Now, again I'm going to flip into 3rd
chapter, I'm only going to read this verse
13 and 14.
Brethren, brethren, says the apostle, I count not
myself to have apprehended, but this one thing
I do.
For getting those things which are behind and
reaching forth unto those things which are before,
I press the mark to the prize of
the high holiness, God in Christ Jesus.
Now, you do know that he wrote this
two years before he died, he just had
two years to go.
And then at the end of the two
years, or between the writing of this and
his testimony in 2nd Timothy, something had happened
evidently, because the man of God said that
here, that he knew who he believed, and
that he had fought a good fight, and
that he had kept the faith, and that
he was now ready to be offered.
Now, that something happened in those two years
to the man of God.
Now, you have been listening to me over
these last weeks, and again we ask, what
is the pastor advocating?
What is this that he's preaching?
Well, I'm concerned that it be nothing else
but Christ.
Because anything anybody offers you that is not
just more of Christ is false.
I'm concerned that in doctrinal foundation be the
Scriptures, and in its whole spiritual meaning would
be apostolic, and that it be in harmony
with the best in the historic church, the
best in devotional literature, the best in humanity,
and the best in biography.
And yet, why does this preaching sound different?
Why does it sound strange when compared with
much of so-called and true gospel preaching?
Well, I want to tell you this before
I enter in, really, to the message for
tonight.
But I want to tell you that about
a generation ago, textualism captured the gospel church.
By the gospel church, I mean the fundamentalist
church, the gospel church, those who believe in
Christ the Savior and accept him as such.
And the scribes and the lawyers took over
and set up a hierarchy in schools and
Bible conferences and churches, and they all went
over to it.
And the rule became a rigid adherence to
words.
Now, it so happened that I believe and
have never believed anything else in my entire
life, but in the plenary, that means full,
verbal, inspiration of the scriptures as originally given.
You'll be honest with me, and if you
have reason to quote me, quote this, that
I believe and have always believed as a
responsible Christian teacher and believer in the plenary,
verbal inspiration of the scriptures as originally given.
But the problem was and still is that
the...
By school, I don't mean any particular school,
I mean a school of thought, had the
verbal inspiration, the doctrine of verbal inspiration, rigor
mortis set into it.
And with the result that we were...
The religious imagination was sultified, the religious yearning
was choked down, the religious aspirations slapped down,
and the longing of fire and wings of
the children of God were clipped like a
hen in a hen coop.
And we were told, as shut up and
like what we had, that this was it.
Brethren, do you know what happened to this?
The result of this thing, with the language
of the New Testament persisting and the spirit
of the New Testament grieved, do you know
what happened?
Well, I'll tell you.
There came about a revolt, a revolt against
the scribes in two directions.
The masses of evangelicals revolted without knowing they
were revolting.
They didn't know it.
It was the gasping of a fish in
a bowl where there's no oxygen.
The masses revolted into religious entertainment until the
gospel churches are now camping on the doorsteps
of the theater.
And then, over against that and on the
opposite side, some of the more intelligent fundamentalists
and evangelicals revolted into evangelical rationalism, which is
already busy making its peace with liberalism.
And the result is that you just don't
hear what the rest of the time I'm
speaking about.
It sounds strange to hear anyone preaching as
I preach because on one side we have
the masses saying, I've accepted Jesus' great tribute.
Let's go and have fun.
And on the other side, furious, reverent men
fencing their way perilously near to the borders
of liberalism.
And the New Testament message, objective and method,
has been allowed to lie dumb.
And in the name of the Lordship of
Jesus, which is Lordship in name only, we
have introduced our own message, our own objective,
and then have thought out our own method
for achieving those objectives which are in many
cases not scriptural at all.
Now, my brethren, I want to ask you,
is it heresy to yearn and pray as
long after God?
Is it heresy?
Does it constitute a radical mind to yearn
and pray in spite?
Do you remember what I read the first
night?
The great prayer in the cloud of unknowing.
God, I beseech thee so, for to cleanse
the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable
gift of thy grace, that I may perfectly,
lovely, and worthily praise thee.
To long perfectly to love God and worthily
to praise him.
It'll mean more than words when you say
it.
Mean as it costs you everything.
Is that heresy?
Should they put a man in jail for
it?
Should he be ostracized for it?
In the light of our hymnody?
In the light of our devotional book back
to Paul?
In the light of the biography of the
saint?
No, I think not.
