Welcome to from the pulpit and classic sermons.
Each week we bring you a different message
from some of history's greatest speakers in the
Christian faith and powerful sermons from modern preachers
too.
This week we have B.H. Clendenin with
his urgent message to God's elect.
I've come to you at this very very
critical time.
I have a message I believe if ever
my life is from God.
I want to read 1st John chapter 1
verse 9 and 10 that if we confess
our sins he is faithful and just to
forgive our sins and to cleanse us from
all unrighteousness.
If we say that we have no sin
then we make him a liar and his
word is not within us.
Now most of you in this vast audience
around the world know that I personally am
passing through one of the most difficult times
of my life at this very moment.
But I'm sure there's a purpose in the
whole.
I have for some time begged God to
not let me die until we've shown this
generation his power.
This poor deceived generation his power.
Somehow I feel that this all is connected.
Now the reason I feel so strongly about
this is because the attack on me has
produced a worldwide prayer meeting.
Calls are coming from around this world from
churches, individuals letting me know that they're fasting,
praying, believing in God that for total absolute
victory.
Now I sincerely believe that this prayer meeting
could produce the final move of God that
you and I have been praying for.
Now understand that in my present physical condition
if God does not give me a miracle
which through your prayer I believe will happen.
But if not this could very well be
my last communication with you.
Therefore you can be sure I weigh every
single word that I speak.
First of all the Spirit of God is
dealt with me very strongly that for that
revival to come there must be deep confession
and repentance on the part of you and
I the elect of God.
The river of the Holy Ghost must be
able to flow through us.
Therefore there must be nothing in us that
would prevent the flow of this river of
life.
We must humbly come before our Heavenly Father
and ask his forgiveness.
Hear me ladies and gentlemen and earnestly seek
his direction and guidance.
We know his word said, woe unto them
that call evil good.
But that's exactly what we have done by
allowing the flesh a place in our worship.
We confess before God that we have lost
our spiritual, we must confess before God that
we've lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our
values.
We confess that we've questioned the absolute truth
of the Word of God by preaching so
many other things.
We professed a love for the Word but
have ignored it.
We arrogantly have given ourselves the title of
Pentecostal, professing more power than all others yet
lack the power to witness to the lost
let alone live holy lives.
We worshipped other gods and called it prosperity.
We've learned more from religious TV stars than
the Bride and Morning Star.
We've ranted against perversion in our street but
refused to confess that it was the compromise
in the Word of God in the church
which produced such perversion in the first place.
Romans chapter 1, 25 and 26, by remaining
silent we've empowered the purveyors of perversion in
the pulpit, in the voting book, yet dare
call ourselves holiness.
We've murdered the unborn with our silence in
the pulpit.
We've prostituted our values because of our loyalty
to our party, our union, our ancestors, our
prejudices.
We've committed the sin of racism by condoning
the wrongs of the past and the present.
Others have committed the sin of racism by
their unforgiveness and search of revenge.
We've neglected the poor in lieu of the
appearance of more spiritual goals.
We've lazily prepared to preach, satisfied with replacing
anointing with noise.
We've rejected to train up our children in
the way that's right, then blame the devil.
We've complained because prayer is not allowed in
the school, yet a vast majority of the
church members have no altar in their home.
We've abused power and called it apostleship.
We revere the high and mighty among men
and disdain little men who are much more
holy.
We've closed our lips to the concept of
holiness to be more sensitive to the appeal
of the lost.
Not since the Pharisees accused Jesus of being
the Elzebub has Christ been more dishonored than
with this usurp-friendly gospel.
We become usurp-friendly without confessing it.
We've shunned the past as archaic, have accepted
the trends of the modern church.
Our worship is guided by the top 40
gospels instead of truths embedded with the gospel.
Our arrogance drives us through the night, oblivious
to our ineffectiveness and our disdain for learning.
Others trust in their learning and forget their
living.
We hastily judge other groups, presuming our perfection,
preferring our unique tradition over unique relationship.
We've lost the vision of God as results
for the most part.
We're unconscious of the destructive process going on.
We don't know the way back to reality
because we've lost the vision, my God, of
where we've fallen from.
We've confused noise with power, flamboyancy with anointing,
charisma with calling.
We've replaced conviction with counseling, sin with tolerance.
We've erased the reality of hell from the
Bible to be loved by those who hate
our God.
We ascribe on paper to the second coming,
but it's rarely preached, taught, or expected.
We go on our merry way, driving past
the lost, preaching weekly to those who have
already heard.
