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