No, I want to read to you just
a brief little thing here from a book
called the Philokalia.
He starts out, he wants to help us
Christians forward to know God.
To do what in English proud calls to
be one with God, united with God.
Now I want you, Bible Christians, to ask
yourselves the question, could I go along with
this?
Now this Mesophorus was a Greek Christian.
That is, he was over on the Greek
side.
He wasn't a Protestant and he wasn't a
Roman Catholic and he wasn't a Martoma and
he wasn't a Coptic nor a Mester.
He belonged to over on the Greek side,
but he was a saint.
And he wrote a little book to help
people to go along with God.
And he said, you who desire to capture
the wondrous divine illumination of our Savior Jesus
Christ, you believe in this.
And he seeks to feel the divine fire
in your hearts.
Now here was a scholar and a saint.
And he wrote it into a book in
the 16th century, which is a classic and
is recognized as such.
And he dared to use the word, he
seeks to feel the divine fire in your
hearts and strives to sense and experience the
feeling of reconciliation with God.
Who in order to unearth the treasure buried
in the field of your heart and to
gain possession of it, have renounced everything worldly.
You desire the candles of your soul to
burn brightly, even now, not in the future.
We have become so dispensationistic minded that we've
put everything into the future.
Everything into the future.
But this man says, you desire the candles
of your soul to burn brightly, even now.
Indeed, he said, in this present world.
And who for this purpose have renounced all
this world.
To which by conscious experience, conscious experience, he
thinks he's a modern psychologist, to know and
to receive the kingdom of heaven existing within
you.
He said what?
I'm teaching all the time.
That Christ dwells in the heart of every
believer.
Know ye not that Christ is in you,
except you be aware of this.
And if a man has not the spirit
of Christ, he is none of you.
And the riches of the mind lie potentially
there.
But we have been forbidden to believe it,
or forbidden to say so.
And we have been choked down and the
oxygen cut off, and our wings slipped and
our longing killed.
And that's why when I say it sounds
different and strange and people say, what is
this new doctrine?
It's no new doctrine at all.
Now my brothers, I want to talk a
little bit tonight about the cloud of concealment.
Now Christ has made full atonement for it.
Let's start there.
Christ has made full atonement.
Christ has forced full atonement made.
What a wonderful Savior.
Would you like to hear it said for
you by somebody else that could say it
better than the theologian?
Little Lady Julian, here's what she said.
The precious amends for satisfaction our Lord hath
made for man's sin, turning all our blame
into endless honor.
Could it be said sweeter than that?
The precious amends our Lord hath made for
man's sin, turning all our blame into endless
honor.
Paul said it a little differently.
He said where grace abounded, sin does what?
Where sin abounded, grace does much more bound,
turning all our blame into endless honor.
Now God's face is turned toward us.
I want you to think like that tonight.
Don't let the devil teach you.
Don't let doubt forsake you.
Don't let anything I say or anybody that's
ever said teach you from this glorious knowledge.
But the face of God is turned toward
you.
And as a Christian, the smiling face of
God is turned toward you.
Why then do we not enjoy, now to
use these words again, why then do we
as Christians do not capture the wondrous divine
illumination of the Savior Jesus Christ?
Why do we not feel the divine fire
in our eyes?
Why do we not try to sense and
experience, or why do we not sense and
experience the feeling of reconciliation with God as
well as the knowledge of it?
And why do we not gain possession of
it?
Oh, I know they dismiss it by saying
it's your position and your possession.
But that can get so cold as dry
ice.
Why is it that the candles of our
soul do not burn more brightly even now?
Why is it that we do not have
the conscious experience to know and receive the
kingdom existing within us?
Well, I'll tell you why.
Because there is between us and this smiling
face of God a cloud of concealment.
Now, my friends, there is never such a
thing as a day when the sun doesn't
shine.
In some of the cities, I think it's
Atlanta, Georgia, maybe I'm wrong, but one of
the southern cities offers, the newspaper offers, that
they will give all that room, that day's
run of the newspaper, free of charge if
the sun doesn't shine.
Somewhere, is that in Atlanta?
St. Petersburg?
Well, now let me tell you something.
That the sun shines every day.
And there never has been a day from
the hour God said, let the sun rule
the day, that the sun hasn't shone.
But there are dark days and misty days
and cloudy days, and days that get so
dark you have to light the light, and
days that get so dark that in the
country the chickens go to roost, I think.