We've created a climate where we are more
interested about our own needs being met than
the needs of the community.
We're pastors with a maintenance mind, designed to
make everybody happy.
Their commitment is not to the Great Commission.
It's to clean restrooms, neat bulletins, deluxe potluck
suppers.
We have young pastors who are more discontented
what others have done, but have no problem
with what they have not done.
We have pastors content with no progress, using
the excuse of doing everything they know, but
unwilling to learn.
We have too many people who grovel over
TV religious stars, who squander your money on
limousines, mansions, airplanes, and evangelism goes undone.
We have more people buying proposition than we
have sign for souls.
We drift toward compromise, call it tolerance.
We drift toward disobedience, call it freedom.
We drift toward superstition, call it faith.
We cherish the indiscipline of the lost, self
-control, and call it relaxation.
We make light of perilousness, and delude ourselves
into thinking which take legalism.
We slide toward godliness, and convince ourselves we've
been liberated.
Due to discontent, we've replaced the presence of
wisdom with carelessness, thinking all risk is better
than none.
God help us to turn to God.
Listen, if we're going to see revival, then
there's going to have to come repentance and
confession on the part of the church of
God.
If we'll separate the vial, that is the
flesh, from the spirit, God said we can
be his mouth, and that's all that's necessary.
I beg you today church, hear me.
I'm talking to a people, maybe my last
message to you, but there must be individually
and collectively a repentance on the part of
the elect of God.
Hear me today, God purify our hearts, turn
us back to the truth and reality of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh God, let it be so today.
I've been driven by the Holy Spirit to
stir the hearts of the elect of God,
to call us back to the altar, and
to allow God to search us deeply as
our every desire, every motive.
If God is to move, he must have
a vessel through which he can manifest himself.
You and I have come to the kingdom
for such a time as this.
If we fail, deliverance will come, but our
houses will be destroyed.
Thus saith the Lord, stand you in the
way, seek and ask for the old paths
where is in the good way, and walk
therein, and you'll find rest for your soul.
But they said we'll not walk therein, Jeremiah
6.16. Now Jeremiah is admonishing Israel to
ask for the old paths, where's the good
way?
Walk in, you'll find rest.
That is a perfect picture of today's gatewayward
church God is calling.
But they're saying we'll not walk therein.
They're saying out there today is this is
not your grandfather's Pentecost.
God is once more talking to his church,
calling her back to the old paths wherein
dwelleth righteousness.
His word is repent your way back to
where you left him.
We must not leave any high places or
we'll find ourselves like Israel falling away again.
We must pray our way back to God's
altar and find ourselves on that altar as
a living sacrifice.
The fire never falls on an empty altar.
Christ must become our life again.
For a moment I want to take you
to Joshua, for there is a revelation.
Gilgal, as you know, is the new ground
gained and occupied by the people brought over
Jordan and is a type of resurrection ground
upon which Christ has brought us.
That we are risen with Christ, seated with
him in heavenly places must be constantly remembered.
But before they could advance a number of
things had to happen.
First we read a fear that took hold
of the kings of Canaan.
Now they were the instruments of Satan.
Their fear denotes Satan fear.
He knew the power of Jehovah which had
brought them into the land.
Satan's only antagonism is the Holy Ghost filled
church walking, living in union with Christ.
The enemy is defeated by the death and
resurrection of our Lord being in Christ risen,
seated in him, the heavenly places.
We can look upon him as conquered.
Yet we must know it's only in the
Lord and the power of his might we're
strong.
Apart from him we become the easy prey
of the enemy.
But we're translated from that darkness into the
kingdom of God's wonderful Son.
Circumcision is next commanded by Jehovah.
Jehovah at that time the Lord said to
Joshua, make these sharp knives, circumcise again the
children the second time.
The command was carried out at once and
the reproach of Egypt was rolled away.
Therefore the place was called Gilgal which means
rolling.
Now the circumcision was carried out on all
males who were born in the wilderness.
Circumcision stands for the carrying out of the
sentence of death to the flesh, the death
of Christ and for the people a circumcision
in him in whom you are circumcised with
a circumcision not made with hands.
But this fact that we're dead to sin
by the circumcision, the death of Christ must
be carried out practically.
The sharp knife must be laid to this
flesh and the things of the flesh.
Gilgal therefore stands for the judgment of self.
This is a place of our strength, our
power.
Israel had always returned to Gilgal.
When they did not they were defeated.
It's a parable.
Ai, the city means ruins.
