, because he just cast the thing out, and it left. He upbraided the disciples for their unbelief. Homework is involved in believing. And I was doing my homework regarding this situation. That’s why God trusts me with so much; because I do my homework. As I did my homework, I made sure that I was fasting, I had already fasted for a week. I had already fasted things I didn’t need in my body during the past week-end: sugar, cookies, cakes, things like that. So I had fasted regarding those things the prior week, and then I just didn’t eat the day before. If there was a demon in the house, I wanted to make sure it didn’t even get two or three words out before it got immediately ejected. He’s not about to get a five day notice from me; I wanted him immediately gone out of the house.

Well, I got there, and it really wasn’t a demonic situation at all. There was this baby, a two year old living body, just lying there. She’s been like this for two years! This is why I believe God would send me to this baby. I believe that I am number one on the planet in getting my prayers answered from God. I believe that! How, then, would God get me to that house? It took two years of faith by women who weren’t even the birth mother. It took two women not letting that body die until the answer they were looking for could come to that house. Don’t you dare give up if you’re believing for something. I may not be the man of God with that specific gift you need. It might be a different thing that you need from somebody else. But keep your faith! They’re coming! There is no temptation taken you but such is common to man. God will make a way of escape. He’ll provide a way to do things.

Now suppose you’re John Q. Minister, and you get there. The flesh is healthy, and even though the baby is on a respirator, it’s alive. What do you do? Do you pray for healing? There’s nothing sick. Do you pray a wholeness prayer? There’s nothing missing. Now we’ve gone past the realm of conventional Christianity, conventional medicine, and conventional everything else. But in my time of prayer and fasting, this is what God had revealed to me. Just in time, God had given me the scripture in John Chapter 20….how he breathed on them and gave them a spirit of God. And it just hit me, and every other scripture that I’d known…they all made sense now!

When God made Adam’s body, it was just a body. It was a body, just like that baby’s body. There was nothing wrong with the flesh; it didn’t need healing, it didn’t need wholeness. This body was alive, breathing, even though it hadn’t grown much. The head looked very mature, but the body still looked like that of a baby. The toothless mouth was wide open, and all the nutrition was being given through a tube in the neck. One eye was quasi-paralyzed wide open, and one was half open. There was no movement from the arms, legs, feet. or hands. These women were talking to this body, and encouraging it, but I think that was more to build their own faith. What God told me when I got into that room was, that baby still had never been born. So I got to give birth yesterday.

Turn to First John 1:1, That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us; That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

I want to read what the same writer wrote in the gospel of John, Chapter 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. Underline and put stars and circles around verse 4. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. Do you want to make a baby alive? It needs a spirit. Verse 12, But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: To THEM, not just babies. Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Hold your place in First John. Here is an unborn, two year old baby. The flesh was alive. We find out from Genesis, and what we read in John and Luke, that it’s got to be the spirit first. Flesh profits nothing. But once the spirit happens, all of a sudden, a soul can happen. The baby was flesh, but it had no spirit, it had no soul. It was just flesh. God had to breathe into it the breath of life. And He didn’t do it, because it was still unborn.

Look at First John 2:12. it’s really interesting to pick up there, I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake. Has everyone heard of the age of accountability? There is a time when a child gets to a certain age where they can say, I choose not to follow God. Once they can choose, they are now accountable for their sins. Prior to that, they are not accountable for their sins.

For his name’s sake. Do you remember Jesus’ name? What did he always call himself? Son of Man. Ben-Adam. Of the house of Adam. The last Adam. What did God say to the first Adam before he sinned? He said, “Before you eat of this tree, the day you eat of it, you will surely die.” How old was Adam’s body when Adam died? It was some seven hundred, maybe nine hundred years old. Old! But he died many hundreds of years after he ate of the tree. What happened? The spirit left. BUT, the soul was already trained. So man can still be a living soul without a spirit of God in him. He was born with one, because God breathed one into him. We read it. And Adam was the first son of God. God gave Adam the spirit of the Son of God. Jesus got the same one in the womb of Mary. It left Adam when Adam sinned; his age of accountability. But God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, AGAIN. Now wait, where’s that?....John 3:16…that whosoever believeth on him should also get one. Should not perish but have everlasting life. And in Him was the life, and it was the light of men.

Let’s just sit here and swallow hard for a second. I write unto you little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake. When they are born, little children get spirits of God. And we can sure fix the stillborn situation if we can call on God, and God will allow us to breathe some spirits into them. We can make some babies. I’ll tell you what - they’ll be just like Lazarus. Lazarus was never supposed to have died, it was the unbelief of the people around him. It wasn’t like these women that for two years wouldn’t let this baby’s flesh die. These women kept looking for Jesus to do something. But Jesus is saying, I’m gone. I’ve done my deal here for you. It’s no longer Christ in me, the hope of glory, it’s now Christ in YOU, the hope of glory.

Finally they killed Lazarus, but Jesus is there, he cries, and goes to the Father. Then he speaks the words, Lazarus, come forth! and the embalmed, mummified body of Lazarus, four days dead, (Hebrew legend says that the spirit leaves the body after three days), is front and center, landing at the door to the tomb. Jesus says, Loose him!. And what did Lazarus do? It’s like that Texas phrase, You dance with the one that brung ya. He followed Jesus everywhere he went. He told everyone, Jesus raised me from the dead! Jesus raised me from the dead!!! The Pharisees and the church people got so mad that Jesus had such a great marketing manager, they said, What shall we do? We should kill him!

Let’s suppose that no one on earth wants to listen to me. Well, I’ll tell you what. I can find all the stillborns, all the things without spirits, and I can breathe some spirits into them. I’d have myself an army that would follow me through hell or high water, not afraid of death, because they were dead. And my Father, the Father of spirits, will continue to give me everything I can to use my breath for to breathe into them…just like He did Jesus.

The baby was called London, and in my prayer to God, I just laid it on the line. I said, These two women have kept this body alive for two years until someone could get to her. See, I couldn’t have come two years ago, because I didn’t know anything about this yet. No one could have come to this baby like this since Jesus. They didn’t know they could, and maybe they just couldn’t do it until a certain time. I mean, I didn’t just get a voice overnight. I got a voice from staying in the Word continually. I said, God, I expect to see a sign right away. I understand that today, March 6, 1999, will be the baby’s birthday. And I realize that I’m the first man that has ever had a baby. Sure, I kind of crossed the line to birth this baby, but. it’s just like getting born again, just like a new birth. Most people that come to a new birth aren’t born again without having to get rid of the old birth. And it takes awhile to clean them up before they start looking cute. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

I prayed, and said that I wanted a good sign. The nurse wouldn’t close her eyes while I was praying. She was watching the signs, as the baby started to blink, and as her mouth started to close. I didn’t know if that was normal or not. And then this two year old, brand new baby, was suddenly able to support it’s own head. But there was no soul development yet, because there had been no person in there for God to know, “What kind of soul do we need?” Think about that. If you don’t know the hope of your calling in Christ Jesus, you won’t know where to spend your attentions, and how to develop your will, your mind, and your emotions. That’s why it’s such a tragedy with being born again. Most people in the church are trying to get people born again, instead of saving them from having to get born again. All babies get born. You only need to get born again if you mess up the first birth.

Turn to John 3:1, There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Except a man! Now get this! Let’s go back to First John. We have not rightly divided the difference between a man and a child. Except a MAN be born again. Babies don’t need to be born again. There was nothing wrong with the first birth. Except a man be born again. You could say, That’s taking the words way too literally. Well, First John 2:1 says, My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins; We’ve quoted that verse, we’ve heard that verse, but we didn’t stop to check out the pronouns. My little children, these things write I unto YOU that you sin not. If any MAN sin (notice the pronoun change), WE have an advocate with the Father. Did you get that? He’s talking to little children over here, but then he backs up and is talking about us men; us mature men that need to be born again. He’s talking about men that need to get a spirit of God in them because the spirit left with sin. My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father.

Look at what Jesus is telling Nicodemus. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily I say unto you except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. He told the little children, You’re already in it. It’s of such that makes up the kingdom of God. Little children. I breathed a new spirit into that baby yesterday, and that baby is now alive. Her soul can now be developed. And if in a little while, when she turns her head around and says, My name is Ruth, just believe her. She’d have to change her name from London to Ruth. And it’s interesting, because I was never able to call her a name. I couldn’t call her London, because that’s not who she was. But I know I’ve got a daughter, and I know she’s of me.

When you’re participating in a sport that requires a helmet, have you ever put your gloves on before you tried to fasten your helmet strap? You soon find out that you can’t fasten that strap. Why? You’ve got this new equipment, but you’re not used to it yet. Well, that baby is a full grown part of the kingdom of God. That spirit inside that baby is hooked up to the Father. But all of a sudden, we’ve just popped that spirit into the flesh, and she’s wondering, What’s this? And unfortunately, our education system has tried to teach little people like her that they are their bodies, and they’re not! It’s a spirit inside of a body, and it’s going to take awhile to learn how to use it. That’s how the soul gets developed. It’s very simple when you have a truth to start with. So, here’s this baby trying to fasten her helmet strap, and she’s just not used to it yet.

Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. To paraphrase, except a man be born again (literal Greek is “from above”) he cannot see or understand how God does what he does. Why? He hasn’t got what God does what he does in him. He’s not part of the kingdom of God. He’s part of the kingdom of the earth. That’s why Jesus said, Disciples pray this prayer. “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.” That prayer got them breathed on.

Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. Look at the next verse and the parable Jesus uses. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. Is that awesome?

Let’s suppose someone needs to get born again. The first thing they’d need is the Word, because Jesus said, Except that a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. But as I have said, If a man can see the kingdom of God, if he can understand how God does things….Since you guys understand how God does things, you must be born again. The key is not to go harass someone and say, Do you know Jesus? The key is to get someone to a place where they can hear about how God does what he does. And then that spirit gets in there just as easily as Receive ye the Holy Ghost.

Let’s close here. Let’s pray before we go.
Heavenly Father, show us our role in this. Show us how to get the authority we need to be able to impart your spirits into people. Show us the parables we need to show people the kingdom of God in order that they can receive a born again spirit of you; the Christ in them, the hope of glory. Help them see that they would no longer be in fear of death, or bondage, or slavery to their jobs and to sin. You said if we knew the truth, that the truth we knew would make us free, so we expect to know the truth about this today, and never have to go back again. Thank you, God, for giving men the opportunity to get born again. I thank you, God, for Jesus’ name sake that all children are already a part of the kingdom of God. We thank you for this in Jesus’ name. Give us the name for the girl inside London’s body. Thank you God, for doing that work yesterday. We give you all the glory. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

“Blessed” Means Seed

“Blessed” Means Seed
by Tiger Todd

Turn to Mark Chapter 4. Usually when you speak about anything related to finances in the Bible, you begin in Mark 4. We’ve found out some truths concerning managing finances, one being that man was never supposed to manage himself. He was always supposed to have someone else manage him. But now we need to get to the parable of parables. The primary difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament is that the Old Testament was without a revelation of the kingdom of God. In the Old Testament. They had no idea that God’s Will could be done on earth as it was in heaven. So, what was this Kingdom of God? Jesus explains it here in his doctrine, in Mark 4:1:

“And he began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land. And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine, Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. Some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred. And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable. And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?”

Jesus taught many parables that day, but this is THE parable of the kingdom of God. Jesus’ parables are about understanding, how you can not just hear with the ears on your head, because you all have ears to hear,. But you all need to hear with ears to understand and discern the wisdom heard. These parables are to help us understand the kingdom of God. God sent Jesus to show us a whole new facet of God that old covenant people had no idea even existed. But they did not understand. We had talked about some scriptures that popped up during our “Upper Room” the other night. Everyone looked in their Bibles and said “Where did that come from? How did that scripture get in my Bible in John Chapter 20?” It messes up the entire Christian doctrine as we know it, and it’s just been sitting there for all to see. Thank God it was in all of our Bibles, not just mine.

Regarding the kingdom of God, in verse 13, Jesus says,

“Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?” Jesus is telling all the disciples along with those people that did not leave that day. These were not the multitudes, but those that came back to hear Jesus, who said, “Did you want to tell us a little more about the parable?” And Jesus says, “What do you mean? You don’t know this parable? Of all the people that should get it today, you should. “If you don’t get this parable, how then will you know any parable?” In other words, Jesus is saying, How then will you know about the kingdom of God.

In understanding the kingdom of God, Jesus describes seed time and harvest. Let’s read a little bit more of the parable in order to understand seed time and harvest.

Verses 14-20 says, “The sower soweth the word. And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts. And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground; who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness; And have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time: afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word’s sake, immediately they are offended. And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the word, And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. And these are they which are sown on good ground; such as hear the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some thirty-fold, some sixty, and some an hundred.”

I’ll jump here to verse 26, “And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come. And he said unto them, Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with what comparison shall we compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in earth:”

If you can understand something about this seed, you’ll understand something about the kingdom of God. I want to bring you back to the Book of Genesis, Chapter 1. We find that this is the book of beginnings. If you can’t find a Bible truth from Second Corinthians and the Book of Genesis, chances are, it’s not a Bible truth. If it does not have any basis in the Book of Genesis, it’s not a Bible truth. It might be Peter thinking out loud, it could be a number of things, but it is not a Bible truth.

Genesis Chapter 1:26. Notice God says , Let us make man in our image; after our likeness, and let them have dominion. Circle and underline “dominion”, will you please. Let us make man in our image; after our likeness, and let them have dominion. Let man have dominion. I’m going to give you another word for dominion today, and I’m going to call it authority. “Let man have authority.”

Tonight’s message is understanding the kingdom of God, and therefore understanding how to increase, how to prosper, understanding how we get this benefit package called the kingdom of God to work consistently in our lives. How do we get it? We’ve seen people go from paupers to millionaires overnight in the world. Well, that’s multiplication. We’ve seen farmers take seed and plant it in good ground and get abundant crops. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have orange juice at all the brunches in Las Vegas. We’ve seen it work for some people, but how do you do it consistently in your life if you’re not a farmer. Well, there are only two ingredients to what God gave man in order to make the kingdom of God work. Only two.

The first one is authority. It says Let us make man in our image; after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth; and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, (i.e., some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred).

Look at verse 28. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, Now wait a second, that sounds like the kingdom of God, doesn’t it. What are we missing? Seed. It takes authority, and it takes seed. Well, where’s the seed in that verse? God blessed them! He gave them seed. That’s what the kingdom of God’s all about. You’ve got to have seed. God blessed the man. He gave man authority, man is fruitful and multiplying, and you’ve got to find some seed in there somewhere. That’s what God blessed them with. God’s blessing is providing seed. First Corinthians says God provides seed for the sower. He blessed them and gave them seed. Do you want to be blessed? Then you’d better go find the seed that God gave you. Are you cursed? Here’s the thing. There’s a difference between Deuteronomy 30:19 that says I call heaven and earth to record this day against you that I have set before you life, death, blessing, cursing. Choose life that both thou and thy seed may live. In this case, the seed might be talking about the descendants. But notice blessing and cursing.

Well, if God providing you seed is blessing you, then what would a curse be? It could be taking that seed away from you, because you’ve not been faithful over the seed He gave you. Remember, that happened with the three stewards. He gave each of them their several ability: one talent, three talents, five talents. The one with five increase got ten. The one with three got six. The one with one buried it in the ground. God took it away and gave it to the guy who produced the most.

Could it also be that the seed is the Word? Now we’re getting revelatory. This is not the message. That’s the funny thing about this bunch. You guys pull all kinds of stuff out of it. Could it be that the seed is the Word? Isn’t that what Mark 4 said the seed was? Isn’t the Word sharper than a two edged sword? Piercing even dividing asunder the soul, the spirit, the joints, the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews Chapter 4). Wouldn’t it be that if you have a curse, if you don’t use your seed in the right way, it will come back and cut you? Now wait- the Bible only says, “You can have what you say”. It does not say you’ll have what you say “good”. It means, if you take your authority and your seed, and you don’t use your seed properly, your seed will curse you. Isn’t that what it says? Watch what you do with your seed He provides. What you do with your seed is what you get with your seed.

It’s interesting that it said “blessed”. We’ve got about five subjects going on right now. Let’s just conquer them all at the same time. Verse 28 again. It says God blessed them, (He gave them seed) and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, What are you going to do with your seed? Replenish the earth. If you use something up, then use your seed to grow more. Live off your seed. Don’t keep living off the earth, i.e., if you take your seed and do something else with it, you’ll be cursed. Now please understand that God is not doing the cursing, you’re doing it. The curse came on man when he violated the use of his seed. It’s right here in living black and white. It says, God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: (you can take your seed to subdue it) You can’t even plant seed without authority, because you don’t even know it’s your seed. They have to work together-authority and seed. These are what God gave man… and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed,

Is there anyone with a cross reference? In the literal Hebrew, herb bearing literally means “seeding seed”. God has given man authority, but then He blessed them and gave them seed. He said that in each of the animals in the field, in each of the grasses, in each of everything in the kingdom of God, there is seed in it. Because it has seed in it, I’m blessing you and giving you some of that seed, and I’m telling you what to do with that seed. If you use that seed, it will bless you. If you take oranges from your orange harvest, and don’t just peel and eat them, but instead, gather the seeds, prepare them, and then plant them in good ground, you will have a perpetual orange harvest. You’ll be able to drink orange juice as long as you live. That will bless your seed, and their seed, etc. etc. from henceforth and forever. But if you have a party and serve all the oranges, you’re done with those oranges. If, by chance, all the orange trees don’t die from your mismanagement, you’ll get them again later on.

When I think famine, I no longer think Bible famine. I no longer think of drought- stricken land, where nothing grows. I think about what happens when a person misuses their seed. Isn’t that right? If you’ve got no seed, you’ve got nothing to plant. If you’ve got nothing to plant, you’ve got nothing to eat. You might naturally get another crop to come up in, say, 3, 4, maybe 5 months from now, but famine is living from paycheck to paycheck, living from the last crop to the next crop. It’s not even a crop. You’re just struggling off what grows naturally. And it’s no way to live.

Verse 29, says And God said, Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. If you want a steak, you take some of your cattle and you call them “seed”. There’s been all this hype about us supposing to be vegetarians when we started out. Well, if you want to be a vegetarian, just be one, OK? Some people’s bodies work better as vegetarians. But if God says there is seeding seed in every one of these animals, He meant for you to take the 10% (or whatever) seed of the seeding seed, and use them not for eating, not for just leaving them alone, but to use in order to produce your own cattle farm. Then you can eat from your harvest, you can keep the system going, and still replenish the earth. You can be fruitful and multiply. Just follow the instructions. Eat what you want to eat, but just make sure you are fruitful, and multiply, and replenish.

I just want to interject this, because we can have some fun here. I heard a famous celebrity on TBN the other night talking about his views that we don’t really need the four major food groups. He believes we only need two of them. He believes we were never supposed to have dairy and meat. Well, I hate to tell you this, but I wouldn’t be alive without dairy and meat, because my body lives almost completely on dairy and meat. So I could sit there on TBN, and you could look at my body compared to this celebrity’s body, and you might determine that we should all really be eating dairy and meat. But see, my body didn’t come from the same dirt as that celebrity’s did. God formed Adam’s body out of the dust of the ground, and my body didn’t come from the same dirt as this celebrity’s did. My body is not Chinese, so my body didn’t come from the dirt of China. The Chinese can live off rice and other types of soups and tofu and stuff like that. But my body just won’t do that. Your body is going to live off where you are naturally from. It’s important to line up your body with your nationality. God wouldn’t have said He would be a blessing to all nations of the earth without thinking that nations and nationalities weren’t important. There has to be something to that. So eat what you know is right for you. Do experiments on yourself. Find out what you need to eat.

This celebrity happened to be a serious animal rights activist. Well, what about vegetable rights? Now I’m serious as a train wreck, here. Who’s the veggie guy who purees carrots, and his skin is orange? We’re talking about vegetable rights. If you’re going to be an animal rights activist because animals are a living thing, don’t you think trees and plants are also living things? If you want to be an activist about something, you’d better do your homework. Don’t bring your activism into Christianity. Don’t bring your activism into the Bible. Just be faithful over your seed.

There were certain animals you could eat. I don’t know what made them more or less important, but he declared them as seeding seed. Use these seeds to produce more. You can eat off the ones you produce. Do the same thing with your fruit. Don’t just cut down and eat all the fruit that grows naturally. Be a disciplinarian, take out the seeds, plant them into good ground, produce yourself a harvest and then eat from the harvest. Leave nature alone.

We’re Bible activists here, so I don’t know why it was important for me to get that straight, but…. every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat; and it was so. So don’t tell me that we’re all supposed to be vegetarians. Just try to nurse your baby on carrot juice. Everyone would have little red headed babies with orange noses. Not that I’m against redheads. And whoever gets my tapes, I’m not against redheads.
If you want to be an activist about something, you’d better make sure that your data plugs into every single equation; that you have no extra parts or numerators left over when you’re done. Make sure that when you come work on my car, and begin to put it back together, there aren’t any extra bolts and nuts and springs and stuff laying around, and you say, “Here. It’s fixed, mister.” Don’t even come to the Faith Center with that attitude.

We’ve found out that God made a system called seed time and harvest. And it got screwed up because Adam violated this ordinance. He had authority, and God gave him seed, but he didn’t use his seed properly. There was something he didn’t do with his authority. Remember verse 28? “Subdue it”. He should have subdued that serpent, but he didn’t. There’s more to your crop than just saying, “Oh, I’m a Christian. I’m casting seed”. No, Work that seed! Speak over that seed. Use the kingdom of God. Make that system happen. Bind devils. Loose angels. Pray over it. Praise God for your seed and your harvest that will soon come to pass. Watch over it. Keep the fowls off. Remember when God sacrificed Isaac? Be that sacrifice that God cut in the covenant with him. He cut all the animals in half, the precursor to our covenant. He kept the birds away, I mean, he protected that thing. Subdue it. Have dominion over it.

So, God gave us dominion and seed, Adam screwed it up, and then the thing was cursed. Now let’s go to Genesis Chapter 3:17, And unto Adam He (meaning God) said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: (why? because it was not part of the seeding-seed plan) cursed is the ground for thy sake; (because you ate something that was meant for seed) in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Adam de-plenished. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. Here’s where the vegetarians were born. Cursed. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. So the earth is actually cursed all the way until the flood is over. And we think God can just snap the fingers, throw the switch, and the curse is no more. The kingdom of God will work again. No, it’s going to work again exactly the same way it did before, because God is no respecter of persons. He won’t do to the next guy what He didn’t give Adam the opportunity to do. Nor will He do for us what He has given us the authority to do.

Turn to Genesis 8:22. God proclaims to Noah after the waters have subsided, While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. Seed time and harvest is back. Well, if it’s back, it has something to do with authority and seed, doesn’t it? Keep reading. And God blessed Noah, and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. That’s what he told us. So is the kingdom of God as if a man should cast seed into the ground, and sleep and rise night day and the seed (the blessing) shall spring and grow up, he knows not how, for the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself. Well the earth couldn’t bring forth of herself because there was no seed. Genesis 26:1, And there was a famine in the land, beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went unto Abimelech king of the Philistines unto Gerar. And the Lord appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of: Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee,

If you had a choice between leaving because the economy was bad, and staying because God says “I will be with you”, what would you do? I’m going to stay with God. Because if the Lord is with you… what was that, Genesis 39, Joseph comes naked on a slave train into Egypt, gets bought by a guy named Potiphar, gets dragged along on the back of his little wagon train of donkeys, stuff like that. God does not talk about Potiphar being rich enough to buy slaves. He says, And the Lord was with Joseph and he was a prosperous man. You want to talk about prosperity? The Lord is with you. Do you know why it is such a level of prosperity to have the Lord with you? Because He can bless you at any minute with some seed. You don’t need stuff. You’ve got the kingdom of God. You have authority. You’re a man. God gave man dominion on the earth. If you don’t have anything, it’s because you don’t have any seed. But if the Lord is with you, He can always get you some seed. He expects the man of God, when he gets the seed, to produce his harvest. If you eat your seed, you’ll be like everybody else. They get a paycheck. They use it up.

not talking about money tonight, because we’re really talking about what Mark 4 showed us - The sower soweth the word. One huge thing in terms of seed that we have are words that are filled with power. You are born again not of corruptible seed but incorruptible by the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever. Not only does it live and abide forever, the Word of God is incorruptible. The only thing that can keep the incorruptible Word of God from working, from producing, is by not exercising your God-given dominion, your authority over it. We don’t need any more money, we don’t need any more of this or that, we need a real serious revelation of our words, we need the authority God gave us over the seed of the Word. If money is in the Word, you can speak some things and money cometh. If healing is in the Word, you can speak some things and your servant shall be whole and he shall live. If you need friends, you can speak some things and you show yourself friendly. If you need reconciliation, you can speak some things, and you can be ministers of reconciliation under this new covenant. The sower soweth the word.

Here there was a famine in the land. It didn’t look like anything was working for anybody else, everyone else was leaving, and God said, “Hey, I’m with you”. Didn’t the Bible say the Word of God abideth with you? Verse 2 again, Chapter 26 And the Lord appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of: Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; I’ll give you the seed you need. If you are a farmer, what kind of seed do you need? The physical seed of whatever type of harvest you desire. If you are a businessman, what type of seed do you need? Possibly money. You need time. You need a number of things. All it takes is being one week late getting your new product to market, and all that investment, all that R & D is gone because someone has beat you to it. There are a lot of things you need in business. If you are an educator, what do you need? You need some stuff to educate with. You need some seed.

Seed varies. But the Word will produce the seed if it abides with you, and in you, and if you use your God-given dominion. It says, I will bless thee, sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee. This leads me to believe that if you are not where you are supposed to be, although God has seed for you, you are not there to get it. Let me put it this way. Do you think Isaac could have gone down to Philistia where the Philistines were, and God would still give him seed? I don’t think so, because it says the Lord appeared unto him and said, Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of: and I will bless you. Suppose Isaac goes down to Egypt, and says, Well, that’s great. I’m a Christian, and God is with me all the time. And he goes down to Egypt and finds out that the Lord is no longer with him. The Lord is back in Israel saying, “Where did Isaac go?”

if you don’t think that’s true, And they (Adam and Eve) heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves in the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the Garden, and the Lord called unto Adam and said, Where are you? You’re not where the seed is. You’re not where the blessing is. You’re not where I am. Don’t get this idea that the Lord is going to send you to Kenya to establish the Las Vegas Faith Center. That’s a no-brainer, when you know that Las Vegas is in Las Vegas. He said. Sojourn in this land. It may not look like you can get your needs met here. Now that’s the beauty of Las Vegas, and the Las Vegas Faith Center. There is enough stuff here to sustain a saint while he uses his seed to produce what God wants him to produce. The problem is, Las Vegas is visually a place where you see so much of, “I think I’m called to come to Las Vegas”. And I think you are called for a brain transplant. Don’t think because you can make it there you can make it anywhere. Just because they think they can get a good offering in a town that has a lot of money… that’s not seed to a minister!

You want souls, go to India. Or China. There is something that the people in the world with money need. Money will come, because they’ll put their treasure here. That’s not our job. That’s why Solomon said, “Hey, I just need the wisdom to govern your people”, and God said, Because you have asked for this, and not for money, fame, chicks, cars, coke, (well, not the chicks, cars, coke). When I was in the world, that’s what we were after. We called it the triple “C” in the music business-chicks, cars, and coke. The trumpet player’s ‘C”. But they never got it, because they played harder to make more money so they could buy more coke, so they could play harder, so they could make more money… they continued all that and got caught in the trap.

There are different kinds of seeds. What kind of seed do you need for Afghanistan? A different kind than you’d need for Las Vegas. Well, guaranteed, what you need is the Lord being with you. There is no record that the Lord was with anybody but Isaac at this time. There is no record in Genesis 39 that the Lord was with anybody but Joseph at that time. That’s why there was famine everywhere, but where the man of God was. Don’t think you can just go outside of the realm of the man of God and be blessed, just because you see money, or someone else having a better lifestyle here, or a housing tract that offers good financing.

Don’t get far away from the man of God, because that’s where the Lord, and the blessing, will be. God gave the man of God authority, and He gave him seed. He’s given every believer both authority and seed, but you can see that there are different echelons of authority. We see that in Isaiah 45:11 where God says to the man of God concerning my sons, The men and women of God, command ye me. Well, there was a commanding of God’s hand that the sons and daughters of God did not have, but the man of God did have regarding the sons and daughters.

Let’s see what happened here in famine time with Isaac. Sojourn in this land. You can take it to the bank that if God says you are prosperous, that this is what I’ll do for you, if you go where He says go, then what He says He will do for you will happen for you. But in Adam’s case, God said, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and the replenishing of the earth didn’t get done, did it? Adam didn’t use the seed God gave him, and hey, now we’re out of seed. Now we’re cursed. But here, Isaac stays in Israel. I will bless thee for unto thee and unto thy seed, and I will give all these countries and I will perform the oath which I swear unto Abraham thy father, and I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven.

Do you want to talk about 100-fold? Are there more than a hundred stars in the sky? Jesus didn’t say the kingdom of God says to plant and you will increase 30. 60, 90. We’ve determined that 100-fold means optimum, or maximum yield. There are as many stars in the heaven as the heavens can contain. Therefore, your l00-fold will be as much as your realm can contain. How much can your authority and your dominion contain? Jesus, in Mark 4, went to the disciples privately, and it says, When he was alone he expounded all things to his disciples as they were able to hear it. The disciples were limited. You need to increase your ability to hear. That’s why Jesus started off the parable with, “Hey, if any man have ears to hear, let him hear! I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and I will give unto thy seed all these countries and in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed.” They’ll have seed. Their seed will be blessed, because Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. And it said, he dwelled there, and in famine, he received l00-fold.

I want to take you to Galatians Chapter 6:7: Be not deceived; (I love that about James Chapter 1 where it says, Do not err. I love it when they start out this way. I love it in John Chapter 4, I believe verse 22 where it says You worship you know not what. Don’t be deceived. Do not err. On our “True Worshippers tape, we learned that Christianity had no idea who they were supposed to worship. But they will, because the seed God gave us is blessed. Do you see what kind of harvest that will produce? It will make money look like nothing to do. It will make everything we gave up for the gospel look like nothing to do. It will sound just like Philippians Chapter 3 when Paul says I count it all but done.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. One rule of the harvest is, what you sow, you shall reap. The second rule of the harvest is, you cannot reap unless a man sows. God can’t sow. He is not a man. The Bible said, God is not a man that he should lie. God is not a man. God is a spirit, John Chapter 4 says, and those that worship him must worship him in Spirit and in Truth. Man has a spirit, a soul, and a body, so if man is going to worship God, he has to worship God in spirit. But he has this authority as a man to be able to sow seed and reap what he sows 30-fold, 60-fold, l00-fold. Be not deceived. “Be not deceived” has nothing to do with God, or the devil. It has to do with your authority and your seed. Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. Now notice the sowing thing. We said sows to his flesh, but it looks like it’s the same seed. That’s the flip side. That’s the blessed curse. Blessed equals life everlasting. Cursed equals corruption. I guarantee, when you find a corrupt man in the world, there’s a man that God gave seed to, and he sowed to his flesh. That’s exactly what Adam did.

We’re seeing some major truths here. But he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. Where does it say The flesh profits nothing. John 6:63. It’s the spirit that quickeneth. My words are spirit. The sower soweth the Word in their life. Walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. If you sow to the flesh, it’s going to come back to bite you. But he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. Well, fainting would imply that your flesh got tired. Forget about your flesh, and stay in the spirit, it’s incorruptible seed. It is incorruptible seed

Even in the Book of Haggai, the prophet Haggai is talking to the people and said, You have sown much yet reap little. And he said, Consider your ways. In other ways, he said, be not deceived. God is not mocked. It’s your fault. How do you reap corruption? You earn wages, only to put it in a bag with holes in it. You just got the money, and now you don’t have any money. And now you owe even more than you did last week. You eat and you’re still not full. You buy clothes and there is none to warm you. Out of the mouth of the prophet Haggai. And it turns out that the people didn’t use the seed properly. In the case of Haggai, the children of Israel didn’t use it to build God’s house first. He said, Is it time for you to live in sealed houses and God’s house lie in waste. Notice Proverbs 24 or 26, where it said, Establish your work under the Lord. After, build your house. Well, they got busy in the book of Haggai, and they got the Lord’s house built, because you don’t want to keep reaping corruption. The seed is not for you first.

When you think about all the other parables, it says, “it is the husbandman that is the first partaker of the fruit,” which means when you got the first grapes, you didn’t eat them. You knew that it was seeding seed. When the first harvest comes up, you can eat some grapes. You worked hard, and you deserve some. You did what was right with your seed. It seems like predominantly here, we are the blessed generation. I mean, I go to Israel and say, “These are the chosen people. And they are wonderful, sweet people, but, every one of us makes more money than most Israelites. Every one of us lives a higher lifestyle than most of the people in Israel. And you’re saying, What? We know of Israelites in this country, the ones that handle and manage most of the money in this nation. What’s the difference? This is the New Testament nation. This is the one nation under God, indivisible. This is the one where they sent forth to establish the kingdom of God. They didn’t “get it” in the Old one, they stopped short. They worshipped Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and some of the prophets stopped short, thinking Abraham was their father.

Now, an Israelite who is a disciplined, wonderful worker, can come to this country and exercise the kingdom of God principles that operate freely, because we are so blessed here. We have authority and we have seed. What you do with your authority and your seed will determine your harvest. So, be not deceived. What you sow is what you reap. What you sow is what you reap.

I got back here after my trip and found out that this is the godly nation, not Israel. It’s so sweet to be in Israel, I mean, you just want to stay there. I’m sure there were times like in the Six Day War, if you hung out in Hebron for awhile, you might think twice after a couple of bombings in the wrong neighborhood, but OK, we have that in our own neighborhoods. But, this is the kingdom of God principle that worked for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

God told Abram, Through thee shall all nations of the earth be blessed. Well, through the kingdom of God and this nation, through Americans, all nations of the earth have been blessed. But not through Israel. Or the Soviet Union. Not through Mexico, or through Canada. This is the New Testament, this is the kingdom of God nation. His kingdom came to earth, as it worked in heaven. The only difference is, what are men doing. Don’t mock God. Don’t mock his system, because the system works. The kingdom of God came. He exercised it in the old covenant based upon who was going to listen more to God. But in this nation, we have authority and we have seed. We have the spirit of the Lord multiplied. The Lord was with him and he was a prosperous man. Well, the Lord can be with all of us. Back in the old covenant, he could only be with you. And I had to hang around you if I wanted to be blessed.

Let’s finish up here in Mark Chapter 11:20. I want to start exercising our words. And in the morning, as they passed by, (Jesus and his disciples) they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. This is the fig tree that the prior day Jesus spoke to with his authority. Because it didn’t bear fruit, it was cursed. Verse 21 And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away. And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

I’d like to leave you with a practical tip tonight: I remember back when I first moved back to Las Vegas, I was understanding seed time and harvest, and driving around speaking to things, exercising my authority and the seed of the Word. All you have to do is repeat the scripture in Mark Chapter 11, and you are using the Word. I’d go up to those red lights, and say, “I call you green in the name of Jesus”. And when my faith was up, boy, they turned green. But there were also the times when I would speak to them and they didn’t turn green. The worst part about it- at those four way stops where you can look at the little walk symbol guy in white high lit, (for the other lane), you know it’s not turning yet. But you speak, and you call the light green, and all of a sudden, you see the hands start flashing red. Then you know something has happened. But when it stays out there for the other pedestrian traffic to walk across, you know that nothing has happened yet. I started thinking, OK, maybe that’s because I’m going by the memory of the Word, and I don’t have enough faith for the green. So I had to get back in my Bible. Sure enough, I changed my prayer a little bit, and I’d say, “According to Mark Chapter 11”.... and bam, the hands started to flash. After awhile, that didn’t work anymore. So I had to reach for my Bible, open it up, and turn to Mark 11, and I’d say, “Right here!” And those hands started to flash.

But what happens when that stops. You have to realize that you still might not be getting the whole message. And you know, God is revealing and revealing and revealing…. and “to whom much is given, much is required.” A lot of people can limp along with a 30-year old revelation, don’t think that it was the whole revelation, perhaps only as much as your church body can understand at this time. Some pastors are not able to teach it because you are not able to hear it. Eventually it stops, and you start mocking God, and you get deceived. You might start thinking that it’s just not His will for you to have a green light. But then it says, Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. And then we read here in Mark Chapter 11 how to do that, and you find that there are two steps.

First, you say to the red light, “Be thou removed”. Second, you call in the green light. I don’t know of any simpler way to show you how the word of God works. You do it the same way Jesus did it if you are going to heal the sick. He cast out the devil of the dumb man, and the dumb man was able to speak. He didn’t just say, “Speak”. He cast out the devil first. He cast out the sickness and disease first, then said “Be whole” and that person began to be whole from that first hour. First bind the strong man. Then take over his house. Then haul the goods home. Don’t just go haul the goods home first.

So, you have authority and you have seed, and notice, it is twofold. Notice that there is a certain amount of protection, a certain amount of defense, a certain amount of dominion you need to exercise in order to keep the garden clean. Adam should have thrown out that serpent. If he let him hang out long enough, if you let certain people hang around your house long enough…. The problem is, you start blaming God, and say, ” God, why? Why don’t I have it now?”

We’d better close. Heavenly Father, in Jesus name, we thank you for arriving here and walking in our midst. If there is anything else we missed, let us know. We give you our ears to hear, we want to understand the great mysteries, and we will be faithful to employ all that we know. We understand that much has been given to this body, and therefore, much is required. But we will do it, and we will produce much fruit. We will be fruitful and multiply and replenish and take this earth for you, Father. Thank you for giving us seed. We repent for ever having used our seed for something else, and we pray for crop failure for the curses that came up in our lives. We thank you, God, that you can see to it that these things are wiped clean, wiped off our slate, now. Thank you God. We turn from that. Now we are going to take the blessings, and we are going to produce fruit that remains by the incorruptible seed of the word of God, which lives and abides forever. Thank you, God, for blessing the Las Vegas Faith Center and its body. In Jesus’ name we pray these things, and we receive them. Amen.

Middle History

The Las Vegas Faith Center
Message from Sunday January 3, 1999

“Middle History”
by Tiger Todd - Sr. Pastor

I was thinking about Jesus - remember, 12 years old and they went to the Feast, and he’s there, his family leaves him, and they’re out a day, and they say, “Where’s Jesus, where’s Jesus?” Well, they find him and he’s talking to the doctors of the Law…and you know, this happened all the time when people would listen, and were amazed at his answers. They were amazed at his understanding, and just once, when I’m reading scripture, I want to seem like they did on the Princess Bride, where the guy is saying “You’re that smart, huh?” And he says, “Did you ever hear of Socrates?, Aristotle?, ....morons!!! I want Jesus to say, just once, “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?”, because he really is that smart.

Today, we’re going to talk about what it means to be persecuted for the Word’s sake. Sometimes while reading scriptures, we read them so fast that even when we see the word “persecution”, we don’t see why the persecution comes.

I’d like you turn to 1 Peter, Chapter 2, and begin reading with me in Verse 18. Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear or reverence; not only to the good and gentle but also to the forward. For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if when you are buffeted for your faults, you shall take it patiently. I think this is very funny, because Peter is undoubtedly talking to some people, and he’s talking from his own past experience. He’s talking to some other people, and he’s saying, “You guys are coming to me talking about, “Oh, we’ve suffered, we’ve suffered”. Well, what did you suffer for? Did you suffer because you preached the Word, or did you suffer because you just didn’t make a good choice? Did you suffer because God told you to preach a message, or did you suffer because you hauled that poor waitress over to your table and tried to make Jesus her Lord. I’m remembering a time….Ron and I were at the Continental, (we used to go there for the 99 cent breakfast when we were cheap Christians). We invited a couple of other people over to our table, and that poor waitress was afraid to come over. Every time she came over, it was Ron and I in unison….“Do you know Jesus?” Fine!

So there is some persecution we get for the Word’s sake, but it sounds like we are getting persecuted for the Word. Well, that’s not how the Word says you’re supposed to do things. Remember Romans, Chapter 8, first five verses? It talks about, “there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus”. OK? If you are not in Christ Jesus, you can be condemned today, OK, but if you are in Christ Jesus, nothing that comes from the Word is ever supposed to condemn you. So whatever you hear, get through it till the end.

From our example last week, we talked about something very interesting that occured. We were talking about Samuel, and we were talking about the kids that God said you were supposed to have. He sought out all these old couples, for example, Hannah and Elkanah, as well as Abraham and Sarah. The parents of Samson were the same way. And then we found that Solomon was the son of David in David’s old age. And all these other sons that were already ruling these other countries (when they got kicked out of Jerusalem), were out there doing their own thing…Absalom, for one, and so forth. And we found that Samuel goes to God to tell God, “I need you, Israel really wants a King, so please let me go anoint one. And we ask, “What is Samuel doing? What is a man of God doing going to God with the peoples’ will? A man of God is the servant of God, but the gift to the people. So what is he doing serving the people before the God. He had that backwards. Well, I haven’t found out yet in scripture that God told him to have Samuel. He was dedicated and given up by Hannah as soon as he was weaned to the priests. He was given up as a holy tool for all the days of his life. So, I was wondering….where did these sons come from. Well, as it turns out, Samuel made his sons the judges. And it turns out that the judges, his sons, went bad, and they were the reason why Israel got tired of the judging system and said, “Give us a King like everybody else”. So Samuel had some personal pressure that caused him to do that.

Well, we find out that he had to go get Saul. He said, “Well OK, here’s the only kind of King I can find that can somehow rule you”, so he gets Saul into action. King Saul. Well, we know that King Saul was mighty, and head and shoulders above every other man in Israel, and he was a good looking KIng, but he went bad. So God removed the anointing from him to be King, and then immediately sent Samuel over to the house of Jesse, to identify Jesse’s son of his old age, David. So he anoints a ruddy youth named David as the new King of Israel. Now David didn’t begin “kinging” for awhile, but at least he was anointed, and Saul immediately began to be afraid of this David, because he knew the Lord was with him, and also knew that the Lord wasn’t with himself any more. So he starts terrorizing David, chasing him, trying to kill him. I mean, he even followed him to the next city and just kept on kicking him. He must not like this person. And that, in effect, was what was going on. And then you find out he did marry after Saul died, he did marry Saul’s daughter, and they had babies here, had kids there, and all this other stuff. And these kids were disasters…one raped the sister, one did this, one did that, one killed the brother that raped the sister, I mean, it was just like Peyton Place. Would it be like God to say, “Let’s anoint King David, let’s give him this kind of life. I love David”. No. David was beloved of God, and we concluded from last week’s message that this could not possibly be God’s plan. What it was, we are going to call “Middle History”, and that is what we are going to talk about today.

A lot of this Middle History just didn’t need to happen. Obviously, if Samuel hadn’t had to have kids, there would have been different judges. They couldn’t have put that family pressure on Samuel to get him to go to God in order to get a King. So we probably wouldn’t have had Saul as king, and the judging system would have gone on until David was an older, wiser man. If Samuel had sired better sons, Saul would not have not been King, then Saul would not have hunted down David, and David would have been King in age and wisdom, instead of youth and foolishness. I hate the fact that foolishness always follows youth. But it happens. I’ll give you a recent example. I was looking out one of the windows at my condo, and watching these neighborhood kids who were going through the trash….and these kids saw there was a blender that had been thrown away. These kids take it out of the trash, and the next thing you know, they’re swinging it by the cord and smashing it all the way down the street. I was so stunned, I didn’t think to do anything to stop those kids from beating up that poor defenseless blender, but that incident made me realize something. Youth will take a perfectly good blender and smash it all over the street, while age will wisely repair the power cord, and then puree some carrots. So, let’s look at the difference between youth and age, and foolishness and wisdom.

As you get older, you become a repairer. Just go to any older person’s garage. “Oh, that’s a perfectly good hammer (stick). I can fix that somehow. It will go with my other forty that…..” No, that really happens. Something happens with wisdom, and makes you tend to want to repair, while when you are a youth, you tend to want to destroy. That’s why young people make the best warriors, and old people tend to….I heard John Avanzini say that if he was in the war, he’d go over the ocean, drop the bombs there, and say “Oh, it was bad out there”. Young men just run into battle, like David did against Goliath, he just ran right at him with the stone, threw the thing at him, and said “Get down, bad boy”. The old men just say, “I’ve got some letters to write, some thank-you’s from Christmas”, so we have a difference here. God is looking for some wise people. Now he’s hoping that the young can be wise, but the young, you need to tie them down to give them some wisdom.

Middle History! David, especially. I’m going very quickly here, because we have tons of examples. David’s middle history…. oh Absalom, oh I don’t know, David, wait for the right woman? Bathsheba? Could you stop taking those public showers? I mean, she could have done a lot to help. But notice, these are things that happened because David was in the wrong place. The scripture in 11 Samuel, Chapter 10:l says “when Kings go out to battle, but David stayed home”. So we’ve got this Middle History, and we’ve got these disastrous events that were not part of the plan at all.

I saw a pattern here, and this is a good pattern, because this is one you can plug into every one of your lives, because anyone that needs something from God is apparently experiencing Middle History. I can say that unilaterally, because I can say this. It’s a strong statement, but if Adam had not sinned, there would have been no need for your Bible. If the Bible is a lesson of reproof, correction, instruction, and righteousness, that the man of God be perfect, and the man was still perfect, there would be no need for scripture. That was pretty easy proof, right? Just take the scripture. So really, every message that comes from the man of God, every message that comes out of your Bible is there to fix Middle History. Is everyone seeing that?

Turn to the Book of Judges, Chapter 10. I’m just going to scan the Book of Judges because I want you to see this pattern. The information in the Bible is not as important as the theme that I am about to show you, or will be revealed from the information. So the names are not all that crucial, except you are going to see some things here that are very intriguing.

After the time of Abimelech a man of Issachar, Tola son of Puah, the son of Dodo, rose to save Israel. He lived in Shamir, in the hill country of Ephraim. He led Israel twenty-three years; then he died, and was buried in Shamir. He was followed by Jair of Gilead, who led Israel twenty-two years. He had thirty sons, who rode thirty donkeys. They controlled thirty towns in Gilead, which to this day are called Havvoth Jair.

Now that was interesting. Two verses talk about three guys judging.

And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.

CONFUSING

Take note of this. He’re in Judges 10, we’ve got just a couple of verses showing the whole life story of the guy from God’s viewpoint, and the plan of God for his life. The Bible is not a complete history book- it doesn’t talk about how many German Shepherds Abraham had, because his pets really didn’t have much to do with the plan of God, which is what the Bibleis all about fulfilling. So when you don’t see stuff in the Bible, it’s probably because it doesn’t have much to do with the plan of God. The omission of any personal history in these verses is what makes them so obvious. Here, we’ve got only a couple of verses for the lives of these people, so they have become obvious. But then something changes…

Let’s move on past these two judges, just a couple of guys, who have served God in their offices for twenty-some years. Then something else happens. It says,

“And the children of Israel did evil again (I’m in verse 6) in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim, and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the children of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines, and forsook the Lord, and served him not.

Scan with me down to Chapter 11, Verse 1, which says,

Now Jephthah, the Gileadite, was a mighty man of valour, and he was the son of a harlot: and Gilead begat Jephthah. And Gilead’s wife bare him sons; and his wife’s sons grew up, and they thrust out Jephthah and they said unto him, Thou shalt not inherit in our father’s house; for thou art the son of a strange woman”.

Now get the pattern. We’ve got judges that judged Israel some 23 years, “but the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord”, and now we’ve got all this extra scripture. And then we’ve got a hero. And now we’ve got a hero being born, Jephthah. Now we’ve got a mighty man that God is pulling out of the ranks to fix the evil. So we can go on a whole chapter more about Jephthah. Scan over here to Chapter 12, and look here in verse 7. Jephthah judged Israel…..now we’re still talking about Jephthah. But now we’re closing the book on Jephthah, but we’ve got 2 1/2-3 pages on Jephthah. And Jephthah judged Israel six years and then died, Jephthah, the Gileadite, and was buried in one of the cities of Gilead. After him, Ibzan of Bethlehem judged Israel. He had thirty sons, thirty daughters whom he sent abroad and took in thirty daughters from abroad for his sons. And he judged Israel seven years. Then died Ibzan and was buried at Bethlehem. And after him Elon, a Zebulonite, judged Israel; and he judged Israel ten years. And Elon the Zebulonite died, and was buried in Aijalon in the country of Zebulun. And after him Abdon, the son of Hillel, a Pirathonite, judged Israel. And he had forty sons and thirty nephews, that rode on threescore and ten ass colts: and he judged Israel eight years. And Abdon the son of Hillel the Pirathonite died….......

Chapter 13, Verse 1. The children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and what happened? It says here, And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren, and bare not. The angel of the Lord appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, Behold now, thou art barren, and bearest not: but thou shalt conceive, and bear a son.

Now here we have the story of Samson. I’m not trying to get into the story, I’m just trying to show you a pattern. Where it says “He judged Israel seven years” and that was it, “He judged Israel 23 years” and that was it….these are the people with no Middle History! These are the people that perfectly did the will of God! These are the people that didn’t do evil in the sight of the Lord. These are the people that fulfilled their obligation as a judge for the years that they were called to be a judge. These were the people that just went and did what God said. There was no evil, God didn’t turn them over to their enemies, and thus no Middle History because they just did what they were told.