Now, there are dark days, and yet the
sun is shining just as brightly as on
the brightest, clearest days do.
Why then does it not shine on the
earth?
Because there is between the sun and the
earth a cloud of concealment.
The sun is all right, the sun is
up there gleaming broadly, and just as bright
and just as hot and just as radiant
as ever.
But he doesn't get through to the earth
because there is a cloud of concealment.
Now, what is this cloud, my brother?
You know what it is from the standpoint
of the weather.
But what is it as applied to Christians?
Why, what's the matter?
Well, it's the cloud of concealment.
The cloud that we allow to be over
us as Christians.
What is this cloud?
Atonement has been made.
There is nothing to do for it's all
been done.
Not a drop of blood needs to be
shed.
Not a spear needs to enter a holy
heart.
Not a tear nor a groan nor a
drop of sweat.
Not a moment in agony.
Death has no more dominion over him.
It is done.
It is finished.
It is forever done.
And the face of God shines down upon
us.
And even upon Christians there is that cloud,
or above Christians there is that cloud of
concealment which befits thee and thy God is
above his face.
Now, what is that cloud?
Well, it's a cloud.
It may be one thing.
It may be many things.
There is the cloud of pride for Asia.
You are your father's child and heaven is
your home.
And yet for a lifetime you may go
without the wondrous divine illumination of the Savior
Jesus Christ.
Without feeling the divine fire in your heart.
Or sensing or experiencing the feeling of reconciliation
with God.
And without the candles of your soul burning
brighter.
Because you allow a cloud to be over
your head.
And the devil says, well, God hit you.
God turned his back.
The devil lies.
The back of God has never been turned
to its child of God, which will repent
and sinner.
Since the hour Jesus roamed and died and
said he couldn't.
The face of God is turned all away.
But we allow this cloud of pride.
And the cloud of stubbornness.
There are some people that are just plain
stubborn.
They will not bend.
They will not kneel.
Neither to man or God.
Or to anybody.
Except the law and death.
They will not.
And so this cloud of stubbornness.
God complained about Israel.
He said, your neck is black.
And your forehead is high.
And you couldn't get them to kneel.
And then there is the cloud of self
-will.
Now, self-will is a very religious thing.
And it may become religious.
And get converted.
And enter right with you into the church
when you join.
And bring you into the chamber when you
pray.
That is self-will.
And self-will, you'll note, is good-natured
only when it's done in the same way.
And it's God's will tempered when it's crossed.
Now you think about that.
Is your surrender to God sufficient?
So that you can be spiritual even when
you're crossed.
And then there is ambition.
And do you know there's even religious ambition?
There are people that are religiously ambitious.
For something perhaps that isn't in the will
of God.
Or that's for self-aggrandizement.
And the result is that it's a cloud
above them between them and their God.
Now, there's a literal proverb.
And in not translation, it reads like this.
It rather amuses me.
Because it's so true.
And it's such a perfect picture of the
human heart.
He says, He says, And
you'll find Christians like that.
Having what God calls a controversy with me.
And then, Everything I came for myself.
Now this is the one thing I've been
teaching.
I suppose it's hard to grasp.
That I've got to give up everything.
That this pastor that I have here must
go on the block.
And I must be ready at any moment
to give it up.
And let it ride away on any sermon
I teach or any position I take.
I dare not tiptoe it.
My job is editor of the weekly.
My position in the religious world.
My, my, everything has to be on the
block.
And ready to go.
If I own it, It is a cloud
over my head.
And it becomes a cloud of impurity that
nothing will penetrate.
And people try to pray through it.
If you can't pray through it, nothing can
penetrate it.
You try to fast through it.
People have fasted for days out of nothing
but stubbornness.
You know that.
The history, I won't go into politics.
But over the world in the last 25
years, You remember that there were some who
fasted and died for political reasons.
Just through downright stubbornness.
And there are those who try to fast
their way through.
You can't do it, brother.
The cloud of concealment.
If it is something that you say is
yours, Then you won't give up.
You'll think of me, but you don't.
It'll put a veil over.
And if there's any sun, it'll not be
very bright.
It'll be a cloud.
You can't pray through it.
It's the idea that if you pray long
enough, everything will be all right.
That's why God got some people up off
their knees and told them to quit.
Two different instances the Lord stopped praying to
them.
Did you know that?
I said, no, you didn't.
There was a man, Saul.
And he was praying and praying.