Ai is another type of the world.
But the source of defeat was Achan sin.
We're always tempted to look outside of ourselves.
The problem is within.
The shekels of silver, gold, Babylonian garments blinded
his eyes.
These things were to be accursed.
Joshua said so.
Amen.
This obedience would bring trouble upon Israel.
So Achan sin was responsible for the defeat
of the people.
He confesses, I saw, I coveted, I took
the evil in the midst of the people
of God unjudged.
Becomes the most powerful agent against the people
of God and withholds God's power and blessing
and so it is still.
As soon as we cling to the things
of the world then the enemy gets an
advantage over us and we have little power
and cannot advance in the things of Christ.
But Achan sin discovered, forced confession, lifts judgment
from Israel and falls upon him and his
house the heap of stones.
The valley of Achor where it was stolen
was a place of hope.
Not only a place of national repentance and
national repudiation but it was also the place
of a great tragic national expiation.
Israel had sinned so Israel had suffered but
it is the sin of one man, my
God don't let it be me, that had
brought judgment on the camp.
Now observe the sin of a single man
imputed to Israel became Israel's sin and because
of that imputation the wrath of God was
on the nation.
That is what has happened to the church.
But when the sin of that one man
was discovered, when it was confessed, then it
was imputed to him and lifted from Israel.
Thus the penalty due to national sin was
actually carried upon those whose guilt had involved
the nation in such a thing.
Amen.
That man in death was not only reaping
the reward of disobedience but the sin of
the nation being expiated in his death of
this individual.
Thus was opened the door of hope, the
valley of Achor, the valley of trouble.
If we will purge ourselves then God will
come.
A study of the life of Paul reveals
the power of the Christian faith to excite
the worst passions of men.
But we become so familiar with it externally
that by our own spirit and demeanor we
cast a doubt upon this veritable proposition.
Set it down as the saddest fact that
has become possible for nominal Christians, believers to
care nothing about their faith.
They degraded it so that it now converses
with infidels, doubters, even mockers.
The faith that used to hold no parley
with unbelievers is now walking on the common
road, begging, asking leave, holding discussion, apologizing for
the suggestion of its own faith.
This age is seized with the horror of
dogmatism.
The gospel has been reduced to a point
that the message is not you must be
born again but rather through inoffensive preaching, house
group fellowship, we assimilate the lost into the
church.
Christianity is nothing if it is not dogmatic,
has no reason for existence if it is
not positive.
It is not one of many.
If it is one of many it is
not what it possesses.
The gospel of Christ is complete, final, positive,
unanswerable.
Paul writes to the Romans, I am not
ashamed of the gospel of Christ.
That word ashamed means to disfigure.
He said I will not disfigure this gospel
to make it acceptable to a world that
hates him.
We must ever keep in mind that at
this very moment Christ represents us at the
throne of God and we represent him on
this earth and we must not represent him.
Amen.
We must not represent him to make him
acceptable to a world.
In proportion as any religion is true it
cannot stoop to the holding of conversation with
anybody.
Christianity reveals, proclaims, announces, thunders, not a suggestion
it is a revelation, not a puzzle to
which has a dozen answers but it is
an oracle.
Please understand what is meant.
The dogmatism of truth is one thing and
the dogmatism of the imperfect preacher is another.
Truth must be dogmatic, that is positive, absolute
without ambiguity.
Truth must be clear in its own conception,
clear in positive demands, clear in its rewards
and punishments.
It is not lawful to have your brother's
wife was God's message to the king.
It cost John his life but to say
it differently would have been a high treason.
Can you wonder then that a religion namely
the Christian faith which claimed to be the
voice of God should have encountered such awful
hate if it could have come apologetically and
said I think, I suggest like the 21st
century Pentecostal it might have been heard at
the world's convention but it came otherwise.
It came with a voice saying this is
my beloved son, hear him.
God help us church, look at yourself, look
at myself, let's repent, let's get ourselves on
God's altar and we will see God's power.
The problem is they never saw the kingdom
of God.
I pastored a long time before I realized
why you have to beg about half the
church to come to church.
You know you got to mail them out,
you got to call them on the phone,
you got to plead with them to come
to the house.
They're going to be absent if somebody isn't
on them.
It took me a long time to understand
the problem.
They have not been born again.
It's not their nature.
You know Joe never had to send no
postcard to get me to a bar.
He knew I'd be there.
Money wasn't going to keep me out because
he'd give me credit.
He'd do something bad wrong if I wasn't
there because that's my nature.