Now you have heard this before, people come into church and they’ve had all this trauma, the trials and tribulations, and they come in and say “There’s just so much to learn”. Not if you don’t have any Middle History. Adam didn’t need to be told anything. Adam didn’t have any Middle History in the beginning. God didn’t need to show him the knowledge of good and evil. He didn’t need to get into any of this stuff, because he didn’t have anything to fix. And that’s what messages, or scriptures, are for. They are there to fix stuff you broke, or that was broken in your life. So it became obvious. We go from hero to restorer. God sends a hero to restore (this is how we read it in Judges, Chapter 10), and then we have “did good, did good, did good”...but the children rebelled. OK. Now we are at evil. God builds another savior. Jephthah. OK. Jephthah gets things straightened out. The next judges that follow, “good, good, good”, but then his children do evil again. OK. Let’s build another hero. Samson. Do you see the pattern here? And the Middle History is either in what you’ve caused (and talk about that persecution for the Word’s sake). Did you get persecuted because you decided to do something, or because this kind of stuff happens? We find that there are two reasons for Middle History. Middle History happens when you cause something, and Middle History happens when God is trying to fix something.

We’ve all had Middle History, and we may even be experiencing some right now. We’ve all got stuff that just isn’t perfect. And God says it can be perfect. God says that we ought to be able to do our job without fail, without problems, without whatever else.

OK, here’s an example - Jacob and Rachel. I was reminded of the Stephen Still’s song, what was that, “Love The One You’re With”? Here’s a good example of, remember, Jacob, he worked for Laban and got Leah instead. But he didn’t turn her down, did he? “I love you, Rachel! Leah? Well, I can love you too. But I still want Rachel”.

And then there’s Bilhah and Zilpah…. What about the handmaids? Hello! Just look at the history of the children from Jacob and Leah, who became the 10 of the 12-tribes of Israel! Who thanked God for Joseph? We know the story of Joseph. He became a savior. But what did he save Israel from? He saved Israel and the whole family of Abraham from all of the problems that were caused by the children of Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah!

Go back to Genesis, Chapters 29-30 and see that the saviour was needed because of a decision that was made by Jacob. And people say, “Well, you know, if Joseph had not been.”..and again I’m assuming you know the stories, but remember that Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. And people say, “Well, that’s how he got into Egypt, that’s how he got to Egypt to become the prime minister, in order to save everyone from the famine”. Well, don’t you think there’s another way to get to Egypt besides having your brothers throw you in a ditch, selling you into slavery, and you going into prison. There are a lot of ways to get into Egypt, OK? It didn’t need to be because your brothers tried to kill you. And so many times we look at this negative thing like God is using this negative thing. Well, He’ll use the negative thing if you go seek Him in the middle of a negative thing. But God is not causing all these calamities. The man is causing all these calamities, so this Middle History, all this stuff….the stories are just awful about all the things that needed to be fixed.

If there was nothing broken, there would be nothing to fix. Middle History demands a saviour. To save what? What is a saviour for? The saviour is there to save the plan of God….because that man has authority on the earth. God gave it to Man. But why would God mess with it? Because he got really close to it with Israel at the time they were leaving Egypt. He got really close after the tenth time that Israel sought another God in the wilderness, or disobeyed him or tempted God, as wrote in the Book of Numbers. God got pretty close to just saying “Forget it. I’m going to start another people over here”. But the saviour was chosen because God still has sight of his Plan. And He’s saying, “Well, I can’t let this thing go, or we’ll never get THE SAVIOUR. We’ll never get MY family back together. We’ll never get Jesus back on earth like He was supposed to be in the beginning. We’d never have Jesus walking hand in hand with people on earth unless God sent a saviour at these key points to fix the Middle History that these people have caused.

Turn to Numbers, Chapter 13. The following persecution would be for the Word’s sake. I ‘m going to give you some examples while you are turning to Numbers, Chapter 13. In business, we are kind of taught to lie, but the Book of Ephesians, Chapter 4, Verse 25 says Wherefore put away lying. Speak every man truth with his neighbor. And you know, sometimes it looked like a lie might be the best thing for that person. The person you are talking to really shouldn’t know the truth. But once you knew the scripture…. Persecution for the Word’s sake is standing on what the scripture says, and then being persecuted because you stood on it and were immovable. At that point, there probably will be some persecution. “I’m going to tell you the truth. Chances are, you won’t like it”. But what happens is, when we don’t stand on the Word, a whole new form of persecution arrives. The problem is that the new form of persecution adds five more years of disaster to your life. And in this age, where we just don’t have time to mess around any more, if we’re going to the promised land, and we’ve all heard what our promised land is, then we can’t be here as Israel leaving Egypt, where Moses and God say “five days” and then have these forty year trips. And then, at the end, another forty years gets tacked on. We need to find out how to shortcut it, and the key is, getting persecuted for the Word’s sake means you have to stand on that word, on that word only, and say, “Hey, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, I didn’t want to do that, but I’ve got to stand here immovable. It’s better for you. It’s better for me. It’s better for everyone else”.

Well, let’s look at the Book of Numbers 13. I’m going to read a little smattering of scriptures, so stay with me….Numbers 13, This is what happened. Moses sent out twelve spies, one from each tribe, into the promised land. They went out there and said, “Certainly it’s the land that flows with milk and honey, BUT there are bunch of people there, they built a huge city, one like we’ve never seen, and we are like grasshoppers in their eyes, they’ll kill us”,... and we pick up here, and it says, And all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried, and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt, or would God, that we had died in the wilderness. And wherefore had the Lord brought us into this land to fall by the sword that our wives and our children should be a prey. Were it better for us to return into Egypt” A lot of times, if you just took a stand on the Word the first minute, the first second that you had a choice, that thought could never occur. It’s only when you compromise the stand on the Word, and to what percentage….I’m sure the numbers work out that if you stood 70 percent on the Word and 30 percent on whatever else, that 30 percent is going to haunt you until ....“Well, you should have never left that job for this one”...That 30 percent is going to tell you that you should have never taken that trip like so-and-so said you shouldn’t have. There’s always going to be a pull, and a pain, a stabbing in your back, and something wanting to make you go back to Egypt, thinking that Egypt was somehow better.

“Well, I remember that I made all that money in whatever business I was in, and now look what I did for the Gospel, and I ain’t got” ...Well, you could have stayed in that business, you know, you’d be dead, you would have been a poster child for some drug thing that happened. You know that! But see, what happens when you are only standing 70 percent, you are talking about the past, and that past comes back to haunt you. And then it starts affecting your decisions today. And your decisions today start making you think that….and so you start trying to elongate your faith walk instead of just…...promised land!”. You are just still trudging away through the heat and the cold, “Oh, we’re so foot sore and poorly shod, but at the end of the journey, there is God…in the sweet bye and bye, I’ll get my” .... Well, you won’t get your Harley in the sweet bye and bye. You’ll get it now if you want it. There won’t be any Harley in the sweet bye and bye. They’re too loud. But anyway…..

Numbers…we’re still reading in Numbers, and I’ll read this whole Verse 4. They said one to another, let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt. And Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of all the congregation of the children of Israel. And Joshua, the son of Nun, and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes because they were the only ones that came back with a good report. “Hey, they may be big giants”, they said, “but I’ve got the word of God that says it’s my land. And they spake unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying, The land which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land. If the Lord delight in us, then He will bring us into this land, and give it to us; a land which flows with milk and honey. Only rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land;...Boy, there’s a good one. None of us really rebelling against the Lord, but we certainly have feared what other people thought about our not rebelling against the Lord….for they are bread for us: their defenses departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Fear them not. So Josh and Caleb are preaching a good sermon right now….But all the congregation bade stone them with stones. Great! “We don’t want to go!” So they stoned them with stones. .. And the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel. And the Lord said unto Moses, how long will this people provoke me?

I think that God, at that time, spoke like the Terminator. “How long will it be ??? They believe me for all the sights which I have shown among them. I will smite them with pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they. And Moses said unto the Lord, Then the Egyptians shall hear it, for thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them; and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land: for they have heard that thou Lord, art among this people.

I’m going to jump to the next page. The Lord said I have pardoned according to your words,” so Moses has this great plea, reminds God of what He said before, that He wouldn’t do, God plugs it into his own equation, and says, “All right. I’ll pardon you, but these are going to be the consequences of them that disobeyed you and me. This is an important key to Middle History. Verse 21, But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory… because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles…..and havenot hearkened to my voice; surely,.... “they’re gonna die”. Sorry, that was the short form. What happened was, all of the spies represented a tribe. Well, all those tribes had to die in the wilderness. Actually, they couldn’t enter in, they were there, but they couldn’t enter in, so they had to go forty more years into the wilderness, and they just kept wandering, learning faith, before they could go in. And here’s an important key, and I’m going to read it so I don’t quote it wrong, It doesn’t just affect you. When you compromise on the Word about a particular situation….I’m going to give you some examples that won’t rock your boat, but they ought to help you make new decisions so you don’t forecast any more Middle History in your lives.

Joshua and Caleb were saved that day, and so were the tribes they represented, but they still had to wait forty years, themselves, because of those they were with. So it doesn’t just affect you. I probably saw five minutes of the college football game while I was at the gym, and here’s the game going on, there’s the play, and the guy, the right tackle, goes in and tackles the guy. And he’s going through the middle, and all these guys jump on him because ....What’s your position on the field, sir??? “I’m a tackle”. So, you’re saying that your job is to tackle. OK. So you made a tackle. You were just doing your job. And so many times we get this thing where doing our job is a victory, and not doing our job is OK. And realize, now, the ones that just did their job didn’t get any Middle History…they were the ones who just obeyed. This is is so simple, because you say, “Well, if I didn’t know this,” I mean, wait, Jesus said “Unless you come to the Kingdom of God, or enter into the Kingdom of God as a little child, you’ll not get in”. Let me paraphrase this portion. The Kingdom of God, God’s way of doing things, will not work unless you come to it as a little bitty child. You cannot make the Kingdom of God work as a rocket scientist, because it goes against everything you’ve ever learned in science. So it won’t work if you know something. You’re going to have to “unlearn” some stuff, and that’s going to take some time. But, if you come naively, and you read the Word, and that Word says in 11 Thessalonians, If any would not work, neither should he eat, then don’t let your brother-in-law stay on your sofa for 2 years without a job and keep feeding him. Now wait. Do you see where the compromise could occur?

George Carlin talked about that thing with the brother in law, he was making fun of these things, there’s all these new little CARE organizations, non profit organizations to take care of that guy that comes over on your sofa with three days growth and just stays there for a few years….Big brother-in-law, and working with a lot of good charities, and you start thinking about, and you decide you’re going to stand on the Word. The problem is, you make this stand, and then your Christian friends come up to you, and you say, “I’m standing on the Word” If any would not work, neither should he eat. Two years is long enough. Hit the road. You stand on the Word and your Christian friends say, “Now, is putting that poor boy on the street the christian thing to do? Is that the christian thing to do? We’ve got to stop doing the christian thing and start doing what the Bible said to do, start doing what God said to do. If His Word said to do this, then the christians need a new religion…. because we are talking about your next five years.

How much of your life do you think you can just throw away? If your life was a verse, here’s the verse your life ought to be..“judgment day you go up to Jesus…you’ve pleaded the blood..the blood….the blood…and Jesus says your verse, “Well done good and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord”. That’s what we want! That’s our verse! We don’t want “And I slew ten giants”....Yeah, because you had three kids that made giants. No, that’s Genesis, Chapter 6. They were giants because the sons of God (didn’t it say that those that are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God?) Romans 8:14 Then, the sons of God, it said, got together with the daughters of mere men and they produced giants. And these giants went astray. And God said, “AAH!! AAH!!!” God’s sending the sons of God out to turn men into sons of God, not to hook up with them and make “middle history” (the polite way of calling it).

How do I get persecuted for the Word’s sake? Being persecuted for the Word’s sake is taking a stand on the Word. By His stripes you were healed. Persecution for the Word’s sake…when you are sniveling, dripping, coughing, wheezing, aching head, stuffy nose, and you decide to go to 1 Peter 2:24, and it says By His stripes you were healed. When you make a faith stand that you were healed, persecution comes when everyone else who tries to tell you that you are sick. But when you go to the doctor, and it takes the same amount of time, less time, more time, or whatever, any persecution you get did not come from the Word. And the problem is, you run the risk of Middle History. Now, I’m not telling you not to go to the doctor. You go to the doctor based on the level of your faith for going to that doctor. God’s Will is, he spoke the Word and he was healed. God’s Will is immediate, spoke a word, no touch, no physical contact. And you’ve got second best, third best, fourth best… well you can’t go to the hospital as an atheist and not have some kind of faith. Right? If you truly didn’t have any faith the hospital could do anything, you wouldn’t even go. If you truly didn’t have any faith that they could do anything, you wouldn’t take any of their drugs. So it’s all a measure of faith, and you go with the faith level you are at. Obviously, we are trying to build our faith to get to the level where we walk around healing the sick, and aren’t just sick ourselves.

So you see where the stand occurs when you take a stand on the scripture. There is going to be persecution. In fact, for people who come in here hearing me preach about healing, the persecution already comes. I mean, I just spoke these words, and someone who gets this tape, may say, “Wait a minute, is he telling me not to go to the doctor?” That’s persecution for the Word’s sake. But it’s better than me being sick. It’s better than you wondering where your pastor is on Sunday morning because he is at home coughing up a lung, and the doctor he consulted said, “Don’t move”. I mean, I might have to stuff that lung right back in, but I’m gonna preach I’ll do whatever it takes, because I’m going to stand on the Word.

Here’s one, “Forgive, if you have ought against any”. Oh, that’s a tough scripture to stand on, isn’t it? “Honor your father and mother”. Now, there’s a tough one, and kids are going to have to realize that if they are going to avoid a whole mess of messed up life. It may even be to the point where no one will even want to marry you when you are 25 because of the Middle History you caused when you were 13. I’m telling the truth, and we need to face the truth, and realize that every decision that we make today has the potential to cause more middle history if we don’t just pick a scripture and stick to it! And then, we need to find whatever way we can to stick to it!

Here’s what happens when you say “No” and then compromise. This is how all the trash happens. This is where all the misleading voices come, this is how that imp gets on your shoulders. When you say “No” to a particular scripture, that is the way, and the only way, that the devil gets into your life. When you say, “Well, I know it says “Don’t feed him”....well, it seems to me that we could fix the ghettos if the mamma’s just stopped feeding the boys that wouldn’t work. What happens when she says, “I’m gonna feed him” anyway? “That’s my baby”. She’s actually saying that she is smarter than God in this case. She is saying, “Well, God, I know that you put this principle here, but see, I know something you must not know”. Well, isn’t that the perfect opportunity for the devil to come in and help you play God? Doesn’t that test the limits of your “Godhood”? ...Because it seems like Mamma knows best. No, God knows best! And if you just listened to God, then you’d have your son back, with a job, cleaned up, and repenting in two weeks instead of having five years of him now in prison, and other families dead on drugs or whatever because there wasn’t a stand taken on that scripture. And again, I’m giving you worst case scenarios. But you’ve got to see how Middle History is created. And it’s all around us. So, I’ll honor my father and my mother. And I won’t drive Dad’s car 60 mph in a 45 mph zone.

And sure, that son might not have hit anybody, but maybe he would have. There is nothing wrong with being repentant when he might have. Thank God for that chance, but a lot of people don’t have that luxury. A lot of people don’t get that second chance. And then the problem becomes that the other family doesn’t know forgiveness. They are not standing on the forgiveness scripture. So you have two families with a mess affecting both families, and more families, and more families….and then they’ve got vendettas against each other.

Here it is. Once you say “No” to the Word, and you have opened the door to the devil. We were watching a John Avanzini video, (and if John gets this tape, I do apologize), but we were talking about how when you say “no”, you are not going to stand on the scripture. You say, “No, I’ll just handle this my way”. And then you hear this creaking in the background, and this coffin lid opens, and the devil comes up and says “Good evening. What can I help you with today? Would you like one, two, three years added onto your life…three years of misery…I’d love to count”. I mean, that’s exactly what he does, and you GET that added time! And in the middle of it, you are blaming God. Look at Adam, just the next day after not being obedient to God. God says, “What did you do?”, and Adam says, “That woman you gave me”...blame her, blame him. He could have short cut his Middle History, but instead, we are all affected by that Middle History, even today. I’d love to be the generation that just fixes it, just declares war on Middle History. I’m just going to be so dogmatic about standing on a scripture that I just look stupid to the world. But God says he takes the foolish things of this world to confound the wise..”.to bring to naught the things that are”. Well, I’m ready to do that.

I call this the “saint threshold”. The more obedient you have been, the less there is to learn. There comes a point, if you are in the middle of Middle History right now, and you are in the learning stage, you will eventually get to a threshold if you stay with it.. a threshold where you become the master of your circumstances….where you are no longer taken about by what your children do….you are no longer dragged down because of what happened at your job because of whatever. And there is going to come a point when you can now offer help, because in the midst of it all, you can’t offer too much help. And no one is requiring you to. But God is trying to raise up Samsons, Apostle Paul’s, Saviours. That’s what they were, Saviours! Saviours of Middle History. If you read the Book of Galatians, you’ll find out that because of what the first Apostles preached, Paul was sent in to save them. Peter tried to teach them all how to be Jews again, and tried to get the Gentiles to be circumcised and then Peter’s got to come on the scene,....I mean, God’s pulling someone out of the works. Well, that’s where He’s got us.

The Evening News is Middle History. Look at all of the things that happen because we didn’t stick to the Constitution. And what do we call a compromise? An Amendment! And it really isn’t our fault that we got so lax in being obedient, because we saw all the people we voted into office, we just let them….“Well, we can just amend that”.

Here’s one of the major differences between men and women…. A man says something, and if he doesn’t do it, he’s wrong. A woman says something, and if she doesn’t do it, she’s changed her mind. Different. It’s a different thing. So we make an “amendment”. I have amended my prior conversation. Well, we need to get here, and make no amendment, and in fact, there is a scripture that says “where you swear to your own hurt and change not”.

Look at the Book of Ephesians, Chapter 6. Verse 10: Finally my bretheren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. No one who ever stood on the Word in any of our Saviour examples, could have done the saving in their own power. You’ll find that with Samson, you’ll find it with Jephthah, you’ll find it with Samson’s parents, and on down the list, that it had to be the Spirit of the Lord coming upon them to do the delivering. God needs us to take a stand, and then it’s His power…His might. And sometimes we get into these compromises because we just don’t think it’s possible….“Hey, I can’t do that because” ... Well, remember that all things are possible to him that believes. God is looking for a believer to just believe him. Don’t believe what you can’t. Believe what you can.

Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armour of God (not just the helmet) that you may be able to stand against the whiles of the devil (whom you let in when you compromised the last time). For we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness in this world, wicked spirits in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all, to stand (and notice that it said “evil day”. It did not say “evil month”, or “evil vacation time”, it did not say “evil retirement years”....just an “evil day”. Just take one day and stand.

....stand therefore having your loins girt about with truth, having on the breastplate of righteousness your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Above all taking the shield of faith wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the Word of God praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.
It’s not too late to stand on the future. A decision to stand on the Word today will stop any Middle History tomorrow. Sure, there will be some persecution, but they will come running back. If you are willing to take a stand on the Word, they will always come back. That’s the story of the Prodigal Son. God stood on the Word and said, “I can’t save you any other way”, and the son took off. But the father stood there, waiting, and it turns out that the son who was living with him was actually the bum son, the one that didn’t even know his father. He said, “What are you doing killing the fatted calf?” Dad said, “Well, you could have had a fatted calf every day if you had wanted one”. You didn’t even know me. You’ve been living with me….this guy knew me when he came to his senses.

So today, make sure you get your faith up to take a stand from which there will be no retreat. Although some persecution might follow, in your dogged determination to stand 100 percent on the Word of God, you will not be creating another era of Middle History for the next however many years of your life. Do you understand what we’re talking about? How you can prevent yourself from making any more Middle History? With all these messages, God is so faithful to help us fix our middle history. So make sure you plug them in right away. Make sure you get your faith up to do it, and make sure when there is a decision to be made, and you know the Word that pertains to it, just stand on it. I mean, even if it affects me, I’ll honor your decision to stand on the Word.

Well, let’s pray. God, deliver us from the Middle History we are in. You said we could come boldly to the throne of grace and obtain mercy. We are going to stand on that verse. I will not go any longer without mercy. I will not go any longer without the grace to help in the time of need, so I am standing on that. And these people, this congregation, are standing on that. And now show us what to do with the rest of our lives, show us how to be obedient to the rest of the plan you have, not just for us, but for the people around us. We thank you, God, for it, and we expect it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

LORD + CHRIST = GLORY

The Las Vegas Faith Center
Message from Sunday, January 31, 1999

LORD + CHRIST = GLORY
by Tiger Todd - Sr. Pastor - Church Sermons

I’m very excited about today’s message, since it contains the missing component to fulfilling the hope of glory in your life. Since very few things, actually, nothing in the Bible works on its own, we needed to know this so we could make this principle work on purpose. The Bible is interesting that way, because it says that with faith, you can inherit promises. But it further says that it’s only when you couple faith with patience that you can inherit the promises of God.

Has anyone see the movie, The Prince of Egypt? Where would Moses have been without God moving? He would have been back in the river in a little basket, headed in the other direction. Can you see that some things need to be coupled with something else in order to work? God needed Moses just like Moses needed God. In order to demonstrate that, I had hoped to go to Home Depot and get a little catalyst and a little epoxy, and show you how one element, on its own, just sits there, not accomplishing anything. But when you mix the two elements together, all of a sudden the combination of the two starts getting hot, a reaction starts to occur, and pretty soon, you have generated an all new substance that is stronger, more powerful, and much more useful than either of the two separate elements. That’s what I want you to be thinking about today.

You may have attained a lot of knowledge in your life, but if it is coupled with zero wisdom, you’re still going to be stupid. Let’s lay it out on the table using me as an example. As a seventh grader, in my naivete, I set the record in terms of having an ego. I’m bringing this example forward because, (a) I know it very well, and (b) because I now understand how many 13 year olds go through this period of time when all of a sudden they recognize their greatness! Where was this wisdom hiding in my formative years? Well, anyone who has ever experienced a 13 year old, or anyone who’s ever been a 13 year old, knows what I mean. Those of you who are about 14 are probably saying, “What’s he talking about”? So, in retrospect, I have formulated a definition for arrogance. Some may call it egomaniacal, some may call it egotistical. Anyway, I wrote Tiger’s definition on what it means to be egotistical: it means “being as smart as you say you are”. I had this little “statement” that spurted out of me when people would come to me for… whatever. I mean, if we had six classes in our schedule, I somehow got seven “A”‘s on my report card. My wisdom and knowledge were beyond “what you could ask or think”. I was the first seventh grader to be in Algebra. I was every high-end teacher’s pet. The Dean hired me to work in the school when I was a seventh grader. And I knew what that meant! Now here’s the point: It was me alone with this huge head. Of course, when my shoulders weren’t quite as big as they are now, I’d fall over a lot. I had this huge head, and the reason why it was a problem, was because I didn’t know who to give the glory to for my wisdom or my knowledge. And because of that, then what happens when you’re as smart as you say you are is it becomes a bad thing. I present to you the the “church world” as a whole has done the same thing- but in reverse. We gave all of the praise and glory to Jesus and we were but worms!

There are a few people that have done things the Bible way. But a lot of Christians haven’t seen it demonstrated in the Bible. They’ve followed someone else’s example, and that example may not have been true. We found that in the Book of Acts, we followed the acts of the Apostles when the acts of the Apostles were not following the words of Jesus. We’ve seen some examples where entire religions have built churches with people’s names on it, and they were only supposed to visit there, not settle! Jesus would have said to those very people, “Excuse me? I told you to go there, and you stayed here. I told you to say this, and you said that”. But the church world just grabbed the “act” because they didn’t go back and see what God actually told the people He sent. Anyway, as we get on this ego and glory thing, we’ll see more on this example a little later, and I think you’ll see how it occurs.

We’ve been doing a study on “The Christ”. Turn to 1 Peter, Chapter 1, and let’s pick up on The Christ. For those of you that have not accepted my doctrine on The Christ, there’s the front door… Just kidding! I believe this is going to be wonderful, because I understood more about The Christ once I found out what The Christ Equation was missing. We have seen Jesus Christ, and we have thought Jesus was The Christ. That’s true, Jesus was The Christ, the Son of the Living God. Jesus was Christ in the flesh. But as I did a study in the Bible, I found that there were many Christs.

Now that messes with the Church. And the reason why it messes with the Church is because it is still only half the message. That would be like a faith church not preaching love. You know, faith worketh by love. Or how about a “love” church that doesn’t preach “faith”? That’s like telling people to go believe for what you want, but not teaching them to be doers of the word , so they go off with half the information and get into more debt than they started with by going ahead and signing up for every credit card offer they get in the mail. There’s something missing, and I believe that once we add this missing element, now that this understanding has finally reached the planet, it will allow you to understand, too. And I’ll tell you, this is not about the size of my head, because I give the glory for what works in me- the understanding I have been given- to my Father in Heaven, just as the glory for what works in Eric, or Candace, or Millie, goes to the Father for what He gave those people.

Here is what happens when we praise the Lord without this understanding: Did Jesus say he was the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords? Did you hear that in the Bible, or have you heard it in church? King of Kings. Lord of Lords. When Jesus comes back, who are the Lords going to be? Probably us…so if Jesus walked into the room right now and said, “Where are my Lords?”, how many of you guys would have the guts to do say, “here we are!”? Well if you had the guts, you’re going to be his Lords. Now, what if he said, “We’ll praise the Lords”? What! Jesus! You can’t say that! Wait. We seem to have a problem here, because when you praise the Lord…hold your place here in 1 Peter, and turn to Philippians Chapter 2 for a moment. We have to cover this first, as I’m being inspired to do this. And remember, if I cut you open, wait until I sew you back up before you make a judgment of stoning or whatever.

Verse 10 says, That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

We did a huge study on the Father, and I’m telling you what, the way I can talk now, without someone having this current understanding, people might think that Tiger just omitted Jesus from the equasion. Not so. I just realized that Jesus said, When you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. I don’t do anything that I don’t first see my Father do. I do this so that my Father is glorified. He said, when you pray, say “Our Father which art in heaven”. So let’s settle this thing once and for all.

Turn to Matthew Chapter 6. Here’s what happens when you spend your time praising the Lord and not glorifying your Father. By the way, just so you know, God’s purpose in using me to explain this is to show you how to glorify the Father. Are you in Matthew Chapter 6? Part of the trouble we’ve had in glorifying the Father is that every single one of us will glorify the Father in a different way. No two people could glorify Him in the same way, anymore than two people could pass the same fingerprint test, or the same retina scan the same voice print, or the same DNA scan. When the angel came and said, “Mary, you’re about to give birth to this guy, and I want you to call him Jesus. Now he’s gonna be a Christ, but this child that is coming is Christ the Lord.” We’ve talked about this, and people were kind of cringing inside…all this spiritual stuff. Well, it should only cringe in people that haven’t heard anything about it yet. I could tell this to a six year old, and the six year old would say, “Yeah, you go”! And a 13 year old, without knowing who to give glory to, would say, “Yeah, it was all me”

Well, let’s look at Jesus talking here. Go back to Matthew 6 verse 7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Now I want to stop for a moment, because how many of you know that Jesus walked in faith? Do you believe that? By show of hands, how many people think he didn’t walk in faith? Good! So I can explain it this way. I’m going to add the word “you”, meaning if Jesus is praying to the Father, I want to show you by just by adding who he is praying to , how it changes this pathetic translation. Remember, we talked about this before. Jesus never prayed this prayer. In fact, it was impossible for Jesus to pray this prayer. He was teaching the disciples how to pray. Look at verse 12 to see the reason he couldn’t pray this prayer.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil….and verse 14, For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

Did Jesus ever need forgiveness? No! Jesus never sinned. He could not have prayed this prayer, and then said, “My Father will forgive me if I pray this way and I forgive people their trespasses”. Jesus never sinned. He didn’t need forgiveness. He was teaching the disciples how to pray, and he told them to pray “Our Father”. So I am going to add the word “you” in front of “lead us not into temptation”. The Book of James says,

Let no man say when he is tempted, he is tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted, neither tempteth He any man.

So it is impossible for God to lead anyone into temptation. But look, by adding the word “you”, can you see how we fixed the translation? Thy Kingdom come. “Thy” is the word “you”, by the way. It means Your Kingdom come. “Your” was just omitted in the translation. Your Kingdom come. Your will be done. On earth as it is in heaven. You give us this day our daily bread and you forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, and you lead us not into temptation but you deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom of God. This prayer wasn’t designed for asking and begging God for stuff- we have to rightly divide this with the later parts of the Bible, one verse at a time. The Bible says, you can’t just take one scripture out of the Bible and build a doctrine on it. It says all scriptures, out of the mouth of two or three witnesses, let every word be established. Jesus quoted that from the Book of Deuteronomy. He was saying that there was a prophecy of the scripture, not a private interpretation. In other words, you can’t take just one scripture by itself. You must confirm it with a second or third scripture. Now look at what I’m trying to get to….

Remember, we are talking to “Our Father (verse 13) and you lead us not into temptation, but you deliver us from evil, for thine (yours, Father) is the kingdom and the power and the GLORY for ever. Who is supposed to get the glory for ever? Our Father. Jesus said, Our Father is supposed to get the glory for ever. So if you believe the Bible, the God of this Bible says that you are not supposed to give glory to Jesus. You can give honor to Jesus. God gave glory to Jesus by saying, “Jesus, let all the angels of God worship you”. But we are not angels. The problem is… what about Moses? Moses was a deliverer. His actual literal Hebrew name means he was a “saviour”. But he wasn’t a saviour without God on him. Can you see that if we have too much “Praise the Lord”, the Father is not going to get much glory. And I’ll tell you why. If I’m the deliverer God uses to do something in the last days, and you say “Praise the Lord”, you’ll actually be talking about me. And I don’t want that praise. I want you to glorify the Father.

Turn to Nehemiah Chapter 9. I want you to see who, what, and where Nehemiah is talking to and about. Nehemiah has a word from God to rebuild the temple that has been destroyed, abandoned, and left undone. The gates are all in shambles. The children of Israel are once again in bondage to another group of people. These people say, “Hey Nehemiah, because of your great stewardship, go ahead and fix the temple, you have my blessing. And the King ruling over Nehemiah and his people actually endorsed, and actually helped pay for this job to rebuild. Nehemiah has a call from God to go rebuild the temple, and he is going to God, but there are enemies. There are always enemies rising up to try to stop you from accomplishing the plan of God.

Let’s look here. Nehemiah is talking to God, verse 27. Therefore thou deliverest them (because of their disobedience). Look at verse 26 Nevertheless they were disobedient, and rebelled against thee,(Nehemiah speaking of his people) and cast thy law behind their backs, and slew thy prophets which testified against them to turn them to thee, and they wrought great provocations. Therefore thou deliverest them into the hand of their enemies, who vexed them; and in the time of their trouble, when they cried unto thee, thou heardest them from heaven; and according to thy manifold mercies thou gavest them saviours, (underline the word “saviours”, plural, in your Bible) who saved them out of the hand of their enemies.

It is essential to understand saviours if you are ever going to understand the Mystery of Christ. No pastor on earth right now can claim they understand the Mystery of Christ, because God said He was not going to give it to pastors. Ephesians Chapter 3, actually most of Paul’s letters, says it’s only going to be revealed through his apostles and prophets in the last days. That’s why it’s called a mystery. But Pastors should be expecting God to send a holy apostle and/or prophet to bring this mystery to pass. But once you know the mystery, things go so fast, and today we are going to see how that thing works.

God sent them saviours who rescued them from the hand of their enemies. Just for the sake of enlightening our thinking today, there was a time when the earth was corrupt. God spoke it in Genesis Chapter 6, and He said, the wickedness and the imaginations of man in their heart are only evil continually…..therefore, a flood is coming. But He called out a man, a saviour. If you continue to read in the Book of Nehemiah, he lists these people. ..from Noah, to Joseph, to Samson, Ehud, Deborah, Jephthah. He said,... But you sent a saviour, and we know that it was Noah, his three sons and their wives, and a bunch of animals that were saved from the flood. Does everyone generally understand that? Now that I’m reading so much more scripture, I see it was more like 80 years that Noah obeyed a voice of someone he couldn’t even see about building an ark, the idea of which the entire population was against. His call from God was to save the righteous. The problem was, no one listened to him. These weren’t supposed to be the only human beings on the boat. Noah called out. He built a big ark. The flood’s coming! Noah was a saviour. It didn’t say anything about his three sons being righteous, but they were saved. So it has nothing to do with righteousness.

When we talked last week about “get the money”. I had been under the impression that the Bible said not to seek to be rich. Then I found out that the scripture I was standing on wasn’t in the Bible. Seek not to be rich. Sorry, it’s not in the Bible. The Bible actually says, seek not things. So we had trouble. We were double minded. We couldn’t receive a thing from God, according to James Chapter 1. All along, we thought we shouldn’t seek to be rich, but then, every example of what we saw as a godly man in the Bible was RICH! So we were double minded. We were unstable in all of our ways.

Let not that man think he will receive anything of the Lord whether it be bond or free.

We couldn’t walk in that. So now we’ve decided, yes, seek to be rich. The problem can be, though, when you get rich, your money will tell on you. Money is an amplifier. If you have $30, and you’re into adultery, that $30 will show up at Motel 6. If you’ve got $2,000, it will show up at Bellagio. It’s just an amplifier. It can either amplify the sin, or amplify your righteousness. If you’ve got $30, you can bring a couple of people out (ones who have less than $30)and preach the gospel to them. If you have less than $30, the people who have more than $30 will not sit down and listen to you because of the Law that Pastor Ron alluded to in Ecclesiastes. But if you do have enough money to take everyone in the world out to lunch, you can get the entire world saved. Money will amplify sin, or it will amplify righteousness.

John Avanzini showed me first that money is neither good nor bad. If there was a drug deal going on at 7-11, and you’re just standing there, and you can’t believe they’re doing that so blatantly. All of a sudden the guys doing the drug deal drop the money on the floor. Is that drug money? Well, not if I see it. That’s my money if I see it at 7-11. That’s my money! Now you couldn’t possibly think that if I picked up that money, you’re not going to call next week and learn that the Pastor is down at the crack den? So that wasn’t drug money. Money is neither good nor bad. It does exactly what the person who has it does. It does the will of the person who has control of that money. It’s an amplifier. And just like an amplifier, it doesn’t do any good without the signal behind it. You’re the one that sends that signal.

Let’s go to Second Corinthians Chapter 5. We’ve probably got a dozen scriptures, so don’t lose your place in 1 Peter. Verse 17 is a famous verse, but you’re going to have to understand this if you are going to understand something about the truth of God’s Word. Verse 17,

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.

Do you want to find out a reason to give Jesus Christ the honor? It’s because Christ was able to reconcile us to God. This is very important, because today we are going to take two Christs out of the Bible, and we are going to parallel their lives. We need to see this, and I’ll tell you, if you don’t believe in the way this Christ thing works today, you will by the end of the day, once you see it works with the hidden component. You’ll say, How could I miss that? I’ll tell you how - too much religion. But it says here, all things are of God who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.

So Jesus was the Christ to do a certain work, to reconcile us unto God. Well, wasn’t it true that the other saviours were doing a certain work?.. saving people from their enemies, and reconciling people to God, because there was no saving unless there was repentance. In order for that saviour’s ministry to work, there had to be repentance by the people. In Noah’s day, there was no repentance, hence, there was no saving for those people.

1 Peter. We’ve got to tie this string together, and make you see that it’s from God, that the Bible really is true, and that certain people have certain stuff in them to do certain things. We honored Lynn today because Lynn has something in him that does certain things. What’s in Lynn is not in me. Sure, I could do what Lynn does, but it would take me a hundred times longer. Look at Chapter 1 verse 9. It says

Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. Of which salvation (we’re talking about saviours) the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ (referring to Jesus), and the glory that should follow.

The prophets had Christs in them. They had Christs in them to do a specific task, and their Christ was supposed to prophesy. That’s why they were called “prophets”. People that weren’t prophets did not have a Christ in them to prophesy. Certain Christs were in there to do certain things. We must understand that your Christ is specific, one in which you have been raised and raised.

I’m going to Isaiah Chapter 49. Since we are talking about Jesus Christ for a moment, I believe this applies to every Christ.
Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people from far, The Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. And he made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver hath he hid me;

We’re talking about Jesus Christ. He was hid in his hand. Does anyone know what happened when God hid him in His hand? He learned the Bible, and the Law, and about the prophets. He learned carpentry (the Bible calls it carpentry, but it’s actually stone masonry or stone building. They hew stone. They build the monuments. That’s what carpentry was back then. It still is, actually, over there, because there aren’t many trees, really only olive trees, and you don’t build too many dwellings out of olive trees in Israel. So he was hid in God’s quiver for an appointed time…until something was going to happen, something that was going to inaugurate that Christ in him. Do you remember the day that Jesus’ Christ was inaugurated? Do you remember the day when Jesus ceased being Jesus of Nazareth, and became Jesus The Christ. Remember the Baptism day at the River Jordan? John’s there walking around in his Christ. In Isaiah 49, wasn’t it the angel that told Zacharias that in Elizabeth’s womb was a child filled with the Holy Ghost, a Christ? We know it wasn’t the Spirit of Truth on the Day of Pentecost, because Jesus said it hadn’t come yet. So it had to be one of these Spirits of Christ that Peter was talking about. But John the Baptist’s Christ was different. What was John’s Christ? The Baptist! We’ve been so stupid reading our Bibles. It’s been there all along. The same angel went over to Joseph and said, “This one is going to be Christ the Lord. Head Christ.” Ephesians Chapter 4 talks about the head of the Body of Christ. Hey, if you guys don’t start working on your Christs, He can’t come back because He’s got no Body. He’s only the Chief Cornerstone. We need more stones. We’ve got to build with that from which every joint supplies.

Are we still on the message? Let’s find that out. Turn to Colossians Chapter 1. (That was just the intro). You’re probably thinking, Oh, my Lord! I’ve heard three messages in one church in one day. Well, we have something we are supposed to do. Welcome to the Faith Center. How many messages did we stop at in the Upper Room on Tuesday night? Ten messages! Ten messages in one hour. Now, I’ll guarantee you that hasn’t happened anywhere on the planet before, and I’ll tell you why. The Christ in me is a trouble-shooting, understanding mysteries Christ. That’s why God put that specific one in me. He determined that the guy with the big head at age 13 years was the absolute best guy to use for this job. And we saw this again yesterday when we had car trouble. I said, Lynn, it sounds to me like, BAM! My Christ took five seconds to figure it out. But because of 45 minutes of not walking in the Spirit early in the morning, the car wouldn’t start. Someone had vandalized our little car. But once I was again walking in the Spirit, my Spirit of Christ in me, it produced the answer. The Christ in Lynn, the “fix it” Christ, fixed it in the next five seconds, and the car started. Ten total seconds. So, determining what your Christ is supposed to do is crucial, and that’s what we want to get to today.

The key came out last week when I was in Texas. Please turn to Colossians Chapter 1, verse 25 Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God; Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints:

If you take your Concordance out, and look up the Greek word they use translated “saints”, it is the same word every other place they translated as “holy”. So whenever you see “holy spirit”, “holy ghost”, “holy”, no, that’s the word “saint”. Sixty one times in the New Testament is the word “saint”. Half the time the translators used the word “saint, and half the time the translators used the word “holy”. Sometimes I’m sure the word “holy” would be a better descriptor, but most of the time it was understanding that the Christ that he was using was one that was for a saint. That’s what makes a person a saint. But as we’ve all found out, being “saints”, if you don’t walk in what your saint is supposed to do, the Amplified Bible says, you are a mere unchanged man. But glory to God. We’ve got an answer today. We will be shouting soon! To fulfill the word of God; Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to this saints: to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; THIS IS THE MYSTERY… which is Christ in you, the hope of Glory.

The hope of glory. Where does the glory go forever? To the Father! The hope of glory in my life has to do with this. What am I going to do with what the Christ in me is supposed to do? The hope of glory in Brian’s life is, is he going to do what the Christ in him has been placed there to do. He was hid in the quiver till the appointed time, to fulfil not only his calling, but to fulfil the Word of God. The only hope that the Father has of getting glory from Brian’s body, a living sacrifice, holy, without blame, (which is your reasonable service), the only hope of glory God will get, is if Brian walks in his Christ. He can try to walk with a Christ in him all he wants, but there will be no glory unless walking in his Christ. You might think that I’m just a freak, but it happens, and, well, that’s what they thought about all the prophets when they walked in their Christs.

We’re going to go to the Book of Judges as we parallel two lives. And hold your place in the Book of Judges, and then we’re going to bounce around in the New Testament and look at Jesus for a moment. Book of Judges Chapter 13. If you don’t have any tapes of ours from the past, if you haven’t studied “Middle History”, or “Christ the Lord”, if you haven’t listened to those messages again, then please do. We were able to preach ten messages in one place in one hour in one night on this planet, not just because I was walking in my Christ, but because as Jesus pulled the disciples along in the Book of Mark, just before they got on the ship and went to the other side, about verse 33, it said “When they were alone he expounded all things to his disciples as they were able to hear it”.

We had a room of people who were able to hear ten mysteries at one time, mysteries that have yet to be revealed anywhere on the planet. God is getting pretty excited. He’s finally like, “Hey, we can get the job done after all”, because it’s all about bringing the Body of Christ together. The problem is, each Body is trying to be the whole joint, the whole Body. And it’s, By that which every joint supplies. We’re just a fraction of it, but when we accept our fraction of troubleshooting, wisdom and knowledge, we’ll accept your fraction over there of gifts of love, where you can help people be birthed in love. Other bodies have gifts of faith where you can bring people up to a new level of believing. It’s like when the Christ Lutheran Church came out to the Outreach yesterday, and supplied their spot, and it took an hour and a half, and we were out there for nine hours. Well, their Christ spent the entire week producing the food to bring to the outreach to be able to walk in their part. When all the Christs can start doing their part, you’ll always have what you need when you need it. How could we better have blessed those people in the park yesterday? If we had more money, we could have done more stuff. It wasn’t for lack of people. It was for lack of money.

Are we in Judges 13 yet? Look at verse 1.

And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.

All right. I can’t protect you any more. You’re going to find that some other nation is going to rule over you.

There was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren, and bare not. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto the woman and said unto her, Behold now, thou art barren, and bearest not; but thou shalt conceive, and bear a son. Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing; For lo, thou shalt conceive and bear a son;

Now we start getting a list of what this saviour’s Christ is made up of. This is the type of man I need. Wait. Someone has done evil. It brought bondage. That’s how it works. If you don’t believe in God, then go to the business world and see how it works there. You do evil, it brings bondage. That’s how it works. What does God do? He sends a saviour to save from the bondage. He designs a specific saviour, because that’s the type of saviour needed to fix the bondage. He needed someone like Moses. Samson couldn’t have removed 430 years of bondage to Egypt - he couldn’t have gotten Israel free. As strong and mighty as he was, he wasn’t the right character. He would have never made it to Pharoah’s court. But because Moses was hid in the quiver, actually hid and raised by Pharoah’s daughter, he was specifically designed for the task, so his hope of glory would be very different than Samson’s hope of glory. But now we’ve got this listing here, in verse 5, of how Samson is being designed.

For lo, thou shalt conceive and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver (or save) Israel out of the bond of the Philistines.

Do you see, we have a saviour being built? God is designing a saviour.

Now hold your place there, and turn to Matthew Chapter 1 verse 21, it looks like the same angel, who says…

She (meaning Mary) shall bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

Of course, we know that’s bondage, because the Bible later says that either be a slave to sin, or a servant of righteousness, because you are a servant to whom you obey. So here it is. Flip back to the Book of Judges, and look at Chapter 14 verse 5 And then went Samson down, and his father and his mother, to Timnath, and came to the vineyards of Timnath: and, behold, a young lion roared against him. Notice the words “against him”. Now, keep reading. And the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, ...

I want to present to you today, that the Spirit of the Lord ... now wait, whose Spirit is that?...that would be the Lord’s Spirit, wouldn’t it? Just like when those angels were singing there in Luke chapter 2, it wasn’t the Christmas card they were writing, when the angel of the Lord told the shepherd, “Hey, there is a saviour being born in Bethlehem”. It was the Lord’s angel. Now Jesus gave us the what-for on idle words. He says, if you speak an empty, inoperative word, a word void of power ( what “idle” really means in the Greek), he says you will be held accountable to it. So, do you think these words in the Bible are idle? When The Bible says the “Spirit of the Lord”, or the “angel of the Lord”, then it is referring to the Lord’s Spirit and the Lord’s Angel!.

The Spirit of the Lord is what comes upon a person with a Christ in them to produce the power that will guarantee victory in their calling.

Now look at this. Samson has a Christ in him. He has a Spirit of God in him to do a specific task. He is a saviour. But Samson walks as a normal man until it says, “The Spirit of the Lord came upon him.” Now look at this. It says…

The Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him and he rent him (meaning the lion) as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand: but he told not his father or his mother what he had done.

He grabbed the lion and tore him in two. It’s my strong belief that without the Spirit of the Lord upon him, although there was indeed a Christ in him, the hope of glory, there would not have been a lion torn in half, but, more likely, a man named Samson would be the one torn in half. OK? That’s what usually happens. What usually happens when people go out walking on the lake is that their feet go under water. But when the Spirit of the Lord comes upon Jesus, he walks across the water.

Turn the page, and look at Chapter 15, verse 14,

And when he came….

I’ve got to preface this for just a minute. When Samson was called, and his Christ was designed, it was designed to be a weapon that would deliver, or begin to deliver. as the scripture literally says, the children of Israel from their captors, the Philistines. That would be truly saving his people from their sins. What you’ll see in Samson’s life is that the Spirit of the Lord only came upon him when he was about going against the Philistines, or when the Philistines were coming up against him, or, as we saw with the lion, (which could be read two different ways), when something was going to get in the way of fulfilling the hope of his calling. I’ve had well meaning Christians try to keep me from fulfilling the hope of my calling because they didn’t have the faith to believe it. The Spirit of the Lord came upon me to rebuke them, because my calling from God is the only hope of God getting the glory where my life is concerned. And nobody, no lion, no Christian, no Mormon, no nothing is going to get in the way of that fulfillment.

And when he came unto Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him: (everyone say, “bad idea”) and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands. And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.

Well! Look at Chapter 16, verse 9.

Now there were men lying in wait, abiding with her in the chamber.

I have recently learned why I tend to go over here for awhile, and then over there for awhile. That is like the trademark of the apostle Paul, and I’ll tell you why. What a liberty it is to be able to preach in this church, to this body. Leroy Thompson talks about a church in Muncie, Louisiana, that had only 40 people, but despite that, he said , “I saw the angel of prosperity, people lined up to sing. The Pastor just said, “Hey, Preacher in the house, and they all just sit down and listen.” We don’t have to sing, we’re going to just let the Spirit of the Lord move upon the man who’s come with the message.” And he said, “I don’t have freedom anywhere else in the earth like I have in that place”. And it just dawned on me why I get the “over, abouts and arounds”. It’s because as you people are becoming able to receive it, and as I speak it, the Spirit of the Lord is coming upon me to reveal each new thing to you. As you become able to spend four or five hours, well, we could do this all day, and I could take you into stuff that you just…well, anyway.

And she said unto him, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he brake the with, as a thread of tow is broken when it toucheth the fire. So his strength was not known.

Well, we’re going to find out where his strength was. Delilah puts ropes around his arms again. Verse 12

Delilah therefore took new ropes, and bound him therewith, and said unto him, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And there were liers in wait abiding in the chamber. And he brake them from off his arms like a thread.

Now here’s how it works. This is a day of your life, a 24-hour span (to the white-board). This distance represents what you can accomplish in one day. This is Christ in you if you have been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible by the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever. You’ve been born again. You may not have inaugurated that seed, (we talked about seeds in the pack still sitting at Home Depot), but once someone puts those seeds in the right ground and inaugurates them, you have the ability to do one whole day’s worth of stuff in one hour! However, if you decide to, in that day, to do what the spirit of God tells you to do, if you fulfil what the hope of God’s calling in you is supposed to do, the Spirit of the Lord comes upon you. And now, just for the sake of giving you scriptural definitions, then, if you sow in good ground, you shall receive 100 -fold, you can do 100-days worth of stuff in one normal day that you wouldn’t be able to do without the Spirit of the Lord upon you! This was the mystery…. Christ in you, the hope of glory. Why was there no glory in this man’s life? He did what he wanted to do, not what the Christ in him was supposed to do. So, although Samson walked around and did a lot of stuff, I mean, he was in the whore of Gaza’s bed, but as soon as he got up at midnight and headed toward the Philistines, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, regardless of his sin. There was no message of his repentance, but the Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he yanks off the gates of the city and throws it on them. So, what was the hope of glory? ...To begin to save people from the Philistines. So whenever he headed toward that hope, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him. It was not his strength that accomplished the task.

Turn to the Gospel of John Chapter 5 verse 19. He says, Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth; and he will show him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.