God came and put his hand over his
mouth and said, Saul, not Saul, Samuel.
He said, Samuel, don't pray anymore for Saul.
He's broke.
Don't pray for him.
Shut him up.
And then there was another instance where Joshua
was lying face down praying.
We'd have written a text about him.
We'd have said, oh, what a thing.
But God says, what, he's lying there on
your stomach.
I don't honor a man for lying on
his belly.
Get up off your feet and deal with
the situation in your crowd.
And then I'll bless you and save all
that lying around going.
So remember that it's not an idea that
if you pray long enough, everything will be
okay.
It's not right, but the seed of God
loves these long seasons of prayer.
And God gives an answer to prayer.
And prayer is the soul's sincere desire and
the breath of the saint and all that
I believe.
And I think practically from me.
But the idea that I can hang on
to things and then throw the cloud away
while I'm hanging on to the cloud.
No, no, you can't do it.
And that's the trouble.
So nothing will get to it.
And then there is fear.
Fear is always a child of unbelief.
No matter what you're scared about, whether you've
got cancer or whether your child's likely to
have polio or whether you're likely to lose
your job or whether you're rushing to send
a guided missile and destroy Chicago.
Remember always that fear is a child of
unbelief.
And fear over your head is a cloud
of obscurity.
And hide that smiling face from you.
It doesn't, it doesn't turn your face away.
For the blood of atonement keeps his face
forever turned towards his people and towards repentant
sinners.
And then there is self-love.
Self-love.
We make a joke out of this.
But we never should make a joke out
of it, friends.
Because self-love is a cloud of concealment,
a cloud of obscurity.
And even the Christian who has offered himself
to Christ and has, has believed and has
converted.
That Christian can keep a cloud of concealment
over him simply by loving himself.
And to fall out of love with yourself
is an accident.
That is, it is not only an accident,
I mean a hurt.
It hurts you like falling off of something.
And then self-gratulation and self-admiration.
These self-things.
They're there and as long as they remain
there.
And then the odd thing about it is
that the scribes have excused me, and proved
that they should be there, and you can't
do anything about it.
And yet we cry within us, Oh, that
the candles of my soul might burn brightly
even now.
Oh, that I might know the divine illumination
of my Saviour Jesus Christ.
And we groan with the groan that goes
back to Paul in Philippians.
It goes back to David in the Psalms.
That we might come into a warm, spiritual
presence, lasting fellowship with Jesus Christ that lives
within us.
And we're, we're raving so high.
And yet we can't because we admire ourselves.
And we're not going to have anybody disturb
us.
And we congratulate ourselves.
Or, or we love ourselves.
And then there's money.
Money these days gets between, betwixt thee and
thy God, as it were, we call it.
Gets betwixt thee and thy God.
Some evangelist years ago in my hearing pointed
out that you can take two dimes and
cut out a landscape.
You can take two dimes with you to
the Great Smoky Mountain and go clear to
the top knob of the Great Smoky And
with two dimes cut out all the glorious,
green, rolling, vista of the Great Smoky.
Just put them in front of your eyes
and put them close.
The mountains are still there smiling in the
sun.
But you don't see them because there's dimes
in front of each eye.
It doesn't take much money.
We who don't have much money are always
taking the sniper marks.
That's the rich man.
But brother, you can be rich and only
have ten dollars.
Because if it is between you and your
God, then that cloud, that cloud is concealing
God from you.
And then there's people, just plain people.
The Lord tells us that we shouldn't be
afraid of man with his breath and his
nostrils.
And yet there are people, we're Christians, who
are, have a cloud of fear about us.
Constantly a cloud of fear.
They want us to be, they want us
to be here in this society.
And the sociologists tell us we must do
this, that we must adjust to society.
And the schools are busy.
Instead of teaching the history and writing and
reading and arithmetic and all the rest, they're
teaching the children to adjust so as not
to be queer and to get along well.
Well, if you've got that as your goal,
you have a cloud over your heart, my
Christian friends.
And then there are our friends.
And then there's the position we hold, whatever
it may be.
And then there's the loved ones.
And this is the tenderest and perhaps the
hardest.
But that's all got to go.
You say, then what do I do with
it?
If this cloud is all over my head,
is a cloud of safety ill meant?
And my father's smiling at me, and I
can't see his face.
What shall I do?
Well, the old brother suggests, and I borrow
what he suggests to you as a beautiful
illustration, he calls it a cloud of forgetting.