I can tell you a man born again,
he still says I was glad when they
said to me, let us go to the
house of God.
Nobody ever had to beg me to go
to church, anymore to have to beg me
to go to bar.
Just tell me where Christ is functioning.
I'll be there on the front pew if
you let me.
I'm going to be there.
You see we've got to come back to
the reality.
God dealt with me so strongly about you've
got to go back to the basis.
You can't build the kingdom of God on
tariffs folks.
It won't work.
They have to be born again people.
You cannot build this kingdom on people that
do not have the kingdom in their lives.
God took me back, made me to realize
that before we ever, ever move any further,
we've got to come back to understand the
greatness of that fall and the greatness of
this redemption.
That is the roots of Christianity and unless
you have roots you bear no fruit.
A tree can't live without roots and you've
got to understand, you hear me, the depth
of that fall.
God said in the beginning, let us make
man in our image.
God made Adam and mirrored in that man
you could see the Father, the Son and
the Holy Ghost.
In the fall that was what was lost
and a man is never born again until
there's a birth of that Son in that
life, until God can see again in that
life the mirror of himself.
There is no birth without that ladies and
gentlemen.
We don't believe in Darwinian evolution but we
sure taught it in the Pentecostal church.
We made men believe that they could grow
and be educated into this life.
You don't grow into life when biogenesis become
a bona fide scientific fact.
There ought to have never been another mention
of evolution on this planet.
That just says life comes from life.
It don't just happen.
Life only comes from life.
We've turned the Sunday school around.
I know I'm talking about the sacred cow
at this point.
I'm a believer in the Sunday school but
I'm not a believer in much it's become
today because it's no longer teaching new creatures
how to walk with God.
It's teaching ungodly people how to be religious
without ever coming to know the Lord Jesus.
I preached one Sunday night.
I preached on a born again believer or
a product of a religious system.
In that message, this has been 30, 40
years ago and right here in this church
I preached.
We in the assemblies of God have young
men who are pastors in a pulpit came
up through the Sunday school, the CA department
and now preachers and have never been born
again.
Oh, I thought that night is difficult.
Brother Graham was our superintendent at that time.
Very, very great man.
Godly man.
Always for 40 something years I've had this
prayer meeting every morning at 5 o'clock.
God dealt with me about seeking him early.
Once in a while he'd drive from Houston
over.
Well, that Monday morning after I preached that
message I heard that old gravel voice somewhere
in there and I knew the superintendent had
come to pray with me.
He was a great man of God.
We always had breakfast walking across the parking
lot.
I said to him, Brother Graham, I preached
something last night and maybe I pushed the
button too far, stretched the band too wide
and I told him what I said.
He said, if you have to deal with
what I have to deal with, that calls
himself preacher with the adultery, the immorality, you
know you can't preach it too far.
I'm telling you folks, you don't grow into
this.
You're born into this kingdom and there's never
going to be a revival till we bring
her back.
The greatness of that redemption.
Christ must be birthed in that human being
and if that Christ is birthed in him,
then the house of God is a wonderful
place and the church of God is the
body of Christ and the place that we
want to come and want to be.
The kingdom of God, what is it?
Jesus told a certain group of people that
some of them would not see death until
they saw that kingdom come in power.
Looking back now, I know you know he
was talking about the day of Pentecost when
that wind blew through that upper room, heaven
came into the hearts of men and women.
The kingdom came in power on the day
of Pentecost.
When the wind blew through that upper room,
then the kingdom of God took up its
residence in the heart of a human.
It's not meat and drink, but Jesus said,
joy, peace and righteousness in the Holy Ghost.
Again he said, the kingdom of God cometh
not with observation, that is with the physical
eye, but the kingdom of God is within
us and if that kingdom is within you,
then you know it's there.
Years ago a man called me from Houston
and he said, Pastor, I watch you on
television, I'd like to come to Beaumont and
talk to you.
I need some counseling.
I said, well that's fine, it's an hour
drive, you're already on the phone, maybe I
can help you now.
What do you want to talk about?
He said, well I want to see if
you think I have the Holy Spirit.
I said, no you don't.
My, my, such discernment.
I said, I didn't know discernment, sir.
The God that inhabits eternity can't live in
a man without a man knowing that.
You may be here, somebody taught you a
little prayer language.
They lied to you, mister.
The miracle wasn't that I talked in tongues,
the miracle was he lived in me and
gave me something to say.