Oh boy, there was some marveling, because you heard the comments by the Philistines in Samson’s day. They said, “Where does his great strength lie?” ...because I played tennis with that boy, and he lost. We were out shopping and he got tired. I couldn’t believe it. I asked him to carry one more bag, and he said, “No. Not one more”. But then as soon as he headed toward the Philistines… see, you don’t go to Schwarzenegger and say, “Where does your great strength lie?” He looks at you like, “Can’t you see?” Samson had the Christ in him all along. But there was only a hope of glory until the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and the Spirit of the Lord only came upon him when he was doing what God wanted him to do. I venture to say that if you are born again today, there is something that you do well, and have done, and may have done as a child. That’s what Isaiah 49 says that you were trained for, and once you reach the hope of your calling, you’ll have those tools available at a moment’s notice.

Now this goes to a whole new realm of born again. A person only needs to be born again post-Jesus’ resurrection and his dying for the sin of Adam, if you messed up after you were a child ( see I John 2:12). After that, you can make a demand on his sacrifice for sin. But if you’re a child, you don’t need to be born again. And I would venture to say that if you guys were 6-8 years old, you probably did stuff that was super-natural to you, and it was 100-fold, and it was just happening. Now when I was 13, I didn’t do drugs, I never smoked, and I ran from all appearance of evil. And at 13, I was the human head. But I didn’t know where “it” came from, so I didn’t know who to glorify. We need to go to our kids and show them where “it” came from. Jesus was 12 years old, and he, too, was the human head. And the Doctors of the Law said, “How could you be this smart?”

Unfortunately, it wasn’t what was in my head, or what went to my head that caused my failure. It was believing outside opinions. I’m learning to stand up for what the world might think of as arrogance and ego, or a “Who do you think you are?” Well, how much time have you got? “Well, you’re just blowing your own horn”. Well, it’s my horn. Now wait, we’re talking about glorifying the Father. He gave me this horn to blow. It’s mine!

Are we still in John? I want to cut to the chase, but I really can’t quite yet. You need to have this, so please be patient. Do you remember who Jesus was sent to? It was to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. That shows up in Matthew Chapter 10, because he is walking along, and a Canaanite woman, (that’s not who he was sent to), steps up and says, “Master, deliver my daughter. She is vexed with the spirit”. And he says, “Can’t. Sorry, I’m on a mission from God. Can’t do it. Sorry”. She asked a second time, and he said, “If I go with you, The Spirit of the Lord will not come upon me, therefore, I, Jesus, whom you have worshipped, still cannot do the delivering, because I, myself, can do nothing. It is the Father in me. He does the works.” And Jesus, not for a moment, was going to step off his path that his Christ was supposed to walk in because Jesus, like no other Christ on the planet, stayed for his entire three and a half year ministry with the Spirit of the Lord upon him. Constantly. Constantly! Constantly!! Because he never veered to the right or the left, he always removed his foot from evil. And he said, “I’ve got to fix the Jews. And unfortunately, as much as I want to help you, I can’t help you, or it would cause me to be un-anointed. I couldn’t help you anyway if I’m un-anointed. But if I go over here with you, I’m going to miss my opportunity to please my Father who only sent me to the Jews.” Now, when I’m gone, I’ve got these 12 men… Right now, their Christ is only to be a disciple, a disciplined one, a learner. But when I apostle them, when I send them, they will walk in the hope of their calling.”

And then you’ve got the men at the Gate Beautiful. And now you’ve got when they walked in their calling. The whole church has missed this because they didn’t understand the Christ. There are so many things we’ve misunderstood because we just didn’t read it like children. Children, in their naivete, will show you Spirit. “Oh, that’s the Lord’s spirit, Daddy”. “No, son, that’s the Holy Ghost.” So what are we going to do? Mess up their purity? And all along they saw. He says, Unless you come to the Kingdom of God as little children, you will in no wise enter in.

I want to show you this in Luke Chapter 4, please. I want to look at Jesus’ anointing. He stands up in the synagogue where he was brought up, and says, verse 18

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me

Now here’s where I missed it as a preacher. Because I have heard everyone that’s got a revelation of the anointing, or the anointed one and his anointing, which is not untrue, but is too general. That’s like me going up to you and saying, “I want to borrow your Ford”. Well, what are you going to do with it? “I’m going to haul some lumber”. Well, I know it’s not going to be my Mustang, my Sable, or my Taurus. I know you’re not going to use my Pinto, because I don’t even drive the Pinto. So I must be asking for your L00 truck. We’ve been saying the Holy Ghost while you’re talking about the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of the Power of a Sound Mind, the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation, the Spirit of Grace, the Spirit of Truth that was given on the Day of Pentecost. We’ve been too general. I’m not saying it was wrong the way we did it. But I looked at this thing, and it says,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach.

And I said, “There it is! The Spirit of the Lord comes upon you to preach. But that’s not what it says! Now if you only had the first verse, you could assume that it meant it’s on the preached Word. But we have the second line that Jesus spoke. He said,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach.

The Spirit of the Lord was not upon Paul to preach, or Peter to preach at this time, it was upon Jesus to preach. It was upon John to Baptize. It was upon Samson to slay the Philistines. It was upon Moses to bring them out of Egypt. It was upon Joseph to move them out of Egypt and into the promised land. It was upon Noah to build an ark and get people saved from the flood. In Luke 4, Jesus’ said that The Spirit of the Lord was upon him to do still different things.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, saith Jesus, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives,and recovery of sight to the blind,to set liberty them that are bruised To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

That’s what his Christ was supposed to do, and he fulfilled perfectly the hope of his calling.

I present to you that we need to perfectly fulfill the hope of our calling, and now, for the first time, we can do this. Because we know how it works. I’ve seen Sharon type and seen her accomplish 100 days work in a day. So the Lord was upon her to do what she was supposed to do. I’ve started writing eleven books since July. The Spirit of the Lord was upon me to do those books. There were a lot of years where I wasn’t writing any books. Christ was there all along. I was born again. But I wasn’t doing what God called me to do. Even the first time, when He asked me to write the first book, I was thinking, “You must be meaning someone else”. Dennis Burke talks about that. When God wanted him to write a book, he said, “God, don’t you remember my English class? ...because I don’t. You want me to be an author? Are you serious?” So a lot of times we’ve gotten in the way, instead of just saying “Yes, Lord”.

Joshua Chapter 1. God says OK, your time is up, Moses, and Joshua will take it from here. And in the Book of Leviticus, it actually says, Moses gave his spirit to Joshua. Joshua means “deliverer”. It’s the same word we’ve translated as “Jesus”, but it’s Yshua in Hebrew. Jesus. Jesus is really Joshua. So Joshua is actually the second Joshua, not even the first one. But Joshua means “deliverer”. Moses’ name did not mean “deliverer” even though he was the deliverer, because the Egyptians named him “Moses”. “Moses” means “drawn forth out of the water”. That wasn’t his Hebrew name. His real Hebrew name was probably Joshua.

Matthew Chapter 16, verse 24 Jesus said unto his disciples , If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross

That always bothered me. Have you ever been bothered by that? It didn’t say “take up my cross”, it says “take up his cross”. And I thought about Christmas. And I thought about the symbols used at Christmas, and that’s a cross, isn’t it? Right? Christ!.... take up your cross and follow me. I looked up the word “cross”. It’s a Greek word meaning “your atonement for Christ”, but we thought it represented Jesus.

Turn to Hebrews Chapter 11, verse 24 By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharoah’s daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasure of sin for a season; In other words, choosing rather to take up his cross rather than go shopping, rather than hanging out with the Pharoah’s kid, verse 26:

Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.

Is there anyone with an anointing to be historically scholarly here? Was it 1500 years between Moses and Jesus? So certainly, it wasn’t the reproach for Jesus. It was the reproach for the Christ in him…the thing he was supposed to do. And Moses counted walking in the spirit- doing what the spirit of God in him was designed to do, the hope of Glory- as greater riches than everything he gave up as Prince of Egypt. And just to punctuate last Sunday’s message, God told him what to do and he simply obeyed. God said, “You tell the people, Moses, to borrow all the gold and silver from all the people that were their captors”. And their captors said, “Here. Just take it. No more frogs, please. Get out.” And they took all their gold and silver. Remember, this is during their suffering for Christ. Suffering is just obeying what God wants you to do. That’s like me trying to tell you, “Don’t eat this or that” Well, you might not be able to eat this, but you might be able to eat that. I don’t drink coffee. But maybe you can drink coffee. You have a different Christ. I have a different Christ. All I know is, you obey God, and I’ll obey God, and together, we’ll be the Body of Christ.

Now what happened, they took all those riches out, the sea parted, and thank God that the Spirit of the Lord moved, because I don’t think Moses, no matter how much he paddled, could have worked it out. But the Spirit of the Lord moved, the sea parted, they walked through on a dry path, brought all the stuff over to dry land, and then God closed the sea up on all their captors, on all of their debtors. So although he suffered in walking in his Christ, walking in the Spirit, not fulfilling the lust of his flesh for a season, the boy got PAID on the other side. It’s only a season. Walk in it!!! Walk in the Spirit! Walk in your Christ! See if you don’t get so excited to walk in the 100-fold in one day on the planet, I mean, where it would take a hundred days in the natural to accomplish the same things. That’s how Jesus accomplished so much. That’s exactly how he knew what was going to happen before it happened…because every day with him walking in the Spirit, he was fixing 100’s of days where the children of Israel did not.

I had over 150 deja-vu’s this last year. I knew what was going to happen before they actually happened…if I walked in the Spirit, the visions I had did happen. I could have chosen to not show up, but then history would have been changed. Walk in it! Find out what you do best! Find out what you do on auto-pilot, and that’s how you determine the Christ in you. This week, go and find out if you type fast, if you count fast, if you paint well, whatever the Christ in you does well. There are some Christs out there that are supposed to mow lawns for certain people so those people can be about walking in their own Christ. Find out what you do! Find out more about your Christ! Find out what God put in you so that you can glorify your Father. It’s only a hope until you can get the Spirit of the Lord upon you, and you can’t do that unless you just DO what He says to do.

Do we need to pray, or do we need to shout?

Idle Words

The Las Vegas Faith Center
Message from Sunday, February 28, 1999

“Idle Words”
by Tiger Todd - Sr. Pastor - Church Sermons

I think there have been some people who believe I make this stuff up. We thought about something related to that during our “Upper Room” discussions on Tuesday night. I said, Look here in John 20. Jesus had just resurrected, he comes to the disciples, breathes on them, and says, Whew! Be filled with the Holy Ghost. Everyone is looking at their Bible, and thinking, What??? Because that event was weeks before Pentecost. And there it was, sitting in our Bibles all this time. It’s like God just stuck it in there, or Tiger just pasted it in when you weren’t looking. What I’m trying to lead into is this: many things have been popping out this year that we hadn’t seen before, and I’d like to talk about one such a subject.

I’d like you to look at Matthew 12:36. Jesus is speaking here, But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. Every idle word. Does anyone know what we thought that meant? You probably thought it was a word you didn’t mean, or a word that had no substance to it. The word “idle” comes from a Greek word, word 692 in the Strong’s Concordance. It means a negative particle, something that it is inactive, for example, unemployed. But two words struck me that I hadn’t seen before. One of them was “lazy”, and the other was “barren”. It’s a “lazy” word. A “barren” word. Let’s concentrate on the word “lazy” for a moment. A lazy, or inactive word. What are some of the characteristics of a lazy person? You might respond, big, a TV watcher, a procrastinator, someone sleeping when they shouldn’t be. Ooh, I like that. Why sleep ye? Rise and pray lest you fall into temptation. That’s a good one.

We’ve talked about this before, but lazy words are words that you don’t pay conscious attention to when you’re saying them. I’ll give you an example. My wife leaves me a note, or comes up to me and says, “Honey, I love you”. And I say, “I love you, too.” She knows I love her. But my response just popped out, as in lazy. I didn’t really stop to think what was behind the words “I love you”. I didn’t take any time to say, “I will nourish and cherish you all the days of my life.”

As I was dissecting things, and trying to rightly divide the word of truth, I came across some other things that Christians say a lot. For example, when people sneeze, most of us automatically say, “God Bless You”. We’ve conquered this in our church. We touched on this a couple years ago, when we talked about “Bless”. What does the word “bless” mean? Bless really is a word that empowers you to prosper. We’ve gotten discernment on that one. But when you say, “God Bless You” when someone sneezes, what are you really trying to say? Did you mean, I noticed you sneezed and it interrupted me while I was talking, and would you not do it again? That’s what I used to think it was, but really, what you’re referring to is, was the reason why they sneezed because they’re sick? I mean, assuming the cause wasn’t just a bright light, a photoelectric problem, or maybe something in the air, or they did like I did when I fed the horses this morning. The horses moved around, and stirred up all this dust action, and I sneezed. “God Bless You” really means that if you sneezed, I want God to heal you. Well, God empowers you to be healed of whatever caused you to sneeze. I believe that’s really where the root thing came from. But we don’t think of that when we say “God Bless You”. Now we can all think something different.

I want you to start thinking about the laziness of automatically responding without a thought. Here’s a different example. I walked around a lot at the Homeless Outreach, and when I sat down, and I sort of sighed, Uhhhh. Why did that have to come out? It really didn’t hurt to sit down, I wasn’t that tired, but it seemed like something was connected. That response automatically bypassed all thought, it bypassed my heart, it bypassed my intellect, it bypassed everything. I had just made all this noise that I didn’t need to make.

Lazy. Barren. “Love you too”. “God Bless You.” And here’s the worst- “Praise the Lord”! Now wait. What did you mean by that? Let’s take a few examples. Here comes the sacred cow tipping. “Praise the Lord.” That’s probably our best slogan in the Christian church. If you think of others, please let me know, and I’ll be sure and cut those up, too. When the prophet Elisha healed Naaman, the Syrian, of leprosy, do you think Naaman ran out there and said, “Thank you Jesus. Praise the Lord!” Naaman had no idea who Elisha was the day before that event, let alone Jesus, who hadn’t even been born yet. So when we say “Praise the Lord”, we’re trying to attribute some sort of credit to Jesus, aren’t we? If you start breaking it down, step by step, you’re trying to say, “Thank you Jesus”, when really, Jesus wasn’t anywhere around.

Is anyone here Jewish, by natural descent? Well, while you’re here in Matthew 12, flip over to Matthew 15:21. It says Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a woman of Canaan (a non-Jew) came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; (she said, Praise the Lord) my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. (Undoubtedly, the woman kept saying Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord. Help!) But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Are you of the lost sheep of the house of Israel? No? Then Jesus was not sent for you. Sorry. For all our listeners on the tape, let’s let that sink in for a moment. If you are not one of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, Jesus was not sent to help you. He told that to the Canaanite woman that very day. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs. Then he called the woman who followed him “a dog”. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.

Well, something else happened, didn’t it. I’m not going to preach this message yet, because there is another one “in the works” on the “be made whole” message. Whole-ing vs. healing. He said, I cannot help you because I am only sent by God. My whole mission, the Christ in me, the hope of glory for the Father out of me is only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Now you can be aware that when you said “Praise the Lord”, it had nothing to do with the Lord Jesus.

Let’s say a guy off the street gives you $l0.00, and your response is “Praise the Lord”. You’ve just called him your Lord, haven’t you? Am I right? Without knowing it, that’s actually what you’ve done. You’ve called him Lord. Well, he’s probably big enough to be Lord of you over the $10.00, but he ain’t big enough to be “Lord”. The Bible does say to call on Jesus as Lord.

I think we need to settle this right now before we go on with the message, so turn with me to Romans 10:13. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Ok. But he’s talking to the church at Rome. These guy she’s talking to aren’t Jews, are they? They’re not from the lost sheep of the house of Israel. They’re Romans. They’re Italians. How many Italians do we have in here? So the Italians can be saved! No, that’s not what he was talking about. Look what happened, Verse 1 Brethren, My heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. Well, that’s why Jesus was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. i.e., neither does the church, if they go after Jesus that way. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, He’s about to explain to us what being ignorant of God’s righteousness is. Well, if we’re ignorant of God’s righteousness, I don’t believe the righteousness of God will do us any good and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.

Jesus said to the Canaanite woman, I can’t help you. I’m sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Still, she sought the righteousness which is by faith, so it was faith that was able to get her daughter delivered, not Jesus. Just as he said to the woman with the issue of blood, just as he said to the Roman Centurion, just as he said to the leper, “Your faith has made you whole.” You don’t praise the Lord, you come and follow, you take up your cross, i.e., your Christ, and follow me. You do what God wants you to do, now that your faith has made you whole. Don’t just come and try to imitate me, because I’m only sent for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. If you imitate me, you’ll have a ministry only to the Jews. They’re going about establishing their own righteousness. But the righteousness which is of faith, verse 6, says this, But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise. Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above). Or who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead).

In other words, don’t call on Jesus Christ, don’t try to bring him back physically to do the job. But what saith it? What does the righteousness which is of faith say? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, Isn’t that what the Canaanite woman did? She spoke some sort of word, and God saw what kind of faith she had. She said, I can get healed off your crumbs. I can get healed from you walking by. I can get healed because I understand that it’s not you that do the works, but the Father in you, Jesus. I know you are Jesus, but hey, that is the righteousness which is of faith, and that is the faith that saves. and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; This is important. We want to make sure we understand this. That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

Now Jesus is Lord, certainly, but when you praise something that a man or woman of God has done in the spiritual realm; healing, for example, you’re not praising Jesus, you’re giving glory to the Father. You might be thanking and giving honor to the man of God. Jesus was always Lord, he never stopped being Lord. But if he was always Lord, then why was someone sick yesterday before we laid hands on him if Jesus was still Lord yesterday? He is the same yesterday, today and forever. What was the difference? A different person came into the room, a person called by God in this age. What we need to realize is that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, but not much else is.

We’ve gotten this idea that because it said Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, that the Bible was the same yesterday, today, and forever, that other things are also that way. Well, go grab your old high school pictures and tell me if you are the same yesterday, today and forever. Jesus is! Period. We’re talking about the gospel of Christ.

Turn back to Romans l:16. because I want you to understand this. Jesus did not preach the gospel of Christ. Why? Because he was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He had a gospel, he had good news, but it was only for those that were the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He didn’t have good news for the Canaanite woman. Do you understand that? He told her he couldn’t help her. That’s not good news to the woman who’s got a daughter vexed with devils. But God would not leave those people out. Because she wasn’t a Jew, Jesus was not her man of the hour. If you were a Jew, he was your man of the hour. In Elisha’s day, Elisha was the man of the hour. In Elijah’s day, Elijah was the man of the hour. When Israel was in bondage to Egypt for 400 years, Moses was the man of the hour. When Moses lived out his 120 years, Joshua became the man of the hour. Do you understand what we are talking about?

What I want to present to you is that there are different gospels. Look at Romans l:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: The gospel of Christ is a new gospel; new since Jesus, and new because, it says here, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. This gospel of Christ includes the Canaanite woman, as well as the Jew. It includes the Greek, it includes male and female. It includes the sinner, it includes it all. It includes it all because It is a new gospel. What Jesus did made the way, he made the gospel available, but it is still a new gospel. I want you to follow me here. You don’t have to agree with me yet, but make sure you are following where I am headed. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written. The just shall live by faith.

I have a little list here. I don’t think we’ll even read these scriptures, but if you want to write them down, you can look them up later. One of the first gospels in the Bible is the gospel of circumcision. That’s what Galatians 2:7 calls what God did with Abraham. But contrary wise, when they saw that the gospel of uncircumcision was committed unto me as the gospel of circumcision was given unto Peter. This means that the Jews had a certain cut in the flesh. It was the gospel of circumcision. There was good news to Abraham that if his seed was circumcised, they would have all the rights and benefits of God in their age. But the new gospel said it didn’t matter if you are circumcised. It’s a different gospel.

Deuteronomy 28 lists the blessing of the law and the cursing of the law. If you obey my commandments, if you keep my statutes you will live, you will be blessed in the city, blessed in the field, blessed going in, blessed going out, above only and not beneath, you will be the head light, not the tail light. If you don’t, you’ll be cursed in the city, cursed in the field, all kinds of stuff. Forget about the curse part, just do what he says. But this is the gospel of deliverance that God gave Moses for his people. During that age, in the wilderness, if you obeyed these statutes and commandments, you would live. It was a gospel of deliverance. All the gospels were gospels of deliverance, but they had different ordinances. And they had different people that instituted that gospel.

Genesis Chapter 3:15 is where the gospel of the Messiah began. God tells the serpent in the garden that there would be one coming “who is going to do the hokey pokey on you”. The gospel of the Messiah is preached all the way through the prophets, through Jeremiah, through Isaiah. Surely a virgin will conceive and bear a son. And really, the prophets were the ones that continued to keep the gospel of the Messiah alive. Even through 400 years of bondage to Egypt, they still heard about this gospel… that there is one coming. Do you know who their messiah was? It wasn’t Jesus, it was Moses who was their deliverer. That’s what messiah means… a deliverer, a saviour. Deliverer means saviour. The word Joshua and the word Jesus is the same word, it’s really Joshua. So there was one Joshua, and there is another Joshua in Jesus. That’s how the system works. It’s the gospel, it’s good news that God has someone in mind to help you.

Luke Chapter 3:2. This verse talks about the gospel that John the Baptist preached. Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness. And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. This was the gospel at the time, and John the Baptist was the man of the hour. John the Baptist said, If I’m going to preach this message to you, and you will come and get baptized, your sins will be remitted to you. And the Bible says that the Lord went before him to see to it that everyone lined up to get dunked. Pharisees, scribes, all kinds of people wondered, What are we doing this for?, but they did it anyway. There was something on John the Baptist’s ministry for that gospel. Jesus wasn’t around, he wasn’t in his ministry yet, until the last day of that dispensation, if you will

I want to make sure this is clear. We’re not talking about what churches have said was a dispensation, we’re talking about what God said was a dispensation. Obviously, the message is going to be different to Israel when they are in Egypt than when they are out of Egypt. It’s going to be different when they are in the wilderness than when they are in the promised land. It’s going to be different when you have enemies to fight than when you don’t have enemies to fight. Things actually work a lot better today than they did in Jesus’ dispensation, because back then, if you were not part of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, you were in trouble! You didn’t have a saviour. As Ephesians 2:12 says, you were without hope and without God in the world. Why? Because you were strangers in the covenant with Israel, a promise, you were strangers from the seed.

Luke 3:2 says the gospel of baptism and repentance is what John the Baptist preached. Then we have Jesus’ gospel. Matthew 4:23 says Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom. The gospel Jesus preached was the gospel of the kingdom. That reminds me of Mark 4:1 which says He began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land. And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine, The gospel of the kingdom of God was Jesus’ doctrine. He was the first one to show us, So is the kingdom of God as if a man should cast seed into the ground. It was the gospel of the kingdom, and Mark 4 is filled with “and so is the Kingdom of God” over and over and over. It is the gospel of the Kingdom.

Please turn back to Romans 2:16. We were at Romans Chapter 1 where Paul said, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto deliverance. Verse 16 of Chapter 2: In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel, Paul had his own gospel. It wasn’t the gospel of Jesus. God gave Paul his own gospel. It wasn’t for Paul’s glory. It was Paul’s gospel, because he was the one uniquely designed by God to introduce it.

Here’s what I’d like to present to you, and we’re not off the message. We were talking about idle words, and about slogans. I present to you that the gospel of Christianity that is preached today is a combination of John the Baptist’s gospel and Jesus’ gospel, not the gospel for today, and that’s why it doesn’t do any more saving than it does. 99% of the words preached today, then, are idle since they are based upon a message for a particular group or era that has been completed. These words are idle- or empty of power- and worse than that, those that preach these obsolete powerless messages are against anyone, well it’s getting better now, that speak about faith. And the message of faith was the only message that could supersede those two gospels when they were preached in their proper age! If the Caananite woman hadn’t exercised some faith, her daughter would have died. And we’ve got plenty of daughters dying out there in Christianity today.

Remember, the words defining “idle” were lazy and barren. Why were they lazy? Did we read our own Bible? OK, we read it, so think about this. As easy as it is for me to say “God Bless You”, wouldn’t it be more effective to be saying, “By his stripes you are healed”? I mean, come up with something. Pray for them. Just say, “Is everything cool? Do you want me to pray for you?” Don’t just use that lazy response, the one that doesn’t take any thought.

For many years, I heard from God, who told me to buy bicycles around Christmas time to give to people. One particular Christmas, I had bought a bicycle, and it had been in the back of my truck for weeks. Christmas came and Christmas went, and I didn’t get a word from God on what to do with this bicycle. Hey, God, who’s this bicycle for? One day, I was driving down Sunset near Eastern, and saw a Hispanic man standing there with a couple of kids. God said, “That’s who”. I guess God didn’t know I had to be somewhere at 3:00, and that I was running late. I’d been trying to unload this bike for a long time, and now God wanted me to give away this bike when I was in a hurry. Really,it all came down to how much time I had, because I knew you couldn’t give a gift from God without giving the word of God with the gift.

God’s not just trying to dump bicycles on people. He’s trying to change their lives with a gift. We see that in Proverbs 16: A man’s gift maketh room for him. God had said, “That’s who”. There they were, I was running late, but I needed to do things the right way. I turned around, and spent the entire afternoon with those people. I missed my original appointment, but I found out about that family. They had already left Christianity for another religion because their gospel wasn’t working. See, if you just look in Bible and see the word “gospel”, you could get the idea that everything between the two covers is the gospel. But no, there are different gospels in here. There are different gospels, and if we allow these slogans to come up, they’ll work on us, and we won’t be able to rightly divide the word of truth.

I think we need to go back to Matthew 6:9. This is the famous prayer, Our Father which art in heaven. After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Why did that come? Because Jesus preached the gospel of the Kingdom, and Jesus did his job. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive us our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine (yours, Father) is the kingdom, and (yours, Father) the power, and (yours, Father) is the glory, for ever, Amen.

Based on this verse, how much glory should Jesus get? None. According to that verse, Jesus should never get any glory. Now here’s lazy. How many churches have preached and prayed the “Our Father” and then sang a song that said, “Glory to the Lamb”? We did it. But not any more. We want to make this thing work. How about “The One and Only Son”? I sang this song on the Sea of Galilee. God got all over it, and it was just an amazing, miraculous thing. But now I’ve learned some things. The end of the song says, “Jesus, the one and only son”. But wait a second! As I stopped to slow down before words escaped my mouth, I realized that he is not the only son. The Bible says he is the first born among many brethren, that those that are led by the spirit of God, Romans 8:14, they are the sons of God. It says no more servants, but sons, and if sons, then heirs of God, and joint heirs with Jesus. He’s not the only begotten son anymore. He died so that we could bring many sons to glory. He paved the way for the gospel of Christ.

Now we’ve got a man named Paul who comes and preaches the gospel of Christ. Peter was supposed to have preached it, but what did Peter do? Peter preached the gospel of Jesus. It had already been done. It was a Jewish gospel. In fact, in Galatians 1:7, Paul tells the church how Peter, in the words he used, has “perverted the gospel of Christ”. The perversion began when Peter preached what Jesus preached instead of preaching what he was supposed to preach. “Oh just give me a little log cabin in glory”. Well, wait a second. Jesus said, In my Father’s house are many mansions”. If you want a little log cabin in glory, you won’t be anywhere near the Father’s house, i.e. you will not be a son.

Idle Words. Once you know something, I mean, we’re going to have to stop and think before we speak it. Well, let’s read Mark 16. Jesus has resurrected, and he’s telling the disciples what they’re supposed to preach. Verse 15, And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. You could think that’s the gospel that Jesus preached, the same thing. Well, wait. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; Wait a second! That’s not what Jesus preached. Jesus preached “So is the kingdom of God as a man should cast seed into the ground and sleep and rise night and day, etcetera, etcetera.

Wait a second. Which gospel is it that produces “saved”? Here’s a hint: I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16). Do you see it? He told them which gospel to preach! He said Go ye into all the world, (that should be your first clue, you’re leaving the Jews, OK, I sent you in Luke 9, I sent you in Luke 22, I sent you to go to the house of the lost sheep of Israel. Go two by two to their house. Take nothing with you. Do you remember the commission? But now we’ve got a new gospel because I am resurrected, because I did what I did. Now it’s your turn. You are the men of the hour. Go preach THIS gospel. Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. These signs shall follow them that believe;

Look at the things that happen in this ministry. It was Jesus who said, In my name they shall cast out devils. Can you see that when you’re preaching the gospel of John the Baptist, and the gospel of the kingdom of God, and not the gospel of Christ, you will not see devils cast out? I believe this is the reason why I have been so effective in casting out devils and healing the sick. “They will speak with new tongues (Mark 16). The apostle Paul was the only one in the Bible that said, I thank my God. I speak tongues more than you all, and he called the Gospel of Christ his gospel. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. That’s the gospel of Christ, not the gospel of Jesus. It’s not the gospel of the kingdom of God, it’s not the gospel of deliverance from Moses, it’s not the gospel of the Messiah coming. The Messiah has come. Look at Israel. You don’t see those things happening in Israel, because they even stopped short of the gospel of baptism.

Well, that’s interesting. The gospel you believe is the one you’ve got to live with. I think we need to turn back to Matthew Chapter 12. Now that we transcribe these messages, I’m trying to fill you in, define the terms, and then let you go back and read it straight. So this is important. If I send you guys a letter talking about something we talked about today, you’d read it, and say, That was great. Did everyone get your “love letters”? If I sent you a letter, and you had attended that service where we talked about love, you’d know what we talked about. That’s why I wrote you the letter. And you’re saying, Yeah, I remember that. That was great.

Well, the gospel of Christ is contained in two thirds of the New Testament. Two thirds of our “Praise the Lord” book was written mostly by the apostle Paul about the gospel of Christ. Yet today’s church world can’t read a letter as if it’s a letter to them. These are letters to the churches at Ephesus, Corinth, Galatia, and Thessalonika. Letters. But we’ve got all these seminaries saying, “Well, he really meant this, brother”. That’s because they’re trying to translate it based upon the gospel of baptism, and the gospel of the kingdom of God. But I should be able to write you a letter, and if you are able to understand the gospel of Christ, much like you understood the message on love, when I send you a letter about love, you’d say, I know exactly what you mean. Just read it straight. You don’t have to get out your Thesaurus or your Strongs Concordance, Greek and Hebrew etc. etc. You just need to read it straight, and go, Yeah. Uh huh. Yep.

That’s a letter to me. So, doesn’t that lead you to believe that if the people in the church world cannot understand those letters without having to decipher them, without having to talk back and forth, and argue, then the letter is not to them. They have believed the wrong gospel, and they have believed them because their words became idle. They said, Praise the Lord, God Bless You, and didn’t stop to think about what they were saying. They read right over the Lord’s Prayer and gave glory to Jesus.

I’ll give you another example. The rich young ruler slid up to Jesus, and said, “Good Master”. Jesus said, “Why are you calling me good? There is nothing in me good but the Father. Don’t give me glory.” It’s all through the Bible, but they hallelujah’d at the message. they Amen’d, they did all the stuff I can’t do with my body because I am white. But while they did all that stuff, they still didn’t get it. They wondered why they fell out in the healing line, but couldn’t get back up. They were supposed to have gotten healed. They were supposed to have gotten delivered. It was the gospel unto deliverance. It’s the “I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ”. But the gospel of baptism wasn’t for deliverance, it was for repentance. The gospel of Jesus was to show how God does things. But it was only meant for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

We’ve read this stuff without thinking about it, before we let it come out of our mouth. Look back at Matthew 12:31 Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. Well, we know for sure that that wasn’t the Holy Ghost that came on the Day of Pentecost, because the Day of Pentecost hadn’t come. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit. In other words, if you’re bad, you might as well just be bad.

Jesse DuPlantis has a wonderful message called “Why are you going to hell going to church”. There are a lot more fun places to be than church. If you’re going to hell, you know it. You don’t care about anything, and you’re just going out there and trying to fit in. So what are you doing going to church? You should be out on the houseboat, or in a lot of other places, but not here.

Jesus is saying the same thing. Either make the tree good, and the fruit good, or make the tree bad. Jesus said that in Revelation to John on the Patmos. He said, You’re either hot or cold. But why even walk in this lukewarm wine here? I mean, coffee’s not good lukewarm. Milk is not good lukewarm. Nothing is good lukewarm. He said, “I will spew you out of my mouth”. These guys here are accusing him of being satan, and satan means “accuser”. Do you see why you’ve got him on “idle words”? They didn’t even know what they were saying. They are accusing him of casting out devils by the power of the devil. They were accusing him, or “sataning” him, in the literal Hebrew and Greek, of being satan. Pretty funny. And pretty idle. They didn’t stop to think before they said it. Either make the tree good, and his fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt; for the tree is known by his fruit. O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

We’ve got some lazy words coming out of our mouth, and it will mess up our heart. Didn’t it say in Romans Chapter 10, For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto deliverance. In the Gospel of Christ, faith has got to be in two places- your heart and your mouth, so you can’t afford idle words. We’ve got to stop and watch the lyrics to the songs we sing. When I started understanding that my words meant something, I started thinking about a lot of songs I sing. I can sing straight through all 273 of my Sinatra albums, but I started singing some of them one day, and the words caught me. I realized that I can’t sing some of the lyrics any more. There was one on the Count Basie/Sinatra album, something like, he’s out for revenge because his woman left him. After I came to myself, I realized why the woman had left him. She should have! Good girl. Way to go. But then I heard the lyrics, “I want to be around to pick up the pieces when somebody breaks your heart”. It’s a catchy tune, and I was getting excited about it, but, “Wait a second.” I realized that’s why it happened to me. By the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, and confession is made unto whatever you are going to have.

Did I take the shout out of the meeting? A good man, out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things. And an evil man,out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth evil things, but I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment for by thy words thou shalt be (a) justified, or by your words, (b) you will be condemned. Condemned by your own words. The gospel of Christ puts the authority of your life, of your future, of your everything, up to you. The gospel of Christ made it so. All we can do is teach you what to do, how to do it, and what to look out for. The one that hears it sooner and does it faster is the one who won’t have to go through any tribulation.

We were talking yesterday about how something just “leaked out”. I said, Where did that come from? What’s that still doing in there? I thought my heart was pretty darn clean, but all of a sudden, something just leaked out. I said, What was that? So I immediately took control. It’s sort of like when I’m getting a little too carefree, (I’ll call it out of control), if I start approaching 50 mph in a 45 mph, or change lanes into the left lane, but kind of move to the right just a little fast. I’m generally very faithful. I do 45 mph, and that’s it! If I just sell out to 45 mph, and if the light’s green ahead, I just prepare to stop. I take the time to realize that I’m not going to be pressured into anything, because pressure is really when something leaks out that you don’t want to leak out. It happens when you’re squeezed.

You can eliminate a lot of pressure in your life and practice walking without pressure by just taking the pressure off and saying, I don’t care. I started doing that, and catching back up, and finding out that that kind of thing was leaving doors open. Those things were letting stuff in that I didn’t know would leak out. And I don’t want to be condemned by those words. I want to be justified by every word. I want to speak a word over someone’s debt, and I want to hear, tomorrow, that everything has turned around in their life. I want to lay hands on the sick, and know that tomorrow, everything has turned around in their lives. I want to hear about it that minute, but I’m not looking for that. I’m not interested in a sign to determine whether God is working or not, I just want to be confident that I’ve got good stuff in here, so that good stuff comes out. Good things come to pass by my hands because I have made a conscious effort in what goes in my heart and what comes out my mouth.

So we sing the praise and worship songs, but we need to give them some thought. I had to apologize, but I had to walk out of the praise and worship at Kenneth Copeland’s place once I knew about some things that we’ve discussed about glory. I love Kenneth Copeland, he’s my father in the faith, but they’re out there singing the songs, and they don’t even realize what they are singing. Apparently they didn’t stop to think about the scriptures when they first wrote the songs. As we think about them, if something comes up regarding singing, and praise and worship songs, and you see somewhere in the scripture where it doesn’t work, just bring it up to Joseph or myself and we’ll be the first ones to change it.

Jesus said, If you were blind, you’d have no sin. But he says, Because you say, We See, your sin remains. So there is no sin if you didn’t know it wasn’t a truth. It wasn’t sin to those singing at Kenneth Copeland’s. It was robbing them of power at their ministry, surely, but it wasn’t a sin. It’s just that God couldn’t work the way He wanted to work, because He only works the way He said He would work. But now that you know it, it will be a sin for you to continue in it.

Finally, turn with me and we’ll let Hebrews 6:l-8 do the talking:

Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this will we do, if God permit. For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God: But that which beareth thorns and briars is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned.

God Grades on a Curve

The Las Vegas Faith Center
Message from Sunday, May 31, 1999

“God Grades on a Curve”
by Tiger Todd - Sr. Pastor
(Edited Church Sermon)

Today’s message is called, “God Grades on a Curve”. Some of this information might be something you’ve heard before, but I’m hoping you’ll see a little deeper into this as we talk.

Please turn to First Corinthians 10:11, Now all these things happened unto them for examples; and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

Let me point out a couple of things. Number one: the word “common” here, in the Greek, means human. And that means there is no temptation that will come against you that is out of the realm of human, or natural, or to put it another way, flesh controllable. The word “temptation” in the Greek, is translated throughout the New Testament as “a temptation, a test, or a trial”. We know that God is the one, in this verse, that is making a way of escape. So the test, or temptation, or trial here did not come from God. See, I do easy math, and easy math works like this: if there is a scripture, in James, that says Let no man say when he is tempted that he is tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted, tested or tried with evil; neither tempts, tests or tries he any man, then I know that God would not give you an evil test. That would be impossible. He wouldn’t tempt you with something evil, because the Bible says, Let no may saith….

Number Two: Jesus went out of his way to tell the Pharisees, whom he really could care less about, that any kingdom divided against itself could not stand. So it follows that if the same God was sending you an evil test, plus being the one who was making the way of escape from his own test, He would be divided, and His kingdom would have an end. Just so you know how I think, I call that easy math.

The word “common” indicates that if there is a temptation, or an evil test, this is NOT something coming from God. This is something coming from His adversary. If you’re in the kingdom of God, this is now our adversary. Those temptations, tests or trials come to destroy you. God says that none of those have any more power than is available in the natural, in the flesh. It’s human. The test is “do-able” in the human realm, just like a job is. You might get a job where they say, “You’ve gotta do this, that, and this”. And you say, “That’s impossible”. Well, if other humans are doing it, it’s not impossible, OK? It’s humanly possible. So the word “common” simply means human: that which can be done by the species, man.

What do you call it when you are in a test or a trial, and you get saved from that trial? The Bible has a big word for it. The hint is “saved”. It’s called salvation. Salvation is not being born again, it’s being saved from the test, temptation, or trial. If it’s God’s will that all men be saved, that lines up with the other scriptures using the easy math. It’s God’s will that you make it successfully through every temptation, test or trial.

If you are in school, or whatever, and are taking a test; this scripture says that you will never be allowed, at your level, to take a test that you are not humanly capable of passing. Now, stop for a moment. We’re reading the Holy Bible. We are reading a book written, really, to spirits. But here, it’s saying that the kinds of tests we experience are really low level natural.

Now, a lot of people go through tests or trials because they are just plain stupid. There are a lot of things that involve no demonic activity whatsoever. Some people just make a bad choice. Some people think they can get away with something.

I want you to hold your place in First Corinthians, because we’ll need to refer back to this.

I was raised a football player, with the hopes of someday playing for the Dallas Cowboys, I was planning around everything concerning football. I was quarterback for the Teamster Tigers, and my name was Tiger. I mean, I had all kinds of advantages. Well, when I moved up to Washington where it rained every day, I didn’t have many people wanting to play football with me. The only thing going on was basketball, played inside the gym. I was a football player. I couldn’t play basketball. But I soon realized that if I ever wanted to play sports ever again, I needed to learn basketball. It took awhile for the football rules I knew to slowly disappear and be exchanged for basketball rules. And so many times we go to play the game of basketball with football rules, and wonder why it didn’t work out.

Pastors watch over your souls. Everyone else in the world is more concerned with your physical property or your flesh, which are two of the shortest term investments you’ll ever have. But your soul is forever; so I have the most important job on the planet. That’s why it’s important to me that you get the most out of your life while your flesh is still here; and that eternally, you’ll get the most out of whatever this stewardship places you in, in the future. If you are faithful over little now, later on you’ll be in charge of much. So a pastor watching over your soul is an important job, and we need to understand that soul development is also important.

Go to Ephesians 2:6, regarding your soul, And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. Here’s a very popular scripture. Today, we’re going to have to know the game of real life, not just about the short term flesh, or possessions. We’ll need to understand real life; meaning, just because my body leaves, that doesn’t mean I’m dead. I just happened to be in the body. There’s coming a day when I might be absent from the body, but I’m still going to live, and I’ll need to know the eternal stuff, not just the stuff of today. We’re going to replace some definitions that have been in our “football dictionary”. But the game is now basketball. And if we’re ever going to be really proficient in basketball, we’ll need to know these new definitions. As we do this, we’re going to define some terms, and then plug them back into our initial game equasion. This is our play book.

Verse 8 says, For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. I believe that one of the biggest things that derail folks in the body of Christ has been in this verse, and just in this verse. I love the Amplified Bible, but in this verse, it translates, or expounds on the Greek word which we see as “grace”. It turns “grace” into “undeserved or unmerited favor”. The Amplified Bible says something like this: For we are saved by unmerited favor through faith. Unmerited favor basically means, I was nice to you for no good reason. But the word “grace” in the Greek or English dictionary isn’t the same thing. That is the word “mercy”. We’ve touched on this before, but we needed to change the dictionary in order to plug it in to our later equations. That’s why I want to go through this. For those of you who are already aware of this, just play along, and say, Wow Pastor. Thanks for sharing that with me!

For by grace are you saved through faith. If “grace” was unmerited favor, look at how we got derailed, because,... keep reading, And that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: We thought that it was unmerited favor; we thought that God just gave us a gift, and that’s how we got saved. Are you with me?

But in the Greek dictionary, the word where we get “grace” from, is the word “charis”. It has a twin sister, word 5485 in the Strong’s Concordance, in the Greek Dictionary: the word “Charis”. It’s twin sister is word 5486: the word “charisma”. We have an English word “charisma”, don’t we? Is charisma “unmerited favor”? When people say, “He’s got charisma”, do you think that God just gives stuff all the time to those who don’t ask? Maybe sometimes. But if it’s not all the time, it can’t be a truth.

Here, the definition of “charis” is, the divine influence upon the heart. And that’s what grace is, in this verse. It’s the divine influence upon the heart, and it’s reflection in the life. That sounds like God, doesn’t it? Unmerited favor from God is found in Psalm 118. It’s in there about six million times. It’s called “mercy”. His mercy endures forever. He just keeps saving you, regardless… But it’s not the word “grace”, it’s “mercy”. Most of the church world thinks the word “grace” is indeed, “mercy”, because they got it from the Amplified Bible, which defines it as “unmerited favor”. But, if they translated it from the actual Greek dictionary, it is “the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life”. So now, if someone has charisma, what are they saying? They are saying that there are some divine attributes in this person’s life, and it shows up in his lifestyle.

The Bantam-Scribner dictionary defines charisma as “a special gift or power conferred by God. and possessed by certain leaders, that inspires loyalty and devotion among their followers”. It’s a pretty good definition. How many of you guys would like to have some charisma? Most of the world would like some charisma. A lot of the world has charisma. But now, if you are saved by charisma, and that not of yourselves, but the divine influence upon your heart, not your influence on your heart, then the verse still stays true….its a gift from God. No kidding! It came from God. It didn’t come from you. It wasn’t obtained through your education or your upbringing, or your genealogy. It is a gift from God. All of a sudden, that verse is heavily weighted; it’s strong and powerful. It’s not just, “We’re saved by grace, and his mercy endures forever”.

The word “salvation”, is translated in either of two words: sozo, or soteria. It means, “temporal deliverance”. Ninety percent of the time, the word is, and should be, translated, as “healing”. Or saved. You are healed. It means: deliverance, saviour, Jesus (Ishua, in the Hebrew), salvation. So you are saved, physically. Joshua was a saviour, and the first one that led them into the promised land. “Joshua” means saviour. Ishua is how it’s written in Hebrew. Joshua saved them from the wilderness, right? That’s what salvation is. So, if your New Testament says, For you are saved….from what? What do people today need saving from? Debt, sickness, disease, lawsuits. Lots of things.

For by grace are you saved through faith. Think back to our first verse in First Corinthians. There is not a test, temptation or trial that you need saving from that you will not be able to bear. But with it, God will make a way of escape. What’s the way of escape? Grace! But it’s not just undeserved favor. Grace is actually a “something”. Right? Grace is His influence upon your heart, and how much of it you let out. Every born again believer is carrying around some charisma. Whether or not they walk in that charisma will determine how saved they are.

Flip back to First Corinthians There have no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that ye may be able to bear it. This says to me that there is enough charis, or charisma in you to totally negate any traps set for you. There is enough to totally negate any sin you were in, and to totally wash you clean from any transgression. It says that you will be able to escape. Now, that’s not a highly successful word, escape. Christians usually live by two standards: escape and survive. But God tries to get you into a promised land that FLOWS with milk and honey. He tries to make you the head, and not the tail. But this says that this promise we have from God is that if you are in a test, you can get a “C”. You will graduate in the spring. Do you understand where we are now?

I want to look at a couple of “charismas”. Look in First Corinthians Chapter 12. I’m going to pick apart just a few verses. We’ll begin reading in verse 1. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, Guess what? The word “gift” is the word charisma. It’s the same word that was translated “grace” in the book of Ephesians. Some of the time, the translators said, Let’s put “grace” in our English bibles. The other times, they said, Let’s put “gifts” in there. But it’s the same word. Paul says there are many “charismas”. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led. Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. Now there are diversities of gifts, (or “charismas”, or graces) but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. Your charisma is there so you can profit. Profit! Your charisma is there so that you can make it through the tests and trials. It’s there so that you can succeed, finish the job, and get the paychecks. It’s there so that when you lay hands on the sick, they will recover.

Look at some of the graces here. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit;

Here’s what I want you to know. When I lay hands on the sick, knowing that there is a charisma of healing in me; I expect them to be healed. I expect that if there is a test, (if someone is not doing well), if I follow the instructions with the charis in me, and lay hands on the sick, this person is recovered. I firmly expect that to work. That’s a test. It’s a test for a pastor when someone says, “My cousin is dead. Come raise him.” That’s a test, OK? Now, It wasn’t God that killed him to teach pastor how to raise the dead! It was a test to see if I would use the gifts that are in me. The gifts that are in me must be based upon the things I. too, needed saving from. We are saved by those gifts, by the “charismas”.

Hang in there. This will all add up. You’ll find out that you have gifts, “charismas”, graces in you that you didn’t know you had. And you know that in order to get you to this place of “I am saved”, they have had to be already in there. God will not allow you to take a test that you cannot pass. If you are taking the test, it is proof that you can pass it. The very fact that you are taking the test means that you can pass it. if you are a believer, that’s what it means to take the test. And the way of escape are those graces, those charis’s.

Let’s read a little more, Verse 9 To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues. Now jump over to verse 27 Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues. Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret? But covet earnestly the best gifts; and yet show I unto you a more excellent way. There’s more yet!

Not everyone has the same gifts within them. Our job, as a body, is to know which member possesses which gifts to get whichever trial taken care of. Right? We’re a body! You might not have a gift of healing in you, but I know people that do. We all have different gifts. I know that one of the gifts Vicki has is her exhortation. She has the ability to bring someone to a new level of faith by rehearsing past moves of God. And people will receive that instantly. Her gift makes the gifts in me work so much faster! I should do a commercial. Fast fast fast.

The Greek word “charisma” is defined as, a special gift or power conferred by God, possessed by certain leaders that inspires loyalty and devotion among their followers. Is anyone saying, “Well, I’m not a leader”. No, if you diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God and keep his commandments, it says you will be the head. That’s a leader. You will be above only. That’s a leader. You’ll lend to many. That’s a leader. It’s in there! It’s gotta be in there, or you wouldn’t have been able to make it to this place. That’s good news.

About eight years ago I was perusing a book at a book store entitled, “The 100 Most Influential Men in History”. Now, eight years ago I was a Jesus freak. I thought it was all about Jesus. I didn’t know what it meant, and I didn’t know anything about it, I was just a Jesus freak.

Now you know where I was at when I went into that book store. I opened that book, and looked at the index, because the names were ranked as to the 100 most influential people in history. Number one wasn’t Jesus, and I was mad!!! Number one was the apostle Paul. And I wondered how the Apostle Paul could possibly be ranked ahead of Jesus? Now, with all that I’ve learned, I know. Without preaching 15 other messages, I want to show you some things about the apostle Paul.

How many of you know that there is not a Book of Jesus in the Bible? Jesus is the author of our faith, but he is not the author of the Bible, OK? There were other authors: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. There was Paul, the apostle, Timothy, we’ve got a number of different authors. But not Jesus. Paul, the apostle, outdid everybody by penning nearly two thirds of our New Testament about Jesus and his saints. So, I could kind of appreciate why he might be more influential…

Scanning the “most influential” rankings by the author, I was shocked to see that Jesus was not number one. It was only recently that I began to agree with the author that the apostle Paul, who penned nearly two thirds of the New Testament, literally changed history. Jesus didn’t change anything. Jesus said, Not my will but thine be done. He came at the appointed time, at the due season, and fulfilled the prophecy. Jesus worked within history. Paul changed history. Now, Paul was able to do what he did because of Jesus’ obedience to the plan of God, but, Paul was called to actually break the mold of history. We’re trying not to allow the same thing that Grandpa had when he died at such-and-such an age, and how his son got it, too, and then you, from falling into the trap of history. We’re trying to break those historical documents. We’re trying to uproot them, and let everyone be free. So like Paul, we, too, are called to change history. That’s our job. Our job is to be such loose cannons that the devil doesn’t even want to come near our houses because he has no clue what we’ll do. It’s only when you are predictable can his trap confine you to the law of sin and death.
Paul became the example to the Gentile Christian church. Jesus, on the other hand…write down these two scripture references: Matthew 15:24 and Matthew 10:6. I’ll explain what they say. We won’t turn there. Jesus, by his own confession in Chapter 15 said, I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Jesus was only sent to a certain group of Jews. If you were a Greek or Italian, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t sent to you.