He said, put this cloud that's above you
under your feet.
There's a cloud of forgetting.
And Paul said exactly the same thing, forgetting
those things which are behind and reaching forth
under those things which are before.
You see, the things which were behind Paul
were a cloud.
And if they'd been in front of him,
then he'd shut out God, but he put
them behind him, his deceit, his mistakes, his
blunders, his errors, his wrongs, the times he'd
fallen on his face, and the time the
Lord had to take him before his time,
and all this he'd put them behind him
and under his feet as a cloud of
forgetting.
And the old man, as God says, put
them underneath, and have them up between thee
and thy God, like so to the cloud
of forgetting beneath thee, between thee and all
the creatures that ever God made.
We've got to get that cloud of forgetting
under our feet.
And, of course, that's the job of the
Christian, and that's why I'm preaching like this,
and some are understanding they're going to do
something about it, others are not.
Others have come up to me and taken
me by me, wanting me to move, and
have turned back into the wilderness.
It's because, like so, for the cloud of
forgetting, of forgetting.
Now the face of God, I repeat, is
smiling still, and not all the clouds I've
met, and not all the clouds the devil
can blow up there, and the devil can
blow up a storm and put it between
you, and the face of your God, experientially,
but remember that God is waiting within you
there, or the king of the city, and
he's waiting for you to move up, to
move up.
I remember getting on a train at LaGuardia
Field in New York some years ago.
It was about, I would say, 3 o
'clock in the afternoon.
And the smiling, relaxed, friendly pilot came out
and made a little speech.
He knew that old duckers like me would
worry about it because it was raining.
Rainy, miserable day, like when you get here
sometimes.
Just, just plain miserable.
And he said, now, we are leaving in
a moment.
And he said, the situation is this, friend.
In 15 minutes, we'll be in the sunlight.
And he said, the weather report shows that
it will be clean from here to Chicago.
And sure enough, it was.
He had a friend in Chicago.
And so we got into that train, almost
feeling our way there through the smog and
the mist, and in 15 minutes, we'd hit
the cloud under our feet.
And the bright shining sun above, and as
we rose, even the cloud became white beneath
us.
You've flown a lot, have had the experience
of seeing that gray, gray billows of the
trees that are underneath you, quite as thick
as, and when you were underneath them and
looked up, there were a misty, miserable, smoggy
thing that cut out the sun.
But in 15 minutes, you put them under
your feet.
And, oh brother, is it nice to take
off in that smoke and rain and fly
all the way 900 miles in the sun.
Now, you're going to have to put this
under your feet.
You're going to have to get busy about
it, to do something about this.
And more than sit and take in some
more, you're going to have to work on
yourself, contradict yourself.
But he says he will, without which he
wouldn't.
Doesn't he?
He'll hit the clouds under you, he'll hit
the clouds under you.
What does a man do in an airplane?
Now, I, being of the lander's type, I
help the pilot.
I keep balance in the thing, as an
attorney.
Now, really, I do.
But I'm
going to let him over.
Oh, they have every seat in the wide
world.
He says, he's not going up.
And they think the sun will be shining
when it is.
Now, put it under you, my friend.
Put it under you.
What do you get?
Well, I'd say money, people, friends, conditions,
fortune in real life.
Oh, it is.
He is a jealous rival, and he's a
jealous lover, and he suffers no rival.
And whatever rival, I don't say that you're
not going to him.
I do not say that you're not justified.
I say that this means this ability perfectly
to love him and we're willing to save
him.
What has been choked out and smitten down,
and this will last, and we lack it.
Because we will not put under him.
Let it rise between us.
It is I take the hand of love.
Take it from his mind.
With this eternal promise sign, I take thee
under me.
I take thee.
Blessed God, I give myself to thee.
And I again.
No thought is ever to be erected again.
The face of God smiles on his people,
but the cloud is hiding.
Your cloud, my cloud.
But you say that's true.
To me, that's true.
That's what it is.
But that couldn't be true of the gospel
people.
It is true of the masses of the
people.
To get a little bit of oil.
And they said, we'll take this
tool of God's.
If we continue in the direction we've been
moving.
That is it.
For as we
take the world.
One life.
And we dear Christians have been walking around.
And put all these things.
We Christians and all.
We're discouraged.
We're blue.
We've been dismayed.
All these people.
We decided under their feet.
To put
it all.
Not trying to tell them what to do.
Or how to do it.
But we never knew before.