I've watched him reduce this great, I've watched
such a ecumenical thing as it spread back
in the 60's, just old and dead religious
bodies joining themselves together for some kind of
a political reason.
I said to the folks here in this
church, I said there's no harm in that,
there's nothing to it whatsoever, but the day
it takes on a Pentecostal context, it'll go
straight to demonism.
I've watched it, mister.
Let me tell you something, this don't mix
with anything.
Christianity is not a lucretian of everything.
It is Christ, I said it is Christ.
It is Christ, Jesus the Lord.
This kingdom in a man separates him from
whatever there is of this earth.
You don't mix Baal and Christ, mister.
There is no mixture.
It's Christ and Christ alone that's a savior
of us all.
Hallelujah to God.
Jesus on this earth, he talked much about
a kingdom outside of this one.
He talked about a kingdom of darkness where
disembodied spirits dwell, where demons walk to destroy
and disturb man, but he also spoke of
a kingdom of light and power where God
and angels live and invited me to walk
in that kingdom.
Oh, if I could run, I'd do it
now.
I said he invited me to walk in
that kingdom.
He told me about a world where God
was real, where angels walk, where miracles happen,
where it's commonplace with God.
I'm talking about the kingdom of God.
Oh yes, hallelujah, hallelujah.
A kingdom in which the church was to
move and live, that's what he said.
You're to demonstrate on this planet what heaven's
all about.
The Bible said the word of God is
forever settled in heaven and then Jesus come
along and said whatever's settled up there, I
want it to happen down here.
Your prayer must be thy kingdom come.
He also spoke of a kingdom of light
and power where God and angels live and
invited me to walk in that kingdom.
Oh, if I could run, I'd do it
now.
I said he invited me to walk in
that kingdom.
He told me about a world where God
was real, where angels walk, where miracles happen,
where it's commonplace with God.
I'm talking about the kingdom of God.
Oh yes, hallelujah, hallelujah.
A kingdom in which the church was to
move and live, that's what he said.
You're to demonstrate on this planet what heaven's
all about.
The Bible said the word of God is
forever settled in heaven and then Jesus come
along and said whatever's settled up there, I
want it to happen down here.
Your prayer must be thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on this earth, not
in the millennium but right now in us
that know this great God.
This gospel never changes because the God that
brought it never changes.
The people that walk in God's spirit are
the same as the first century people that
walked in the spirit.
Hallelujah to God, amen.
This was powerfully made real to me in
a camp meeting about 72 miles from here.
They called me 1958, come in in 56,
begin this church.
The semblance of God in East Texas had
a camp meeting out in the field, built
a little old brush arbor kind of a
place, only it had a metal roof instead
of brush.
I preached for seven years at camp meeting.
I saw it come from 150 to 1
,000 people out there in those woods.
You'd go up there folks and the men
would go out along the fence row.
You could hear them for a mile as
they prayed.
Women stayed under the tabernacle for an hour
before it started.
Oh, what times, what times.
One night I was preaching, the old PA
system wasn't nothing like this, but I pulled,
there was 1,000 people scattered out there,
pulled the microphone out, didn't even know it
was cut loose.
I was so caught up in God, I'd
walked out dragging that dead microphone with me,
proclaiming Christ, preaching.
All of a sudden they went mad, you
hear me?
I mean people jumped up, began to fall
over each other.
Some fell out in the sawdust.
Over 100 people were baptized in the Holy
Ghost.
I said over 100 people falling out, amen.
When I saw what has happened, I retreated
back to the platform.
One man come a running.
I went over, laid hands on him, not
to bless him but to keep him off
the platform, amen.
I got over, I stopped him.
Minute I laid my hands on him, he
just began to pour out of him the
language of heaven.
Oh, he spoke in the most beautiful language.
While I'm there with him, Brother Thomas come
up by me, a pastor.
He said, what's going on?
I said, listen to him, he's talking in
tongues.
He said he can't, he's my nephew, born
deaf and dumb 35 years ago.
He can't even say mama.
I said, well he's saying something now.
For 20 minutes he spoke in the language
of God, but when the Holy Ghost lifted,
he's still a deaf mute.
Life is deeper than conscience.
There's somebody in me.
Come on, worship God.
Don't worry about it.
Oh, hallelujah.
That's all I'm saying.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
You've been listening to the From the Pulpit
in Classic Sermon series.
This week you heard B.H. Clendenin with
his urgent message to God's elect.
Tune in next week to hear Carter Conlon
speak about deal with sin, Christ is coming
on From the Pulpit in Classic Sermons.