Matthew chapter 10 says that Jesus was only sent to them. Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It’s amazing, isn’t it? Only after he was resurrected did he say, Now, you guys go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. The disciples didn’t do it like they were told. They still only went to the Jews, so God had to resurrect a guy named Saul of Tarsus. Now remember, there is not a test you are not able to pass. The way of escape is actually the grace of God. Can you see “grace” now, without thinking that it is unmerited favor? “Mercy, He just grabbed me by my bootstraps and saved me”. No, it’s something in you that you walk in.

This is a great example. Paul says in First Corinthians, I thank God I pray in tongues more than you all. Someone pointed that out to me one day, saying that’s probably how he wrote more of the Book than anyone else, because he prayed in tongues more than the rest of us! It adds up. It’s so straightforward. We are going to foreshadow this a little first: are you beginning to see exactly how Paul turned out to be so great in Christianity?

Turn to Acts 11:22. Jesus was the key to Christianity, but when we use the word “Christianity”, let me show you where it began. Then tidings of these came unto the ears of the church which was in Jerusalem: and they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far as Antioch. Who, when he came, and had seen the grace of God, was glad, and exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord. For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith: and much people was added unto the Lord. Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul: And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.

Do you remember that John the Baptist had disciples? Everyone had disciples…they even had squabbles over who was baptizing more all through the Bible. When Paul and Barnabas were preaching in Antioch, that was the first time people said, These people are like Christ. In fact, they are calling them Christ-ians, or little Christs. It’s easy to see when you hear anyone else that’s been around me for awhile. They sound a lot like me. Here are the two people on the planet, at the time, that were the most like Christ. People said, We’re gonna call these people Christ-ians, for lack of a better word. Those Christ-ians were Paul, the apostle, and Barnabas. It wasn’t Peter, John, James, Nathaniel, Judas, Judah. It was this guy Paul.

Do you think Paul had some special dispensation from God that the others didn’t have available to them? We’ve got people today arguing that God called me as an apostle because I wasn’t one of the twelve. Why, then, would he make Paul an apostle, when he wasn’t one of the twelve? And why have him possess all the gifts, the “charismas”, that he did? Barnabas walked in all kinds of grace. So they must have had it, and then whoever they preached to became disciples; and were also called Christians. They didn’t call the first disciples Christians. They were preaching about Jesus. Paul and Barnabas were walking like Jesus. Why? Because they were walking in the grace of God.

I need to move on another step. I want you to look at this guy, Paul, that wrote so much of the Book. Let’s go to Acts 7:57. Stephen is a table waiter, and full of the Holy Ghost. The disciples talk him into going against the church of the Pharisees in Jerusalem. Stephen was obedient, and he delivers them a message. They didn’t want to hear what he had to say, so they stoned him right there in the streets. And we’ll pick it up here, Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul. Saul of Tarsus was this guy who became the apostle Paul. God changed his name. He was the young man saying, I’ll hold this guy’s coat while you stone him. That’s what it said. Let’s keep reading… And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles. And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison. Saul would say Knock, Knock, Hi! God Bless You. Jesus is Lord, and when they said Yes, Praise the Lord! he’d grab them and haul them away to prison. He’d identify them as Christians! So they’d crucify them and stone them. This guy was as bad and as ruthless as they get.

Let’s go on to Chapter 9 verse 1 And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest. And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem. He was going from country to country, going over to Syria to find Christians so he could haul them back to Jerusalem. He had a vendetta. And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Saul had a speedy conversion!

Later on, Saul is told to go to the house of Ananias. “Go there, he’s a Christian”. God goes ahead of him and says, Ananias, there’s a guy named Saul I’m sending to you. Teach him some stuff. Ananias says, No, maybe you don’t understand. This guy, Saul is probably headed towards my house anyway, to haul me back to Jerusalem. But God finally talked him into it. He welcomed Saul in, but Saul was blind. I always wondered, Did God just strike him blind? It says that when he received his healing after coming into the house, and them praying, that scales fell off his eyes. I’ve wondered about that, because it says that the Holy Ghost was upon him. I wonder if the Holy Ghost was upon him saying, Can’t see! Can’t see! It’s scriptural speculation.

Verse 6 And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told the what thou must do. And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man. And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink. And there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias; and to him said the Lord in a vision, Ananias. And he said, Behold, I am here, Lord. Verse 29 And when he had received meat, he was strengthened. Then was Saul certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus. And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God.

Now, you’ve got to have a bunch of charisma to make it back into the synagogues to preach Christ after you’ve been this kind of ruthless guy! I mean, his picture was probably posted at every post office. This guy was the worst!

I want to take you to a scripture, and hopefully, you’ll be able to make this connection if you haven’t already. Before we go there, I want to read you one more scripture. You don’t have to turn there. Second Corinthians Chapter 5 verse 20 says, Now then we are ambassadors for Christ. Remember, this was penned by the apostle Paul who did just that: became an ambassador after a few days with the disciples. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him (this is your teaser) to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Now, tuck that away.

Romans Chapter 5, verse 1 Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, Jump over to verse 20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: We read in First Corinthians that there is not a test that there won’t be enough grace to pass, at least with a “C”. But a “C” does not sound to me like “much more abound”.

I want to present to you that the apostle Paul did all these amazing things, and had all this charisma. He made it into the house of kings, and had several hundred helpers from Caesar’s household. Everywhere he went, he had helpers. There are at least a hundred different credits that he lists in the book of Philippians of all the people that helped him. I mean, he had charisma. Why did he have so much charisma? Because he had so much sin! And where sin does abound, charisma, charis, can, does, and will, much more abound.

I venture to say that there is only one person who had even more charisma than Paul. And that was Jesus. Well, Jesus never sinned! Now wait for a second. That is totally true. Jesus was made into sin. He was not Jesus on the cross. He was sin. All of it. It wasn’t that he just had sin. He wasn’t like the other two guys on the crosses next to him. He became sin.

How many of you know that would be a test? How many of you know that you’d need a really good way of escape, depending on the severity of the test? Well, how much grace would you need to be this guy Jesus, to make an escape from his situation? See, our original definition of grace doesn’t say it all. The very Grace of God- His gifts- is what we’d need! Not just the divine influence on the heart. But divine influence, period. Him! That’s why he said, It’s the Father IN me. He doeth the works. We just never coupled the two because Jesus was sinless, but became sin.

Now we can read Romans Chapter 5 straight through. Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace. Do you see the “much more” part? We only have enough to pass the test. But through our Lord Jesus Christ, we can get enough to supremely pass the test….. wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Christ in you, the hope of glory. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: For until the law sin was in the world: but sin in not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. It certainly abounded unto Paul. Remember, he said a messenger of satan had buffeted him? He said, I sought the Lord three times. And what did God say? My grace is sufficient. “You’ve already been given grace, Paul, based upon your ability to pass the test, and to the measure of what will overcome all of your prior sin. But my grace will put you over the top. Call on my grace. You’ll have access to it, but you’ve got to call upon it.” Hey, many people perish, the Bible says, because of a lack of knowledge. If you were just a chief of sinners, (that’s how Paul described himself), then bless God, you are just full of grace. Hey Sinner! You’ve got so many gifts in there, you should be up here standing where I am, delivering more people faster than I can! Just do something!

Verse 16 And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

Is that cool? We have access. It’s like taking a test in school, but having access to the guy’s notes who aced it last year. You can even find out what’s going to be on the test that you haven’t taken yet. Did you ever try to do that in college? I tried to find out from a Senior who’d already taken it? “Can I get a copy of your test? I’ll clean your dorm room!” What would you do for Jesus to get his notes? Every possible charisma to overcome every possible situation had to have been placed in this one named Jesus since he was made to be sin; and where sin does abound, grace, charisma, charis, does much more abound. Paul, Barnabas, and a bunch of today’s Christians had a lot of sin. Therefore, God had to give them at least as much grace to be able to get at least a “C” on every test in life. But if you were not a chief of sinners, like Saul, you don’t have to go commit sin so you can load up on grace. Please don’t think this is a license to sin. No, we have access to all grace, all charisma, through the one who became sin for us.

Turn to Romans 12:1. Remember, this was all one letter to the church at Rome. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Seeing to it you are now free from sin; you’ve got all this grace, and all these “charismas” that you’d better find out about. Begin your life now trying to find out what those things are in you. Begin exercising those things. The only way that you’re going to do it is if you make your body a living sacrifice. Stop thinking of yourself as the way you were, and try to erase your flesh’s memory. Present your body as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Having then gifts (grace and “charismas”) differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching; Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be with dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another; Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord;

I’ll give you one more scripture. Turn to Second Timothy 1:2. Timothy was having a little trouble. Paul probably gave him this message, and I’m not sure if it was before or after God gave him the message of Hey, my grace is sufficient for you, you whiner. Paul probably told that to Timothy, and Paul probably got it from God. To Timothy, my dearly beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day; Obviously, Timothy was on his mind. Timothy was doing a little moping. Greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy; When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also. Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that stir up the gift of God (the grace, the charisma) which is in thee by the putting on of my hands.

I implore you today to just stir it up. Stir up what you’ve got. Go get what Jesus got when you don’t have enough, when you don’t think you have enough. Stir it up. Be faithful over little. Without the extra grace, Paul penned nearly two thirds of the entire New Testament. That’s a lot of stuff I thank God for, because we found that the disciples preached different messages. They saw things differently because they were talking to Jews. I wasn’t born Jewish, so I needed someone like Paul to tell me something different, so I could understand.

Let’s close in prayer.

Heavenly Father, by the profession of my lips, I stir up the charisma of God in me. I stir myself up to access everything you put in me, and more so. I declare that I’m going to take advantage of all the things that were in Jesus. He was made sin that we might be made righteous. And we know there are a lot of gifts we could be using right now. So we’re going to use those things right now, in the name of Jesus. I speak also that every other member of the body of Christ would do their part. If my prayers will work for them right now, I say, Speak to them! I loose angels on their behalf, right now, to have them stir up their gifts; whereby we can all come together in the unity of faith in God. Help us build a mature church; a righteous body for the head to come back to. We thank you God for it, we expect it all done, and I thank you for these people. In Jesus’ name. Amen

This message was transcribed and edited from the original audio message.
© All Rights reserved. - Las Vegas Faith Center Church.

From Faith to Faith

The Las Vegas Faith Center
Message from Sunday, June 6, 1999

“From Faith to Faith”
by Tiger Todd - Sr. Pastor
(Edited Church Sermon)

There are a number of things that I want to share today. I had several experiences that actually moved me into almost redoing the message, but with a fresher understanding. Rather than go back to an old message with the same scriptures, I wanted to see if there was another perspective.

Those that have been around here for any period of time have changed. Their mind has been renewed. And if someone continues to have their mind renewed, as we do, you become transformed. You begin to see other views. You begin to see the other side of things, and what is really important.

I want to show you something in Mark Chapter 5, and then turn you to Sunrise Hospital Chapter 4, verse 20. We’ll start in verse 20 And he (meaning the person that was just healed) departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel. This was the man that had all the demons cast out of him. When Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people gathered unto him: and he was nigh unto the sea. And behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw him, he fell at his feet. And besought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed; and she shall live. And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and thronged him. I don’t need to read the rest of the story. En route to Jairus’ house, all these people thronged Jesus. Let’s cut to the chase in order to concentrate on the story concerning the ruler of the synagogue, Jairus, and his daughter. Verse 35 While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue’s house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master any further? As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe. And he suffered no man to follow him, save Peter, and James, and John, the brother of James. And he cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept and wailed greatly. And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entereth in where the damsel was lying. And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise. And straightway the damsel arose, and walked; for she was of the age of twelve years. And they were astonished with a great astonishment. And he charged them straitly that no man should know it; and commanded that something should be given her to eat.

Yesterday, I was at Sunrise Hospital. The day before, there had been a health emergency. The doctors had given up hope on a two year old girl. They had tried to find out what was wrong with her, and in doing so, they had taken an x-ray requiring barium to be introduced into her body. Well, barium often causes constipation, and the little two year old hadn’t gone to the bathroom in a week. Further complications collapsed her lung. And we’re finding out that often, it’s medical science that causes the problems. When problems don’t get fixed. It’s actually caused by things that they do.

That’s why this is important. When something strikes a chord to the point where it hurts, then it’s time to preach a message and get down to the bottom of things. Maybe someone who hasn’t made it to the hospital with their daughter, yet, can learn what to do first so the trip to the hospital won’t be necessary. It’s not that I’m accusing or blaming doctors, or hospitals, or medical personnel. It’s just that their science is so limited when it comes to life. They might have all these new techniques, but people still die, don’t they? More people die now than they did last year, when there were less new techniques available.

If a system has a dead-end, why do people keep pursuing that dead end? Why don’t we pursue the end that causes life? Why would they pay several hundred thousand dollars in medical bills for their child, but not spend the same amount on an Elijah or an Elisha of their day? Would they pay several hundred thousand dollars to those who raised the dead or healed the sick? Why not pay all that money to Jesus or the man of God? They actually did that in Jesus’ day, I believe in Luke chapter 8. Even Christians today want to talk about the good works God can do, but then they go spending all this money on hospital bills, where the child is still going to die because they proved to God with their treasure, who they loved more.

I want to divert here, because I’ve told God that we’ll always go where He says to go. So I’m just gonna go…

Regarding the subject of warranties: The medical profession is one of the only ones that doesn’t give you a warranty. In other words, if their procedure doesn’t work, you don’t get your money back. We’d demand a warranty with our cars. We’d demand a warranty in just about any other circumstance. But when we go to the doctor or a hospital, and pay all that money, or file insurance claims (because we’ve paid our premiums), in exchange for all that financial out-go, there’s no warranty whatsoever.

The Bible talks about a memorial prayer. I want to talk about a memorial prayer for a moment because we find that one of the biggest memorial prayers concerns this whole idea of Jesus, and who he was sent to. This church understands that he was sent to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. That’s where Jesus said he was sent. The House of Israel received him, and then they went out in to all the world. That world included me. Are you with me? That’s how the Bible reads.

One great example of memorial prayer actually involves someone in the Bible didn’t need to go through Jesus to make it to the Father, God. Jesus spoke to a bunch of Jewish people saying, no man has made it to the Father except by me. Well, he was talking to Jewish people, because there were a lot of people that weren’t even Jewish that made it to the Father: Noah, Seth, Enos, a bunch of people. But here it is in the Book of Acts, we find after Jesus’ resurrection, that someone actually obtained access to the Father a different way.

Please turn to Acts Chapter 10. I’m following the spirit leading me, and if God wants me to talk about this, we’ll just do it. Verse 1, There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band, A devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway. He was an Italian, a centurion, and he worked for Rome. He saw in a vision evidently about the ninth hour of the day an angel of God coming in to him, and saying unto him, Cornelius. And when he looked on him, he was afraid, and said, What is it, Lord? And he said unto him, Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God.

Here is a man that made it to God the Father by his praying and his giving. He bypassed the one named Jesus. There it is. Mark it down. Someone made it to the Father outside of going through Jesus.

Cornelius got rewarded, God sent him to Peter. Peter didn’t believe it. Peter still thought that only Jews were going to go to heaven. He didn’t go into all the world like he was supposed to. Keep reading. God sends him to Peter, and Peter says, No way, Lord. Not so. What’s he got against Italians? So we find that there is another way: it was with prayers and giving. Prayers, coupled with his giving, got him noticed by the Father. He didn’t have an altar call. He didn’t have to come to any church. He didn’t have to quote Romans Chapter 10. But he got to God the Father, which is the ultimate deal. We’re not trying to get to Jesus, we’re trying to get to the Father. Jesus’ sacrifice made what he did available, certainly. But in terms of Jesus’ ministry, it was fulfilled. He got to sit down at the right hand of God. Cornelius got it by giving. I don’t know what “it” is

We’re trying to get to the root of this. What if I were to say, “I’ll heal your child, but you have to give me $100,000”. That sounds so wrong, doesn’t it? But a doctor essentially says, I’ll heal your child if you give me $l00,000? And we pay it. What’s our problem? Double-mindedness.

Well, I prayed my prayer for that baby in the hospital, and said she’d be better in five minutes. Five minutes later, the baby pooped. I didn’t charge her a dime. The doctors aren’t going to give her guardian back the money, because they couldn’t accomplish the same thing. Actually, the doctors really owe ME the money. If I were involved in that situation, I’d be after the doctors who ordered the barium put into the child’s body that caused the problem.

This is how it works in the Bible. Call the man of God! Only in the Old Testament did they send Elijah 20 camels laden with gold, silver and other stuff as payment. They were good to the prophets back then. But we have a problem now. We think healing is free. Well, here’s where I believe the problem lies with the hospitals. If the hospital, doctors, medical community, pharmaceutical companies offered a warranty, they wouldn’t allow that sticky verse in First Timothy to pop up: The love of money is the root of all evil. They are saying, We are not going to give you your money back, even if our system doesn’t work. They are in love with money.

To Cornelius, money was a memorial. Can you see the good side of money? Cornelius gave and gave and gave, and got honored for his giving. In the Old Testament, the other kings sent twenty camels to the prophet as honor. God honored that by letting the power work through the prophet to heal Naaman the Syrian, or like for the Shunamite woman, raise a little boy from the dead. There was also the example of the woman who couldn’t have a baby, but she built the prophet a nice house, so that if he was passing by, he’d have a place to stay. When it came time, and her child died, Elijah just raised him from the dead.

We have to fix these snags. Otherwise, we’ll continue to say we believe in God, but then pay someone else to fix our problems. God is trying to show us that when you pay someone else, you actually lose what little faith you had in God, because it has been transferred to wherever else you put your money. People say, “I could never give $200,000 to the gospel”. But when they’ve got a family member get sick, they’ll come up with $200,000 for a doctor. What’s up with that? Why couldn’t they come up with it to help the man of God preach the gospel of healing, or get kids off drugs, or to preach righteousness, or change gangs, or to fix families and marriages? It looks like they only want to come up with money if it benefits them personally. I’ve seen that with the natural family. There is a different kind of tie than one with an outer family, like a church. There is this “heartstring thing”. Or maybe it’s the people around them that say, “What do you mean, you’re not gonna do that for your kid?” Maybe it’s peer pressure, parent peer pressure, whatever, but we have to realize that something’s got to change so that babies stop dying. I can’t be at every hospital.

Worse than that, even if I go to a hospital, and I’m convinced that if those I’m called to raise up are either sick or dead, it’s nothing for God or me to do. We’ve got a “Perfect” God with perfect instructions that the man of God will follow. Therefore, there is no possibility that they are not going to be well when I’m done. But remember, where your treasure is, that where your heart be also. People who are paying doctors have moved their treasure into the medical community, but are still trying to believe God for a miracle. And just like Jesus, he could do no mighty works either in that instance. If you need God, never forget that you cannot serve God and mammon. Why? When they moved their money into something that ‘s not God, it doesn’t just reduce your faith in God, it just about eliminates it. I believe it’s directly proportional. Do you have $100,000 in the Gospel here, and $100,000 in something else over there, or do you have $200 the Gospel and $200,000 in everything else. God can see where your heart is- and it’s with the heart that man believeth- because, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also!

What actually happened at the hospital? I got a call a few hours later from another woman who’d gone to visit the child. She said something like, “She’s pooping up a storm.” And I said, “I’m glad I’m not there”! But the next day, here’s what happened. Remember when Jairus said, Come heal my child. Jesus didn’t deal with the rest of the multitude, just the one who said, I believe you can do this. When he got there, someone had said, She’s already dead. Don’t bother the Master. So after the miracle that took place in the hospital, the baby’s doctor starts saying, Well, now it’s this problem. The day before, it had been that problem. We fixed that. Now let’s fix this.

Again, we’re preaching out of Sunrise Hospital, Chapter 4, verse 20: pediatric version. I walked up and said, “Be not afraid, only believe”. And the family members said, “In what?” Well, she was a believer when the child pooped. Now she was saying, “In what?” All I could say was, “Just don’t be afraid. Whatever you do, at least protect your doubt.” I shut her up the best I could, and, sure enough, things worked. The baby had no trouble. It was interesting, too, because this child is one who is not aware. She’s had a brain problem from birth. So it’s not like I’m able to whisper in the child’s ear and say, “Come on, push hard, Baby”. The child was not aware of anything going on around her. Obviously, it was God moving. I spoke for five minutes, and God honored.

The next day I received a phone call describing the next problem. And now I’m mad, because when God heals, it’s not just some sort of spot treatment….” I’ve got this other thing now, can you fix it too?” It’s not like that! The baby was healed. Her bowels moved. The healing will work, and it will continue throughout her body. The problem was, she had some doctors and nurses with the attitude of, Don’t bother the Master any further. This can’t be fixed.

I’m mad because the baby’s guardian didn’t protect her heart. I went to the hospital again. The baby is fine as far as I’m concerned. I’m not going to draw back on my faith OR my prayers. If I believe I receive when I pray, it’s done. Done!. But now I’ve turned myself loose on this woman, and she said, “Well I believe in the God of this, and that,” and I said, “I see your problem. Where were you for the last three months when all this stuff started happening? Were you coming to my church services? Were you ordering and learning from our tapes? Were you investing your money in the gospel I preach? Where were you? You don’t have any faith. You have NO faith. That’s your problem. And unfortunately, because you are an adult, Deuteronomy 30:19 says that the baby’s life lies in the balance of your faith”. She had quickly started accusing God of not doing things, but all the while, it was her own fault.

She said, “I have faith in God!” I replied, “Well, there’s the problem”. We’re in a new age, and we have a whole new type of faith. And that’s what I want to remind you of today. There are many different “faiths”. Now her friend, the one who called me, is full of faith, so I motioned for her to come over next to me. We walked away from the nurses, and all the crying, and she explained that the baby’s condition began to deteriorate when her relative, the one in charge of the baby, went to nursing school. It was almost prophetic, because she had learned all about toxins, and had gotten familiar with all those other medical situations. Well, shut up with all that! The problem was, she’ put her money towards her medical education, and it was draining her faith. If her education had reached the top of medical science, the baby would have been as dead as her faith. That’s the problem with investing in a dead-end.

Let me get back to the “faith thing”. This woman may not have known that there was more faith than the type of faith she thought she had. So, let’s get into that now.

Turn to Hebrews Chapter 11 verse 4, By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh. By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. But without faith, it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Through faith also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised. Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable. Verse 24, By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharoah’s daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible. Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of the blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them. By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land; which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days. By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she received the spies with peace. And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets; Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment. they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented. Of whom the world was not worthy: they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise:

That’s the history of the big gun saints. But read the next verse. God having provided some better thing for us, Well, let’s just stop for a moment, and see if it’s talking about by faith, by faith, by faith…that maybe the “some better thing” is a better type of faith.

Turn to First Timothy Chapter 5 verse 1, Rebuke not an elder, but entreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren; The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity. Honour widows that are widows indeed. But if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to show piety at home, Now it might seem silly that we’re reading this scripture about widow women. But remember what we just read in Hebrews Chapter 11? It was women that received their dead to life. If you go back through the Bible about who was raised from the dead, it was always the children of women that couldn’t have any more, widows’ children, or the man that women depended on. You’ll find it in Elijah and Elisha’s ministry, with the boys that they raised from the dead. You’ll find it in the City of Nain, regarding a widow and the boy at the coffin. You find it, too, with Lazarus, who was raised from the dead because of Mary and Martha. He was their whole support system in the house. There is something about a widow woman that God honors. And that’s what you have to realize when you’re reading this section in Timothy.

Verse 5, Now she that is a widow indeed, and desolate, trusteth in God, and continueth in supplications and prayers night and day. But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. These things give in charge, that they may be blameless. But if any provide nor for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel. Let not a widow be taken into the number under threescore years old, having been the wife of one man, Well reported of for good works; if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saint’s feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good work. But the younger widows refuse: for when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ, they will marry; Having damnation, (that word, usually, is “judgment” in the New Testament) because they have cast off their first faith.

The Book of Hebrews said that all these other people in Hebrews did a bunch of stuff with a particular type of faith. And I want to call that the “first faith”. That would be faith IN God, just like the widow woman. She believed IN God. And a lot of people believe IN God. But there is a new and improved faith out there. There are actually two new and improved faiths. They cast off their FIRST faith That’s believing IN God. Now, here’s what believing IN God is: We read it in Hebrews. God says, Noah! Build the ark. He tells him how to build the ark, and Noah does it. He believes IN God, and does what God says. Abram! Get thee out of Ur. He believes IN God, mostly, and does what God says. We have Samson, Jephthae, and all the other ones listed. Daniel! You’ll be OK in the lions den. Just go in there, and because you believe IN God, just believe that God will honor his promise (like we read in Hebrews Chapter 11). Are you with me? This is faith IN God. But this is not the faith we are supposed to live in today.

This is the faith that most of the church world, that says they believe in God, practices. And they are just marred with tragedy. There was a lot of tragedy in the Old Testament. If you imitate what happened in the Old Testament, you’ll get the same results. But there is a new and improved faith. God having provided some better thing for us. First of all, we need to find out, Who are the us’s? So let’s find out. Look at Ephesians Chapter 1 verse 1. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, Keep in mind that this letter is written to the saints, to the “holies”. He later says, “as becometh saints”. Meaning, those that are actively listening to the Word to become something different: to renew their mind, to make their bodies a living sacrifice.

Jump over to verse 15, Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord (do you see that) Jesus, and love unto all the saints, Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you. Wait a second! Some people think that if they have faith IN God, they’re done. They think they’ve got all they need. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. And all the while, this is where Paul starts with them. He says, Because I heard you have faith in Jesus, let me tell you about the Father. I am going to pray a prayer so that the Father can give you what you really ought to have. This also leads me to believe that you wouldn’t even be able to have that if you didn’t, at least initially, have that faith in God. Right? Cornelius: same thing. He prayed continually, had faith IN God, and is giving. God says, I’ve got a memorial here. Cornelius prays in the morning and gives. Angels, get down there, and get him on to this next thing… the very same thing that Paul is talking about to the saints at Ephesus. Now that you’ve got this faith IN God, I am praying, That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the workings of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.

Now jump down in Chapter 2 and look at one of our favorite verses. Verse 8, For by grace are ye saved through faith; He’s moving them into another realm of faith. You’d better have faith IN God, but now we’re talking about a different type of faith. I’ll just keep reading. By grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Now, when did this whole thing start? I thought when we got faith IN God, we were there. But now there is this much more. There is this much more that Paul had to pray in order for them to understand that there was this much more.

Let’s go back to the Book of Mark, where we began reading about Jairus. Let’s see if we can see where this began. Look at Chapter 1. If this is a faith that changed with Christ Jesus, it should show up right here, as to when and where it changed. We have that saying in the Bible, “Jesus Christ: the same yesterday, today, and forever”. But you know, his office changed. He might have been the same. There are a lot of ways to read that. But if you said, “Tiger Todd, the same yesterday, today and forever”, that helps us to understand. You could say that today, I’m the same as I was yesterday. But does that mean that ten thousand years ago, I was the same? No, it meant yesterday, didn’t it? Because it said, yesterday. We’ve added so many of these big eternal things to very simple statements. Yeah, he’s the same yesterday, today, and then forever. But his office definitely changed. Jesus came as a king, not as a priest. John the Baptist, of the lineage of Aaron, was his priest. “No greater prophet born of a woman than John the Baptist,” was spoken out of Jesus’ own mouth. Jesus was born of a woman, but he came as a king, right? He came from the lineage of David, King of the Jews. You can’t be a king AND a priest. You’ve got to be a king OR a priest. That’s why God always paired them together: Nathan with David, Aaron with Moses, Samuel with Saul, John and Jesus.

Let’s read this. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. I want you to realize that before John opened his mouth to prepare the way, and said, Hey everybody, Come down and get baptized, there was no one before preaching that message. It was an all new message, or doctrine. None of them preached it; not Elisha, Elijah, Joshua, Caleb, or Moses.

And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins. There was no sin confession in the Old Testament, unless God just spoke to one man, giving him some sort of favor. For example, “You need to confess your sin”. He’d usually show up in a vision or dream, showing him something like, You’ve made this grave error, and then, he still had a choice. But this new deal was just en mass. All the Jews in the area just came in to get dunked.

John was clothed with camel’s hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey; And preached, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost. And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan. And straightway, coming u out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him: And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness. He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him. Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of (baptism and repentance? NO!) the kingdom of God. He one-upped the last gospel. There had been the gospel of dunking, but this was the next one. His disciples still baptized people, but now they added something to it. And I believe it’s going to unfold, and tell us what this next message is.

If we just look at the whole Bible as the same all the time, we’ll miss the changes. We’ll try to walk in 4,000 year old faith when God has provided a better thing for us. But how many of you know that you can’t walk in what you don’t believe in? You certainly can’t walk in what you don’t know. So keep reading.

Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: What did that mean? It meant that the gospel of baptism and repentance was done. It was fulfilled. Full filled. John is now in prison, and can’t preach or dunk. He’s done. Now it’s a whole new deal, and you’ll find that the people who have been dunked are probably going to chime in here and say, “I don’t remember it to be this way”. The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. And straighway they forsook their nets, and followed him. And when he had gone a little farther thence, he saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the ship mending their nets. And straightway he called them: and they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after him. And they went into Capernaum; and straightway on the sabbath day he entered into the synagogue, and taught. And they were astonished at his doctrine: Why? Because it was brand new. For he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes. Well, scribes couldn’t have authority. Scribes didn’t know it. The scribes only knew the old deal. But this new deal makes you not want to go back to the old deal.

There are a lot of times where people think I’m just plain wierd. People say, “Would you pray with me?”, and I say, “We don’t need to”. Did you ever notice that about Jesus? The Caananite woman ran up to him and said, “Jesus, please pray for me!” But you didn’t find Jesus doing a lot of praying with anybody. He did all of his praying alone in the wilderness. He went off in a desert place apart to pray. We’re finding out that there’s something really unique about this. You’ll find the same thing with the apostle Paul. So it’s not just Jesus that was praying alone. You’ll find out it took a long time for Peter to get praying out of his system. He was kind of like, “Come on, group hug. Let’s hold hands”. We’re not against praying. We’re into getting the new deal. And there is a new kind of faith we need to know. So I’m just going to blurt it out. It’s not faith IN God. It’s the very Faith OF God.

There is a new faith. Someone could ask, “Why do you go to the church at Peppertree?” And you could respond, “Well, I’ve really got faith in Tiger.” But wouldn’t it be different to say, I have the faith OF Tiger? Certainly it would! So you can see the difference. You can have faith IN God and believe IN God, but if you have the Faith OF God, you could say, I desire a brand new car! And it’s there.

Now watch how this works, because Jesus taught with authority, not as the scribes. And there was in their synagogue (of course, where demons would hang out) a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out, Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the unclean spirit had torn him, and cried with a loud voice, he came out of him. He didn’t say, “Let’s pray. Oh God, save us from this.”

Faith IN God. If you remember the verse in Hebrews Chapter 11, faith IN God was saving the life of the man of God and his family. (or anyone who had enough sense to go to the man of God to get their family saved from sickness, disease, dead boys, slavery to debt, whatever it was throughout the Old Testament.)

Faith IN God s, as John Avanzini puts it, faith that saves your fat from the fire. Jesus recalled that in Elijah’s day, there were many widows. But Jesus was only sent to one. So only one, really, had that level of faith in God. And with Noah, his family only went along because Noah had faith in God. So this is a personal, or you might even say a selfish faith. This is the only level of faith that the people have that accuse the prosperity and healing people of heresy. It is the obsolete “faith IN God” folk that accuse the “Faith OF God” folk of “naming it and claiming it”, and speaking to things, and being “prosperity” people, and all the while, those accusers are the very people that only operate in the selfish kind of faith!

When I had a desire in my heart, and I spoke forth a Ford Explorer and a Ford Van, it wasn’t for me! If it was, a Lotus SE Twin Turbo would have manifested. So the “name it and claim it” folk aren’t trying to get things for themselves. They’re trying to get things for the gospel. If you give me $l00,000 for healing your son as a memorial prayer to God, so that God will move on your behalf, God sees that you now have your heart in this deal. Where your treasure is, that where your heart be also. If you don’t have any treasure in something, your heart won’t be there. I can heal your baby for a day, but you won’t keep the baby alive for another day if your heart has drifted to wherever your faith is now. And if your treasure moves, so does your faith. The baby dies.

This is very simple, and very practical. We understand how this works. But if I got $l00,000 for the healing, do you think I would just lavish it on my own lust? I don’t have any lusts left! If I buy a football, I leave it at the homeless outreach. If I buy new shoes, I leave them at the homeless outreach. If I buy Eli some shoes, I leave HIS shoes at the homeless outreach. Then I buy him more shoes. I’m, what they say, not good with money. But I’m all God with money, because I’ve been changed and renewed with this different type of faith. I speak forth things that cost money, because there are two ways of getting things: money and faith. Sometimes your faith will get someone else to move with their money. Sometimes, just as in the hospital, people need stuff that money won’t buy, no matter how much you have.

Jesus spoke to the demon, and he obeyed and left, verse 26 again of Mark:1, And when the unclean spirit had torn him, and cried with a loud voice, he came out of him. And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing is this? what new doctrine is this?

Well, I believe this is part of the God having provided “some better thing for us” doctrine. For with authority, commandeth he even the unclean spirits and they do obey him.

Now jump over to Mark Chapter 4. Let’s look at some other things. In Chapter 3, he heals the guy with the withered hand, In Chapter 4, he finishes teaching them about the kingdom of God, with parables, and expounds all things to the disciples. The same day… verse 35, And the same day, when the even was come, he saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side. And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships. And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.

That’s very similar to what happened at Jairus’ house, right? They were all encouraging him, “Go get the Master. Go get Jesus, We’ve heard of his fame throughout the region. He healed all that were sick in Capernaum.” But as soon as they start getting their faith up, all of a sudden, they get sidetracked when the daughter’s life signs start to drop. She stops breathing, and suddenly, you find out how much faith they have in their hearts. You find out how much, and where their faith really is.

The same thing is true here. A strong wind arose while the disciples were in the ship. And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?

I don’t think Jesus said, Come let us pass over to the other side, but half way across, we’ll perish. No, he said, Let’s pass over to the other side. Verse 39, And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. He didn’t pray, “Oh God, if you love me, turn this storm off!” People think that storms and stuff like that come from God. No, only unexplained storms come from God. Unexplained. Like fire that’s in the shape of an eagle that trots along and blocks you from going places (like the one at the Red Sea)- that’s a God storm. But a tornado that just plows through Oklahoma City is not a God storm. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith? Obviously, they had some sort of faith, but what kind of faith didn’t they have? They had faith IN God, or they wouldn’t have been following Jesus. They wouldn’t have gotten into the boat with him.

If you’re breathing, you’ve got Faith #1. Adults look for their house keys because they know the key will undo the lock. They don’t have to know how a lock works. They’ll take their car key and start the car. They have to have some sort of faith to do that. They believe in the key that will start the car. They don’t have to know how the car works. They’ll even blame the car when they turn the key and it doesn’t work, because they’ve got faith that the key is supposed to start it. When it doesn’t start, they’ll start speaking to it, kicking it, and however else they vent their frustration.

There is another kind of faith that could speak to the car, and even if the car didn’t have an engine, the car would still take you down the road. That’s the kind of faith the disciples apparently didn’t have when Jesus said, How can you not have this kind of faith?

Why did Jesus think they had that kind of faith? Jesus wouldn’t have judged them on something they weren’t using unless they’d had an opportunity to get it and know it. Well, as Romans Chapter 10 says, “The righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise. And if thou shalt confess”... Apparently, if you don’t know the Word, and faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word; and you haven’t spent your time hearing the Word, but just spent your time in wonder and amazement, in thinking you didn’t need to read the Bible, then apparently all you’re going to have is Faith #1. You’re not going to have Faith #2.

The problem today is that everyone has Faith #1 in an age that demands Faith #2 to have victory.First Thessalonians says that the wicked and unreasonable don’t have faith. That’s not talking about Faith #1, because they still have faith their cars will start. Wicked men are driving today. I don’t know if you’ve seen them, but they’re out there. They’re unreasonable and wicked. So it has to be referring to Faith #2. They don’t have the kind of faith where they can speak to things, and those things obey them.

How many of you would like to have Faith #2? If so, what’s that going to take? It takes hearing the word. I was so distraught that day at Sunrise Hospital, and so angered. If there is a demon, or a wicked spirit, or an antichrist spirit around, I get this little cramp in my left shoulder muscle which begins to create an awful headache. Those signs are my “demon sensor”. Several of us have experienced the same thing. We’ve finally isolated it to a sensing of wickedness. It wasn’t there the first day at the hospital. Shoot, I healed the Pediatric Oncology ward. But when I went back the next day, amidst the doubt and unbelief, and actually, antichrist spirits, (meaning rebelling against the word of God and agreeing with the doctors), my demon sensor went off. I was mad, I was not feeling well, and if you had called me, I would not have been the same jovial me as I had been the day before.

I decided to listen to my recent message, and “do things with all might”. I had a partner letter coming out, so I read the partner letter completely, and so forth. The next thing I did was check my E-Mail, but because I did, that meant I had to read it. I couldn’t just read it and delete it, because, after all, I’m doing everything with all might. Anyway, this little poem was on my E-Mail, and I want to read it to you because it has to do with Faith #1 vs. Faith #2.. This is the sequel to the poem, “Footprints”.

One night I had a wondrous dream,
One set of footprints there was seen.
The footprints of my precious Lord,
But mine were not along the shore.

But then some stranger’s prints appeared,
And I asked the Lord, What have we here?
Those prints are large, and round and near,
But Lord, they are too big for feet.

My Child, He said, in somber tones,
For miles I carried you alone.
I challenged you to walk in faith,
But you refused, and made me wait.

You disobeyed, and would not grow.
The walk of faith, you would not know.
So I got tired. I got fed up,
And there I’ve dropped you on your rump.

Because in life there comes a time,
When you must fight and you must climb,
When you must rise and take a stand,
Or leave your butt prints in the sand.

I was totally rejuvenated by that poem, because you can have faith IN God without doing anything. But James must be talking about the Faith OF God when he says, “Faith without works or corresponding action to that faith, is dead”. Faith doesn’t work by itself. The Faith OF God means you have to scrap and fight. You’ve got to drive 17 miles from North Las Vegas to come here and get some faith. But there is coming a day when you’ll need to speak to something, and when you speak to it, there’s going to be some horsepower behind it. That thing is going to move. And that thing is going to obey you.

I got the news yesterday from my wife that a house I spoke into existence is now IN existence. It’s all right when people buy you vans and cars, but when they buy you a house, Hallelujah! That’s all right!

Well, let’s see if I can teach you anything else before we go.

Turn to Mark Chapter 11, verse 20, And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away. And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. My cross reference says, could be rendered as, have the Faith OF God. He says the Faith OF God works this way: For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, The reason God had me tell these stories about the money and the hospital, is because your money and your heart are linked. Matthew 6:21 says, Where your treasure is, that where your heart be also. If your money is somewhere else, and not in the Word of God, then your money is going to pull your heart wherever your money is, and you are going to doubt, whether you like it or not. You are going to have full faith in the medical profession, or in whatever or wherever you have your money in.

How about those people who have 15 broken-down cars parted out on their lawns? They just know that car will run one of these days. They’ve got all kinds of faith that it will run because they’ve poured all their money into it. But it’s not the kind of faith they need to make the thing run, because it’s still sitting there.

We’ve got to be cautious about that. If it’s going to come down to your kids, or your parents, or your family members, or me, whatever. I’m going to need you guys to have the Faith OF God. You might need to speak to my body and say, “Get in line”. And it will just get in line. And I’ll say, Thank You.

We’re looking for this kind of faith, because Jesus isn’t coming back to do it. That is exactly why Romans Chapter 10 reads the way it does. It says, Say not, “O Jesus, come down from above.” Or say not, “O Jesus, come up from below.” What does it say? It says, “The word is nigh thee in your mouth and in your heart, that is the word of faith which we preach.”

We’ve got all these people believing in God, and calling on Jesus. Well, Jesus ain’t coming back! I wouldn’t, if I were him. I wouldn’t have come the first time. Jesus answering saith, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

The faith OF God says, whosoever can have whatsoever. It doesn’t say, According to God’s will….No, it says, whosoever and whatsoever.

Start practicing. You might say, “I want that Lamborghini Kuntash”. God would say, OK, but give God some credit for adjusting your desires. But don’t be so afraid to have a desire that you don’t say it. Hey, you might want to give it to me! We need to be exercising our faith like a muscle. The Faith OF God is a spiritual muscle. You’ll feed spiritual food taken in: the word of God. You’ll couple faith with action, like the book of James speaks of… corresponding action to the faith, to what you’ve spoken. And you’ll develop this strong muscle that can now lift what the physical can’t. It takes constant exercise and feeding, just like your body does.

Therefore I say unto you, This was the moment in time that Jesus, who obviously had the Faith OF God, imparted the Faith OF God to the disciples. Do you see how subtle it was? He says, Whosoever will say whatsoever, therefore I say it to you. He spoke the Faith OF God to them, so that they would have it, and could use it. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, (them=what you are praying for) and ye shall have them.

What an awesome deal! He imparted the very Faith OF God. In Mark 4, he couldn’t do it because he said, “as they were able to hear it”. They weren’t able to hear it yet. They were still talking about who is going to be at the right hand of God, and all this faith IN God stuff. How big is my mansion in glory going to be? Rapture! Rapture!

I’ll have to apologize if I hurt anybody’s feelings, but wanting to go in the rapture is one of the most selfish things you can do if you’ve laid down your life for the gospel. I mean, are you His, or are you yours? If you don’t believe in a hereafter, then you wouldn’t be so afraid of dying here and getting into the hereafter not to go in a rapture. I don’t know of anyone else I’d rather be on this planet during the tribulation period. I volunteered to stay back in January, a year ago, when I got me off my mind. Because the faith IN God has you on your mind,. The Faith OF God has other people, and their deliverance, on your mind. That is the non-selfish type faith. It’s the faith Jesus used. I said, God, I’m a machine for the gospel. I don’t have to go. I’d love to stay. I could have so much fun here. (I guess that was selfish.) I’m just getting good at using my faith (or using your faith, God.) I don’t want to get out of here now. You could use me. I could be a big help to you. Because you know that when the first bombs start going off, most of the Christians are not going to be of much use to God.

I wrote this down. The old fogies believed IN God. That was the Old Testament faith. Those were the Old Testament saints. But we are the new fogies, and the new fogies have to have the very Faith OF God. We have to exercise this faith, use this faith, and speak to things.

Why didn’t the disciples walk in it? Jump over to Mark Chapter 12, since we’re doing this dossier on the Book of Mark. When Jesus resurrected, he upbraided the disciples. It says after he appeared unto the eleven as they sat unto meat, he upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart. They went back to fishing, to this and that, and believed not them which had seen him after he was risen. He said unto them, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. This gospel. This new gospel of whosoever/whatsoever where you can use the Faith OF God. He that believes and is baptized shall be saved. He that believes not shall be damned. These signs shall follow them that believe in my name: they shall cast out devils. They will obey you now. All of a sudden, the authority is totally transmitted, transmuted, sent over, translated. In my name shall they shall cast out devils. Just like I did. They will speak with new tongues. Just like I did. They shall take up serpents. Just like I did. They will drink any deadly thing and it will not hurt them. Just like I did. They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. Just like I did.

I want to give you these two little hints. The same things that kept the disciples from walking in the Faith OF God are the same things that will keep you from it as well. The top two reasons are:
Number one: Fear. You are afraid of something, or are protecting something. You are protecting an old habit, or how you were trained. This nursing thing caused all kinds of fear in the baby’s guardian, because all day long, her training could only remind her of the limitations of medical science.

Number two: No studying. Like it said in Romans Chapter 10, I would have fear if I were a medical doctor, and hadn’t gone to medical school. Right? Well, you try to live a life of faith, The just shall LIVE by his faith, says Habakkuk Chapter 2. Well, how are you going to live by faith if you haven’t got any faith within you to live by? No wonder you aren’t living so good! Not only would I have fear as a doctor, how about the fear from the person I’m working on? “I’d like to see your credentials, please”. “Well, I don’t have any. But I was a mechanic for a few years, and….I never had screws, or nuts and bolts left over. They always went right back where they were supposed to go.

Turn to First John Chapter 5. Verse 1, Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: You’re all right. You’re believing in God. and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. That includes you and me. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. Millie doesn’t want to go to all those classes, but if she wants to graduate, and get her degree, she’s gotta go. She’s got to take those tests. Just don’t make them grievous. You don’t want to drive all the way over here on Thursday nights, or do all this other stuff, but I’ll tell you what, it’s gonna bless you. Someone was crying out last week because they had a big financial debt come bite them in the butt, and all the while, God raised up our prosperity service for that…that they didn’t attend. The woman in the hospital…same thing. My God, we’re healing machines here. We’ve got a 100% healing rate, a 100% raised from the dead rate. I mean, something can kill them whenever they want after that, but we raise them up. So if God has provided it, don’t make it grievous. Don’t say, Oh, I don’t want to do that.

Why don’t you want to do that? Because you have submitted yourself to all this other stuff that’s hurting you. And you don’t want to deal with one more thing. Well, that one more thing is the thing you should have done.

Let’s read verse 4, For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: That’s not talking about a person. You are not a “what”, you are a “who”. It began with a “who”. Verse 4 is talking about a “what”... Whatsoever is born, birthed, produced of God. Isn’t it the Faith OF God we’re talking about? What you receive by using the Faith OF God is a whatsoever, which also means that whatsoever you want can be birthed out of you by the word of God that dwells in you.

Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.

This is something that the bank creditors can’t repossess from you. This is something that won’t break down when you least expect it. This is something that probably won’t even collect dust!
For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. The very Faith OF God.

I think it’s time to stir it up, and use it. This is a tool we use. This isn’t a barrier breaking message, but it is if we’re not utilizing it. Everything is going to start coming in line real fast if we start exercising that spiritual muscle. I’m starting to see stuff come so fast, I’m almost down to five minutes before they do. I want to get stuff going real fast. I want to be able to speak to things, and say, I call you…. and see if God just does it before I say it. I want to move my faith up faster. I’m aiming for instant. All things are possible for him that believeth.

Let’s close in prayer.
Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus, the first thing I think we need to do is just cast all our care of things that aren’t working. Cast all our care of the things we are in, and the things that our friends are in. We cast all the care over on you, not because we don’t want to care about it, but because our care won’t do anything about it. So we cast it on you, knowing that you, God, can fix it.

We thank God for the Faith OF God; the very faith that was imparted to us, the very Faith OF God that we can use to speak to things, and have them obey us: wind, sea, storms, demons, cars, houses, trucks, brethren, people. We will dedicate ourselves to going to the school of faith. We will study and build our faith. We will exercise it. We will be faithful over that gift you have given us. And we know, too, God, that you will be faithful to turn up the power as we continue to add works and corresponding action to our faith.

God, we thank you for it. I call us safe today, that everything we touch today will prosper, that everywhere we go, we will have complete authority. I speak it forth by the very Faith OF God today. I speak forth every body well today in the name of Jesus. I speak every family member well and healed and in favor with us today. I speak forth that our bosses come to their senses; that anyone who is over us in authority, in work or in any other avenue, that we will have the favor of God with them like Joseph had with Pharoah. We will not be lazy with it, and we’ll walk in exactly where we expect to be. I thank you God, and we call it done. In Jesus name….Amen.

This message was transcribed and edited from the original audio message.
© All Rights Reserved. - Las Vegas Faith Center Church.

Friends

The Las Vegas Faith Center
Message from Sunday, May 9, 1999

“Friends”
by Tiger Todd
(EDITED VERSION)

I want to talk about relationship. I want you to see the “ship” part of the relationship word. Just to give you an example, and to classify some of the different kinds of relationships in this room; there is a pastor/congregation relationship, a teacher/student, a mother/daughter, and a brother/sister. These are all different relationships. A lot of words in the Bible end with the word “ship”; for example, .fellowship, partnership, and friendship. I want to talk about friendship, but in order to do that, we’ll have to look at the biggest “ship” in the Bible, which is stewardship.

Stewardship is a relationship between a steward and the person whose goods he is steward over. We’re not talking about natural goods today. We’re talking about the stewardship between two people. If I happen to be the pastor of the church, and you happen to be one of the congregation, or the partners, or the members, or whatever that other entity is, then you have a specific responsibility to me, just as I have a specific responsibility to you, That is a stewardship over that relationship.

I found that certain people in the Bible had a very different relationship with God than did other people in the Bible. Actually, as I was beginning this study, I saw many different levels of relationship that they each had with God. For example, I could be your pastor, but let’s say I’m also a master disciple. That would be two different kinds of relationship with you, right? That would be two different ways of relating. Jesus had his disciples. Anyone that you take instruction from, in both word and deed, would be the master. So let’s suppose I am a master disciple. We could also be brothers. We’d have a different relationship as brothers than we would as master and pupil. I would do things differently for someone as a father than I would as a master. I don’t have a particular right as his master (pertaining to instruction), as I would if I was his father. So we have these differences. I want to quantify these differences, because God sees this as critical. And a lot of times, the words on each Bible page just don’t seem to make sense for everybody, every day. The differences in relationship is one of the reasons why.

Turn first to Deuteronomy 10:17. Nine times in scripture, the Bible says that God is no respecter of persons. Do you know what that means? It doesn’t necessarily mean what we thought it did. I used to say it meant that God wouldn’t do something for you that He wouldn’t do for someone else. But I’m finding out that that’s not true. I hate that! Nine times in scripture we find a Bible truth, and then find out that it’s not particularly true. So let’s find out what it does mean. Verse 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward: Well, there it is. God is no respecter of persons. Acts Chapter 10, Romans Chapter 2, Habakkuk Chapter 2. First Peter, and more, contain scriptures that talk about God being no respecter of persons. But look at what part he doesn’t respect about the person. He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God; him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name. So we have a list of different types of persons, and a different type of relationship with which there is no respect. There are also levels with which he has great respect.

The Book of James says that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Let not that man think he shall receive anything from the Lord. John Avanzini puts it this way. He says, A double-minded man is a man who has two conflicting opinions about the same subject in each of his two minds. He is referring to a conscious and a subconscious mind. The conscious mind says, “Yes, Amen brother”, but the subconscious is telling you something different. It might even be something you heard when you were three years old. So even though your head says, “Yes, I know you’re telling me the truth, Tiger”, there is something in your subconscious mind that may tell you something different. That is the mind that controls your bodily functions, the one that knows what to start doing with a bagel when you eat it. It just starts the process. Well, that subconscious mind is exacting, but it’s not always right. If it was, if it always did the right thing, there wouldn’t be any need for medication, or Pepto Bismol. It just knows it needs to do something with it.

Let’s say, early on, that you heard somewhere that the only thing preachers ever wanted was your money. You found out later that there were some preachers who didn’t care about your money. They cared about you. But you have this thing in your subconscious mind from long ago. Now you’re 25 years old, you’re in church, and you find out that this preacher really isn’t interested in your money. In fact, he refuses to even take an offering. Consciously, you know, OK, preachers don’t want your money, but subconsciously, that “early on” thing rivals what you now know. That gives you two conflicting opinions fighting it out in your minds. James Chapter 4 says, We war in our members. Why? We have two conflicting opinions about the same topic or subject in each of our two minds: our conscious and our subconscious.

The Bible says that if a man is in that state, he cannot receive anything from God. You need to be in agreement. The remedy for that is to take the word of God, and feed those scriptures to yourself over and over and over till they get down and dig out all that garbage that we’re taught. Once you dig that out, it’s replaced with, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the Holy One of Israel. Now you can walk in agreement. Now you can walk with, what the Bible says, your whole heart. Then, you will be able to accomplish anything you desire.

We have a double-mindedness here. The Bible says nine times that God is no respecter of persons, yet we find that He had huge respect to Israel when they left Egypt. He had respect to Israel over the Egyptians, for one, when they crossed over into the promised land. The folks at Jericho were just minding their own business, and God had no trouble wiping them out. So He DID have respect to Israel over the people opposing Israel. Consciously, when you see these examples, you might be thinking, Well, I’ve been taught that God is no respecter of persons. Subconsciously, you might be thinking…but I read about Him wiping out Jericho. So it’s possible you might hesitate in walking with a whole heart in building a relationship with this kind of God; who says one thing out of one side of his mouth, and what looks like another thing out of the other side. Agreed?

There are things we didn’t understand about our mother and father. There were things I didn’t understand as a child, that they did as adults. They’d say one thing, and seemingly do another. A lot of times, they knew darn well what they were doing. I just didn’t understand why they did some of the things they did. Why did they get so mad when I left the door open? “Because I pay for the electric bill”, saith my Dad, “you don’t”. “But don’t you want me to be cool, Daddy”? “But you’re no respecter of persons. You love me, so what’s that rod for”? “Bend over!” See, we don’t always understand it. But once we get it, we can really get it. We get it by an act of our will; by plowing the truth down into us until it uproots all those weeds.

For the Lord your God is a God of gods, a Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward

But that is just a minor relationship. We know John 3:16, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Well, that doesn’t seem to jibe with the God who allowed all of the children of Jericho to be killed by the Israelites, does it? He loves the world, yet he killed the folks in Jericho? You mean He sent his son, and then allowed his son to die for the sake of these ugly people??? We should probably investigate these relationships and see if we can make sense of this.

Turn to the Book of James, Chapter 2, and begin reading in verse 21. It talks about a man named Abraham.

Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.

Abraham was called the friend of God. There were a lot of contemporaries of this man Abraham, but Elijah was not called a friend of God; he was a servant of God. You could pick a bunch of people that did great and mighty things: Samson, Jephthah, Ehud, Deborah, Elisha, Nehemiah: none of them were considered friends of God, but this man Abraham was. So we’re seeing a man with a different relationship. But we must also couple this with, God is no respecter of persons. So how did Abraham get this relationship? If he could develop this relationship, then there must be something I can do that can put me into a position to become a friend of God.

As a natural man, isn’t there something I can do to become a friend to Eli? We don’t just start out as friends, do we? Something is always done to develop a relationship. Many of you are my friends. Those that are not, it’s not that we don’t want to be friends. It’s just that we have yet to take the steps to become friends. We have not done those things. The Bible says that God is no respecter of persons. So if I am a man made in his image and likeness, then if I take the appropriate steps, I can be a friend of God.

I want to show you some examples of people that did take those steps. You’ll see what they did; and if we do the same things, then God has to not respect me as a person, but respect the things that I did. That is what He will do, and I will become a friend of God. Wouldn’t you like to be God’s friend?

Let’s look at Isaiah Chapter 41, verse 8

But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend.

There’s something about Abraham. The god of Israel serves him, but he calls Abraham his friend, separate from a servant. They both accomplished the will of God; they both did what they were told, to a degree; but even within the same tribe, even the son of the man he calls a friend wasn’t considered a friend of God.

Turn to Genesis Chapter 18. We know that God chose this man Abram, and changed his name to Abraham, to become the father of many nations. But the choosing had little or nothing to do with God. The calling did, but not the choosing. Do you remember the New Testament example that Jesus gave of the wedding feast? At the very end, he tags it with “many are called, but few are chosen”. In the example, the chosen were comprised of the ones who showed up. A lot of people were invited, but only a few actually said, “OK, we’ll come”. At the first invitation, no one showed up, so he went out into the highways and byways, and found the good, the bad and the ugly, and brought them in. Those that said “Yes”, became chosen. The qualifications weren’t a big deal, even though God first had invited others. We see that throughout the scriptures, where God initially invited the children of Israel, but they didn’t show up. Then He went out to the Gentiles. God will say, I’m inviting Israel first, because they are the seed of Abraham, but to be chosen is simply to say, Yes!.

I’m assuming that if I want to be a friend of God, I’ll have to say “Yes”, and obey. I won’t have to try to be sooo good. I don’t have to worry that He won’t take me if I’m too fat, or too skinny, or if I’m not smart enough. That doesn’t have anything to do with it. It’s simply a matter of saying “Yes”, and then obeying when He says, “OK, this is what you need to do”. God then gives you a name, which is the calling of what you are supposed to do.

In this case, God chose this guy Abram, who was a moon worshipper from Ur of the Caldez. The Bible says he was fairly old, and still living at home. God said, Get thee out of Ur. Genesis Chapter 12. Get away from thy kindred and thy father’s house. A Mama’s boy. Get out, and then I’ll make of thee a great nation. So Abram said, Yes. Cool. I’ll do it. When he did it; really, that was his qualification. But we’re going to find out how he became a friend of God. Every one of the chosen said “Yes”, but a friendship with God is something else.

We’ll pick up in verse 16 after the angels have told Sarah she was going to have a child, and she laughed.

And the men rose up from thence, and looked toward Sodom: and Abraham went with them to bring them on the way. And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do

God is getting ready to wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah, but before He does…There’s this idea that God just does everything He wants to at any old time. No. You’ll see some conversations where He has to pick a man to help do it. He works through people in a particular way. He’s longing for this kind of relationship. He’s longing to not have to just wipe ‘em out. He’s longing to not have to pull the plug and uncork the flood. He’s longing to be able to go to a man and say, “Now this is the situation. It’s bad. What should we do here?”

Be like Jesus and say, Well, is there another way? God’s looking for another way. Isn’t that a friend-type conversation? What should I do about this or that? You’ll go to a friend to get their perspective, because you trust them. You know that the’re looking out for your best interests. That friend might tell you something like, “Well, they were probably under the pressure of this, and they probably didn’t mean to say that.” They can diffuse you from making the same mistake that they made. That’s a friend. And here is God considering wiping out Sodom and Gomorrah because of sin, and saying, I really shouldn’t keep this from Abraham.

Now look what happens here.

And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I know him…

For those of you who think God knows everybody…. Wrong! Did He know the guys who ended up floating around in the Red sea after Israel walked through? “But God, your eye is on the sparrow!” No! His eye is on the sparrow, so I know He watches His friend. It’s his friend he watches.

For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.

There are some 6,000-7,000 promises in the Bible. Second Peter Chapter 1 says, if you want to be partakers of these precious promises, that by these you be partakers of the divine nature of God. Deuteronomy 28, says, if you walk in my ways, and keep my commandments, you will get all this stuff, but it’s a “might” based upon your performance. It’s not just based on you being “I’m a son of God, I’m gonna get it.” No. You have to do something to develop this relationship. Obviously, Abraham had begun to develop that, because God is saying, I know this man. I KNOW this man.

How many of you still think that God knows everything? Well, let’s nip this one in the bud before we go any further. I’ll read out of Deuteronomy Chapter 8. Just lock this one away, it’s not part of the message. He’s telling the children of Israel, verse 2

And thou shalt remember all the ways which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.

God does not know what you are going to do. That’s why He gives you tests. Not trials. Tests. He says, OK, I’ll feed you with manna, I’ll give you instructions in collecting it; and if you collect it as instructed, I’ll know you’ll do good when you get to the promised land. You can do the very same thing with your children. You can bring them up in a little bit of stewardship, and say, OK, let’s see how you handle this little three-wheeler… but if you don’t handle this, I’m not gonna get you the BMX bike. It’s a test to find out what’s in your child’s heart. Is he ready yet? God does the same thing. He doesn’t just KNOW what you’re going to do.

The only time where the Bible says that God knows the hearts of all men, is in Acts Chapter 1, where Peter is praying to replace Judas, the fallen disciple. He’s praying to God, but God doesn’t answer him. So Peter prays, “God that knoweth the hearts of all men”. In all the other places in scripture, it says, He tries the reins to find out what was in their heart. So we don’t want to be quoting Peter, and thinking it’s God. In the Book of Acts, they were praying, Lord, you know the hearts of all men. Which disciple should it be? They didn’t get an answer. And it says, “They put forth their lots”. They were gambling to find out who was going to replace Judas! And then we hear this scripture, “You know the hearts of all men”. Well, if He did, lightning would have struck their little disciple fannies. They were gambling and praying?? So we’ve got to watch what the scripture actually says.

Now that we understand that God DOESN’T know everything, but He does after he tests the reins, you’ll find out within your own heart, Jesus said, Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. You’ll be out there driving around one day, pressured by some really bad drivers, and He’ll see what comes out your mouth when they suddenly cut you off. “Well, I guess I can’t trust him at the women’s gathering, because those words are just not appropriate.” But when that stuff happens and you just handle it, then He’s ready to exalt you.

Humble yourself unto the mighty hand of God and He will exalt you in due time, casting all your care over to him; for He cares for you.

Let’s get on with the message. Genesis Chapter 18 verse 19. Again, For I know him, and he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know. God only HEARD the reports of the bad stuff happening at Sodom. He wasn’t there, He didn’t know about it. He says, I’ll go down and find out if it’s as bad as they said. Wow! Are we gonna believe what’s in the book and then just add our own deal, or are we just gonna believe what’s in the book? Whatever you speak out of the book had better have come from the book. And regarding this idea that God knows everything, knew everything, sees everything, NO! Sorry. You won’t make it on Faith Center Jeopardy, that’s for sure.

I’ll read it again. I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know. I get excited about that, not because God doesn’t know something, but because if God knew everything, that would make Him a liar, a murderer, an adulterer, a cheater. He’d be all those things that He says Thou shalt not do. If God knew Adam would fall, and then made him anyway, He’s murdered Jesus. Do you see that? You’ll find out that everywhere He just doesn’t know, He had no idea about until angels reported that there was wickedness. That’s who the two men were that Abraham and Sarah saw. They went down to Sodom to find out for sure about the wickednes. God hears things, but the Bible says, His eyes are over the righteous. That’s respect, isn’t it? His ears are open to their prayers.

And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the Lord. And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? How many of you know that you don’t just normally approach God when He says, I’m going to do this!. You’ve got to have a really special relationship.

Let’s look at another relationship: your boss. The boss has said, This is what we’re gonna do here. And some guy hired just two days ago happens to walk into the corporate board meeting, and says, “Here’s the better way!” Would you do that? Not if you want to keep working there. You’d better be the son of the son of the head of that corporation in order to say that without losing your job, and getting spanked when you get home. Actually, you’ll get both. Anyway, you’d have to have a special relationship.

So here’s Abraham with enough guts to go to God and say, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? Abraham, in his negotiations, didn’t say, Spare the righteous. He said, Spare the city for the sake of the righteous. Verse 25 That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? This is a huge principle! Get on the edge of your seat for this one: Notice that this friendship worked both ways. God is having respect toward Abraham, but Abraham is getting into God. God is allowing Abraham to counsel him. Look at that! God may not need counseling, but because He is a friend, He will receive it. We’re thinking, Well God doesn’t need us. You are so right. He doesn’t need us, but He’s got us. So now, He’s got to play by His same rules with us. Abraham knows God. That’s what made him a friend. He really knew him; not like at Jericho where you mention God’s name and everyone takes off. Abraham gets into God’s face and says, I know you, and I know you wouldn’t do this if there were fifty righteous.

Verse 26, And the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes. See, Abraham knew God, didn’t he? And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes: Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it. Two things you’ll learn from that verse. One, God’s not looking to destroy anything. Two, He’s really good at math. And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for forty’s sake. Look at this kind of relationship with God!

That relationship has been preached that we could all be that way. Nothing irks me more than when someone, without knowing the scripture, speaks the scripture… especially the pastor. They don’t know that word, they don’t have a revelation of that word, it’s not alive in them. They are speaking out of my book without the right to do it. Boy, that makes me mad! I remember seeing those people that signed those sympathy cards to send off to LIttleton, Colorado. And here is this scripture saying, “No weapon formed against thee shall prosper”. Well, it looks like these weapons were formed against them, and they did prosper. People that don’t know the verse, that don’t know the scripture, and don’t know why the weapons prospered, should not be using that verse. They don’t have a right to do it. That is a right reserved for the friends of God; not just for people that are throwing out a scripture.

Did everyone see the movie “True Lies”? It was important because it honored a marriage covenant, for one. Number two, Arnold is cool. That’s important. They’d gone on this covert operation with Arnold, who’d been with this service for some 17 years, plus a new guy. The head of the organization, an eye-patched Charlton Heston, is saying, So Harry, you really messed up last night. And the new guy on the team stands up and says, Well, it really wasn’t a this and that and the other. Charlton Heston interrupts him and says, How long have you been with Harry’s team? Six months? Then what makes you think that the same slack I cut Harry in any way translates to you??? And that is exactly what the Bible is saying. Other people have tried to talk to God like Abraham, or Jesus, had a right to. Or as we are about to find out, as Moses had a right to.

Turn to Exodus, Chapter 33. verse 8 And it came to pass, when Moses went out unto the tabernacle, that all the people rose up, and stood every man at his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he was gone into the tabernacle. And it came to pass, As Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses. And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door. And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face. That doesn’t mean his face, if you will, as in, “to His face”, because God does not have a flesh face like we do. It means Moses talked with Him, not in visions, not in dreams, not through prophecy, because of the relationship Moses had. God starts describing, he is no meeker man on the earth. Now that word “meek” does not mean wimpy. It really means, gentle. The word “gentle” isn’t really what we think the word gentle means, because Jesus was considered meek, yet there was one church service he didn’t like where he was braiding a rope, getting ready to whip some people. He was gentle! But he was meek, meaning meek towards God. He humbled himself to God. Whatever you say, I’ll do. I believe that was true of a Samson or anyone else God called; even though what they did turned out to resemble something far different than meek. They were still meek because they were doing something for God.

But here is Moses face to face, eyes wide open. Not a prophecy, not a plan, not a dream, not a vision, not all the dark ways, nor in some mystery like the one the church world received even after Jesus completed his earthly ministry, like the Mystery of Christ. This one is still a mystery. Hidden in God, still. But there are some people, in this age, that will be able to see it face to face, if they become a friend to God. See, God loves a bunch of people. But he doesn’t like many. I used to tease my wife about that. I used to say, I love you, Honey, and she said, Oh thank you, and I said, Because it’s a commandment. I just like to throw in a little scripture every now and then. She didn’t like that very much!

You know, you can love somebody but still not like to be around them very much Love is patient, love is kind, but friendship is a different deal. You’ve got to have a trust that your friend will never leave you nor forsake you. So, if you are going to try to become a friend of God, and we all should if we’re not already, we’ve got to find out the things He likes. Isn’t that what you did when you wanted to become a friend with somebody? You found out what they liked and then said, Hey, I like that too. We ought to do those things together. Pretty soon, you’ve found more and more things in common, and you’ve become friends. Love is supposed to be unconditional, but friendship is conditional. Friendship is conditional, because you can’t really fellowship the someone or something that is not in the same class of being as you. God says, What fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness.

Jump to First John. Chapter 2, verse 15. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. Now, go back a few pages to the left to James Chapter 4 verse 4, You adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Friendship IS conditional. God doesn’t want you hanging out with friends who are indentured in the world, and then Him be trying to talk to you. God couldn’t come down in a cloud until he got Moses isolated in the tent. “Finally, I can talk to you!” God doesn’t hang out with people that are murmuring, backbiting, stealing, adultering, building golden calves. etc. In fact, Deuteronomy 9 says that the only reason He kept helping the children of Israel in the wilderness purely for His oath’s sake to Abraham. The only reason He hauled them out of Egypt is because, Well, I gave Abraham my word that I would.

If you want to hear from God, if you want to be a friend of God, you can’t be hanging out at some of those places, and expect Him to talk to you. Oh, He’ll give you a warning shot. That’s what he does if you’re in one of those places. It will be like in the movie, “Amityville Horror”. You’ll hear, Get Out That’s all He’ll say in those places. But He’s waiting for you to get out. I’ve been in some churches where He said, Get Out! Darn! I almost missed the third offering. I’m outta here.

You adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. Wow!

Turn to Proverbs, Chapter 18. Verse 24 says A man that hath friends must show himself friendly: That means, do the things it takes to be a friend to the person you are trying to be a friend with. Show yourself friendly, play the role of a friend until you become the friend. When you were born again, you didn’t start looking like a son or a daughter, anymore than when your babies got born, they looked like they belonged to you. And there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Do you know what that means? Do you remember that saying, Blood is thicker than water? We thought that meant, because you and I are brothers, born of the same mother; that is a closer bond than the relationship I’ve made with someone who isn’t my brother. Or mother, or son, or whatever else. But that’s not what it meant.

In the Middle East, where the phrase came from, the saying is, Blood is thicker than milk. This means that if two people, as an act of their will, make a cut in their flesh and make covenant; then that is a closer tie than two children that nurse from the same breast. Blood is thicker than milk. So here it is. There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. It relates to the cut of those animals when Abraham made his covenant with God. God said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. And Abraham said, I will neither leave you nor forsake you, either. They are bound to that covenant.

Aren’t we bound to that new covenant? Aren’t we bound by Jesus’ blood? We’ve been cut in our hearts. That’s closer than James, Judas, Joseph, and all the natural brethren from Mary, the mother of Jesus. Jesus said, Who are my brethren and my mother but those that do the will of my Father. What is the will and covenant of Jesus Christ.? There is a friend that sticketh closer than flesh and blood.

Now we’re really starting to get to know what this word “friend” word means. It’s not just people who hang out together because it’s convenient. It’s not just two roommates who split the rent. It’s someone that is in covenant, and if it’s a relationship between you and God, now God can trust you, just like you can trust Him. And there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

Turn to Proverbs 27. Verse 6 says, Faithful are the wounds of a friend; That’s not just a “make you feel real good” friends scripture. But if you find out what it means…. look at verse 5 Open rebuke is better than secret love. Solomon says that a wise man receives rebuke. Or a fool shuns it and laughs. Open rebuke is something you can get from a friend because you know that person wants to better you. The Bible says that all scripture is given by inspiration of God for reproof, correction, rebuke and instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect; thoroughly furnished unto all good works. Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend.

I’ll give you a couple of other examples of friends. Jesus considered John the Baptist a friend. Jesus loved Lazarus. When he found out that they had let him die, Jesus said he was just sick. Then he went and handled it. And give some thought to where Jesus goes to handle something. Are you in a situation where you need Jesus to handle something? Well, what’s gonna get him there? Friendship.

Turn to Galatians Chapter 1. The is about the apostle Paul and his relationship with God. Verse 9 As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

When you are a friend to God, that’s the number one friendship you have. Number 2 might be your spouse, then on to other the other people you have made covenant with. But if you desire to be a friend to God, and you are a Pastor, how could you ever speak just what the congregation wants to hear, or keep back what they’re afraid you will say, or what they’re afraid you will not say, and you do not deliver them?, saith the Lord.

Can you see what’s happened in this country? Can you see what’s happened all over the world where they have just adopted the last move of God as being all of God? 1600s, 1700s, 1800s and here we are in the 1900’s where we’ve now got automatic weapons at the high schools , and our spritual armour is still the same message preached in the 1600’s? That’s ridiculous. It would be all right if they were up at the walls trying to shoot arrows at me. But now we are in 1999 with a 400-500 year old message, all because the so-called men of God weren’t really men of God. You can go through the history books, and you’ll only find highlights of one man of God per age: a Nostradamus, a Galileo, a Da Vinci; someone who kept the future climbing toward God. The world only highlighted them because of their natural achievements, but they were men of God. Where else would you get the wisdom for all that they achieved? They were the saints that kept real spiritual things going to get us to the place where we are today. Try to fight the U.S. military with sticks and stones. You won’t last long. You’d better have a friend in God.

Abraham, as a friend, before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah when their kings were taken over, took 300+ men and defeated five kingdoms in one evening. He was a friend of God. God’s saying, Do you talk the way I have asked you to talk? Do you talk in the same conversation of our friendship when you’re around other people? You know that there are times where you talk a little differently when you’re around someone else. You’ll use that as an indicator of how your friendship is doing. Do we just jump in and start badmouthing one friend when you’re with this other friend? This is an indicator. We are somewhere between zero and perfection, So we can use this as an indicator. Start watching your conversation change some things which you use to bad mouth, by speaking words that edify, that minister grace to the hearers. When that starts to change, you’ll find out that you’re not as good a friend as you should be. And if you can’t be a friend to a natural man, how much more of a friend could you be to God, if you don’t know how to do it with just a human?
And it got quiet.

I see a God who is longing for a friendship, longing for a way into our daily lives, and longing to bring those friends into His daily life. I see a God looking for that. I saw that with Adam. God used to walk with Adam in the cool of the day…just hanging out with him. He didn’t just come down to give him a lecture, or to tell him what he did wrong. He was coming down just to hang out. “What do you think about this? Do you want to make one of these? Here, you make one.” They were just hanging out.

Turn to John Chapter 15. We’ll begin reading in verse 10, If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, Jesus is talking to his disciples, the ones that stuck with him. He’s not talking to the 70 or so in John Chapter 6 that took off, and then the others that followed. He’s talking to the 12 who said, Where else would we go? These things I have spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. This is my commandment, That you love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do soever I command you. Do what I command you. It might be different for you, here, than to you over there. But if you all do whatsoever He commands you, then you are all His friends. It’s not supposed to be the same thing for everybody. In fact, unless you start walking in your calling, unless you fulfill the hope of your calling, you will never have your joy full. You’ll constantly be looking for one more way to kill yourself. You’ll constantly be dissatisfied, running around from job to job, whatever it is, trying this and that; all because you’re not walking in what God put in there for you to walk in. If you walked in it, you’d just be walking with your joy full one hundred-fold. It’s the only way. You are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth, I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.

Psalm 103. David was a man after God’s own heart. He was a friend of God, and he’s saying Bless the Lord, O my soul with all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; Look at the benefits of being His Friend. When you become what David was, that’s when you’ll get the benefits. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies; Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s. The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed. Now look at this. He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel.

He made known His ways unto Moses. Why? He could trust him. He was His friend. He was showing him how and why He did what He did. But the children of Israel only got to see His acts. But brother, we’ve always heard, “His ways are higher than our ways”. They’re not higher than Moses’ ways! They’re not higher than David’s ways! In order for David in the Psalms to write that Moses knew God’s ways, David also had to have known His ways in order to look at Moses’ ways to know what God did.

Isaiah 55 says, Let the wicked man forsake his way, and the unrighteousness man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord. And then it says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, unrighteousness man. My ways are not your ways, implied wicked man. But if you are not unrighteousness and wicked, then He is trying to show His ways. Well, that’s pretty important in a 1999 church that wants to understand the Mystery of Christ. If this is the mystery that brings about the church that brings Jesus back so that the Father can live again and have friends all over the earth, then we need for Him to show us His ways. We can’t keep acting like we’re in 1500 B.C. Israel, not knowing anything about God except that He speaks through one man, and that it really bothers us that we can’t get all the news direct from God. And we don’t like it. That’s why when I go to a pastor of another church and I reveal some mystery, some truth, and they don’t just say, “WOW! Hallelujah, Brother, that was incredible!”, they don’t want to go through the man of God either, so they say, Well, who do you think you are? That’s the same thing Israel did every time Moses got some word from God. And they’ll do that to you if you start knowing His ways. It doesn’t really bother me as much as I let on, because I really don’t care about disobedient men. I care about my relationship with God.

We’re back in John 15:15. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. That’s not just anybody that prays that prayer, is it? That’s someone who wants to be a friend. These things I command you, that ye love one another. If the world hate you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. Just like it hated Moses. Just like it hated every person that heard from God. Just like Saul, if you will, hell bent to try to kill David. He’s trying to kill the very man that freed him, because of that relationship. If you were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

Turn to First John Chapter 1, verse 1, and we’ll close there. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us: That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.

I want you to close your eyes and repeat this after me. Dear God in Heaven, I want to be your friend. I want to be a friend to you. I want you to be a friend to me. I will be a good steward over our friendship. From this day forward you can trust me. You can count on me. I will prioritize my life in a way that is pleasing to you. I thank you for favoring me. You said you would never leave me nor forsake me. Well, I’ll never leave nor forsake you. You are my friend. I lay down my life for you. I establish this now, in Jesus’ name. Amen

This message was transcribed and edited from the original audio tape message.
© All Rights reserved. Copyright 1999.

Field Day

The Las Vegas Faith Center
Message from Sunday, April 11, 1999

“Field Day”
By Tiger Todd
(EDITED VERSION)

As you probably saw in your bulletin, today is a “Field Day”. For those of you who don’t know what a Field Day is, it’s where God says there are too many messages going around right now; and because there are, we are here to answer whatever questions you might have. I expect God to be able to answer them.

Question:
I heard someone, it might have been Kenneth Copeland, say that children ought to bear their yoke in their youth. This person said this was mentioned in the Bible, and I couldn’t find it. Can you tell me where that would be located?

Pastor:
Can you tell me what subject he was talking about when he said that? Or did you just hear someone say that?

Questioner:
I believe it was something about Abraham, and it was something about “children ought to bear their yoke in their youth”.

Pastor:
The two words “bear” and “yoke” are the only reason, if you will, why I’ll have trouble in answering this question directly, because it doesn’t apply to children. Turn to 1 John Chapter 2. We’ve covered this before, but some of you might not have been here. Verse 1, My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

Let me go to verse 12, I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake. Isaiah 10:27 says that the devil’s burden shall be removed, and his yoke shall be destroyed, because of the anointed one, or the anointed ones, i.e. Christ, Christ-ians, and so forth. So when I hear the word “yoke”, I think of burden. It could have been another word, perhaps responsibility? In 1 John 2:1, notice the pronoun, “we”, coming up. He say, My little children, your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake. But then he says, If any man sins, WE… First, he’s talking to a you, and then he goes to a we. My little children, these things write I unto you, Then he goes on to say, And if any man sin (is a child a man?) No. And if any man sin, we… So we’ve got two groups of people being spoken to in this one verse. He says to the little children, You guys are sinless. He says it again here, Your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake. But men, when they sin, have an advocate with the Father. Children do not need an advocate with the Father, because Jesus’ sacrifice worked.

I heard someone preach on a tape yesterday, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The speaker was a great faith preacher, but most still came from the old, traditional churches, so even after they got into their calling, every now and then, one of those old religious lines tends to pop up. Don’t they think they should have reinvestigated, and found out exactly what they were talking about? Well, the speaker went on to say, “We are all sinners.” TIME OUT! Did the sacrifice of Jesus work? Did it pay the price for sin? Well, if it worked, then you’re not a sinner if you receive his sacrifice.

There were two things levels his sacrifice affected. One was on the level of man. He had to be a man so that he could be man’s advocate with the Father. Therefore, the Father now does everything through Jesus. In this case, when you confess your sin to Jesus, he goes to the Father, and the Father says, Now you are sinless, my son! If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us all unrighteousness.

After you have done that, how much unrighteousness do you have left? None! You have no sin. But concerning children, post Jesus’ resurrection, the Bible says, Your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake. What did he call himself? Remember through scripture, he called himself Son of Man? Well, the Son of Man means,The last Adam. Jesus was man connected to the natural lineage of Adam. He was the final Adam in the line. He paid the price for THE sin, the one that went through all the children of Adam; because sadly, every child born- from Adam to Jesus- was born in sin. But if Jesus’ sacrifice worked, children are not born in sin. I want to settle this once and for all: children are born sinless, because if they’re not, Jesus’ sacrifice didn’t work. I believe the sacrifice worked.

What kind of yoke are we talking about? How about, Children obey your parents in the Lord. Why did God choose Abraham rather than someone else? Why did he pick this moon-worshipper from the Ur of Chaldees? Genesis 19 records that he was picked because God knew he would teach and train his children in the ways of righteousness. It was not because he was capable of having those children. God knew he would raise and nurture them in the admonition of the Lord. But obviously, there is still the child’s responsibility. Ephesians and Colossians talks about what the children’s responsibilities are. Children, obey your parents in the Lord. If you are talking about bearing a yoke, in order for the child to turn out, he’s got to obey his parents. Honor thy Father and Mother. If there is a yoke for children to bear, it’s that we have a choice. The Prodigal Son is a great scriptural example of, Yes, they do have a choice. One son could take the goods and take off. One son could stay home and obey his Dad. And that would be your responsibility if your parents have laid down their lives and decided to serve God. Then of course, your yoke to them is to obey them until you hit the road.

Question:
Could you explain grace, and how it works.

Pastor:
Grace. Turn to Ephesians 2:8, For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. I love explaining grace, because I hear a lot of “Well, I’m saved by grace”, but people forget about the faith part. What is faith? It is the substance of things hoped for, which means you have to have a hope. Jesus said that the faith of God in Mark Chapter 11 only works with a desire. Right? It’s interesting, because the church as a whole believes we are saved by grace through faith; not of ourselves, but as a gift from God, as if we don’t have anything to do. No. We are saved by grace through faith. If you don’t do some things in faith, you won’t even get grace. So you can’t get salvation.

We know that faith is supposed to be in two places. Romans Chapter 10, the “saving by faith” chapter, says that the righteousness of faith has to be in two places: in your heart, and in your mouth. Those are the words of faith we preach that, If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thy heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. But grace, here, isn’t what we think it is. I think the church believes the word “grace” is actually the word mercy; meaning that it’s just a free gift. But that’s not what it is, because the Amplified Bible mistranslated “grace” from the Greek word. So, everywhere you see the word “grace”, they have translated it into “undeserved favor”. Has everyone heard that? But the word “grace” is the exact same word as the word “gift”. Like when it is a gift of the spirit. It’s the same exact word. It’s the word charis. A similar word to the Greek word “grace” is charisma. So, if you are saved by grace through faith, that not of yourselves, it is a gift. That’s exactly what it said. You’re not saved by anything that you were born with, that you created, that you earned, or that you did anything about. You are saved because of certain gifts God placed inside you, and those gifts are what is going to deliver you. That’s what salvation means, deliverance, soteria, or sozo, either of the two.That gift is what is going to deliver you if you use your faith with the gift.

Let’s suppose that God places one gift in one person. Let’s say that the gift he puts into Lance is singing. Singing, then, is the gift that God expects Lance to use that will deliver Lance from his circumstances. Remember Ephesians, chapter 4: He gave some apostles, some prophets… to some He gives these kinds of gifts unto men. You might be saved by a gift of an apostleship, or by a gift of an evangelist. Gifts and graces are all the same thing. With “saved by grace through faith”, the thing that saves us is something that God puts inside you, and then, something you do with it by faith. In other words, you believe that God has placed something inside you, and you start to use it. Once you do, that is your deliverance. It’s not that everyone is just “saved”, because look around you. People aren’t saved. People are dying.

“Saved” is not talking about going to heaven. That is born again. That’s a new spirit. “Saved” is that word soteria. It means temporal deliverance. It means healed as much as it means saved. Saved refers to your physical body, because you don’t need healing in heaven. Your flesh doesn’t do much good in heaven. But if you’re sick, you need to be saved from sickness. Right? If you have a $600.00 bill due at the first of the month, and that’s two days from now; if you only have $50 in your account, you need saving from that bill and its consequences. Right? And if all of a sudden that money comes, you’re saved, aren’t you? Saved! If you are a child who didn’t do your homework, and they’ve just announced a pop quiz in school, but time runs out as the bell rings, then you are saved by the bell. Saved!

God says what you are supposed to be saved by are the gifts He put inside you. If he had given me the gift of math, I’d be saved by my math skills when they announced that pop quiz. I wouldn’t need to be saved by the bell.

Question:
Could you explain the difference between born again and saved, because we’ve had the mind-set that being saved by grace through faith means you are born again, that you’re going to heaven.

Pastor:
Jesus mentioned the word saved, but Paul was really the one who preached on salvation. But he was preaching predominantly to Jews. Born again is getting a spirit of God placed in you. Does everybody really understand that? Born again means that God has now put a spirit of His in you, and of that spirit, He says, We are born again not of corruptible seed but incorruptible by the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever.

Turn to 2 Corinthians 5:18, Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, That’s what happens when you are born again. Literally, the Greek word means “born from above”. The King James Bible just translated “again”, and then the whole church said again, again, again, just like they said grace was undeserved favor.

Jesus taught the gospel of born again, and that’s contained in John Chapter 3. There came a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. The same came to Jesus by night and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Born again is a different thing than salvation, because there are a lot of born again people that still aren’t walking by faith. Why? Because they think that grace is just mercy. I mean, read Psalm 118. His mercy endures forever. He is merciful. Mercy is all over the place. But in order for a person to partake of the benefits of the Kingdom of God, the system of government in God’s kingdom, you have to understand how things operate in the Kingdom. And he’s saying that unless you’re born again, you’ll have no way to understand God’s system.

Unless you read and understand the manual at the Mirage Resort, you’ll have no idea how to run that hotel, let alone, your own department. You’ll run it the only way you know, and it won’t work the way you know it. It only works the way they designed it to work, because it’s the kingdom of the Mirage.

The kingdom of God is only designed to work with people who have God’s spirits in them. So unless a man gets one of those spirits, he cannot see how to run this new kingdom, and hence, things won’t work for him. That’s one of the major reasons why when most people get saved, really, they’re born again. When they don’t walk by faith in that new understanding, they’re worse off financially than they were when they started. Jesus said, My children perish for lack of knowledge. They don’t perish because people are preaching prosperity or because of the wicked world. They don’t perish for any other reason except for what God said; lack of knowledge. The wicked perish in a number of ways, but he says, My Children perish for lack of knowledge. See, it’s like the Wheel of Fortune with the wicked. Which way would you like to die today if you come against one of God’s anointed?

Saved. Born again. You can be saved, and not get born again (if you’re Jewish). But born again is what gets you to understand the kingdom of God. If you want things to work for you, you’ve got to do it God’s way. And you can’t do it God’s way unless you know God’s way

This is the way I rephrase John Chapter 3. Jesus said, Verily, verily I say unto thee, except that a man be born again (the Greek word means “from above”)... Unless a man be born again, he cannot see how God does what he does. He cannot understand the kingdom of God. But, let’s turn that around. If a man comes to me and he sees the kingdom of God, I mean, if I show him how to plant seed and get harvest, if he knows he’s got to tithe on the first fruits of all his increase, if he knows that the first number to call is not 911 but the person who is going to lay hands on the sick so they are going to recover, he sees the kingdom of God. If he understands how the scriptures work, that you can’t just take one out of context, that you’ve got to take one out of the mouth of two or three witnesses, then he understands how God does things. If he understands, he MUST be born again. Jesus said, If a man can see the kingdom of God, he must be born again.

Saved is easy to understand. Did that “thing” get you? Yeah? Well, then you weren’t saved from that “thing”. What you do to get saved is get more knowledge, and figure out how to protect yourself in the future.

I’ll just say this for the heretics: the Bible is not 100% true. Why? Because it’s not 100% the Word of God. I know of one scene, in particular, where an uncircumcised Philistine giant named Goliath came running up to a godly man, David, spouting off words. Well, those were NOT the words of God. They were the words coming out of an uncircumcised Philistine. And they were proven wrong by the man of God. Not everything contained between these Bible covers is the Word of God. Some of it is the word of Job, some of it is the word of Goliath, some of it is the word of Simon-Peter. Some of it is the Word of God. Some of it says, Thus saith the Lord. Jesus’ words are in red. I only say what the Father says. You can get a lot of words from God in here. So we have to rightly divide the word of truth. We have to use what the Bible says to understand what the Word says. For instance, in 2 Timothy, where it says, All scripture is given for reproof and correction, that means that the scripture is really used if you’ve made a mistake. All scriptures are given for reproof and correction, i.e., if no one ever sinned, there would be no need for the Bible. Right?

According to the Book of Galatians, if Peter had not messed up and confused the message of Christ, Paul would not have had to write the Book of Galatians. We wouldn’t even have it in our Bibles if Peter had preached the right message. But Peter, in the Book of Acts, was preaching the wrong message. He was trying to make people Jews instead of setting them free. He was preaching the circumcision gospel. I had better get off of this! Anyway, Galatians was written for reproof and correction.

And then the next part… instruction in righteousness. It’s like the word of a prophet. You see God speaking to Jeremiah, and He says, Here’s what you are going to do. You are going to tear down, you are going to destroy, but then you are going to build up and restore. And a lot of that has to happen. The simplest people to teach the kingdom of God to are the people that don’t know anything about God, about religion, etc. But so many times we have to undo a misleading doctrine that started out in the Bible, but 300 years later, turned into something else. And then we have to get past thinking, Oh am I going to traditionally defend that, or am I going to stand on what the Bible says. I’ve just flat out decided, Hey, I’m just gonna look like a freak if I’m the ONLY one totally standing on the Bible. But I’m gonna stand on the Bible. I refuse now to be religious. I’m going to give you reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness so that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works, as that scripture concludes.

Question:
I’d like to know what you say when people say that Christ was slain before the world was made?

Pastor:
The Bible says he was. The Book of Revelation actually calls him “the lamb slain before the foundation of the world”. We also have that recorded in 2 Peter Chapter 3, but was that “in the beginning”? ”...and God said, Light Be. Let’s slay the lamb.” That’s not how it read! Do you remember why scripture was written? Because something was wrong, because someone sinned. Right? Well, was Jesus, or Y’shua, (or Joshua which all mean saviour) right?

In the beginning, when God had created everything, did anything need saving? No. So there was no need for Jesus on Day One. In the beginning. But that line, “before the foundation of the world”, doesn’t mean, “In the Beginning of Creation”. The word translated, “world”, is the Greek and Hebrew word which means inhabitants, or decoration. If you turn to Genesis Chapter 3, you’ll find out when the world began.

Adam and his wife were dirt bags. God made them out of dust from the ground. Sorry. Adam and his wife were just sacks of dirt! Remember, He made Adam’s body forged out of dust from the ground. Then He breathed in it the breath of life. If there are no more questions, I’d love to go there.

They were just dirt bags. And God breathed OF His spirit into Adam. Remember, He separated the woman from the man, so the first Adam made out of the dirt was BOTH male and female. He separated out the female. She becomes her own living soul, and there they are in the garden. God made them both. But they were made from the earth. Right? In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. But here in Genesis 4:1, we have Adam and his wife making the world. And Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived and bare Cain… And it goes down the list, and all of a sudden you see a lot of begat, begat, begat. That’s when the world was created. We know that this is the truth because in 2 Peter Chapter 2, God says He spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down , AND, it said , He saved not the old world which perished.

Now, after the flood of Noah, did the earth perish? No. Just the inhabitants. So “the world” is the inhabitants. The inhabitants were created by Adam and his wife. Genesis 4:1, this is the foundation of the world. Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived. So that’s the foundation of the world.Therefore, “before the foundation of the world” has to be a point before that. It could be Genesis 3:24, it could be verse 23, or 22. Those are all “before the foundation of the world”. Do you see how simple the Bible reads?

But now, “the lamb slain”. That is Genesis 3:15, and sure enough, it happens before the foundation of the world, where God says to the serpent, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed, it shall bruise thy head… and immediately the seed (the “it”) becomes the he (Jesus), the lamb slain before the foundation of the world, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Before the foundation of the world, Genesis 3:15. So, yes. Jesus, the body, took on that spirit of God that was slain before the foundation of the world.

Do we want to go real deep here for a second? If you look at the lineage from Jesus, in the Book of Matthew, it reads… who was the son of, who was the son of, who was the son of,...and it gets down to Adam, and it says, who was the son of God. God told Adam that if he ate of the tree, if he sinned any which way, if he disobeyed God, that day he ate, he would die. Do you remember that in the Bible? Well, Adam’s body lived another, let me just give it to you, the days after Adam after he had begotten Seth were 800 years, he begat sons and daughters, Adam lived 930 years after that tree incident. OK? So what died? To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

Is it all right if I go on with this? Here’s what happened. This is something that God has been dealing with me about. I really didn’t have the guts to say it, but then I realized, Wait a minute, that’s why he gave it to me! Because I’m supposed to have the guts to say it. I know how it works now.

Remember, the message we had on John Chapter 20… Jesus, forty days before the Day of Pentecost goes to the disciples and he breathed on them. Jesus said, Receive the Holy Ghost, and then breathed on them, forty days before Pentecost. He breathed on them. Where did that scripture come from? I mean, that messes up our whole doctrine, just like the one in Luke 1:17 where John the Baptist really got the spirit of Elijah in him, which was the Holy Ghost in him. So John the Baptist got a Holy Ghost five months before Jesus was conceived, and then we’ve got a bunch more Holy Ghosts happening. Forty days before the Day of Pentecost! Boy that throws out as false, the whole church doctrine that says that Jesus had to have been resurrected, in order for you to Born Again only after the Day of Pentecost, in order for the promise of the spirit to come, for you to get the Holy Ghost. So we have these little double-minded doctrines floating around that make us not be able to receive anything from God, and hence, we are left with just a “soulish religion”. Here’s the way I believe the system works. So quote me on the “believe” part.

Look at Genesis, Chapter 2, verse 7. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life… and (the same word in Hebrew is actually the word “also”). “And” means also. ...and man became a living soul. Here’s the way I think it works. This is definitely pre-sin, and let’s say, post-Jesus, which is really post-sin. Right? The sacrifice worked. I mean, we’ve got sin out there today, but just understand what I’m saying, especially where children are concerned. I believe God gives every baby a spirit of God. It’s the breath of life. If you read the gospel of John, In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. So here’s what I think it is. A baby is born. God gives him a spirit. From that moment on…now the spirit we know, the spirit of Christ in the Bible, contains what that spirit is for.

Judges Chapter 13 is a good example .God says, Israel is in bondage. We need a saviour. And He begins the process with Minoah, this old man and his wife, a barren couple, before they’re even thinking about having a kid. God says, This is what kind of kid you’re going to have. He doesn’t just use the church to produce a saviour. Look at Jesus. You say, “Well, He’s God”. No, that’s just the kind of spirit God gave him.

We know what kind of spirit God gave Jesus, right? John Chapters l, 2, and 3 say, Because Jesus only spoke the words of God, God gave him His spirit without measure. So, the spirit has a divine calling. What was the Spirit of Christ inside of Jesus? The angel said, Which is Christ, the Lord. He was also the spirit inside the body of the flesh, Jesus. Remember, Mary still had something to do with it. She still went through labor, and all that stuff. Part of her anatomy was in this body, Jesus. But the spirit inside him that made him alive was the spirit of the son of God. The only begotten son spirit. God so loved the world.

God is a spirit. The Bible says that Those that worship him worship him in spirit and in truth. So what kind of son could a spirit have? A spirit. What kind of son could a horse have? A horse. OK. Go to the fair, and I’ll show you how that works. There are no pigs having ducklings. Spirits have spirits, men have men. God breathes into every man born the breath of life, and then the man becomes a living soul. Your soul would be your will, your emotions, and your mind. God lays the blueprint, and He says, This is the matter of man. He said it there in Judges 13., This is the matter of man. This guy is going to be Samson. The angel says, This one is going to be Jesus. You will call his name Jesus because he will do these things. So there must be a little microchip inside the spirit with a divine program on it. It knows what to do.

What happens from the point at which you know what to do? If you and I got two different spirits, we’d develop two different souls, wouldn’t we?...two different minds, two different wills, two different sets of emotions. And spirits all about accomplishing that divine purpose. Without a spirit, you don’t get a soul. But if you read Hebrews Chapters 9 and 10, you’ll find out that it concludes in Chapter 10 with the saving of the soul. So we have a whole different salvation of the soul.

The Bible records that God promised something, through the prophet David, about Jesus. He says, I will not leave his soul in hell. But Jesus was the son of God! Yes, but he had his own will. He said, Not my will, but thine, God. So he had a different soul from the Father. But the spirit of God that produced the soul was the son of God. If you think about it, when Adam died, is was the spirit of God that left. What fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? Man sins. The Holy Ghost leaves. The Spirit of God leaves. Holy Ghost. The word “holy” is the word used 61 times in the New Testament translated to the word “saints”...the spirit for the saints, the spirit that makes you a saint, left. So Adam is just a living soul now, he’s got no spirit any more. He’s not the son of God any more. He sees himself naked. Now he’s afraid. Now he’s relying on all soulish things. Before, he walked in the spirit and did not fulfill the lusts of the flesh like Romans Chapter 8 said. Can you see? All these scriptures start making sense when you start making sense of the scriptures.

That spirit is what left. That’s the spirit that God crucified. That was the lamb slain before the foundation of the world., the spirit of the Son of God. God crucified him right there by speaking it in there. He said, There is coming a day that this spirit is going to go back into a man. I’m going to try to get him here as soon as I can. Unfortunately, there was a lot of disobedience that went on throughout the Bible, because they’ve got a lot of pages between Genesis and Jesus. So there were a lot of things that reproof and correction, and instruction in righteousness were needed for up to that time. Did I cover it?

Assistant Pastor:
That’s why God would have chosen Abraham, because he would teach and train his children in righteousness, instruct them in the ways of righteousness. That spirit that was going to be born into the son that God was going to cause Abraham to have, had a program. And every child born has that thing in him from God, designed to do what God plans for that child to do, that calling. So it’s important to God that the parents teach and instruct in righteousness, because that helps develop the soul. If the child is instructed and trained in righteousness, that program on the inside, and their spirit, their calling, will be allowed to run its course and develop, and it will be able to become what God has planned for them to become.

Pastor:
God had to call Joyce Meyer into the ministry because so many of us had souls that needed repair. But think how it would be if we automatically started out from birth walking in the spirit because we had a father, a teacher, a rabbi, whomever, teaching us in what we were supposed to do.

When I was 12 years old, I thought I was the smartest person on the earth; and I may have been. I had the biggest head. But I didn’t know who to give the glory to, and see, that’s what a father is supposed to do. He says, Oh, no no no.. You’re designed for THIS You’re not designed to be a dictator and take over a small country. You’re designed for this. Well, I didn’t know that. So what happens is this: you go off and have all these experiences, and those experiences really mess up your soul. Now you’ve got to get people like T. D. Jakes and Joyce Meyer who deal with that soul, people that have a calling to try to get you back to where you can walk in the spirit as if you’ve never sinned. When you confess your sin, First John Chapter 1, says He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness. John Chapter 3 goes on to say, If your heart condemns you not, you have confidence toward God. And whatsoever you ask, you will receive of Him because we do those things which are pleasing in his sight. But if you don’t, it’s your own heart condemning you. That’s why there are so many soul doctors today.

If you take a look at Adam and Jesus, you might say, Well, they had to have the same spirit of God in them…the spirit of the son of God. The Bible calls them both “the son of God”, and if the Bible says only begotten, then it must have been in two different bodies, in order to keep all the scriptures true. Right? Now, the differences between them are Adam was in the garden, and Jesus was in Nazareth. So this answers our “What is grace?” question. What are our gifts? Same spirit, different bodies, different age. God puts different gifts in Jesus than he puts in Adam.

Gifts, graces, the thing that saves you, are to help you in your body, with that spirit, adapt to the surroundings you are in, in whatever age you are in, and in whatever place. Did you get that? Now you can understand why some are Apostles, and some are Prophets. In a lot of churches, the focus is all just Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Well, Jesus wasn’t even the best prophet. How many of you here know that you have a spirit of God in you? Every one of you is a better prophet than Jesus, every one of you, because when asked about John the Baptist, Jesus said, There is no greater prophet born of woman than John the Baptist. Well, Jesus was born of a woman, so he included himself. But then he said, But the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he (John the Baptist). Are you going to believe Jesus’ words, or are you going to believe something that religion has taught you? I’m going to believe what Jesus said.

Question:
Going back to Genesis, Adam and Eve were the first people on the earth. Then they bore Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel. Where did Cain find his wife?

Pastor:
Ready? We have a parallel lineage that occurs in the Bible. And we have this idea that this is a chronological deal. We can actually read in Genesis Chapter 4, that Adam knew his wife Eve. Let’s just look at the time that goes by in a verse. Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. And she again bare his brother Abel. Now how fast after she bare Cain can she have Abel? If you want to talk about acceleration before the flood, fine, but there, at least, had to be a little bit of time between. I’m going to guess that it had to be at least nine months between Cain and Abel, OK?

Abel was the keeper of the sheep. How old would your child have to be before you let him keep sheep? And then he called him a “keeper of the sheep”, which means he actually kept the sheep. He didn’t just go out there and play with the sheep. So we’ve got a big span of time here. Let’s give it at least l5 years minimum. Abel was a tiller of the ground. So you’ve got his birth after Cain, he’s growing up, and that took up some more time. In the process of time, it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock..So we’ve got time going by.

Turn to Genesis Chapter 5. Let me show you a whole new deal. Genesis Chapter 5 is a totally different genealogy. It’s a genealogy of what the Old Testament calls “the sons of God”. When you are in Christ, Romans 8:14 says, Those that are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God. Which spirit? The one that God put in you. Not a spirit from outside, but the spirit of Christ in you. Are you led by the spirit that wants you to do this, Jesus? Or are you going to say, No, my own will. Those that are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God. Samson, are you going to do your own will here, or are you going to be led by the spirit of God? OK, then you’re a son of God.

In the Old Testament, God was able to squeeze one son of God through in every generation. And it gives us a good description, This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him. We’re talking about Adam; that when he was made, he was in the likeness of God. So that kind of sets up what kind of genealogy this is. Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, Now we know it’s before sin, because they were together in one body. We’re talking about a special situation here. In the day they were created. Now look here. Adam lived 130 years, and begat a son in his own likeness. after his image; a different son from Cain and Abel. He called his name Seth. And the days after Adam after he had begotten Seth were 800 years: and he begat sons and daughters: He begat innumerable sons and daughters.

If you were the ultimate man with the ultimate woman, how many kids could you have in nine hundred years? Quite a few! We’ve been able to populate Nevada with several million people in its 125 year history. So, to answer the question, where did they all come from…they were all sons and daughters that came from Adam, but there was only one in each generation that was like God. A godly man, Seth. And if you go down the list, it says, Seth lived X amount of years, and he begat lots of sons and daughters, but he only had one in his image and likeness, which was in the image of likeness of Adam the day he was created, which was in the image and likeness of God. So we have a special lineage that ends with Noah. Because truly, all the people destroyed in the flood were kin to Noah. But after such a perversion, God doesn’t look at it that way. God says, No, no no. Those that are led by the spirit of God that I gave them, they are my sons and daughters. I don’t care if you’re born out of flesh. Flesh profits nothing, It is the spirit that quickeneth. John 6:63 says. It is the spirit that quickeneth.

Question:
I’d heard about another wife that Adam had, that actually they say was the first wife. Can you tell us about that?

Pastor:
Jewish tradition calls it “Lilith”, or something like that. Well, Lilith was not in the garden, and Lilith is not in the Bible, so… No. You have to realize that at this time, there were tons of angels. All of the angels God ever created were still there, and there were all kinds of little things that spirits could say. That’s like asking, Was it a ghost, or was it a spirit, or was it a spirit of a man, or was it a spirit of God? Well, the Bible says To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. So, the only spirit or ghost you could see would be an angel. Or a fallen angel. A demon or an angel. There are a lot of those kinds of things, and you just have to draw the line and say, Nope, this is the way it was made. Because if Lilith was here today, she would have bypassed Satan in the garden, and she would have been in church today. Right? She would have had no sin if there was another woman. Anyway, it’s a Hebrew tradition, and I believe, actually, they have grabbed some things out of the Book of Isaiah, and misunderstanding prophecy, came up with their own carnal conclusion.

Turn to First Corinthians Chapter 2 to see how these things happen. Verse 7, But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: There’s “before the world”, right? The mystery was, How can verse 3:15, spoken to the devil, have anything to do with Jesus? Well, we understand it now. The lamb slain before the foundation of the world. We know about the foundation of the world. It was a mystery until God revealed the mystery. That’s why tons of churches still think God knew Adam and Eve were going to sin, I mean, if that were true, they’d have to believe that God murdered Jesus. That’s crazy! If I know that Joe’s coming over to borrow my car keys, and I know he’s taking them, but I also know he’s going to go run over someone, then I’m not giving him the car keys. And I’m not even good, compared to God. I mean, that’s just not right. And you can’t serve a God that’s not faithful and just, which is what Jesus calls him. He is faithful and just. So, sorry, Joe, no keys for you. Adam, I’m not putting you in charge of the earth if you’re going to go ahead and mess this stuff up.

These things are hidden mysteries so that the real sons of God can be led by the spirit of God, and have inside information to put them above the world. Remember, Jesus told the disciples that. He said, I can’t take you out of the world, but I can teach you to live above the evil in it. I believe that is in John 17. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, that hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit. His spirit in us.

That’s how an evangelist will know something about evangelism that I will not know. That’s how a territorial apostle- one who is sent with a ground-breaking truth for a particular territory in a particular age- will know something about his territory that I may not know. It’s not revealed to me. I’ve still got a spirit of God in me, but I am a fraction of the whole. I’m one member; a fraction of the body of Christ. So God gives me information that only my fraction gets, because I’m the one that’s supposed to get that stuff. I’ve got one pinky on this hand, and that’s it. If it doesn’t do its “pinky job”, I’m out of luck. This is the only finger I have that responds to the specific impulse from my brain to make it move. I don’t get other body parts moving at the same time like when I scratch my dog’s stomach, and his leg goes nuts. It doesn’t happen that way. When my brain sends the impulse to this pinky finger, it’s the only finger that knows to move. And that’s the way it is in the Body of Christ. It’s a body, and we are all members. So I get instructions that the rest of the body doesn’t get. But other people in the body have their own instructions. That’s the part of God in them that they are supposed to follow. God reveals it to that person about what he is supposed to do. It’s not to tell me I’m wrong. And certainly, it’s not for me to tell him that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I know what I’m talking about, and I know about what I’m doing like nobody else does, because God told me to do this. One of the things he has put in me is the ability to inaugurate callings in people. People come to me to try to get birthed as a member of the body, and I teach them how. That’s what I‘m supposed to do.

Other people like T. D. Jakes and Joyce Meyer have callings in them to repair the soul. But don’t come to me to help repair your soul, because I won’t talk real nice. People come to me whining about something they’ve done that keeps derailing them, and I can only say, “Then don’t do it any more.” That’s my whole counseling session! That’s my whole soul ability. Just don’t do it. Just say no. But T. D. Jakes or Joyce Meyer, because of what God put in them, would have a different response.

Anyway, the hidden wisdom is where God deals on a completely spiritual level, leaving everything in a mystery to protect you. That would be the same reason why safeguards are established at the bank for your checking account. It’s for your benefit. The safeguards are there to protect you. It’s not just a revolving door, I mean, Come on in and take anything you want. We’ll trust you. No, your account is protected. God has protected us, because there are enemies out there.There are principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness, wicked spirits in high places.

Question:
What does the Bible have to say regarding life existing on other planets. How do you explain the UFO sightings?

Pastor:
Let’s do it this way. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Caffeinated and decaffeinated. God lives here. There is life on other planets. So that ends this thing. There IS life on other planets. In terms of the UFO sightings, well, I just don’t know about that. I know that one UFO picked up Elijah, right? A Chariot of God came and got him. Right? A UFO could be a car you can’t recognize. I mean, you’re driving by, and wonder, What was that, Harry? It’s a UFO. An unidentified flying object. So, if you are in Rwanda, everything that flies overhead is unidentified. A coke bottle is unidentified in Rwanda. So, the answer to your question about sightings… it could be angels, it could be chariots, it could be other beings, I really don’t know. All I know is that there is life on other planets. My Father lives on another one. And he’s got a lot of angels, and apparently, we have a lot of loved ones there. Has anyone had a loved one pass on? So there is definitely more than the Father on another planet, and I’m sure they’re having a good time. They’re probably watching us on TV, laughing.

Question:
I was wondering if it could just be the signs and wonders that were prophesied to happen in order to fool people. If it’s unidentified…

Pastor:
Well, that’s exactly what the demonic government would try to do. That’s exactly what demons, principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness, and all those wicked spirits would try to do, because even satan, himself, he said, is transformed into an angel of light. An angel could probably very easily transform himself into whatever he wanted to. He could probably make himself look like a flying saucer, which would allow him to move 500’ to the right real fast, and all those other things you see on the home videos. But I don’t believe everything I see on TV. Not only do I not believe CNN, I don’t even believe a lot of the church stuff I see on TV. So it follows that I’m certainly not going to believe some video footage taken in the back of a barn in Arkansas, showing some metal disc thing. I mean, the guy’s neighbor could have been throwing a hubcap up in the air. There are tornadoes, there are a lot of things.

The key is not what’s going on, the key is that you have authority over everything that is going on. Jesus gave us the authority top use his name, and his is the name that is above every name that is named. Well, the angels have names. Remember Jesus cast the one out of the mad man of Gadera. He said, Who are you? “Legion, for we are many.” Above every name. Not “coffee pot”, not “Oldsmobile.” It’s the names of principalities. Spiritual things, the names of saints. He is a spiritual God. So it is the name of the son of God, or the name of Elijah, or the name of whatever is the top name, which includes everything below people, that he is referring to. As Hebrews Chapter 2 says, now people are restored above the angelic if they’re sons of God..

Assistant Pastor:
Here’s something to consider. If you get caught up in the wonderment of something, you’ll not be able to walk in your authority over it. If you get caught up in the wonderment of UFO’s, and you see some video tapes, you hear about abductions, and all of a sudden, maybe something like that happens to you, you’re going to be recalling all the things you saw on those video tapes, or The X-Files. You’re not going to be able to walk in the confidence that you have authority over that thing. You’re going to be wondering, Are they going to zap me?

Question:
Can you amplify on the subject of faith? To have that, you have to have the holy spirit, don’t you?

Pastor:
The reason this is interesting is because the church, as a whole, thinks that the Holy Spirit is one spirit. And really, they allude to, that the Holy Spirit is the one Jesus sent from the Father that came on the Day of Pentecost. We’ve got it from the Book of John Chapters 14,15,16 and then some in 17, where the Holy Ghost which is supposed to come, the promise of the Father, is actually the Spirit of Truth. See, that’s a totally different holy spirit. But the holy ghost…Turn to Acts Chapter 2 verse 1, And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting; And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. We’ve confused the same two things: holy ghost and the spirit. The spirit of Truth was the one that was going to lead you and guide you into all truth, speaks not of himself but of the Father, and show us things to come. Remember that in the Book of John? But the “holy ghost” the disciples received were the same type of ghosts, or spirits (pneuma in the Greek) and holy, the same word translated elsewhere as saints, that he gave to the other 120.

Turn to John 20:20, And when he had so said, he showed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. That was before the spirit of Truth came. Forty days, I believe, exactly forty days before the spirit of Truth came. So what Holy Ghost did they get? They got a spirit of Christ. They got a spirit of God to do what their calling was, at that point. That’s how they were able to make it to Jerusalem. They got the new plan.

On the Day of Pentecost, there were 120 in the Upper Room. So that leaves about another 110 holy ghosts that needed to be received, and the spirit of Truth that the Father sent on the Day of Pentecost told them how to do whatever they were doing. You cannot have the faith of God without the holy ghost in you. But that’s not the spirit of Truth. It’s the spirit of Christ in you. Do you know what Colossians 127 says? It says, Christ in you, the hope of glory. See, you don’t live where I live, so the hope of your glory is got to be a different glory than mine, so I got a different spirit of Christ for my neighborhood. And if I let that holy ghost come into me, I’m now called a Christ-ian. I have a spirit of God. All of them together make up the whole body of the whole Christ. Jesus is not the whole body of Christ, he’s just the head. He’s coming back for the body. So, he’s the head Christ.

Well, I’ve got a Christ in me, the hope of glory, and this new Christ that came in John Chapter 20, this now breathed out of the son of God, so now my Christ is no more a servant, like in the Old Testament. Look at Samson, Jephthah, Ehud, Deborah, Moses, Aaron, the holy ghost Zagat. They’re Spirits of God. That’s all they are. They’re saints. Nehemiah 9:27 calls them all saviours. They were only servants, but see, we are no more servants, but sons, and if sons, then heirs of God, and joint heirs with Jesus. So from John Chapter 20 on out, when you get a holy ghost, you don’t just have a spirit of God that’s a servant, you’ve now been melded with the son of God, so now you are a son.

So now we have these son spirits. This is what changed after the resurrection. Let’s suppose this one is called Samson, and this one is called Paul- in order to show the line between pre-Jesus, and post-Jesus. Let’s say that Samson has got a servant spirit of God in him. We know God gave it to him, man couldn’t have designed it. But this one, Paul, has a son spirit. That affects the type of faith you have. Why? Because servant faith was the same thing that Abram had, which is faith IN God. But son faith is what Jesus describes as the faith OF God. Faith IN God is God saying, Abram, get thee out of Ur, and go into a land which I tell thee. And Abram says, OK, and just obeys. The faith OF God, Jesus said, You say to that mountain be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, and it shall be done. The faith OF God speaks to things. Faith IN God just obeys God. You can’t speak to things if you’re not a son, right? You don’t have that right. But God made us sons, and our brother Jesus Christ is the first begotten from the dead, the first born among many brethren. Now are we the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when He shall appear we shall be like him.

2 Thessalonians Chapter 3. Finally, brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you: And that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men; for all men have not faith. Because wicked men don’t have spirits of God. They might have been born with them, but they lost them. Now they need to get born again to get hooked back up with God. Wicked men don’t have faith because they don’t have a spirit of God in them. They don’t have a holy ghost.

Assistant Pastor:
Here’s something that helped me with the understanding of holy ghost. The words really mean “saintly spirit”. A saint’s spirit. We have used the term “holy ghost” in the church for so long, that we just thought the holy ghost was one single thing. When you go back to the words “holy” and “ghost”, and when you translate “holy ghost”, or “saintly spirit”, the only way those words can work correctly in the scripture is for a very individual, specific thing. You couldn’t say it was the “holy ghost” and just have it be like everyone had the same holy ghost. Because it was specific individual thing when it said saintly spirit. It was always a very singular thing for an individual. Every one of those “holy ghosts” had specific names and callings. And another one for another individual. And the old thinking messes us up. We’ve got the spirit of truth, spirit of love, spirit of a sound mind, and those are three spirits right there. Those are all holy, aren’t they?

Pastor:
And in Ephesians, we see the Spirit of wisdom and revelation and knowledge, elsewhere the Spirit of grace; Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty That’s yet a different one. But the holy ghosts are the ones who have names, the ones who have callings. It turned this guy named Saul into Paul. Paul was the name of the spirit. The spirit of Paul got into this body named Saul, and he changed. There was a spirit named Abraham which had a divine plan. The name Abraham meant “father of many nations”. Well, as soon as it got into Abram, his name changed because he changed. He became what his name was.

Sadly, we have examples like Solomon, who didn’t get a name change. David named him Solomon the day he was born. On the day he was born, God also named him, but he didn’t go by that name, which was “Jedadiah”, or beloved of God. With every holy ghost, there is a name that corresponds to it. That’s how you know how to walk in your calling. Who, really, are you? For John the Baptist, You call his name John, but Luke 1:17 says that the spirit in this John is Elijah. That’s what it says! Did we get that? The Faith of God is actually coming from that spirit of God in you. If someone doesn’t have faith, chances are, they’ll need to get born again. You’ll need to show them the kingdom of God, and how it works. Once they get it, God trusts them, and puts a spirit in them. That’s how you are born again.

Question:
To continue on the subject of the spirit, and on the blaspheming of the holy spirit… Could that be when you grieve the spirit and you’ve sinned, and you lose that spirit of God that you were born with, and then never get into your calling. Therefore, you could never be forgiven, because you never did what God planned for that spirit in the first place?

Pastor:
The unpardonable sin is blasphemy of the holy ghost. I Cor. 6 says, Know ye not that you have the holy ghost, which is in you, that you are not your own but bought with a price? Romans Chapter 12 says to make your body a living sacrifice. I was looking here in Ephesians 4:30, which says, Grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption.

First thing: if you have passed your age of accountability, and the Spirit of God you were born with has left, you’ll need to get born again to get another one. If you get born again, and get another spirit, well, you’re sealed until the day of redemption, or rather, when your body dies. The only unpardonable sin is this: gifts, graces, and the calling (singular) of God are without repentance. The only sin a person cannot be forgiven from is NOT walking in their calling. I don’t care if you’ve only got five minutes of air left, you need to get with God and say, God, what am I supposed to do now? Because that will free you before it’s too late. That will free you before you don’t have the authority to say, I want to walk in my spirit. That would be blasphemy of the holy ghost if you don’t.

Here’s what I found out about “sealed unto the day of redemption”. Now, it makes certain verses seem OK. Remember Hymenaeus and Alexander? Alexander was a coppersmith that did Paul wrong. Paul says, I have turned him and Hymenaeus over to satan for the destruction of their flesh, that they learn not to blaspheme. Do you know what that means? Well, let me show you. Let’s call this the whole body of Christ. And we’ll just pie slice the pieces of the body. Ephesians says it’s the whole body fitly framed together by that which every joint supplies. Well, apparently, there was a holy ghost in this guy named Hymenaeus. There was a holy ghost in this guy named Alexander. But they did Paul evil. They didn’t do what he needed, they rebelled against the holy ghost put in them, which would have been the calling of the church, where there are apostles, prophets evangelists, pastors, teachers, helpers, etc., for the work of the ministry, till we all (all the ghosts) come together in the unity of faith. So Paul had to say, OK. We can’t get the body of Christ together while those two key holy ghosts are still in those bodies. So he turns them over to satan to see to it that those bodies die so that the spirits can go back up to God. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and God can get them into new bodies. It seems really spooky, but that’s the way the Bible reads. Ananias and Sapphira - now we have a situation where these two lied against the Holy Ghost and died in church. But it brings up another subject.

We find that Simon-Peter, a couple of chapters earlier in the Book of Acts, is choosing to raise Tabitha from the dead at Joppa. But Peter is choosing to keep Ananias and Sapphira dead when they held back from the offering God said to give. He said, No, these aren’t the kind of people that should be carrying around the Holy Ghost. They’re supposed to make their bodies a living sacrifice, holy, saints, unto God, which is your reasonable service. So certainly, they lied against the Holy Ghost. They rebelled against what that spirit of God was saying to do. God said, “You are supposed to give $100,000”, and they gave $50.00. And Peter had a choice. And that came in John Chapter 20. That was the right or privilege of a son of God. Jesus said that in John, I think, Chapter 8, The Father judges no man but has given up all judgment over to the son. He has given all judgment over to the son. Well, Jesus gave it to all the rest of the sons. The same verse we read in John Chapter 20, where he breathed on them, said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost whosesoever sins you remit, they are remitted, but whosesoever sins you retain, they are retained. Now, the differences between them are Adam is in the garden, Jesus is in Nazareth. So this answers our “what is grace?

This is the right of Righteous judgment, just like Jesus had. But if someone is not walking in their Christ, they do not have that right and are judged themselves. The master plan is not about Ananias and Sapphira keeping the money and building an addition on their house, and buying new furniture. The key to the plan is getting the body of Christ together first so that Jesus can come to fill his spot as head Christ, and then you’ve got Vicki, you’ve got Tiger and Jenny, and Ron, and on down the list, all the Christs. These guys have all got to get together for the Father to be able to come back, like Ephesians says, and dwell in his temple. That’s the plan.

I freaked out these ministers that came to preach from another church. One was was talking about the last 25 years of his ministry where he got to see the dead raised once, and got to experience some moves of God, like in 1982. I recounted to him just the prior week at the Faith Center where we healed deaf ears, blind eyes, tuberculosis, multiple sclerosis, had the dead raised. I mean, we had a good week. Well, if that kind of power is working at our hands in that area, the same kind of power that watched Ananias and Sapphira lie against the Holy Ghost and die in church, is also there. So it’s time, and that’s why God has been giving us the kind of reproof he has. He’s saying, You’d better just give in, because judgment has come to the household of God. It’s a good judgment. God will just send that spirit in a different body. That soul will probably still go on to heaven, work on the outside of the city gates for a long time, They’ll be in a classroom, some four year old will be teaching them how to live by faith.

Assistant Pastor:
I’m lead, actually, to close with Mark 4. I. I’m not going to read the whole thing, but I encourage you to read through the entire chapter when you get home. I was led to do this because I want you to make sure you don’t fall into one of these categories where the Word bears no fruit. We’re going to glorify God by bearing fruit. Verse 14, The sower soweth the word. And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts. And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground; who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness; If you have received it with gladness, great! Don’t let go. And have no root in themselves, If you have no root in yourself, but you are starting to get it, go to the Word and build some roots. If you are not real familiar with these things, but you’re getting it, you’re receiving it with gladness, make sure you go get some root in yourself so that you don’t lose any of this. And have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time: afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word’s sake, immediately they are offended. You don’t know much about this, but you go talk to your other Christian friends, and they say, Well, that’s not right, and this and that, and Doctor so- and-so said that, all of a sudden affliction or persecution ariseth for the word’s sake, immediately they are offended. Don’t be offended.

Go through this when you get home. See to it that you don’t fall into one of these categories that causes the Word to bear no fruit. We’ve talked about this before. As the spirit of God is revealing these things to us, as the spirit of Truth is showing us these things, sometimes it goes against what we have heard before. You’ve got to dig old things up, correct things, and make adjustments. We’ve got to go from faith to faith, and glory to glory. We’ve got to continue to increase. And that means making adjustments. So if it seems to go against something we’ve heard before, or we’ve thought that’s the way it was, make sure you go to the Word. Find out what God says about it. Don’t ask your friend what he thinks. Go to the Word. Go to God. Go to prayer, and find out, and confirm it in your heart with God, and no one else. Don’t reason together with your buddies. Come let us reason together saith the Lord. Reason with God. Don’t ask your friends what they think about it, because if you do, you’ll end up getting persecuted for the Word’s sake, and you’ll not bear the fruit you should. Read Mark 4. Know the things that cause the Word to not bear fruit. Make sure you don’t fall into that category. Always go to God and find out what He says about it.

Let’s close in prayer.

Fact or Fable?

The Las Vegas Faith Center
Message from Sunday, June 27, 1999

“Fact or Fable?”
by Tiger Todd
(EDITED VERSION)

Yes, it’s the Las Vegas Faith Center game show, featuring your host, Pastor Tiger Todd. Today’s game show, “Fact or Fable”, happens to be the title of today’s message. There are lots of things we know in the Bible as either fact or fable, but just as we’ll find in today’s game show, being out in the world means we need to be thinking on our feet. We need to find out whether or not we can get the right answer when we’re in the midst of a trial or a pressure.

There are two bonuses to this game show/message. First of all, you’ll find out the truth about some facts/fables from scripture. Secondly, you’ll be pressured into getting the right answer while everyone is watching you….just like being out there in the world…What do I do?...What do I do?....What do I do???? We’ll get into what DO I do, plus become aware of looking out for possible hidden agendas. Yes, there could be some trick questions. I know that people used to try to justify what they were doing by using some pat scripture. At the time, I thought it was a scripture because I didn’t know my Bible, but as we learn more from our Bible, we find out… Wait, that just ain’t in there!

Turn to Second Peter 1:16. I want to read a critical scripture here. For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, One of the things about being a Christian, going out into all the world and preaching the gospel to every creature, laying hands on the sick, and doing all the other things we are called to do, is that you don’t always know the difference between the truth and what might be a cunningly devised fable.

When we have made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ…I don’t have trouble with people in the world, but people in the ministry sometimes have trouble with the way I operate in the personal calling that God has given me. The difference between a cunningly devised fable and the truth is, you manifest power in the truth. If I do a little dance and sing a Sinatra song, and you get healed of cancer, you might enjoy the song and dance, but it’s the power we’re after. I would rather have you be healed of cancer and maybe leave you wondering about how I approached the gospel…maybe I wasn’t reverent enough, vs. being reverent for 30 years and you still be sick and die. We need to follow the signs and wonders associated with the power, because they are the proof that what we do works.

For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father… I’m giving you the training here, and I want to make sure you get the right answers on all these things. All good things come from the Father, James Chapter l says. So the difference between the truth and a cunningly devised fable is, one came from the Father, and the other came from men. This is one more reason why we do this. You’re supposed to get so stirred up that you just dive into your Bibles to find out exactly what it really does say. Second Timothy 2:15 says, Study to show yourself approved, a doer of the work, a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Doctor Craig, a pastor in Phoenix, says, “Just eat the meat and spit out the bones”. If you are listening to a message, to something that you are concerned may be a cunningly devised fable, just take it in joyfully, receive all the Word you can, and then go home, get your Bible out, and study to show exactly what was the truth, or not the truth. It may all be the truth, or only 10% truth. Because everyone, everywhere, preaching everything has to have some truth to it, or no one would listen. You have to have a little truth to make a lie work.

Fables can be deceptive, just like some of my college tests were. I used to “over think” on my physics exams. Is it oxygen or nitrogen? What does he really mean by that? He probably just meant what he said. I was thinking it might just be a trick question. But if you knew a lot about oxygen, you’d be the one who got the right answer. If the teacher marked you wrong, you could go back to the teacher, and say, “No. Sir. Here’s the book, and this is exactly what the answer really is”. You should never be ashamed to do that, because all the information is supposed to come from the Father. Don’t be afraid to go to a man and say, “No, this is what the Father said, Mister, or Pastor, or Doctor so-and-so”.

For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount. We have also a more sure word of prophecy; We have a “more sure word” than the one God spoke out loud about Jesus that the disciples heard. How could they be any more sure if God said,“I like the Faith Center”. How could it be a more sure word than that? Well, the Bible says that it is. And we have to listen to what the Bible says the Bible is, not what we think the Bible is, based upon what someone else said. whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the first dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture (the more sure word) is of any private interpretation.

That just means that if you find out something in the Bible, it’s not yours until it’s yours….until you find it out. I cannot do your understanding for you. You must understand for yourself. I can teach you, but every hearer of the gospel still needs to go home, take their Word, and understand it for themselves. Otherwise, it would be like cramming for a test, passing it, but two days later, not having any idea what the answers were because you didn’t really understand it yet. The person giving the test understood it. But you didn’t really understand it the day you passed. The object of the Bible is to get a more sure word, one that is down inside you, a living word that you can now take to the bank every time a situation comes up. That’s your word for you. God will never leave you, nor forsake you.

Are we ready to begin the game show?

Alpha team on my right, Omega team on my left. Every question is worth ten points. We’ll teach the truth about each fact or fable question. Please choose a spokesman for each team to corporately speak for your team.

We’ll begin with the Alpha team.

Fact or fable: God knows everything.
Alpha: It is a fable.
Yes! It might come as a surprise to you, but there are a lot of things that the Bible says God does not know. God doesn’t look on a lot of things. God is a spirit, not flesh, and He has different channels of operation. How many of you guys walked in the flesh and not in the spirit? Well, when you walked in the flesh, you didn’t think the same as when you walked in the spirit. So we’ve got different avenues of operation where God just does not go.

I want to show you a couple of really interesting things. One appears in Genesis Chapter 3, where Adam and his wife succumbed to eating the fruit in the garden. Verse 7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? There it is! Was God being sarcastic, facetious, all the things that walking in the flesh people do. God doesn’t play those games.

Let me give you more information on “God sees everything/knows everything”. God sees certain things. There are certain ways where you could be somewhere and be seen, but there are also certain ways where you could not be seen. We have parables throughout the New Testament, like the Prodigal Son. Did you ever stop to think in the Prodigal Son story that the Father was a parallel for God? Well, where was the Father when the other guy was in all the pig slop and when the son ran away and did all that stuff? He was staying right where he was, waiting for his son to return. He had no idea where his son took off to, and he didn’t follow his son everywhere through the pig slop, and through all the other stuff. He waited, with open arms, for his son to return. God does not follow people in and out of their stuff. He does, however, hear when people cry on the name of the Lord.

Here’s another one. Job Chapter 38. This is one of the coolest stories in the Bible, because Job is another one of those fable books. Just because Job said it doesn’t mean it’s the truth. It just means that Job said it. I mean, just because I said something, it doesn’t mean it’s the truth. You’ve got to find out whether God really said what I said. In Job Chapter 35, the prophet Elihu is continuing his prophesying about what God can and cannot do about how wronged Job was for 30 chapters. He’s just beating up Job verbally, and can’t resist the urge to let everything go.

An interesting thing happens in Chapter 38. Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind. This is the first time God speaks since Chapter 1 of the entire Book of Job. Elihu says, All of your words, Job, are without wisdom. And the prophet Elihu continues his statement, kind of like people talking outside about God, and I walk in and say, “Now wait, I’ve got to straighten this out because you guys are going too far in this direction”. When I get done speaking, then God speaks and says, What is this I hear? So one of the interesting things about God is, He rarely hears just regular people talk. That’s good, because most of us would be dead from idle words if He did. But when the prophet spoke, that’s when God heard about the situation. God has very selective hearing. Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? He got that from Elihu saying, Your words are without knowledge. And God says, Who’s this I hear about? This couldn’t be Job!

One of the things that we have to realize about God, something that keeps him honest, is, He always expects you to win. He is the ultimate, the perfect Father. If he sends you out… “go this way, do this, that, and the other”, He’ll gives you the provision to do it, He says, I’ll supply your needs according to my riches and glory by Jesus Christ, Manager, I’ll get you everything you need, and I expect you to succeed. God just expects you to succeed.

Bosses that expect their employees to succeed don’t follow them around all day, do they? Parents that expect their kids to go to school when they get on the bus don’t follow them around, do they? Only parents that don’t expect them to succeed will follow them. Well, expectation is faith. And God is the first person mentioned in the “Faith Hall of Fame” in Hebrews Chapter 11. God is faithful and just, and therefore, doesn’t see everything because He fully expects His children to do exactly what He asked them to. He expects them to do what they said they would do, that He provided for them in order to do. Got it? Ten points for the Alpha team.

Omega team, ready for your question?

Fact or fable: Jesus is not the only begotten son of God.
Fact. He is not the only begotten son of God. Turn to Romans Chapter 8. If the statement had been, he WAS the only, that would have been true. Jesus WAS the only begotten son. But look at Romans Chapter 8. You could never be a part of the family of God if Jesus could be the only son. There’s no way. Verse 29 says, For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Ten points to the Omega team.

In fact, Chapter 8 goes on to say that those that are the sons of God are those that are led by the spirit of God. Well, we know to become a son, at least to get started as a son, is to be born again. That gets you a spirit of God in you that is a son. So to be led by that spirit, God then considers you his sons and daughters.

Alpha team, it’s your turn.

Fact or fable: Jesus and John the Baptist’s mothers were cousins.
It’s a fact. Luke Chapter 1. verse 30 says, The angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.

This is another good scripture. It shows that Mary was an old woman. Yow! We’ve got a lot of fables being dispelled in just one scripture. We know from Elisabeth here, the angel came to Zacharias first. Verse 7 of Luke Chapter 1 says, And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was barren, and they both were now well stricken in years.
Anyway, the fable has been dispelled, and we’re on to the next one. It’s all in the Bible. I hope it’s in your Bible too.

Fact or fable: No one knows what God has in store for those that wait upon Him, or for Him.
It is a fable.
Let me show you the interesting thing about this. I used to be so tough on people that were “Bible wrong”...kind of like, Yesterday I didn’t know it, but today I do. I used to be that way. But this one is kind of insidious. You’ll see exactly how this one works, and how a lot of things in the Bible do. Certainly, you’ll see scriptures in the Bible where Jesus was the only begotten son, but then a new day came, And other people were born again, born of God. Times changed.

Turn to Isaiah Chapter 64. You’ll see where this began, and how long ago this fable started. In Luke Chapter 4, Jesus stood up in the synagogue and read, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor”
The scroll Jesus opened was Isaiah 61, so you know it was only a matter of days before they unrolled Isaiah 64 to read it in church. Isaiah 64 verse 4, says, For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him. Initially, it looks like a fact, BUT the Bible says, “out of the mouth of two or three witnesses let every word be established”. The establishing scripture is in First Corinthians Chapter 2. This is how you have to do this at home. Well, this says this, but let’s find a secondary witness and at least modify, or get the whole truth, not just one statement. We’ve got some funny ones coming. I got kicked out of churches for these. Chapter 2 verse 9, But as it is written (Jesus is quoting Isaiah 64) Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God has revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. The more complete statement is, you’re not gonna get the truths from God with your natural eyes or your natural ears. You’ll get it from the inside out, is really more accurate. It doesn’t say you can’t get it, it says that a natural man can’t get it, but a spiritual man ought to be able to get everything from God. God has not tried to keep the Bible from us. Otherwise, why even write it? When I don’t want someone to know something, I just don’t tell them about it.

Fact or fable: Angel hair is another name for capellini.
It’s a fact. They must have arrived at that answer spiritually, because they’ve never eaten it.

Fact or fable: Jesus’ father’s family name was Christ.
It is a fact. I’ll tell you why. We were just in Romans Chapter 8. Who was Jesus’ father? God. Now what does Romans Chapter 8 say, But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. For as many as are lead by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

This question was initially worded as “Jesus’ last name was Christ”, and as I started reading and started learning more, IT IS! I’ve heard Creflo Dollar say that Jesus’ last name was Am. Jesus comes from the Am family, God says, “I Am”, so Jesus Am, and we Am, and yes, that was a trick question. No points this round, but we have some lovely parting gifts for you.

Fact or fable: Jesus had a brother named Judas.
It is a fact. There are a couple of places that mention this, but turn to Matthew Chapter 13. Why did I include this question? It had nothing to do with Mary having a family, which was her reward, similar to the reward Hannah got. Hannah was barren, but when she prayed for a son and got one, she gave up her first son to God. God rewarded her. You’d take away God’s reward if Mary and Joseph didn’t get to have a family. The point is, the name Judas has gotten a bum wrap. What if I wanted to name my son Judas? Would you all say, “Ooh, stay away from Judas. Don’t play with Judas”. Judas was a good name. Did you see Ben Hur? What was his first name? It was Judah Ben Hur, which also translates as Judas.

So Judas was part of the natural family of Mary and Joseph, They weren’t particularly happy with Jesus at the time, because they didn’t know what he was doing. Verse 53 of Matthew Chapter 13, And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these parables, he departed thence. And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works? Well, we know he got that from God the Father. Second Peter reads, Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?

Fact or fable: You should never give to get.
It is a fable. I know you’re wrestling with that one. How many of you have heard people say, “You can’t give to get!” Don’t you give 40 hours of your time at work to get a paycheck? Do you expect your kids to come back to you after you’ve given so many years for them? You’ve got to give to get. God commands this. Look at Hebrews 11: 6. This is how faith works. It says, But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is (and inferred,) must believe that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

Here’s another interesting scripture about God: Matthew Chapter 25. This one came to mind last night after I had written down all my scriptures for today, and then God said, Do you want me to answer that question? I said, Yes Sir! So, Matthew Chapter 25, verse 14. For the kingdom of heaven is as a man traveling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey. Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents. And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money. After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them. Lets jump to verse 24, Now he that had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou has not strawed: And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine. He gave him just the single talent after all that time. If you keep reading here, it says that the lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, We have a stewardship of giving to get.

I heard Jerry Savelle was accused of… “You guys (faith preachers) just give all that money away so you can get more money”. Hello!!! The farmer is putting all that seed out so he can get more seed in return. And people think that’s just not right? No, you are wicked and slothful if you aren’t a good steward in that way. That’s why you do things, right, to get back? That’s the way it’s supposed to be. It is the faith of God. We are supposed to exercise our faith, get good at it, then better at it; not so we can keep it. That’s really the problem with the accusation of “You shouldn’t give to get”. The fact is, you shouldn’t keep what you get. Here’s the truth. You live off some of what you get, and you can give some away. You can help out a family that doesn’t have any, but you need to get all you can in order to help all the people you can.

Fact or fable: The word “Emmanuel” means “God is with us”?
It is a fact. Isaiah 7:14 is the first prophecy of Emmanuel. Matthew 1:23 spells out that Emmanuel ( spelled Immanuel in the Old Testament) means “God is with us”. That is the deeper revelation of the spirit of God now being in a man. So yes, God is with us.

Fact or Fable: God only helps those that help themselves.
I hated this fable the most, because I actually believed it. Let’s just teach on this one: You will not find that saying in the Bible. In fact you will find two variations on the converse of that in the Bible. One is, God helps those who cannot help themselves, and he only helps those who don’t help themselves.

When I think about “don’t” part, I think about the Apostle Paul. There was the thorn in the flesh, the messenger of satan sent to buffet him. He was bombarded with care about the church; about how his churches was doing. Mark 4 speaks of those that were sown among thorns. Jesus said that the thorns represented the cares of this world. It didn’t represent cancer or heart failure. It represented the cares of this world. Paul had trouble with the Corinthian church. They were being dumber than most of the heathens. So after going to God with the “Why haven’t you done something” routine, God finally says, “Hey, my grace (or gifts- the same word charis in the Greek), the gifts I put in you are sufficient to handle this care. Let what I have put in you rise up until it gets outside of you, and it will fix whatever is wrong with the church at Corinth. In effect, that was the solution.

If God says, “Be willing and obedient, and just do what I say”, then don’t do His part. A lot of people get busy trying to do everyone else’s part, but then don’t do what they’re supposed to do. They are simple instructions. So when I said “don’t”, I don’t mean lazy, or slothful. The scripture says He helps those that can’t help themselves. Look at the example of Ninevah, when God sent Jonah. The Ninevites didn’t know they were in the tremendous sin they were in that would cause God to wipe out their whole nation. God sent a prophet to tell them; and in doing so, helped those who couldn’t help themselves.

God did the same thing early on in the Old Testament. He said before there was law, there was no sin. Sin was rampant, but they weren’t being judged on it. So God gave them a law whereby they could know what was right and wrong, so that the wages of sin would not kill them all. God, in that case, was helping those who couldn’t help themselves. In the case of the Apostle Paul, or someone else at the level of a saint, He helps those who don’t get in the way and try to do God’s part. He helps those who don’t help themselves; those who stay out of the way. Are you with me?

Fact or Fable: What Satan meant for evil, God will turn into a blessing.
Sadly for the omega team, it is a fable, and I’ll tell you why. This is the one that got my heart broken regarding God, and then also got me booted out of a church. They showed me the scripture that said it was a fact. Please turn to Deuteronomy Chapter 23. This scripture was hard to hear, because I just knew God could be like they were saying He was. Again, I was judging what I knew to be the truth by the power in my life. We were healing the sick and raising the dead from our stereo store, but then this confrontational pastor says, “God’s not that way!” What God told me when his church was praying, “We know what Satan meant as a curse, or what he meant for evil, God will turn into a blessing.”, that He couldn’t do that! So I believed God. But when this church showed me that scripture, remember, “a more sure word of prophecy”, then I was stabbed in the heart. I couldn’t believe it. So let’s look in Deuteronomy 23 verse 5, Nevertheless the Lord thy God would not hearken unto Balaam; but the Lord thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee, because the Lord thy God loved thee. Well, there it is. I saw the scripture, and was heartbroken. I thought, God, you couldn’t be this way. You couldn’t do this. He didn’t answer, and I spent the entire night just diving into scripture after scripture after scripture. I found 50 scriptures to prove I was right, when you only need two or three. But I found fifty other scriptures to prove that what God had told me was the truth, and not what that church said from the Bible was not.

Let me show you how insidious this was. The word I used was “satan”. The other tricky word is “curse”, because there are two things that can bring harm on you. (l) By opening the door to satan, it allows demonic possession, or whatever, which will cause cancer and all those other things, and (2) disobedience, which causes the curse of the law. Deuteronomy 28, verses 15 and on, talks about everything from emerods- ouch- and all this bad stuff to come on you from the curse. But here is the situation with that out-of-context scripture they were using, and the man they were praying for who then quickly died of cancer. They sneered at me not to go heal the guy. I was just gonna go. I wasn’t all holy, I just knew healing worked because God said it did. We were praying over this man who had cancer, and I said, I’ll just go pray for him, and they said, “Who do you think you are?!” It didn’t matter much who I was, even the week before when we got new kidneys for a different person in the church. But they threw that scripture in there to justify their inability to have faith for deliverance. But it was not Satan who cursed, but a man named Balaam in this verse.

Balaam was a prophet of God, and here’s where this verse is true and not true. God cannot take cancer and turn it into anything good. IF the scripture was true, Jesus would have done that. What Jesus did is cast out unclean spirits, cast out devils. Then, when they returned and followed him, they were made whole. There was healing, but first, something else had to be kicked out. The prayer of faith in Matthew Chapter 11 says, First, say unto the mountain, be thou removed. Don’t try to turn the mountain into a blessing. “We’ll just live here. It’s a nice mountain.” No, it says, get rid of the mountain, let it be cast into the sea. Then, it says, call in what you desire in place of it. You’re not turning it into anything, you’re ejecting it. In this case, we’re talking about a man, a situation, a circumstance. Balaam was paid by other people to speak against the children of Israel. So here we have a circumstance. But because the King James Bible uses the word “curse”, we tend to equate it with Deuteronomy Chapter 28, the curse of the law.

We get this in our thinking, so it can be deceiving when we say, “Well, God will move. This will be to the glory of God.” But so-and-so dying of cancer last week was not to the glory of God. Why didn’t God turn that into a blessing? Because He can’t, and unfortunately, the guy probably didn’t get healed because a lot of Christians were praying that he could. Again, we need to get accurate in order to make our prayers work. We need to rightly divide the word of truth. First eject the cancer, then minister life into the body, and they’ll get healed every time. Every time.

Here’s what happened. I mean no disrespect to young girls with kids and no husbands, but I had a dozen of them in my singles ministry at this church I went to at the time. It was very funny, because they were kicking me out over this one scripture, verse 5, and not seeing the whole context of the Bible, and how God works. I finally said, “Well, I’d better read the whole context of this thing”. I started reading from the beginning. You guys want a good laugh?

Let’s read from verse 1 of Deuteronomy Chapter 23. He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord. Ooh, that’s gonna leave a mark! That would alienate a few people from the church of Jesus Christ today,

Now look at the second verse. A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord. Hey, if this church is gonna stick to the letter of the law and challenge me over a man’s life over verse 5, they’d better start practicing what they preach in verse 2. But we know that God is not trying to eliminate kids without parents, or vice versa. We’re trying to rightly divide the word of truth. This might seem ridiculous, but that’s what happens when you just take one scripture out of context and try to initiate law by it.

Look at the tragedies that causes, when what we’re trying to do is get the father’s into church. But we’re not going to do it by protecting one half of the congregation with one verse, and then alienating and speaking against the other half with another verse. We need to all come together in the unity of faith in God for the sake of the kids, and for the Moms that have to act as both parents. Let’s make the gospel work instead of just using it against who we want to use it against.

Fact or fable: Herod the Great beheaded John the Baptist.
It is a fable. King Herod beheaded John the Baptist. He had his head cut off, but it wasn’t Herod the Great who ordered it, it was his son, Herod the King. Herod the Great died shortly after Jesus was born. Herod the Great was one of the most incredible builders of all time. He was also the sicko that had all the children from 0-2 years old in the region killed trying to kill this one called the “King of the Jews”. It was his son who watched his brother Phillip’s daughter, Herodius, dance, and she said, Give me John the Baptist’s head.

Well, you guys have done great. Did anyone learn anything?

Experience as a Teacher

“Experience as a Teacher”  by Tiger Todd

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge - myth is more potent than history - dreams are more powerful than facts - hope always triumphs over experience - laughter is the cure for grief - love is stronger than death” - Robert Fulghum Author of “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”

On to the Myths!

I love the film, “Forrest Gump.” It is the story about a mentally and physically disabled boy trying to make sense of the ever-changing world around him. His mental and physical disabilities, however, are eclipsed by his unerring obedience to the instructions of those he comes in contact with, ultimately changing him into a famous athlete, war hero, and millionaire. Forrest would often quote his momma, played by Sally Field, and the bits of wisdom she had gathered from her difficult life. When being called “stupid” by boys from school, for instance, Forrest would simply counter with, “Momma always says that stupid is as stupid does.” Another unforgettable quote regarding the seemingly random experiences of life, was, “Momma always says that life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you might get.”

A man in my class for homeless and displaced men the other night- just in case you didn’t know, I’m the teacher- asked me about the saying, “Stupid is as stupid does,” and why I didn’t think it was a true statement. I replied, “For one thing, because that’s what Forrest’s momma said!” It would be silly to simply take a “slogan” from Forrest’s momma- or ours, for that matter- and treat it as gospel without some further investigation.

And I did investigate! A few years ago my research found that the word we derived “stupid” from in our English language- and translated into the word “fool” and “foolish” in the New Testament- actually comes from the Greek word moros. I realize that this looks a lot like the English word moron, but when Greek people hear the word moros, what they really hear is the word heedless. In other words, “stupid” doesn’t mean “mentally handicapped” in the way those mean kids were using it against Forrest Gump. “Stupid” literally means that we knew the right things to do, but we chose not to them. “Stupid” is literally the opposite of obedient.

“If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.” Isaiah 1:19

Whether it was Jenny saying, “Run Forrest, run!” or Lt. Dan telling him that he should go to church and pray, Forrest Gump simply replied, “O.K.,” and then did exactly what they told him to do. By definition, Forrest was never heedless, a.k.a. “stupid.” If fact, I believe that the story of Forrest Gump was expressly written to illustrate how that even if you or I are lacking in mental ability, the habit of being willing and obedient to the words of those smarter than can insulate us from the pain and suffering that results from foolishness, heedlessness, and stupidity.

“And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not (heedless, a.k.a. stupid), shall be likened unto a foolish man (moros), which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.” - Matthew 7:24-27

I have been stupid, many more times than I care to remember. Since I discovered that being stupid was completely up to me, I decided not to be stupid ever again. I am still working on it:)

Another film, somewhat more offbeat than Gump, yet with an equally insightful message, is the Adam Sandler comedy, The Waterboy. Here Sandler plays 32-year-old stay-at-home-son Bobby Boucher, raised in the Bayou of Louisiana by “Mama” and her pet Jackass. More a sociology film than the psychology-based Gump, the Waterboyillustrates how Bobby Boucher’s limited access to an education outside of his home, a shotgun shanty on the bayou, has kept him from his becoming who he was born to be. Mama’s wisdom plays a role in this film as well, and is adamantly defended by Bobby Boucher. In one instance, after Bobby has entered college upon being coaxed by Coach Klein- played by Henry Winkler- he is asked by one of his professors “why alligators are so mean.” Bobby’s reply? “Momma says that alligators are so mean ‘cause they got all those teeth and no toothbrush.” And who can forget this exchange: BOBBY: “Mama, when did Ben Franklin invent electricity?” MAMA: “That’s nonsense. I invented electricity. Ben Franklin is the devil!” And according to the wisdom of Bobby’s mama, so were football, Vickie Vallencourt, and Dick Clark!

I realize that I may be one of the few Bible teachers recommending movies like The Waterboy to help people understand deeper concepts to the universe. Many sweet people tend to be afraid of language, sexual situations, and the world in general, and so they tend to take themselves as far away from these things as they possible can. That of course is their right and for that commitment, they have my utmost respect.

My belief, however, is closer to that of Robert Fulghum’s- also a Minster and author- written in the opening quote: “Myth is more potent than history- dreams are more powerful than facts.” I’m also something of a realistic Bible scholar. I don’t believe in only sending our children to “sheep school.” I, like Jesus, believe in sending them to “serpent school” as well:

“Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” Matthew 10:16

If we only study the lives of sheep, we’ll be as the scriptures warn, lambs to the slaughter. We have, however, been called to be more than conquerors.

“Experience is the best teacher.”

How about some wisdom from stories more like our own lives? Who has heard the phrase, “Experience is the best teacher?” Hearing it again the other night in my class of homeless men, and seeing to what lengths these men would go to defend this popular slogan, demanded that I investigate this one as well. You see, it’s not that I don’t have respect for the 14,000-plus homeless men I have worked with over the past 9 years. It’s certainly not that I don’t have great compassion for them or I certainly would not have spent all these years helping them, and at my own expense. It’s just that if they are as physically complete as you and me, and yet are homeless, I have to accept the possibility that what they believe could be a large part of the reason why they are in their present condition! I use this same twisted wisdom in elections when deciding which candidates to vote for. I go to the people I know and love, but who always seem to be victims of something or someone else, or that don’t take responsibility for their own lives and actions, and I ask them who they are voting for. Then I vote, just the opposite. I know it might seem naïve, but I want elected officials who are responsible and who want to help others become more responsible.

      So when a homeless man- one who had borrowed for a home but was not responsible over it, produced 4 children but is not taking care of them, and had a good job but was not responsible to his employer or over his paycheck, which he later cashed to buy drugs so that he could forget the prior experiences- tells me that “experience is the best teacher,” I can no longer use this phrase myself without concern for my own future and the futures of those I am sent to teach.

Where did “Experience is the Best Teacher” originate?

Here is some historical data from a thesis I recently read on the Subject:

EXPERIENCE IS THE BEST TEACHER - “The great Roman leader Julius Caesar recorded the earliest known version of this proverb, ‘Experience is the teacher of all things,’ in ‘De Bello Civili’ (c. 52 B.C.). Over a century later, the Roman author Pliny the Elder in ‘Naturalis Historia’ (A.D. 77) wrote, ‘Experience is the most efficient teacher of all things,’ and the Roman historian Tacitus said simply, ‘Experience teaches,’ in his ‘Histories’ (c. 209). The earliest English rendering appeared in 1539 as ‘Experience is mother of prudence,’ which was included in Richard Taverner’s ‘Proverbes or Adagies.’ The exact wording, ‘Experience is the best teacher,’ appeared in the ‘Widow Bedott Papers’ (1856) by Frances M. Whitcher.” From “Wise Words and Wives’ Tales: The Origins, Meanings and Time-Honored Wisdom of Proverbs and Folk Sayings Olde and New” by Stuart Flexner and Doris Flexner (Avon Books, New York, 1993). Another source gives the meaning and a later date for the first English rendering: “One learns more from experience than from books.” The proverb has been traced back to ‘The Schoolmaster’ (1568) by Roger Ascham and comes from the L*tin phrase ‘experiential docent’ meaning ‘experience teaches.’ Water Scott (1854-1900), however, disagrees with the proverb, saying that ‘experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.’ From “Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings” by Gregory Y. Titelman (Random House, New York, 1996).

Meanwhile, back the Classroom…

In my class of homeless men that night, I began by writing, “Experience is the best teacher” on the whiteboard. Then I shared my belief that if “Experience” was indeed the best teacher, it would be spelled “T-E-A-C-H-E-R!” As I continued on the subject of “neural connections” in patients with early childhood traumas, one man started shaking his head and finally burst-out with, “I have to disagree- you can’t tell me that experience is not the best teacher…when I was driving around an icy corner and I started losing control of my car- and would’ve crashed if I hadn’t slowed down- I learned from experience that corner is icy and I never drove fast around it again.” He looked at his two homeless buddies with pride beaming from his face for having showed the teacher that his education from experience was more important than one from a classroom. I just looked at him like Morpheus did at Neo in the martial arts training room in the film The Matrix. “Do you think that’s air you are breathing? Hmmn.” But I said nothing.                                                  I instead asked the question, “Wouldn’t it have been wiser to have obeyed the traffic sign that had already told you that 15-miles-per-hour was a safer speed for this corner than the 50-mph you were traveling?” In fact, from experience, all he learned was that the corner was icy and he had better slow down! If he had learned to follow the laws of the land, however, as taught by the state in which he was driving and by his high school Driver’s Ed instructor, he would have learned the value of obeying ALL traffic signs, and avoided a near-death experience. Drivers who learn only from experience don’t speed through school zones “because there might be a cop.” I don’t because there might be children.

“Alone, experience teaches convincing lessons, with equally inaccurate conclusions.”  - Tiger Todd

There, I said it! It had to be said! If someone’s education comes solely from experience, they will come to the wrong conclusion about their circumstances, every time.

“Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don’t.” - Pete Seeger

One of my mentors just forwarded me some stories about life in the 1500’s. Not just the good ol’ days, but also the Ye Olde Days! Apparently many of the slogans bandied about today originated in that period. Having more religion than sense, it seems that experience was also the primary teacher of the period. According to this article, the wealthier in those days had plates made of pewter- a composition originally made from lead and tin. Food with high acid content would cause the lead to leach into the food, causing lead poisoning and often, death. This happened primarily with tomatoes, so for the next 400-years, tomatoes were considered poisonous! Later, teachers taught the dangers of “lead”, so that now pewter is now made primarily (95%) of tin with the balance made of copper and antimony. Still, for 400-years, experience taught these people that tomatoes were the devil!

“The trouble with using experience as your guide is that sometimes the final exam comes first, then the lesson.” Will Rogers

In both relationships and business, many people have experienced the final exam long before being taught the lesson! Using experience alone as a teacher blinds us to the future, a key necessity in these two areas of life. How many times after a business catastrophe or failed relationship have we heard someone exclaim, “I just didn’t seeing it coming!”? With good teachers, we can learn to see what’s coming:

“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of Truth is come, he will guide you into all truth…and he will show you things to come.” John 16:13

I believe that teachers who are called to teach have access to this spirit and are thus connected to the wisdom of the ages. Imagine learning math, engineering, medicine or politics without a great teacher. Talk about being lambs to the slaughter!

“Experience is learning from your own mistakes; Education is learning from the mistakes of others.” As quoted by Kendra on last season’s The Apprentice.

NEGATIVE EXPERIENCES SPAUN NEGATIVE BELIEFS

“Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.”  Bob Packwood

One of the most dangerous by-products of learning solely from experience is that the conclusions we draw actually build strongholds of negative beliefs. So many of the homeless men I’ve worked with have created erroneous beliefs about employers, business owners, and the government, all based upon their personal experiences and none from teachers of business or apprenticeship programs in businesses. When I try to teach them how businesses function, I am met with serious resistance. I’ve concluded that beliefs birthed out of experience are some of the hardest to let go of, even when there is no evidence to support such beliefs. Have you ever been verbally assaulted by a religious fanatic over their interpretation of the Bible? Most of the time I have found they never actually read the Bible. They simply heard a lot of stuff from their favorite church or ministry. Although I appreciate their zeal, I would like to see them do their own studying for a while first, before they decide to assault the very people their Bible says they are sent to help.

“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of Truth.”  II Timothy 2:15

Learn to quote who taught you.

Napoleon Hill, author of the timeless book, Think and Grow Rich, was himself verbally assaulted by a local preacher over the principles he had been teaching in his seminars. “You’re going to Hell!” the parson exclaimed. Napoleon Hill, who had the privilege of having studied the lives of over 500 of the most influential men of the Industrial Age and learning their secrets and wisdom, simply responded with, “How do you know?” “Well, that’s my faith, that’s what I believe,” replied the parson. Napoleon answered, “Belief and faith are one thing, but having some evidence to support that belief is a different matter entirely. So, how do you know? I don’t know, so I’m pretty sure you don’t either.”

In whatever we’ve been taught, either through some experience or by the best teachers, let us use the wisdom of Forrest Gump by always connecting what we know to “who taught it,” or how we learned it. Adding “Momma always said” to the beliefs that were passed down from momma, and “I had an experience which taught me this,” is a good place to start. Rather than giving credit to our experiences as if experiences were the Gospel, this should keep us in a better position to receive more instruction from better teachers, as well as help us to obtain more accurate conclusions from better experiences.

Learn to ask yourself and others, “How do you know?” or “Who or what taught you that?” when it appears that an experience has been the primary teacher, or when there is simply no evidence to support a belief.

Moses: almost Pharaoh

If you’ve been to church enough, or been at home on an Easter weekend when The Ten Commandments is televised for something like the 50th time, you have undoubtedly heard the story of Moses. At a time when the Egyptians used the Israelites as slaves, and had commanded that all of the male children from the Israelites be killed, the Bible records that one such child was saved when his mom sent him via basket into the Nile River toward the house of Pharaoh’s sister. Having been adopted and raised as Egyptian royalty, we find that Moses can do no wrong and is in line for the throne.

      Unfortunately, just days from becoming Pharaoh himself, Moses is confronted with the truth that he is Hebrew, and after killing an Egyptian to save a Hebrew slave, Moses descends to the life of a banished slave, living the rest of his days in the wilderness.

      Some forty-years go by and the now-shepherd Moses investigates a strange fire upon a mountain and discovers he is in the presence of God. God tells him of this second chance to deliver the children of Israel from their bondage to Egypt, and that Moses must go to face Pharaoh. Here is where Moses’ experience has negatively affected his ability to believe God’s plan.

“And Moses said unto God, ‘Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh?” Exodus 2:11

Forty years earlier, Moses was going to BE Pharaoh! He was born with this call from God on his life. He was fully qualified and capable of being the Deliverer that God had sent to Egypt back then. But it took just one experience without the help of a teacher to break down the experience, to destroy his self-esteem and with it, any hope the Israelites had of being delivered. Although ultimately, God was able to teach him, 40-years of his life and the lives of others were spent in suffering because he had let experience be his only teacher.

Experiences should confirm good teaching

“And they went forth and preached everywhere, the lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following.”  Mark 16:20

For those of us learning from this teaching, God always backs up what we do of what He/She/They teaches. In the case of Moses, an all-new experience culminated with the parting of the Red Sea. My favorite quote from the film came from the defeated Pharaoh Ramses. In responding to the loss of his armies in the sea, he says, “His God is God.”

“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” C.S. Lewis

USE IT OR LOSE IT! With experience alone, we travel backward.

In his very blunt and practical book, How to be Rich, Donald Trump tells about relying on experience as a teacher when he first became successful in real estate. Having become New York City’s golden boy in the 1980’s, and having experienced success in every deal he made, taught Donald that he was gifted and that success in life was easy. Living by this unrealistic conclusion, The Donald began flying to places like Paris, but not for business: for fashion shows! He states in his book how it was this carelessness with his business that soon turned ugly as the real estate market changed. How Ugly? How about being 9.2 billion dollars in debt with no way to pay his creditors! Trump passed by a beggar on the street one day and paused, thinking, “This guy is 9.2 billion dollars richer than I am.” Getting back to the education from great teachers, like his father Fred who taught him many successful principles, The Donald is once again back on top. His 20,000 employees too, are better off today than if he had learned from his bad experience and thrown in the towel.

“For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God…strong meat belongeth to them who are of full-age who by reason of use have their senses exercised to know the difference between good and evil.” Hebrews 5:12,14

When we make a right choice, it may be hard to do at the time. But it makes the next right choice that much easier. Experiences where we make the choice to do the instructions of good teachers build good habits. Experiences from wrong choices build bad habits, and direct us toward that deeply rutted road of a painful and frustrating life.

FIXING BROKEN HEARTS (The Handy Man can)

“I fix broken hearts, baby I’m your handy man… If your broken heart needs repair then I am the man to see.”  From Handy Man by James Taylor

Experience teaches lessons, but leaves great collateral damage like burned bridges, emotional and physical scars, and good reasons not to try again. Like the homeless men in my classes, many people are in need of repair from the emotional damage caused by experience. The good news is that there really is a Handy Man.

“If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things.” I John 3:20

So we have a bad experience, our heart breaks, we draw the wrong conclusions from the experience, and so we continue in pieces down a path away from the best that life has for us. Do we have to wander the wilderness like Moses for 40-years before we can get a second chance? Absolutely not. Restoration is only a classroom away.

      In the above scripture, the word condemn comes from the Greek word kataginosko, which has typically been translated to blame, or to condemn. But a brief study of the Greek words in its immediate family give us a whole new definition and connotation. Its next-door neighbor, the Greek word katagnumi means- are you ready for this- to rend in pieces, to crack apart- to BREAK! Let me recap: When our heart condemns us for some act of disobedience or a bad experience, we become heart-broken. If we continue to justify the very experience that broke our heart into all of these pieces, we trudge on into the rest of our life half-heartedly- since that’s all we have left- scarred instead of healed.

            “God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things.”

We can’t afford to read past the “knoweth” part too quickly; for the word translated knoweth is the Greek word ginosko.  Do you see a relationship? Our experience without a teacher produced kataginosko: Kata(broken)-ginosko(understanding). Allowing God, in this case, to be the teacher who can restore our hearts, uses the pure form of understanding, ginosko! Here’s where the slogan, “It’s all Greek to me” has it’s greatest relevance! Sometimes I wish I were more Greek than geek!

“Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then do we have confidence toward God, and whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.” I John 3:21-22

“Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced; even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it” -John Keats

The Book of Proverbs begins with Solomon, considered the wisest man in the Old Testament, instructing his sons on the value of getting knowledge, wisdom, and understanding before having experiences. In the New Testament two of the greatest teachers who ever lived, Jesus and Paul, teach these lessons to their disciples and other followers, and even to those who read and do their words today. And in Jesus’ instruction to his disciples in the Gospel of John, chapter 15, he says that after he leaves them, he will send another teacher, the Spirit of Truth. Why? Because we will always need the best teachers if we are going to live the best lives! It doesn’t matter if you were a disciple of Jesus or Paul, experience without a teacher simply cannot get you as far as you need to go.

“The Best Teacher is the Best Teacher.”  -Tiger Todd

There is a place for experience, which I have included in the handy-dandy formula below as “testing.” Incidentally, this happens to be the very same formula used to create Champions out of orphans and peasants in nearly every hero movie made. See if it doesn’t work for you, your family, and your world, too.

A PROCESS TO “LEARNING THE RIGHT LESSON”

1. Be a Student
2. A Master Shall Appear
3. Instruction from the Master is given
4. The Student does the instruction
5. The Student is tested (experience)
6. The Students learns the right lesson from the experience
7. The Student is transformed into a Champion

“His Divine Power hath given us all things that pertain unto life and Godliness, through the knowledge of him that has called us to glory and virtue.” 2 Peter 1:3

We have been given so much, like the ability to live in both worlds, the natural world and the spiritual world simultaneously. Our mastery of them comes through studying what our masters have taught us, while also continually seeking out new masters to teach us yet more. Let us not rely on old conclusions drawn from the experiences of an old life when there is so much new life to be lived.

The Character must Change

After learning from a great teacher like Coach Klein, Bobby Boucher was able to see that not everything Momma didn’t know about was the Devil.

And after Forrest Gump compared the experiences of others- his momma, Lt. Dan, and Jenny- he was able to make better conclusions about Life than each of them. Momma’s experience taught her that Life was life a box of chocolates, that you never quite know what you’re gonna get. Lieutenant Dan thought that every man had a Destiny, and that his was to die in battle like his forefathers before him. Bitter for years after Forrest “cheated him” out of that destiny by saving his life, lieutenant Dan ultimately began putting his energy into living a new life, one based on the instruction of his new teacher, Forrest Gump.

“Maybe it’s Both.”  - Forrest Gump

Forrest discovered that life was made up of both elements, that each of us has a destiny, a calling, a purpose. But like his momma said, within the plan for life there can be many events that seem random and chaotic. This only means that life is more complex than living first, then learning the lessons later. There are so many great teachers, coaches, mentors, and guides available to help us chart a course around life’s many obstacles. They are there to help us through the chaos and on toward our destination, our destiny.

They can even show us things to come.  TT

PRAYER:

God, Thank you for having given us all things that pertain unto Life and unto Godliness, and that life comes through knowledge obtained from great teachers.

We ask that you repair the hearts of those who have learned solely from experience.

Send trustworthy teachers, masters and mentors before their paths who can show them the way to a life of learning; not a life without challenges that produce strength, but one without mistakes that produce scars and even more heartache.

Thank you for sending us great teachers throughout the Bible- Old Testament teachers like Samuel and Solomon, New Testament teachers like Jesus and Paul, and onboard teachers like the Spirit of Truth.

We expect that with each lesson we receive from them, we will also receive the strength to obey their instructions.

And we thank you that through exercising our masters’ instructions in our daily lives, we will learn the truths of life, truths that will also help transform both the circumstances of our own lives and the lives of the people around us. God bless the great teachers.

© 2005 The Las Vegas Faith Center

Your Opportunity To Increase

Your Increase Opportunity
by Tiger Todd,

Do you sometimes feel alone in the universe? Do you go through “dry spells” when you feel like you’re disconnected from God? During these times, does fear, uneasiness, a lack of confidence, or that feeling of being alone wear down your faith and self-esteem?

If it feels like the spiritual river that once flowed through you has suddenly dried up at the source, you are not alone. I know a few people who are “up” all the time, but the rest of us occasionally whine through the Valley of Death more often than we would like to admit. What do you tell people who are in the “Valley?” Is there an antidote for this affliction?

I suppose one solution would be to recite a list of nice affirmations while smiling dorkishly into a mirror, a la Stewart Smalley. Say this in a confident voice, “I am fun to be with, because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”

Well, not everybody. But I guess that’s their problem. And it is still your problem. How do you feel now? No better? Darn.

How about a pint… of Ben & Jerry’s? No? I guess that won’t help us feel more spiritual either.

Then maybe what we need are more scripture readings…yes, that’s it! Perhaps if we read scriptures about how merciful and loving God is, we’ll feel like we’re back in the game. That will make everything O.K.

Or will it?

When we feel like we’ve lost our divine connection, we don’t need more information about how nice a divine connection would be. And we don’t need to reminisce about the past times when we use to be able to “walk on water.” What we really need is a way to reconnect…to the universe, to the divine, to God.

This morning, I found one. I (re) discovered the way to make a confident, faith-filled connection to our spiritual source and it didn’t involve any incense, affirmations, mirrors, pints, fire walking, Sufi dancing, or chanting…well almost.

After gaining some discretionary income- and some garage space- the other day from a garage sale, I sat down to figure-out how much the tithe was. You know, the first tenth part that the Bible teaches is to be returned to God after all of our increase?

“And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the LORD’s: it is holy unto the LORD.” Leviticus 27:30

You may get the idea from my writing that doing the will of God is always my first thought- and it is. But it is not always my first action. The length of time between my good intentions and any action is directly proportional to the desperateness of my need. I’m not proud of this tendency toward lethargy and procrastination, but I am what I have to work with! On this day, early in the morning, I was facing some tough issues for which I needed some spiritual guidance, yet my every request to God didn’t seem to be going any higher than the ceiling. I felt out of touch with heaven, and disconnected from my source of supply. So on this particular day, I was serious about crossing every “t” and dotting every lower-case “j”, spiritually speaking.

Back to the tithe. According to the Old Testament, the tithe is defined as the first tenth part of all of our increase. I know, it’s not too difficult to calculate 10% of anything, especially in the high-finance world of garage sales! It also means that anyone in the Bible could calculate the tithe, so no one had an excuse not to. I’ve also heard in church services that ten percent of what we have belongs to God- or in these particular services, their church. But that is not what God said in the Bible. He/She/They clearly said that it is the first fruits, the increase, that is important, meaning that if one has not had increase, one does not owe a tithe:

“Honor the LORD with thy substance, and with the first fruits of all thine increase: so shall thy barns be filled with plenty and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.”

Proverbs 3:9-10

In Robert Kiyosaki’s best seller, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, the author explains how his “Rich Dad” taught him that if you want God as a partner in your affairs, you need to include him in the profits! It is not that God needs the money. It is rather we who need to remember our Partner.

“Uh, pastor, I thought you were supposed to be telling us how to get reconnected to God, to hear from Heaven and feel spiritual again.” Hold your horses- I’m just about there!

Anyway, when I tithe, I like to read two important scriptures that refer to the tithe, Deuteronomy 26, and Malachi 3. Let’s begin with chapter 26 of Deuteronomy.

“And it shall be, when thou art come in unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee…that thou shalt take of the first of all the fruit of the earth, which thou shalt bring of thy land that the LORD thy God giveth thee, and shalt put it in a basket, and shalt go unto the place which the LORD thy God shall choose to place his name there.”

Deuteronomy 26:1-2

Right. We covered the increase and the return part. Keep reading:

“And thou shalt speak and say before the LORD thy God…” Deuteronomy 26:5

“Say” before the LORD? There is apparently something we are supposed to say to God, as if we are supposed to begin a conversation with Him/Her/Them. Isn’t that where this message began, with those times when we feel so disconnected from the divine that we don’t know if our words are being heard in the heavens?

The next verses are an account of the tither in Deuteronomy 26 tithing the tithe.  Let’s review: the tithe is the stuff, the tither is the one who has had some increase, and tithing is this conversation we are to initiate with God for all of the good things in our life. Literally, tithing is the statement of gratitude we say over the tithe when we bring it to God, and it is this process that demonstrates to God how serious we are about our covenant.

“Thou hast avouched the LORD this day to be thy God, and to walk in his ways, and to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and to hearken unto his voice.” Deuteronomy 26:17

So there I was with my $70.00 tithe, my scriptures, and my need to reconnect to God. I began reciting to God a few of the impossible situations that I had experienced during the course of my life, and how I had been delivered out of them all. I continued with how even my failures had been turned into learning experiences through the wisdom of God, and how grateful I was that I wasn’t the same person that I was then. But it’s what happened next that sent the shivers down my spine…

      All of a sudden, the great distance that once existed between heaven and the room I was in was reduced to a span no farther than the distance from a whisper to my ear! It was as if the barriers that were preventing contact with God had suddenly been removed, as if by invisible cranes and rigging. Look at what happens in Deuteronomy 26 when the tither finishes his statement of gratitude:

“And the LORD hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people, as he hath promised thee.” Deuteronomy 26:18

God speaks! Communication has been restored! A connection has been made! And more than that, what God is saying is what we want to hear! God says, “By tithing, you have shown me that I indeed am your God, so I want you know that I consider you My People.” And that’s not all…

“And the LORD hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people, as he hath promised thee… to make thee high above all nations which he hath made, in praise, and in name, and in honour; and that thou mayest be an holy people unto the LORD thy God, as he hath spoken. ” Deuteronomy 26:18-19

Talk about confidence! How much confidence would you have this week if you heard from God personally, and that you were considered His/Her/Their people? This must have been what Joshua was going through after the death of Moses. For so many years, Moses was the only one to whom God would both speak and supply with the power to heal lepers and part seas. Everyone went to Moses in his or her time of need, including Joshua. But one day, Joshua found himself in charge, and without the self-confidence to take over the position where Moses once stood. Joshua had to feel like we do when the responsibilities of life, whether our children, our jobs, our education, or even God’s mission, land squarely on our shoulders. “How can I do what I must?”

“There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of the life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.” Joshua 1:5

And that’s when it hit me- tithing was never about cutting a check to God but about participating in a divinely ordained experience where we can know that God has heard us!

“And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.”  I John 5:15

TWO Benefits

As many of you have heard in sermons on tithing, much of the benefits have to do with the blessings of the tither. “If you give,” they might say, “then God will bless you, and your barns will be filled with plenty.”

“Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” Malachi 3:10

I just believe there is more to being blessed than increased income. Did you know that the words “there shall”, “be room”, and “to receive it” were added by the English translators of the Bible and do not appear in he original language, Hebrew? Let me adjust the verse without adding the translators’ CNN/Fox News-style spin:

“And prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, and that’s not all.” Malachi 3:10b

Why did I change the translation to “That’s not all?” Because there’s more! Just look at the next verse!

“And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts.” Malachi 3:11

It is one thing to have the windows of heaven open over us so that blessings continuously flow into our lives. It is quite another, however, when God promises to personally deal with whatever forces might ever try to prevent us from prospering! It’s kind of like “the Navy Seals meets State Farm Insurance.” There were years when my businesses had great income, but the outgo through theft, late fees, employee trouble, and repairs were even greater! I needed to tithe and I had worked myself into a position where I didn’t have any increase.

TITHE BY FAITH

I’ve got to tell you what I did, especially now that I have a better picture myself of how tithing was designed by God as a way that any person can proactively connect to the divine. At the time, I was living on the loose change in my truck’s ashtray- a can of tuna a day. Although I had read the scriptures on tithing, I always made an excuse to God as to why I couldn’t tithe; after all, I didn’t have any increase. But I saw the words in Malachi, “Prove me now herewith,” and I set out to prove them true. I decided that I would be happy if I could make $300/week. How much would the tithe be? Thirty dollars. Well, I hadn’t been able to put $300 together at any one time, but surely I could assemble $30! And I did. Then I spoke over it, telling God that I was trusting Him for this tithing stuff to work. I then dutifully delivered the money to different churches, or in the form of food to people on the street. It didn’t take a week and a half to get the first $300! So I increased the tithe and my income shot up again! But remember, there is a secondary benefit.

      My store was only burglarized once more and nothing was stolen. The first four years of my store on Tropicana without tithing: 23 burglaries. The last 4 years: only one.

      Do you think I was convinced that tithing was for real? You’d better believe it. But only recently have I seen God’s intention of a divine connection. Tithing was not designed by God to be about me. Tithing was a way to communicate with heaven with peace and confidence in the midst of a world that is anything but peaceful. Look at Jesus’ tithing statement to God regarding his disciples:

“I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.”  John 17:15

I rest my case.

If we, God’s heroes in this generation, were taken out of this world as some reward for our obedience, what good would it do the rest of the world we have been sent to help? So God- our boss and our heavenly father- gave us a way to not only survive, but to succeed and excel against the negative forces around us. When we need help, answers, confidence, or just some contact with the source of our life, we just have to ask.

“Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:16

Practice tithing. Remember how you’ve grown, what’s good in your life, and how glad you are to be alive, beginning each conversation you desire to have with God in gratitude. And when you return the firstfruits of your increase, in time, money, goods or friendship, thank God for the blessings and protection he has made available so that you can be free to live the life your were meant to live.

And may all nations call you blessed.

TT

The Las Vegas Faith Center

The Right Thing at the Wrong Time

The Las Vegas Faith Center

The Right Thing at the Wrong Time
by Tiger Todd

If you’re like me, you don’t watch the evening news or read the newspaper any more than is absolutely necessary, not because it’s not entertaining, but because 99% of what is called “news” is mostly “bad news”. This negative slant by mainstream media is also why I don’t watch many made-for-TV Bible stories when they are produced by the major networks. Whether it’s “Samson and Delilah”, “Adam and Eve”, “Solomon and Sheba”, or “David and Bathsheba”, it’s pretty clear from the titles that even these are stories about someone’s worst day. The following message from the Bible peels back the layers of blame to reveal a fundamental understanding of our better nature. Maybe most of us make mistakes because we actually do the right thing, but at the wrong time?

According to the Bible, God had given David an anointing to destroy all enemies to His Kingdom. Isaiah chapter ten says that the enemy’s burden will be removed and his yoke of bondage will be destroyed because of this anointing.

And it shall come to pass that in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing. Isaiah 10:27

One great minister sums up the anointing as, “God on flesh doing those things that flesh cannot do, that only God can do.” Needless to say, it was this type of anointing that exalted the obedient shepherd boy David to his eventual kingship. Scripture records that although this boy David used a stone to defeat the giant, Goliath, he could have probably used a Twinkie to accomplish the same thing, since he had so much faith in the anointing of God that was on him! Suffice it to say that David was designed to be a mighty tool for God to free the children of Israel from their bondage to other nations. This was echoed in the book of First Samuel, and I believe that the number one song on the Jerusalem Top Forty Countdown was probably, “Saul slew his thousands, but David his ten thousands”.

I thank God for the calling He gave me. And I am even more thankful that I am not expected to walk according to the dictates of someone else’s calling! A very good Jewish friend of mine, a medical doctor, is a great example of this very principle. He is diligent about whatever his calling requires, and I have never known an instance of him trying to avoid fulfilling what God called him to do on any occasion. And I believe there is a real truth in this. God doesn’t call someone into something that he or she wouldn’t be completely content and competent in fulfilling. Neither my doctor friend nor myself would be able to do what David was called to do, namely, to be an instrument of war for his God. But David didn’t give it a second thought! He not only enjoyed kickin’ Philistine hiney, he also was able to discern the difference between the enemies of God, and those people that just plain didn’t like him.

Have you ever stayed home from work when you just knew you were supposed to go? Sure, you rationalized the decision in your mind by recounting your recent victories, like how many extra giants you slew last week, how the kingdom’s income had doubled, and how the safety of fair maidens was also at an all-time high! Surely it would be no big deal if you took just one day off for yourself… or would it?

And it came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when Kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried still at Jerusalem. II Samuel 11:1

Saint and sinner alike, both know what it’s like to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Did you ever stop to think how this happens? Partial obedience! On the day of the battle, David was supposed to be leading the charge at Rabbah, but instead, he was just lying around the palace. After all, he was the king, and I’m sure he thought he could do whatever he pleased. And he did. Partial obedience. Although Israel went to war against the children of Ammon, David didn’t show up like he was supposed to. You may be relaxing at home, you’ve got money in the bank, your kids are well, you’ve even quoted scripture to your wife this morning, and it doesn’t look like you really need to be in church today. But there is something I like to call a divine appointment that you could very well be missing. A divine appointment is a time arranged by God in response to your prayers and your faithfulness to Him. Although Divine Appointments can manifest in many ways, they are usually disguised as business opportunities, a meeting with someone that God has sent to supply for your needs, or as answers to questions you’ve had so that you can move forward in some area of your life.

The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. Psalm 37 Verse 23

I believe that David missed a divine appointment by not walking in the ordered steps of God’s plan for him. We may not be able to determine what he missed, but we are able to see the consequences of where he went instead.

And it came to pass in an evening tide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon. And David sent and inquired after the woman. And one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah, the Hittite? And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness: and she returned unto her house. And the woman conceived, and sent and told David, and said I am with child. II Samuel 11:2-5

It may be hard to believe that these events and their destructive consequences all started when David didn’t go to work like he was supposed to! Just one little day off, and seemingly, all Hell broke loose! Most of the world is aware of the events that transpired, from the birth of the illegitimate child, to the ensuing lies, to the death of Uriah, and to the subsequent death of the child that was conceived. You too could be in the middle of a similar scenario. From your viewpoint, it might seem totally ridiculous that any partiall obedience on your part could be to blame for the mess you are currently experiencing. Sure, you did tell some people that you were going to that men’s meeting at the church down the way, but instead, you ended up in front of a big screen in a Sports bar. No harm in that, until you find out that the man God sent to you with the financial harvest you had been believing for, was not at the Sports bar, but at the men’s meeting! At the Sports bar, there was some woman that didn’t care that you were married, and now the one time you didn’t do what you said you would, because you didn’t feel like it, your business failed, you wrecked your car, your wife threw you out, and you ended up in an affair with some misguided waitress. And in the fulness of this disaster, which was once your wonderful life, you have the audacity to say, “God, why me?”, like He had anything to do with it! Many times as a minister I have been told these stories of distress, and they were all produced when some wonderful person with a great call on their life, simply gave in to their feelings, instead of keeping their word to the letter.

Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! James 3:5
Partial obedience is deceptive

Partial obedience is so deceptive, so insidious, that even while you are in the great fire of your circumstances, you still cannot see how just a little kindling was the start of such a tremendous blaze!

And they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah. II Samuel 1b

The battle that day looked like a success even without David’s obedience. It looked like it was going to be a great day. When David saw Bathsheba bathing, I’m sure he thought it would be a really great day! But that’s the deception! In our generation, we have been deceived, or programmed, through television shows and advertisements. They have separated us from the value system which is part of our nature from God! I have known people who became alcoholics all because their bar owner friend supplied them with free drinks! The deception in their thinking was this, “because it’s free, let’s drink all we can.” Let me ask you something: if you had a friend who could supply you with free rat poison, would you drink all of that you could? This same deceptive pressure ran rampant in the college I attended. Since our meals were included in our room and board fees, we felt it our duty to eat until we couldn’t move from the table! To make matters worse, factoring in the added time pressure of the cafeteria’s extremely limited hours, we began to take on the nature of pigs! Our rationale was, “You never know when we might be able to eat again”! How sad it is today to see so many beautiful women who suffer from low self esteem, all because of those 40 extra pounds they put on in college! Worse still, they were never fully able to conquer their habits in later years, since that pressure training they received at the college cafeteria affected their nature so completely.

Personally, I enjoy sleeping. Sleep can be fun. But sleeping when I’m supposed to be doing something else somewhere else is called laziness! Laziness that is unrestrained is called lasciviousness, or a lack of self restraint, and will eventually show up in every other area of a man’s life. One particular family I know suffers from this very affliction. The part that used to bother me the most about their situation is that although their house is a mess, their kids are rebellious, and they always have trouble paying their bills on time, every now and then, some breakthrough revelation still manages to come forth from their lips. Jesus wrote the book on this phenomenon, when he declared that what is in a person’s heart in abundance, will eventually come out of his or her mouth.

For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. Matt. 12:34

I’m not saying that what was in David’s heart was evil. But every christian will tell you that just because they got born again in the Sunday night service, that didn’t keep their old language from coming out their mouth on Monday morning. Just as it took some time for the river of our conversation to flow free from our past, so to with David, it took awhile for his disobedience to show up in his future. David didn’t even know why, all of a sudden, God seemingly was nowhere to be seen.

And let the peace of God rule in your hearts. Colossians 3:15 KJV

And let the peace (soul harmony which comes) from Christ rule (act as umpire continually) in your hearts (deciding and settling with finality all questions that arise in your minds.) Colossians 3:15 The Amplified Bible

As I look back upon my life, I find that I have never made a stupid decision that I was really comfortable with! I was always aware of some uneasiness, or some sense of fear or defiance. I believe there is a way that we can avoid every opportunity to be in the wrong place at the wrong time- or be in the right place at the wrong time- and consequently risk disaster. The scripture says that we are to let the peace of God help us make the right choices. Using King David as an example, now, whenever I am tempted to only partially obey the voice of God, I remind myself that there must be somewhere else I am supposed to be, doing something else I am supposed to do!

David was still partially right.

I know I promised you that this wouldn’t be just one more made-for-TV soap opera, so let’s see if there is something else God wanted us to see from this event in the life of David.

Something I used to wonder about was the virtual absence of the words satan or devil in the Old Testament. Although satan’s actions were evident on every page, nobody ever seemed to connect him to any of those heinous events. If you read through the books of Moses and the Books of the Prophets, you can actually get the impression that God is both good and bad! The absence of any destructive act being attributed directly to satan was extremely curious to my thinking. I used to ask, “How can I put my faith in God to heal me if I think He is the same one that made me sick?” Furthermore, reconciling the “God is gonna getcha” of the Old Testament, with the “God is Love” of the New Testament, has always taken a leap of faith on my part to believe.

God graciously answered this dilemma. He gave us the book of Psalms, a glorious, personal diary of the relationship between a man named David, and the God who loved him! And how would we know the mind of God on the heart of a Father toward His children without the Book of Proverbs? In fact, without the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs, I believe it would be impossible to hold any management position or successfully run any business on this earth. The entire church-world should be thankful that God had Solomon succeed David, his father, as King, so that these truths about God from the books of Psalms and Proverbs could be known. Of course, Solomon’s mother, Bathsheba, was certainly proud that her son could become the God-ordained King of Israel…“wait a minute, but did you just say that the mother of the God-ordained king of Israel was Bathsheba?”...“Surely you don’t mean, ‘I might be married, but I’m waving to you from the shower and I’ll be over as soon as I can’ Bathsheba?”... That Bathsheba? You mean, “I’ll be over tonight, since my husband Uriah is out of town, Bathsheba?” That Bathsheba?

Yes, that Bathsheba! The mother of Solomon, and the wife of David. Don’t you think that it was God that inspired Solomon to pen the book of Proverbs? How about the Book of Ecclesiastes (the Preacher)? If you agree, then Solomon could not have been an accident. “Are you trying to tell us that David and Bathsheba were supposed to get together?” Why yes, I am, since that’s the only way to produce this man named Solomon. Well, if that’s true, then what was the big fuss over David and Bathsheba getting together anyway, if they were supposed to be together? Answer: partial obedience.

Write the vision..

And the Lord answered me and said, Write the vision…for the vision is yet for an appointed time… Habakkuk 2:2-3a
Have you ever had a vision, or maybe just a witness inside you, that what you were doing you had somehow done before, and it just felt perfectly natural? Or maybe you had been introduced to someone and the two of you just “hit it off”? I’ve met people where after 5-years of acquaintance, I still never knew very well. But then there are others that in just 5-minutes, we were chatting and joking with each other like we grew up together! I believe that these types of relationships are God-ordained, and that either through dreams or visions, He has shown us who He is sending to us. Well, our God “wrote the book” on visions, and He has given these kinds of visions to us to confirm what His plans are before we arrive at His destination. This is how he helps us walk in the ordered steps that will get us directly there.
I firmly believe that this is the kind of thing that happened to David that day on the roof of his house when he saw Bathsheba. His positive reaction to this woman in the shower could not have been based solely on her beauty. If that were the case, the writer of the book of First Samuel would have probably compared her to Sarai, the wife of Abram, whose beauty stopped traffic- and Pharaohs- even up into her 90’s. And since wives and concubines were common to the kings of that day, including David, there had to have been something beyond what he saw in the natural that made him react to her as he did. I believe that David had a “deja-vu”, or at least, part of one. The term, Deja-vu, is French for, already seen. Well, isn’t that what our scripture from Habakkuk says a vision is? There is no way that a man after God’s own heart like David, would have committed the subsequent acts against Him, unless he really thought that what he was seeing was part of the plan of God for his life! And it was, but not at that time.

To every divine purpose, there is a season.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven…a time to embrace…a time to love. Ecclesiastes 3:1,5,8

With no effort at all, I could write an entire book on this subject. In fact, this understanding is more thoroughly covered in my book on Predestination. But for the sake of understanding how to avoid partial disobedience in our own lives, and save the world from its devastating consequences, please permit me to show you this great truth from the previous verse.

Jesus told the disciples in the fourth chapter of the book of Mark that the entire Kingdom of God was governed by the system of seedtime and harvest. Anything then, outside of that Kingdom, is not. Similarly, everything in the United States is governed by the system known as our Constitution. Everything outside the United States, from Mexico to Iraq, is not. Obviously.

But when we start getting too close to home, and I mean literally too close to your home, and your family, we have a tendency to get really stupid where the Kingdom of God is concerned.

Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. Mark 10:15

Notice I said stupid, not naive. You see, children are naive when they do things that they don’t know any different than to do. But adults, who have had the manual on how God does things for over 300 years, will spout off things like, “God took Aunt Judy home”, after Aunt Judy died in a car accident last week. Let me ask you something: was Aunt Judy serving God before she died? Was she fulfilling the hope of her calling? If not, and only Aunt Judy and God know for sure, she was not participating in any purpose under heaven according to Ecclesiastes 3, and so her life was not involved in the Kingdom of God! Seedtime and harvest does not govern a person’s life unless they have made Jesus their Lord. Aunt Judy was an independent operator who sadly became just another statistic in the deadly course of this world.

And you…who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world. Ephesians 2:1-2a

David and Bathsheba bearing Solomon was part of God’s purpose under heaven for them. Much of their earlier life was not. Disaster struck when David took that God-ordained purpose into his own hands and then tried to complete it without God! Don’t you think that God could have gotten David and Bathsheba together without David intervening like he did? Then you must also think that God can resurrect your business without you having to compromise your Christian ethics and try to do things your way. David, like many lovely people today, needed to exercise a little more faith and patience, so that God, in due season, could bring about His purpose and plan in David’s life.

Are You In The Book?

This is one of my favorite messages, and it wouldn’t have come about if I hadn’t been driven to dig deeper into these scriptures after being asked to leave a church for my uncommon beliefs. Ah, the good old days! I actually wrote a mammoth book after proving the subject, but never made an effort to have it published. Maybe that’s next on the list.

*Please note that this was transcribed directly from the live audio message ten years ago and has not been edited for grammar, relevance, or content.

Please turn to Genesis 3:15. This is the classic story of the serpent’s departure from garden of Eden. Adam and his wife have eaten from a tree that they were not supposed to. Consequently, God shows up and ultimately deals with the serpent in verse 14, “And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”

We’ve been studying this scripture in several different messages. This is the same statement the New Testament refers to as “before the foundation of the world.” Churches for millennia have taught that this statement referred to the life of Jesus, God’s only begotten son. The seed of a woman would eventually bruise the head of the serpent. And of course, it would bruise the boy’s heel, and of course, Jesus was crucified. This is revealed in the Book of Revelation as, “the lamb slain before the foundation of the world”. Doing the math, we find then that Genesis 4:1 is when “the world” was founded. “Inhabitants” is the correct translation of the word “world” in the King James Bible. Let’s recap: Adam knew his wife Eve, and they started making people. This was the foundation of the world.

Genesis 3:15 is the beginning of the word about this man who became Jesus. We’ve correctly assumed that Jesus is the Christ, and that Jesus was the one sent before the foundation of the world. But what we’re going to start seeing today, is what our part is, in 1999, in these prophecies. Things didn’t just stop when Jesus was crucified or when he was resurrected. Things didn’t just stop when he sent the disciples. Things kept going, obviously, or I wouldn’t be preaching about them today. It had to continue for at least 60 years after the resurrection to get the entire book completed. So, things didn’t stop, although Jesus did. There is no record of Jesus talking to anyone in the New Testament after he is recorded kicking Saul of Tarses off his donkey in Acts Chapter 8 or 9. That’s the end of Jesus in the New Testament. Jesus is spoken about, but in terms of his actual contact, it’s been a long time since we’ve heard from Jesus.

Let’s read verse 15 again, And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. We’re talking about the Messiah.

Let’s go to John 1:1 In the beginning was the word. For today, I want you to not think back on what you were taught this meant. If you weren’t taught anything, fine; just believe this as one of a multitude of answers about this. In the beginning was the word. This is the reason why it’s important for you to think about this as a unique situation for today’s message. I want you to think about the beginning time of the word to be Genesis 3:15. I don’t want you thinking it was where God said, “Light Be”! I want you to be thinking regarding Genesis 3:15 where God spoke a word, and then read verse 12 of John, But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

This is what I want to present today for the sake of this understanding. I want to go to the beginning part of Genesis 3:15, because that’s the first place where God spoke the word about this guy who became Jesus. Are you with me? I want you to understand the idea that a word was spoken, but until God said, “There is one coming”, there wasn’t one coming. The word became flesh. And if you don’t find before Genesis 3:15 that He spoke a word about that thing becoming flesh, then it wasn’t the same word. It was a different word. So the word that became flesh here was what we know as this man, Jesus. Now, there were also other words.

I want you to hold your place in John, but go back to Isaiah Chapter 10. Now here’s another word. Verse 27 says, And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing. That might not seem like it has anything to do with this right now, but what God is referring to… remember He told the serpent, This is what’s coming. It was a word to the serpent of what was coming. The serpent had taken the authority of man. God says, Let’s make man in our image, and let him have dominion over everything. So He gives man dominion over the dirt, the carpet, the chairs, the horses, the cats and dogs, the cars, everything; but unfortunately, this man does his own little deal with this demon possessed serpent and gives up his authority, He says, Hey, let me borrow your keys, I’m just gonna take the car around the block. But the guy gets into an accident, with your car, with your keys, and now everything has come down, and you have to pay the bill.

That, in effect, is what happened. God’s out of the deal. He had already given the earth and the fullness thereof over to man. God speaks to the serpent, and curses him, but the curse involves the man. The ultimate part of how to get through the curse is to try to get a saviour on the scene so that all the other people can be saved from the curse. Isaiah 10:27 talks about, There is coming a day, and when this day-with the Genesis 3:15 prophecy-comes to pass, then the burden and yoke, (like an oxen’s yoke), that man is stuck in because he lost his dominion… You see, when you lose your dominion, you’re a slave. When you lose your ability to choose, when your will no longer works for you, you’re a slave. When you can’t say, “I won’t do it”, and you don’t, when you say, “I won’t do it”, and then still do, you are a slave. It says, that burden, that yoke will be destroyed because of the anointing. The word “anointing” is actually the word in the New Testament translated “Christ”. That’s where we get Jesus Christ; as in, he was anointed. But he also had an anointing. That’s where we get the word Christ-ians, little Christs, little anointed ones. This prophecy is fulfilled by a man named Jesus, who indeed, bore the curse.

Turn now to Acts Chapter 10, which more or less sums it up. Let’s read verse 36, and listen to it carefully, thinking about that first scripture in Genesis Then the word became flesh, and then the anointing destroyed the yoke, and the burden; and the bondage that came because of the disobedience. Verse 36, The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ: (he is Lord of all:) That word, I say, ye know, which was published throughout all Judaea, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached; How God anointed (that word is “Christ”) Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; (the serpent in the garden) for God was with him. Well, in a nutshell, that’s the completion of Genesis 3:15. That’s what happened.

The word became flesh. We’ve got a word in Genesis, we’ve got a lot of them in Isaiah, we’ve got other prophets prophesying, There is one coming. And Jesus, by his own testimony, said from the foundation of the world, that all the prophets had been slain, starting with Abel. Remember, Abel was Cain’s brother. Jesus called him a prophet from the foundation of the world.

The devil looked at Genesis 3:15. He looked at what God had told him about having his head bruised by an anointed one, but he didn’t know which anointed one. God didn’t say, His name will be Jesus Christ, social security number XXX-XX, so he just looked at anyone who was anointed, at anyone who had a burden-removing yoke-destroying power, at anyone whom God worked through. The power of God moved on Samson, Jephthah, Deborah, Moses, Ehud, Joshua, Caleb… There were a bunch of anointed ones, a bunch of Christs, if you will, throughout history. The Book of Nehemiah called them saviours. But the devil, and all the demons (those sneaky and stinky spirits) had no idea which anointed one God meant. Therefore, none of the stinky spirits had any idea which one wasn’t the one. So they went out and did what they could, moving through men, and said, Kill him, kill him, kill him. That’s what they do! And eventually it evolves to where someone thinks, “I must be called to kill him”.

It was written that there is an anointed one coming. Obviously, this anointed one came, and his name was Jesus. He went about doing good, didn’t he? Now, what about this “word made flesh” business? There are words that talked about this guy who was born as Jesus. Mary’s body had a lot to do with his flesh, right, but the word became what it said. Now it’s not just words in Genesis 3:15, and Isaiah 10:27, and Isaiah Chapter 7. Now the words written have become flesh, and it’s loose in the community. Now the very word is laying hands on the sick and they recover. Now the very word is handling bread and fish, and multiplying loaves and fishes. The word became flesh. The word became this individual. The word was made flesh. First John reads that our hands have handled of the word of life. The disciples walked with this guy. Every time Jesus sat down, John went over and laid his head on Jesus’ chest. I just love you, Lord.

Let’s go to Galatians 3:16, Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. Here’s where I really want to make sure you know this scripture. You guys are the brethren. Got it? And the Apostle Paul is speaking here in verse 15, Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; Though it be a man’s covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto. Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. There is a promise made to Abraham, a written word, that kings would come from him, along with all these other promises…that he would have a child in his old age. Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.

I always looked at that and thought it was just talking about Abraham’s seed, which is Christ. But, No! He’s talking about… to the brethren’s seed…to your Christ, and to your Christ, and to your Christ. Well, some people might think that’s blasphemy. But is it really blasphemy? How many of you have ever laid hands on the sick. Jesus, by his own mouth, in Mark Chapter 16, says, Go ye into all the world, and preach this gospel to every creature. And he that believeth and shall be baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe.

Were those words from Jesus? Yes! Then they were words from God. He said, They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. Well, I have laid hands on the sick. Right? And they have recovered. Vicki, I know you have, too. We have laid hands on the sick and they have recovered. So do you know what happened? If Lance was sick, and I laid hands on him and God healed him, do you know what just happened? Those words became flesh. And we no longer have a sick Lance in the house. We have a healed Lance. The words “sick Lance” got ejected by these new words “healed Lance”. The word became flesh.

How many of you guys are born again? Well, there are words about that. In John Chapter 3, Nicodemus said, Hey, I know God’s with you, but what’s up with this? And Jesus said, Unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. He cannot understand the kingdom of God, meaning God’s system. How does it work in this kingdom. Unless a man be born from above (literal Greek), he cannot see God’s way of doing things. But if a man can see God’s way of doing things, if you understand what I’m talking about, you must be born again.

How are you born again? Turn to 1 Peter l:19. But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, There’s that verse in Genesis 3:15, but it wasn’t just for him to be born. Those scriptures are still alive. If you watch the Discovery Channel, or Nova, or the programs where they’re talking about outer space and stuff like that, they have learned that every sound that ever left this earth is still moving. It’s still going through space. They know that when they send a signal and then wait for that signal to get back, that’s how they calculate how many miles away the stars are. So the very words of Genesis 3:15 are still working, still moving, still alive in the universe today. now. We can’t hear them, or lock onto them right now, but you can with the proper equipment and the proper understanding.

Verse 20 again, Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, Those words were made flesh for you. Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. How many of you believe in God? and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing ye have purified your soul in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, those that truly love God and believe in Him, those that see the kingdom of God, have been re-born. Something in them has changed. They are not who they started out. Born again not of corruptible seed It’s talking about you, not about Jesus here. Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, Wait! Are you born again? The word became flesh. So you aren’t who you were before. You were born again. 2 Cor. Chapter 5 says you are born again. The word became flesh. And this is new flesh. It’s new flesh! Now, if you see someone who just got born again five minutes ago, just because he still looks the same doesn’t mean that that he doesn’t have a new flesh; it just means that you think he’s old flesh because your senses aren’t good enough to discern the difference. But as soon as you become born again, you become new. And a change will begin throughout the rest of you…the purifying of your soul, the Bible says. We just read it there. But the word, here, became Lance. Lance is in the book. He was in the book, but now, the new and improved Lance, is walking down the streets of Las Vegas. The word became flesh, and here he is. And when I got healed by the word… when the word “healed” in Isaiah 53:5, and in 1 Peter 2:24, “By his stripes you were healed,” were planted in me and sprouted up, then I became healed. I became what the book said. I became new living faith flesh. The word became flesh.

It also says that any man who is in Christ is a new creature. Wait! There’s that “Christ” word again. They called them first Christ-ians in Antioch. I believe Acts Chapter 11 quotes that. So, other scriptures pertaining to the Christ must be talking about you, too. One more show of hands- How many of you have laid hands on the sick, and they have recovered? A lot of you. How many of you have cast out devils? How many of you drink deadly things and it didn’t hurt you? “Hey, just last night, man, and I had the worst headache”...

Genesis 3:15 is now a scripture that speaks about you. Be careful not to just substitute the name “Jesus” into every scripture that only said “There’s one coming”. There was no “Jesus” or “Savior” in Genesis 3:14, and that’s why the devil didn’t know which “one” of the “saviors” it would be that God sent though the ages. Is it Samson, is it Jephthah, is it Ehud, or Deborah, or is it Moses, Joshua, Caleb, Samuel, Solomon, David? Who is it? Is it Ezekiel, is it Jeremiah?

Turn to Luke Chapter 1 verse 30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. That word Jesus actually means “saviour”. It comes from the Hebrew, Y’shua, We’ll call his name Joshua. What it means is more valuable than what it really says. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

Matthew 1:21 says, She shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins. All this was done that it might fulfil that which was spoken of the Lord (word becoming flesh) by the prophet saying, “Behold a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.” Now we’ve got a different name. Emmanuel means, “God is with us”. So, let’s keep Lance as our example. Any man who is in Christ (Lance) is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold all things have become new and all things are of God. So, if the word became flesh in Lance’s body, then God is with us. Some people might think, “Oh, we can’t say that, brother”. Well, it was the Bible that said that. The word became flesh. And if the word was made flesh, that’s how the Bible translators said God is with us. Isaiah Chapter 7 says that “You will call his name Emmanuel, for God is with us”.

Why doesn’t God work on the earth unless there be a man of God sent? Why do people have to die in Pakistan until some preacher finally gets sent to Pakistan? Because God is not in Pakistan, he’s in men, now. It’s the Holy Ghost, which is in you. 1 Corinthians 6 says, And ye are not your own. For ye are bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. That’s why.The words are still moving; the words are still in the earth. The words are still the prophecies, and if we are going to be the people of God, we must embrace the prophecies in our generation until they are fulfilled. People could say, “Well, that was Jesus, the son of God” But doesn’t Romans 8:14 say, For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. First John 3:2, says, Now are we the sons of God. It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when He shall appear, we will be like Him. As He is, so are we in this world.

Until you start plugging yourself into those prophetic scriptures, you cannot become like him. Sure, you’re born again, but you might still smell like those onion bagels. So we need to start putting ourselves in the book. You can visualize yourself in everyone else’s books, right? I can sure see myself sailing that 18’ catamaran. A lot of the children of Israel only saw themselves as the “lambs for the slaughter”. But thank God, in the end of the Book of Romans, Chapter 8, Paul said, Nay, (which means “no way), Nay we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

Genesis 3:15 said, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Those of you that raised your hands that have cast out devils, healed the sick, and more; You have done the very same things that God said he anointed Jesus for, by the Spirit of the Lord. An empowered Jesus went about doing good; healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him. Well, if you have done that, you have already fulfilled that verse yourself. You’ve already become Genesis 3:15, haven’t you.? You’re in the Book! The word was made flesh in you, but now we can add more names to these scriptures besides just Jesus.

Jesus wasn’t even the only one that ever raised the dead. Elisha and Elijah raised the dead. David wrote Psalm 103 which said, “He heals all my diseases”. Moses healed the sick. It’s all right to have a Jesus Fan Club, but Jesus’ idea was trying to get YOU to get busy working. We’ve got some work to do, but we’re not going to do it unless we get the word, and then start becoming what the word says. That’s where the power is to make things happen. If someone was sick, and you laid hands on him, and they got free from sickness, wasn’t the burden of sickness removed by your hands? You laid hands on them, the power of God moved, the anointing moved to remove it. Right? So now you are Isaiah 10:27, right? The burden will be removed in that day because of the anointing. Well, it happened at your hands, because I didn’t see Jesus anywhere.

God is with us. And God is closer than we thought He was. It’s not this outside relationship, like the people in the Old Testament saying, When will God ever show any mercy? and all the while, Moses is in the camp. And they murmur against him. I was reading this morning in Numbers 16 where the judgment came down on Dathan and friends who were murmuring against Moses, saying, Why does God only talk to you? Well, because Moses was the only one listening for God! He says, God, what are you going to do? Don’t kill all the people. And God says, All right, just stay away from Dathan’s house. If you happen to get a word not to go over to the onion bagel’s house next week, don’t do it. God, don’t just take him out with a cough and some flu symptoms, Moses says. I expect it to be in a totally different way; a way that they’ll know it’s YOU. Sure enough, the earth opened up. Under just his house.

Turn to Mark Chapter 16 verse 14 Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief Why? Because the disciples thought like we did. They were hiding out in the Upper Room waiting for Jesus to deliver them. They were waiting for Jesus to do something. Jesus shows up and says, What are you doing here? Was it only women that believed that I would be raised from the dead? There were four Mary’s at the tomb. The disciples didn’t believe the testimony of the women when they came back and said, He’s alive! Well, the women were at the tomb expecting him to keep his word. He said, I’ll be back. When they told the disciples, they said, No, he’s dead. They’re gonna come and crucify us next. Sure enough, Jesus appears and says, I’m back. They said, Oh, Jesus, Jesus, and he upbraided them for their unbelief. He said, Didn’t you get the message? Here’s what you are gonna do. He upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen. And he said unto them, (new words coming out) Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. It’s where he remains today. In a very comfy chair. He’ll be there for as long as it takes us to get our act together. But if you think about it, we are really two thousand years late in understanding the message of Christ. We’re just understanding, No, now I’m supposed to be the one doing the things that Jesus did because the words say so. It isn’t me, I’m just obeying His words. Who do I think I am??? Well, who do I think I’m not, if I’m not obeying Jesus? Do I think I’m like someone who can just stand there and NOT do what he says? We’ve already got the rest of Christianity calling on Jesus to do their job all the time:

Turn to Romans Chapter 10. We need to re-read those prophecies concerning Jesus, and if they don’t say the word “Jesus” in them, then they apply to anyone who believes his words. Verse 1 Brethren, My heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. Why does this hinge on my righteousness? You don’t have to go around trying to be so good before you do anything. Just believe my words. You’ll eventually get good. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith (remember, he upbraided them for their lack of faith) speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) Don’t say, Jesus, please come down and heal me. And then it says, Don’t do this. Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) Remember, he died. So don’t say, Jesus, come up and help me. But what does it say? But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus,

That’s not praying to Jesus, that’s just saying, Jesus is Lord. Those words activate every one of those scriptures, and the word regarding your situation becomes flesh. The Bible says, “Let the poor say, I’m rich.” If you keep saying, I’m poor, then you’ll keep getting poor and the “rich” part of the scripture will never become flesh for you. The Bible says, “Let the weak say, I’m strong.” But people still say, I’m too weak for that, I’m too uneducated, I’m this, I’m that. The doctor says I’ve got three problems. Let’s not believe his words, let’s believe words that actually produce flesh, not just words that comment on your current situation. We need some words that make flesh, and we’re the ones today that the word is talking about.

We are not supposed to say, Hey Jesus, these words now apply to you. No, he’s done. He’s handled his deal, he’s made his deal work so that we could do it, so that it’s not just one Christ. Now there are a whole body of Christs. And now we ought to be out there looking to lay hands on the sick any time we can. If someone coughs or sneezes, just be obedient. Cast out devils in the name of Jesus. Then go on your way like nothing has happened. But don’t go looking for deadly things to drink. The kids today are doing that as we speak.

Turn to John 14:12, Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it. If ye love me, keep my commandments.

Go discover your Bible again, and stop subconsciously popping Jesus into every scripture. Start putting your name in there, and see if lightning comes down and gets you. If it does, I was wrong! Only kidding! I’ve done it, and I’m still here, and I am not Jesus. OK? Just let it be known on all the tapes, I am not Jesus. But I’ve done a lot of the greater works, because I had the guts one day to put up my shield to block the lightning, and then I just put myself into the verse. And the word was made flesh. I don’t even get sore when I work out, any more. Which means, that if you are a woman, you don’t have to have pain having children. You don’t have to have pain and cramps. What you’ve got to do, though, is get yourself into the right verses. Plug yourself into some superhuman verses, and get rid of your mortality. Put on immortality. Start becoming a son or daughter of God.

Does everyone see what I’m getting at? The only way you can get something out of The Book, is to be “it”. Just be it. Just say, I am. I will. I am what I am by the word of God.

Let’s close in prayer. Heavenly Father, in Jesus’ name, we know that there are some specific verses for the people in this room, not just the ones we’ve read today. Show them their verses. Show them where they belong in that book, so that the word becomes flesh, and so that the word becomes the fullness of Christ in them, the hope of glory. We agree to that, in Jesus’ name. Amen

Angels Couldn’t Cut It

“Angels Couldn’t Cut It”
By Tiger Todd

I’m relatively note-free today. I decided to just see what God had to say today. He’s either gonna use me, or fire me. So, let’s turn to John Chapter 1. Verse 29 says, “The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” I thought this scripture was interesting when I recently reread it, because we are taught that Jesus died for our sins, but that’s not exactly what the Bible says. After all, I was even born when Jesus walked the earth. But the Bible does say that Jesus died for the “sin” of the world. What do you suppose the “sin of the world” is? Today, let’s look at “sin” not as a bunch of things all of us do wrong, but as a specific thing not done when action was required.

The cross reference of my King James Bible says that “he (Jesus) bareth the sin of the world”, the translators still not altering the word “sin” from being singular. Once again, to make sure I’ve beat this thing into the ground, Jesus was sent to take away THE SIN OF THE WORLD.

What was so different about this one called Jesus? Throughout the scripture, we see that this Jesus was not the only one to raise the dead, or heal the sick, or move the hand of God in some supernatural fashion. Israelite soldiers once threw their comrade’s dead body into an open grave, one that happened to contain the body of the prophet Elisha. I don’t think they had even finished putting the dirt on top of poor Elisha, but when they threw the dead soldier in with him, the soldier came out alive. We’ve also others in the Bible bare the sins and iniquities of their people. Samson, for instance, on his last day, asked God if he could do just one more big thing. The power of God moves in Samson one more time and Samson catches up on all the work he was originally sent to do. Judges chapter 13 records that Samson was expressly designed to “begin to free Israel from bondage to the Philistines.” Many Bible characters were sent by God to bare a lot of things, but only this one called Jesus was sent to bare “the sin of the world.”

Does anyone know what this sin is, one that could be so bad that it took God’s only begotten son to get things fixed? Let’s find out. We should probably start our investigation near the beginning, in Genesis Chapter 3. Pardon the long scripture segment:

“Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made, And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons, And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day; and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. We talked about that “blame thing”. God says, Uh, who is that? And Adam says, It wasn’t me Lord, it was her. You gave her to me. You talk to her about it. So the Lord God said unto the woman, what is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”

Whew! That was a long passage for a short message, but it does contain a lot of important information. There’s this whole mess-up by God’s favorite couple in the garden of Eden, and it is pretty easy to see those things that lead up to their punishment. But what is “the sin?” The only “single thing” that Adam does repeatedly in the face of God, who is trying to get him to come clean is blame. Adam never accepted the blame for violating what God had asked him to do and instead transferred that blame to others, from the woman, to the serpent, to God. If I were God, that would tick me off too. He said, “That woman you gave me. But because God’s couple blamed their disobedience on someone else, they put themselves in a position of never being able to be forgiven for this sin. It’s like a parent asking their son who broke the sliding mirror in his room. Since it cost the parents a fews days of their lives to earn the money that bought the mirror, they are justifiably upset and deserve accountability. But if the boy- who did break the mirror playing with his friends- blames his friends instead of accepts responsibility for not obey his parents whose rules included “All tackling must be done in the yard,” then the boy will go on in life harboring a sin that he could have been free from. Worse still is his friends gets the blame for breaking the mirror, which further shifts the emphasis from the real sin that separates children from their parents, blame.

I believe it’s Ezekiel that talks about the fall of Satan, known before as Lucifer the angel. Some of the texts like Judas and Thomas that have been unearthed deal with this dramatic fall were not allowed to be part of the 66 books approved by those assembling our current Bible. Suffice it to say that Lucifer apparently said some things that got him kicked out of heaven. He was designed originally as one of the three archangels, one of the three anointed cherubs. He was beautifully adorned, was charge of worship and praise, and was a closet narcissist. One day he saw himself in a mirror and said, “Wow, am I hot! I am so beautiful that God and the other angels should bow down and worship me.” What is it with mirrors, anyway? Since insubordination is not something that God nor Donald Trump tolerate, Lucifer was cast out of heaven but he took all those who were subordinate to him, er, it- like a third of all the angels- with him. Did you know that his new name, “Satan,” actually means “accuser?” This has some relevance here since Romans chapter 2 and verse one states that those who accuse- or blame- are guilty of that which they blame. No extra charge for that.

So there was a big war over heaven, and everything all the way down to the holy utensils of worship in heaven were affected. It would be like like if one-third of the U.S. military attempted a coup. It would certainly be a mess at every level in our own country and abroad. This is similar to what the scriptures record happened in heaven. Lucifer was in charge of about 3.3 trillion angels under him if the estimates of 10 trillion total angels by Bible scholars is accurate. Here’s the whole picture. Lucifer thinks he should be like God; he felt he deserved worship because he was so hot. He ultimately learned what being “hot” really was, but we’re also getting closer to understanding what the “sin of the world” really was.

Our next clue comes from understanding what it was that Jesus actually accomplished. To find this, I want to look at this “world” thing. Let’s continue reading, verse 16. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; You know, it’s not that God just beats around the bush, but what’s interesting is like what happened with David.

Remember when Nathan came to David because of that sin; that whole deal with Bathsheba? Remember the parable Nathan gave to King David about taking his only lamb? David said, That man should be killed. And Nathan said, That man is YOU. Well, God didn’t judge David for killing Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah. He judged him for disobeying him and taking another man’s wife. So there’s something about what God sees, and what we see from the outside. Something else was more valuable in God’s eyes, or He would have said, You murdered this man! But that’s not what the Bible said at all. The sin was committed, and David was out of the anointing when he took Bathsheba to wife. In fact, I was reading in First Kings where David’s plan, actually, was to get Uriah. I’m not jumping around. You have to see this. David asked Uriah to wait at his gate until he could cover up his mess. He said, Wait here. He gave him instructions and then says, OK, now go home and spend the night with your wife. But Uriah disobeyed the King. Well, that’s death for disobedience, so David was justified in his murder, if you will. It’s not a murder, it was a killing. It was a justified death according to law in Israel.

What, exactly, was Adam’s sin? Was it blame? Or really, was it because he didn’t allow God’s plan to be fulfilled? God told Adam to keep and protect the garden, but instead, he let this interloper possess a serpent to start negotiating with the woman. You read it in Genesis 3:1. The serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent…

If you’re gardening and some snake starts to talk to you, how many of you guys are gonna be real comfortable with that? Eve was comfortable with it. Adam had named all the animals, but they didn’t talk back. The Bible is clear about when the donkey actually speaks, or when the serpent speaks. It’s not saying that the animals talked all night. So Eve was comfortable that this serpent had hung around, and hung around. And it looks like his motive is the same one that it was when he was cast out of heaven. What? He wanted to have people worship him. So basically, he’s trying to build a church with these two people in the garden. They had the authority that he wanted. Psalm 80 actually says, when the angels are prophesying and saying, What is man that you crowned him with glory and honor? So the world got messed up right here. The world. Chapter 4 begins where God makes man, and man makes the world. Adam knew his wife Eve. She conceived and bare Cain. She said,I have gotten a man from the Lord. She again bare his brother Abel. Abel was the keeper of the sheep, and now we’ve got all the begats and begats that start. So God makes the first couple, but then the first couple takes over and makes all the rest of the people. That is, intrinsically, what we know as “the world”. And Jesus died for the sin, singular, of the world.

Let’s jump over to Second Peter 2:1 But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not. For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast hem down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness Now what was their sin? The angels that sinned were just being obedient to Lucifer. Lucifer was the one saying, Hey look at me. I need some worship. So obviously, looking for self worship is a sin. But I know there’s more to that. For God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; And spared not the old world, So now we have a reference to not A world, but an OLD world, meaning, we’ve got different periods like the Renaissance, etc. Well this was an old world during the time of Noah. It says spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness. I think that’s why he was saved. bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;

Now, this scripture is comparing the fall of the angels to, if you will, the fall of the people that led to the flood to wash away the sin from their fall. Anyone have the answer yet? Turn to Second Corinthians, and we’ll see if this is one of them. Chapter 5. One of the things that jumped out when I read that about the angels that fell is that angels different from people; the angelic class, We always say, Well, they don’t have a free will. Well, it’s not like they can’t choose unrighteousness. It’s that they don’t. See, we’ve had this thing where…and it says, Hebrews Chapters 1 and 2, it says they are like brute beasts made to kill and destroy. And I’ve heard it before, and I liken this example, I agree, testify to this example, that angels are machines. Anyone in the 20th century that records seeing an angel, usually have them at about 8 feet tall, wearing white clothes and white weapons. So I have likened angels as to machines. Psalm 103 says they hearken to the voice of the word of God. meaning, angels don’t hearken to anything other than the voice or the word of God. They’re stuck. That’s what they listen to. You could be having your house on fire, and say, Oh my God, the house is on fire. Well, that’s not the word of God. So angels might be there, but they’re standing idly by waiting for you to give them a command, like, A thousand may fall at my side, and ten thousand at my right hand, but have not come near me. That’s the word of God. They hearken to that.

Luke Chapter 4 And Jesus being full of the holy ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, Being forty days tempted of the devil. Let’s see how he works. He’s a fallen angel. And in those days he did eat nothing, and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. Was Jesus the son of God here? Yes. He never confessed it, because it would have delivered him, but yes, he was. He had the spirit of God in him, right? God is a spirit. Those that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. So inside the body of flesh Jesus must have been the son of God. To keep all the scriptures true. So he was. So what was his answer gonna be? OK, I’ll turn it into bread. No, Jesus responds with It is written, remember that they hearken to the word of God, that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. So he quotes Deuteronomy 8:3. And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. Of the world at that time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them; for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. Now do you think Jesus knew that that was the truth or not? The devil is sitting there saying, Hey, this is all mine. All mine! It’s the Mount of Temptation. Jesus was being tempted. If it weren’t true, it wouldn’t have been a temptation.

Hold your place there. I want to read you a quickie. Hebrews Chapter 4:14 says Seeing then that we have a great high priest,that has passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. See? It was a temptation. Where, then do you think satan got that stuff? In the garden. God said to Adam, let’s make man in our image, and he’ll be fruitful, and multiply and have dominion over the earth and everything in it. So, satan got that from Adam. Satan is now showing it off in front of Jesus because that’s part of God’s plan. Satan got from Adam what God gave Adam. Jesus has come back to the earth, as Acts 10:30 says, to destroy the works of the devil. He rises from the dead, and he tells the disciples, All power both in heaven and in earth has been given unto me. So Jesus, in effect, is coming back to get back what the devil got from Adam…that God gave man. Are you clear on that?

So now, Jesus is sent knowing that’s what he is supposed to do, but he doesn’t necessarily know how to get it. See, if Jesus knew all the stuff we said he knew, how could you be tempted? It said he was tempted like as we are, yet without sin. If Jesus was God 100% of the time, not God exalted by the Father after resurrection, but, Oh, he was always the son of…, Well, he was always the son of God, truly, but he didn’t walk in full God-ship privileges, he walked in son of God privileges. Or he couldn’t have been tempted. He wouldn’t have been in the Garden of Gethsemane crying out drops of blood before he was crucified saying, Not my will, not what I want to do Father, but what you want to do. We have this idea that he ran this program, he knew everything that was going to happen from birth. Like we talked about the talking bubba doll…we’ve got Jesus right out of the womb quoting scripture. It just didn’t happen. He had Joseph leading him. It wasn’t so. See, the reason why he is a high priest is because he was tempted like we are. If he wasn’t the sacrifice for what we could be, we could not be redeemed by him. We can’t just send just all God down to do it, or God would have done it 6000 years earlier. So it had to be man. It had to fit law. It had to be OK. Anyway, the devil is finding this stuff out.

We’re still in Luke. Let’s read this again, to see how he works as a fallen angel. Verse 6 again, The devil said unto him, all this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. Now look at this temptation. Offering all the stuff, Jesus is saying, Hey this is what I was supposed to get. I was supposed to get back all the stuff that we lost control and authority of. And he is offering it to me, and he’s saying, just go do this one thing. But this one thing is not the plan of God, and it is the very one thing that God kicked satan out of heaven for.

It’s funny about the names: we’ve got Lucifer, satan, devil. Satan means accuser. Devil really, most of the time, means adversary. Of course, Lucifer means son of the morning, which are the words they called him. So he was Lucifer, fell, became satan, and he is, by class, a devil; i.e, fallen angel. Just so you know. If thou wilt worship all shall be thine. Jesus answered and said unto him…Now Jesus did not entertain him like Adam and his wife did in the garden. Jesus is sorely tempted, but his answer, even when he does not know what the deal is, his answer is the word of God, and he’ll either find out whether the offer is accurate or not accurate, i/e stick to the plan. And we’ve got this rogue thinking in the church today. See, Jesus could have said, Yo satan, what up? and then go do it. Jesus could have done that. Jesus could have, but he chose not to. Angels have one chance at that choice. And they only messed up that one day when they all fell. See, they don’t have that right. We have that right. Sometimes we wish we didn’t have that right. We wish we could just always do the will of God without even having to….isn’t that true? We just wish that, no one out there wants to sin. No one wants what sin pays off with, which is death. No one wants that. No one wants sickness and disease; all the things that came on the curse. No one wants to be in debt. No one wants any of that, and here we have this privilege, and all the while, we are just sitting there saying, Boy I wish I could just….Praise the Lord…and just go to work and be perfect. Hi, God Bless You, even if you hate their guts. We just really wish we could do that.

But we have a choice here, and God is trying to show us that that choice is the God-ship satan was after. Did you get that? Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve. And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: Don’t you hate it when the devil is like a Bible student? Well, it’s like the woman in church doesn’t want to marry the Christian brother, he’s kind of dorky, but he’s pushing her and pushing her. So she tries to find a good Bible NO, and she sees where the Apostle Paul says, I would not have you ignorant Brother! So, we’re looking for these good Bible no’s, these scriptures out of context to kind of just prove what we want to do.

I found one about the Fords the other day - we’ve got the Explorer and the Bronco. But I haven’t polished it enough yet. You wouldn’t laugh anyway, so…I get more laughs talking about how not funny I am, so I’ll just keep using that.

For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: Remember Psalm 91 For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Back to Luke 4:12 What do you do? Stick with the plan. Stick with the scripture. And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Jesus established, actually from the Levitical law, it says out of the mouth of two or three witnesses, let every word be established. That’s why you don’t just take one thing, and go marry the guy, because you’ve found a scripture, you ignorant brother. You don’t go buy a Honda because they were all of one Accord. You don’t go playing tennis because David served in the King’s courts. What was the one about David’s motorcycles? David’s triumph was heard throughout all the land. So, you don’t go doing all that out of one scripture. You go to find the establishing witnesses, and Jesus, we find out all through scripture that the temptations and these struggles all happened in threes. See, that’s for our benefit. Well, I don’t think that when the first attack of the devil is trying to get me in some season. He’s trying to get me to go back to Egypt and go do something stupid. I don’t sit and think, Oh glory to God! I’ve got two more coming! I mean, I don’t think that way, but we need to start thinking that way, because it is out ability to be right.

Let’s go to Second Corinthians Chapter 5 I wonder, once I found out that the Bible wasn’t written on day one, all in one work, once I found out that a lot of this stuff shouldn’t have happened…some people have this idea that it’s all done from the end to the beginning, and you find out that God’s good, everything he made was good, he called it good when he got done with doing his stuff, and then he rested. And now we’ve got 66 books minus two chapters that are just a mess, trying to fix it. So I start wondering how much stuff was unnecessary, and how many times God tried to fix the sin of the world, and let’s read this before we go on, verse 14 of Second Corinthians Chapter 5 For the love of Christ constraineth us; It’s like a combination of two words - it’s like compel and restrain at the same time. It propels us towards stuff we need to be in, and it restrains us from somewhere you shouldn’t be walking. For the love of Christ constraineth us: People who do not have this love, hence, are tossed about by every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men with cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. We are lambs to the slaughter. Romans Chapter 8 says We are more than conquerors through him that loved us. So with this love of Christ, it constrains us. because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: The Bible says Jesus died for all. And what had happened was, that one singular sin in the garden, I mean everything came through that coupled. So really, one sin messed up everything from that point.

One of the chapters on Predestination that we wrote is called “Satan’s Timing”. Like, why then? Why did Satan come then? Remember Ecclesiastes 3:1, To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose unto heaven. Well, you don’t think they were out of the will of God before Satan got there? Probably not. What happened was, they were getting ready to have kids: be fruitful and multiply. Satan saw this as the only way to see to it that the sin affected everybody. Do you see that? What if it happened after Abel? See, if Satan got to Adam after Abel was born, Abel would have been a loose cannon. He could have been in church today, OK? Because the sin that caused death was not in him. It would not have been in him. But hence, it still was, because Satan got there at that time. Why did Satan pick that time? Because they were getting ready to sow, to every thing there is a season and time to every purpose unto heaven. A time to plant, a time to sow, a time to reap. See, so he was about ready to do that, and that’s why he had to act then, and that’s why he acted them. But it says here, If one died for all. Well, one caused the deal, so one with a miraculous God plan to fix the deal…but one died for all, that means that all must have been dead. I mean, if we were at the mall, and everyone was locked in, terrorists at every gate, and they had planted a bomb and it was about ready to go off and the people were about ready to sacrifice themselves with this bomb, and I ran over here and tripped on something and fell and accidentally disconnected it, I’ve saved all of your lives. Do you know what that means? When the three seconds ticked off that thing, you were dead. You were as good as dead before the three seconds, because that thing was going to tick off and blow up. So, this is where we get the idea of owing somebody your life. Well, we were dead in sin. We were dead from the beginning. And this is why we owe our life…

Now unlike angels, we still have a right to choose to serve him. Romans Chapter 10 says you have to confess Jesus as Lord. God still honors that God-like thing in us that allows us to maintain individual sovereignty over our situation. Only you can make Jesus your Lord. God can’t make Jesus his Lord. God has made us in a class that the angels have no idea about. That’s why it’s so much fun to sing those devil butt-kicking songs. Because they don’t have that thing in us. We’ve looked at it as a detriment, and it’s not. It’s the part that separates us from the angels. It’s the part that makes us like God. Angels will never be called Sons of God. But the Bible says, now are WE the Sons of God. And it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when he shall appear, we will be like him. So we have this advantage, we have this thing, and that thing is still a choice. It’s a done deal, but…keep reading here. ...that if one died for all, then were all dead: See, even though our life is not our own, because our life was saved, I mean, if you guys were all in the Mall, maybe half of you would come back, and any time I need something, you’d say, Oh, I’ll do that. Well, a lot of you do it now. You’ve laid down your life for me. So let’s just say, typical Mall shoppers on a typical Sunday afternoon…they’d be, oh, thanks a lot, I’ve gotta go. I’ve got homework to do. No, you didn’t have homework to do when that bomb went off three seconds ago. You didn’t have a future. I GAVE you a future, thereby, you do owe me that debt, even if I just tripped and fell and disconnected the thing. See, this is something we need to realize, is that, wait a minute, you didn’t have a future. Jesus did not come selling himself. He only came selling the Father, and we are supposed to give glory to the Father, but let’s look today at what Jesus did. He could have chosen, Hey, no crosses for me, man, too heavy, man. No way, man. Take the thief! But he didn’t. He was tempted like as we are, yet without sin. I don’t want to get up. You have that choice, but you don’t have that right to make that choice.

And he died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto him which died for them and rose again… I believe that is the sin…the sin of the world was living unto themselves. I think the same thing was true of Lucifer. He wanted his own deity. Isn’t that what you want when you want your own deity? That’s why you guys don’t share cars. You all want to be God over this car. It’s in us to be this way. But God has a plan. He says, No, no, you humble yourself under my hand. I’ll exalt you in due time. Don’t you worry about what you’re gonna eat, what you’re gonna drink, what you’re gonna wear. Don’t worry about that. You seek first this kingdom, and then all those other things, I’ll just add to you. See, that’s the plan. You’ll get it with authority. You won’t be pierced through with many sorrows. And you’ll know it’s yours when you get it. No one will take it away from you. GMC Motor Credit won’t be pulling up to be towing it away, and claiming God-ship or Lordship over your car.

Verse 13 again And he died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for him and rose again. He dies, he says, OK, he handles the deal, he leaves you his will, and then he comes back to tell you how to walk you through how the thing’s gonna go. That’s a cool deal. We thought about doing that. When Ron was talking about a steward tip, I don’t usually get invited to do memorial services. I did, because it was someone we knew, and usually, I get invited to raise the dead. So, I told somebody I had to do a memorial service, and they said, You’re gonna do a memorial service? So I’m talking to this family about this thing, and my Bible is wide open, and I’m showing them what the scripture says, and I’m feeling like I’m on the Mount of Temptation with these people. They’re wanting a memorial service for someone that they just really, really, really, really, really wanted dead. They didn’t just want this person dead, these were the former in-laws that were wanting this. They wanted numbers from the Bible, most likely, on how hot it really was in hell. They are trying to site things he did to try to put him on the afterburner list. Let me tell you what delivered me from being able to do that memorial service. It is written…It is written…It is written. She said, Are you trying to tell me that…No, I said, Deuteronomy 30:19 just told you that. Well, I don’t believe that, she said. Well, I gave her about 12-14 of them, and I was just glad I wasn’t doing a memorial service. There might have been more of them there like her.

But anyway, back to the “rose again” part, I had a mind to just go to the mortuary and just get him up. I said, God, can we just get him up out of here, go knock on the in-laws door and say, Now what did you mean about that thing? Wouldn’t that just be the way to do it? That’s not even a greater work. Jesus said, the works I do and greater than these shall you do, because I go to my Father. That’s not even a greater work. He did that with Lazarus. Raised him from the dead, and then the Pharisees were so mad that Lazarus had become preacher of the hour, he said, The whole world’s gonna believe! They’re saying, What should we do? Kill him!!! I don’t want to do some great works that I stress over, I want to do some greater works that I can have fun with. And boy, that would be just too much fun.

I’ll keep reading. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. Do you know what that means? That means, Jesus is not coming back to do anything for you. He did the deal. It worked. Now, it’s talking about the us, who are supposed to take up our crosses and act like him. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. Don’t keep thinking about it, then. When I learned to confess a sin and get rid of it, I learned that God put it as far from the east to the west immediately. What am I doing still hanging around, still playing with it? God is faithful and just to cleanse you of all unrighteousness. So, if God’s gonna say that all things are passed away, they’re passed away. Passed away. Dead. That means, don’t go back in the coffin and get Dracula up and talk like you used to talk. Don’t do it. Leave him alone. Be the new creature. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.

God, in the garden, used to walk with Adam in the cool of the day. I don’t know that God could care less about the earth. The thing that God, the Father missed most, was now this one creation he made for fellowship, he didn’t have the fellowship anymore. He didn’t have a friend. Because he found one, right? Abraham. he had to make a friend. I need a friend. He has to be Jewish. OK, You! That’s what he did! And this reconciliation reconciled us to himself. Yeah, that was the thing that God missed most about the tragedy in the garden. He could handle the blame, the shame, the murder, all the other stuff that ensued, all the dumb kids, whatever else. But just don’t let anything get in the way of what’s important to God.

I have found that there are just not many, I call them minor sins, murder, adultery, fornication, lasciviousness, you can go down the list…minor sins are not what messes people up with God. That messes you up with you. God clearly says that the only sin that he says the calling, what God called you to do, and the gifts he put inside you, he says those are the only things that if you don’t walk in them, are without repentance. As soon as you sin, get back up, and get to your starting blocks again as fast as you can, and start running the race that’s set for you.

Verse 19 To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. Notice, the work’s done, you can take the offer, it’s on the table, will you? Will you take the offer, because you have that right. It’s still you saying, I will! It’s an act of your will. Be ye reconciled unto God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. If you’ve taken him up on the offer, the righteousness is back. It’s back the minute you say, I will. If you sin, as soon as you go and confess it, It’s back! You’re just trying to convince your own mind that it’s not. The righteousness was not like the difference between being happy and being joyful. Jesse duPlantis is full of joy. People who get a new car are happy. Till the payments come. Then happiness is a fleeting thing, so we’re talking about righteousness. We’re talking about a done deal. You are the righteousness of God in him. The only thing you had to do was get in him.

I want to close talking about how stupid those devils are. Sometimes showing the flip side, one of the books, I mean, we have 12 titles that we’re working on, and one of the ways we are going to sell this book, we’re going to try to push it through a denomination that we know would get really made. Because you know, even negative press is press! Everyone will buy the book to read it to just get madder. Because that’s how they do it out there. We’ve just got to play along to get the word out. Sometimes you can find out how a truth works if you look at the other side and here in First Corinthians Chapter 2…Needless to say, all of the principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and all of the wicked spirits in heavenly places that Ephesians talks about,are the rank and file of demon, devils, etc. that fell; fallen angels. If they had known the secret to the plan, obviously, they would not have been overtaken and lose all that power. Obviously, they were gearing up their best to keep it from happening,. But it says here, look at verse 6, Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Do you remember when that was? Genesis 3:15. See, the world in the Greek and Hebrew is literally, decoration. Not the earth, the dirt, but the stuff on it. And the old world perished. The earth was still here, right? Just all the people that lived during Noah’s time perished. Only Noah lived, a preacher of righteousness. So, when God ordained the hidden wisdom, the hidden wisdom was this thing was about “this woman is going to have a seed, and the seed is going to do this, and tall this stuff was like a mystery…seed, sowing, farming. And the next verse says, that’s exactly what it meant…Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Well, I guess not! Everyone, Satan included, got spanked, badly. Jesus used these words, “for the prince of this world is judged.” He really doesn’t have a choice to make this thing change. Because there is a big “The End” in the back of the book here. So he doesn’t have a choice. The Lake of Fire is waiting for him. All he can do is prolong it. We could have one more testament if we don’t do something. He is judged, but all he can do is prolong this thing. I just don’t want to prolong it any longer than we have to. God didn’t want it to take four thousand to get to here.

Turn back to Genesis Chapter 4. I just want to shore that up. Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. Hold your place at Genesis 4:1, and look to the left to Genesis 3:15, And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. The easiest way to read your New Testament from now on…there’s no extra charge for this, this is just one of Tiger’s tips, Is Genesis 3:15 before Genesis 4:1. Yes! All the confident ones said, Yes! Adam knew his wife Eve, she conceived, bare Cain, and we can go down the list about Cain…Cain bare, Enoch bare….Erod…etc. and all of a sudden you see the foundation of the world. So we need to realize that when you are in your New Testament reading “before the foundation of the world”, it’s referring to, before Genesis 4:1, because man made the world, God made man. So Genesis 3:15 is usually “before the foundation of the world”. So that is the verse where, not only did God find out…

Go to Job Chapter 1. Someone is pushing me, spiritually, to do this. Verse 6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. What does Romans Chapter 8:14 say that Sons of God are? Those that are led by the spirit of God. it says, Those that are led by the spirit of God, they are the Sons of God. Well, we’ve had this thing that they are angels. Angels cannot be sons of God because they are dumb. They are dumb! They are like brute beasts. They couldn’t figure out the Genesis 3:15 deal. So there were some sons of God there. ...the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. The Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? (What are you doing here?) Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. I have authority! I have authority! And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? Now a ton of stuff has been preached on that verse. But the one thing that I see, is that God is rubbing it in! In spite of all the control you think you have, Satan, it is still possible for a man to serve me and be upright in everything, and prosper. How much more should we do today now that this thing is fixed. I think God was just rubbing it in.

Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face. And the Lord said unto Satan, Hey, Yo, Loser, Idiot, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; (you big dork). He didn’t even know. he had no idea how far reaching the authority he got from Adam was. Satan himself, not just the low level demons, but Satan himself. Dumb as a stump, and just really thought that God had done this great work, and all the while, he didn’t know what he had. It’s like when somebody is showing me their new car. How many of you ever read the manual of your new car? You get in a new car, riding in it, and you’re saying, Hey, it’s got one of those gadgets on it. Well, that’s kind of like it was with Satan. He didn’t know. There’s still stuff he doesn’t know, but it doesn’t matter. But he’s just really dumb.

Turn to Hebrews 1:1, and we’ll close there. God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds: Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son? And again, when he bringeth in the first begotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him. Verse 8 But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; When Ron was talking in his steward tip, you’re either in faith, or you’re in unbelief. We don’t say doubt, you’re in unbelief. Because you are choosing, really, not to believe. That’s not doubt, that’s a choice of unbelief. And here, when you are trying to walk in righteousness, you’ve really got to learn to hate iniquity. You don’t hate iniquity for iniquity’s sake. You hate iniquity because it will come back to bite you. And that’s no good. So Jesus, here, he hated iniquity. He didn’t have any trouble, though, going down and finding, remember he was hanging out with the sinners.

I told you about that Sociology class out at the Community College. I had one heckler. The message was on love, Bible love. Two words out of my mouth, and the girl in the far corner, the mother hen of the classroom, starts heckling from the get-go. She turned out to be the only professed Christian in the room. I don’t blame Jesus for hanging out in the world. You could give someone without a preconceived notion and a “I will not believe Thomas Syndrome”, you could just go out there with the truth of the gospel, just the simple stuff, the ministry of reconciliation, something that Jesus had already provided and laid out…you didn’t really have to do any work. Now you have to work to get it. You could just go out there and just lay it out to all of them, and they’d just receive it. They’ve been looking for this. Who else is going to tell them that they have a calling in them that God wants them to fulfill? I think about this whenever I’m alone and needy…I need help, I really wish someone could do this for me. I look at all the people in my past that I didn’t go minister to, because those very people could have been called by God to handle the stuff for me, so I didn’t have to do it all. God said that there would never be a test, a temptation or a trial that would come on you that he wouldn’t give a way of escape. He wouldn’t give you a call or a plan or a course to take without providing the equipment to do it. So the equipment’s got to be out there, and that’s why we’ve not got to draw back. The equipment is out there, and if you keep your faith on the equipment, it’s out there. I haven’t found it yet, but I know it’s out there, it won’t be long before I find it. How many people get so close to the Promised Land, and then they draw back because they think God must know. No, everything’s got an answer. Everything works out, and God’s always good.

Let me just finish this. Let’s look at verse 12, And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool? Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation? Angels, fallen angels, demons…are not heirs. We are heirs. Jesus is the first begotten from the dead. First born among many brethren. Now are we the sons of God, the Father, as implied in First John. The angels are supposed to be our servants. They never had a right to get in that, and that’s why it took one mess-up. Here we are, we’re servants to everything from bank cards to mortgages (death grip, in the Latin), We’re servant to all these things, and all the while, there are ministering spirits sent forth to provide, to set us free, we just had to want it, and believe we could. God having providing some better thing for us. And I think if there is anything we can do today, one thing is, we’re not living for ourselves. Today, if just today, think about living your life for somebody else. Not just God, but somebody else. See if they need something before you do. Just to practice that, and that really puts you in such a place of real authority instead of trying to protect what little authority you’ve got. We’re always trying to get, and we never get it. That’s just not going to work. Well, we have it all: the deal has been done, and I think we’ll close here.

Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, I ask that as we pray right now, you will speak to us. However you speak to us, we desire to know what you would have us know for today. Give us each a word, or give us a word together. Thank you for your word. He said, I’m just so glad to have you back as my sons and daughters. Well God, we thank you, and we give you the praise and the glory for restoring your family in the earth. Show us how we can be better kids. Show us how to respect the work that Jesus did. Whatever our own cross is to bare, make it real to us, light it up, put stars around it, so that every day when we wake up, we do not forget what manner of men and women we are. We receive the answer to this prayer, and we dedicate everything we do with our hands and say with our mouths and wherever our feet tread, we’ll do it all for to establish your kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Thank you for this time with you. We pray this according to the word of Jesus. Amen

Parable of the Stinky Bagel

I’m always looking for a new parable, metaphor, or illustration that parallels some truth about real life. There are many valuable parables in the Bible, but one concerning the bagels donated for our outreaches by Einstein Brothers Bagels is too good to pass up. If you were a bagel, what flavor would you be? Now think about your least favorite bagel flavor. You can almost smell it, can’t you?

When Einstein donates their leftover bagels to us, they have a habit of dumping all the differently flavored bagels- plain, asiago cheese, chocolate chip-all in the same big bag. This cinnamon raisin bagel I am holding- my personal favorite- was created pure, embracing its true, yummy nature of cinnamon and raisins. 2 Corinthians 5:17 actually says that anyone who embraces their true Christ nature is a new creature, that old things have passed away, all things new, and all things are of God. We began life as a batter made up of raisins, cinnamon, and some other stuff, and the end product is this new creature, a delicious, sweet, bagel. If I was a Hindu and came back in the next life as a bagel, this is the one I would want to be.

But unfortunately, this particular cinnamon raisin bagel, although created perfectly, was thrown carelessly into the same bag with a bunch of heathen-from-hell onion bagels. It was also rubbing raisins with the “I am stubborn and rebellious” garlic bagels. So although my sweet cinnamon raisin bagel began its life as a sweet new creature, it sure didn’t smell like one by the time I pulled it out of the bag. In fact, it smelled less like the bagel it was born to be and more like the other bagels it had been hanging around with.

When I discovered that certain people were once again doing the same things that they had been delivered from, I had to wonder, Why did these bad things return in their lives? Why? The answer is not unlike what happens to sweet bagels when they hang out with stinky bagels. Just by hanging out out with the people they used to who didn’t get delivered themselves, they picked those things back up simply by being in the same bag.

There comes a time when we each have to recognize that we are just not smart enough to figure out our own lives. This is the time to seek an expert or an applicable scripture where we can say by faith, “I may not get it yet, but I can still act on it.” What something says in the scriptures about you is FOR you, not against you. It is also for helping others, like when you see your friends go backward in life, and you’re thinking, How can they be still doing those same things? Well, yours is not to judge them or call them sinners. How’s that worked for you so far? Rather, we should be available to help deliver them from whatever it is they cannot break free from on their own. I found out that it is usually because they are still hanging out in the mixed bag. When that stinky person from their past calls, they give them a ride. What they ought to do instead is say, “I’m sorry, I can’t give you a ride because I cannot have you stink up my car like you did before.” Or you could just get them a bus pass and avoid all the drama.

God showed me this morning that sin actually has a smell. In fact sin, evil, and death each have their own smells. Why do you think there are so many different fragrances at the department store? Some might argue, “Well, it is because fragrances smell different on every person.” True, but why is that? I am beginning to believe it is because every person has a different “something” inside them that makes them smell different. I’ve used myself as a guinea pig for this for many years. In fact, God revealed this to me. I’d ask, “God, what was that smell that I used to have? Go ahead, you can be honest with me. I can take it.” Don’t think, dear reader, that this is an invitation for you to give me a piece of your mind. I am only mature enough to take correction from God.

Think about someone who could be classified as demon possessed, or just plain stupid, repeatedly. I call them “filled with the unholy spirit,” while Jesus said they were filled with an “unclean spirit,” or seven. To digress even more, I have noticed that smells have mass, like the smells that emanate from my 9.7-ounce can of Fabreeze. When you spray air freshener into a room, you can’t see it, but as the smell increases, the volume of fluid in the container decreases. Whatever created that smell has some weight to it, which means it must be “something.” Smells represent something real, whether clean or unclean, holy or unholy, coming from a can or from a person.

I was reminded of this yesterday. I walked by the door of a real estate company and smelled “that smell”. Now these people weren’t dirty, but something that was going on there was. The writers of the Bible were very aware of smells. They must have been pregnant and migraine sufferers. Scripture tell us sacrifices that produce “a sweet smelling savor” please God. Old Testament animal sacrifices must please God in the same way the smells coming from my barbecue delight me. “And lo, God was satisfied with the barbecue, for the smell was pleasing to his nostrils.” I wonder if lI could get less people to show up for my barbecues if I renamed them animal sacrifices…

I realized something about smell in general, and about the smells I used to have. After getting inner conflicts straightened out in my own life, I no longer needed to douse myself in foo-foo fragrances to smell nice. I realized that the smell I had been trying to cover up didn’t have anything to do with what I ate or how much I sweated from working out. Rather, there was something else there, and it turned out to be something else I shouldn’t have been doing.

One more thing: if you’re a guy, and you’ve never been to a nail salon before, you might just pass out when you walk in. Interestingly though, is that the owner and the other people working there don’t even smell anything any more. They have built up a tolerance for stinkiness due to repeated contact with the stinkiness. That’s how those people in the mixed bagel bag are. They don’t even know how much the smell of onion and garlic has permeated them.

Hanging out with stinky bagels got me wondering about those people in real life who, while being genuinely sweet people, cannot catch a break in life because they continue hanging out with stinkers. They spend so much of their time working on becoming the best parents, employees, and citizens they can be, but life continues to treat them as lower life forms for no other reason but the stink they pick up from hanging with the wrong crowds. The newspapers are full of stories of exceptional people- of note recently are those in professional sports like Michael Vick- who work hard to become new creatures, but then do not protect themselves from hanging out with stinkers.

Mr. Vick did not need Whoopi Goldberg to make excuses for him, saying it was not his fault he returned to the activities of his “people” because that was how he was raised. What? He was raised to kill dogs? I might agree that he learned how to be a dog by hanging with his “dawgs.” Typically, parents and teachers do not teach their children this curriculum. Kids learn “dog” by choosing to listen to “dog” music and other “dogs” instead of their parents and teachers. Interestingly, Jesus did say that dogs do return to their own vomit and sadly, even the self-professed Christian Michael Vick returned to his. If we do not want to be dogs, but rather, new creatures, then the most responsible way in which we can act like new creatures is by never letting ourselves be arbitrarily thrown in with the same pack of dogs- or in the same old bag with a bunch of stinky-old bagels.

Do you want more out of life than you are consistently getting? Remember that new creatures are supposed to live by faith, not by the law of the pack. Your best life demands a relationship between you and your God, not between you and your dogs, if you get the twist.

By nurturing our relationship with God, we can develop the faith that brings to us all those things that others seek. Living by faith is a choice, and not one we always choose when we have the money to just pay for what we want. A few years ago, I was ready for a new vehicle but instead of buying one, I thought I would see if I could get one by faith. After exchanging my TV-time for time meditating on Bible scriptures, I actually heard a voice say, “Call it in!” I listen to voices, in my head and outside of my head. So when an unseen voice like the one at the Amityville house says something like, “Get out,” I just do what it says. A picture of a new Ford Explorer had been stuck to my fridge for about a year, but that day my faith was ready to be released on it. So, I just did what the voice said and called it in. “I believe I receive my new Ford Explorer, now!” The next day, I was driving a brand new, paid-for, Ford Explorer. During that year, I had foolishly told people that I was going to develop my faith to the level of a new vehicle. Many would chide, “Where are you gonna get a new Ford Explorer, just the way you want it, paid-for, including the insurance? You think God is just gonna cough one up for you? Who do you think you are?” Good thing I wasn’t hanging out in the same bag with those stinkers! Who needs friends who constantly deflate your hopes and dreams or who make you feel less worthy than you are? I would simply reply, “God will just have to cough one up, then!” Sure enough, God did, and it was the exact model and color I had envisioned. That’s how I knew it was mine. Seek first God, the scripture said, and all the things you need will be added unto you. And stay away from those stinky bagels!

How can you have a better marriage, a great relationship with your children, or a fulfilling work life? While these are not “things” like cars, houses, and PS3s, the spiritual principle is the same for attaining them. God will still have to cough them up but make sure you are spending at least as much time in his word as you are watching TV or hanging out with others. He may cough up a scripture you didn’t see before, or reveal an area of your life that you need to address. Changing the way we have habitually treated people is a small price to pay to have this kind of contact with God. Did we really think we were going to have the things we wanted in life by not doing what God says? The first step is getting ourselves out of that bag of stinkers so we can find our true divine selves again.

While stink is powerful, I believe that the force of faith is even more powerful. I remember helping one of our volunteers who used to make the bagel pick-ups unload other donated items from her car. Even a week after taking the bag of bagels out, her car still smelled like those onion, garlic, and combination bagels. I felt awful for even asking her to run this errand. When Einstein’s mixes all those bagels together, what becomes the predominant smell? We smell the ones that have the strongest “force”.

People all over want to be free from addictions and abusive environments- and from repeating history. When they cannot get free from these things, it is usually because they are still hanging around people with the stronger “force”. People of faith, on the other hand, exude an even more powerful force than the stinkers do. Start hanging out with those powerful people who go around doing good. Let their power begin to rub off on you and your life will begin smelling sweeter in no time.