Now, again, in the Philippians, the third 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 calling that draws in Christ Jesus.
Now, you 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 second Trinity, something had happened, evidently,
because the man of God said that here
that he was, he knew what 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 preached?
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 it be
the scripture, and in its whole spiritual mood
it be apostolic, and that it be in
harmony with the best in the historic church,
the best in devotion 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
the much so-called and true gospel preaching?
Well, I want to tell you this before
I enter in, really, to the message for
the night, but I want to tell you
that about a generation ago, Titchfield isn't 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 happens 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
by school I don't mean any particular school,
I mean a school of thought.
The verbal inspiration, the doctrine of verbal inspiration,
rigor mortis set into it, and with the
result that we were, the religious imagination was
stultified, the religious yearning was choked down, the
religious aspiration slapped down, and the longing, aspiring
wings of the children of God were clipped
like a hen in a hen coop, and
we were told to 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 greed, 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 doorstep
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 a piece
of liberalism, and the result is that you
just don't hear what this that I am
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, whoop-de
-doop, let's go and have fun, and on
the other side, serious, reverent men thinking their
way perilously near to the borders of liberalism.
And the New Testament message, objectives and methods,
have been allowed to lie dormant, and in
the name of the lordship of Jesus, which
is lordship in name only, we have introduced
our own message, our own objectives, and then
have thought out our own methods 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 and
long after God?
Is it heresy?
Does it constitute a radical mind to yearn
and pray and fight?
Do you remember what I read the first
night, the great prayer in the cloud of
unknowing?
God, I beseech thee, soul, for to cleanse
the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable
gifts of thy grace, that I may perfectly,
lovely, and wordily praise thee.
To long perfectly to love God, and wordily
to praise him.
Does it 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 devolutionary books back to Paul, in the
light of the theography of the saints?
No, I think not.
Now, I want to read to you just
a brief little thing here from Nesseper, from
a book called the Philokalia.
It starts out, he wants to help us
Christians forward to know God, to do what
the cloud calls being one with God, united
with God.
Now, I want you, Bible Christians, to ask
yourself the question, could I go along with
this?
Now, this Nesseper 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 Nesper.
He belonged to over on the Greek side,
but he was a saint, and he wrote
a little book to help people to go
on with God, and he said you who
desire to capture the wondrous divine illumination of
our Savior Jesus Christ, you believe in this,
and you seek to feel the divine fire
in your heart.
Amir was a scholar and a saint, and
he wrote it into a book in the
I think 16th century, which is a classic,
and is recognized as such, and he dared
to use the word to seek to feel
the divine fire in your heart, and strive
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 dispensationalistic minded that we
push everything into the future, everything into the
future.
But, this man says you who desire the
candles of your soul to burn brightly even
now, and Peter said in this present world,
and who for this purpose have renounced all
this world, who wish by conscious experience, conscious
experience, you think he was 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 he be reprobate?
And if a man has not the spirit
of Christ, he's 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 clipped, 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 for
sin atonement made.
What a wonderful savior!
Would you like to hear said for you
by somebody else that could say it better
than the theologians?
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?
Oh, 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 cheat you, don't let
doubt deceive you, don't let anything I say
or anybody has ever said cheat you from
this glorious knowledge.
That 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 not capture the wondrous divine illumination
of the Savior Jesus Christ?
Why do we not feel the divine fire
in our hearts?
Why do we not strive to sense and
experience, or why do we not sense and
experience the feelings 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 turn more brightly even now?
Why is it that we do not have
the conscious experience and know and receive the
kingdom existing within us?
Well, I'll tell you why.
Because there is between us and the 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, and maybe I'm wrong, but one
of the southern cities offers, a newspaper offers,
that they will give all that rum, that
day's rum to the newspaper, free as charge
if the sun doesn't shine somewhere.
Is it Atlanta?
St. Petersburg?
Well, now let me tell you something, that
the sun shines every day, and there never
has been a day from our Godhead 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 day in June.
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 grinning broadly, and just as bright,
and just as hot, and just as 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 brothers?
You know what it is from the standpoint
of the weather, but what is it as
applied to Christmas?
Well, what's the matter?
Well, it's the cloud of concealment, the cloud
that we allow to be over us as
Christians.
And what is this cloud?
Atonement has been made, there's 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's that cloud, or
above Christians there's that cloud of concealment, be
put thee in thy God, as the brothers
say.
So, what is that cloud?
Well, it's the cloud, it may be one
thing, it may be many things.
There is the cloud of pride, for instance.
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 of pride 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 a child of God, nor to a
repentant sinner since the hour Jesus groaned and
died and said, the faith 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 brash, and your
forehead is hard, and you couldn't get them
to yield.
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 will you with the
chamber when you pray.
Yet, it's self-will, and self-will, you'll
note, is good-natured only when it's getting
its own way, and it's grouchy and ill
-tempered when it is 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 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 little proverb, and in the
Nox 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, "...tripped by his own folly, a
man eats his heart out, finding fault even
with God."
And you find Christians like that.
Tripped by their own folly, they eat their
heart out, finding fault even with God, having
what God calls a controversy with me.
And then, "...everything I claim 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.
But this pastorate 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
preach, or any position I take.
I dare not stick to it.
My job as editor is easy, my position
in the religious world, 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, but
you can't pray through it, nothing can penetrate
it.
You try to fast through it.
There are people that fast for days out
of nothing but stubborn.
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 reach.
Just sheer, downright stubborn.
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 and you won't
give up, you think you do, but you
don't, it'll put a veil over it, and
if there's any sun it'll not be very
bright.
It'll be a cloud, and you can't pray
through it.
This idea that if you pray long enough,
everything will be all right.
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?
Said, no use.
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.
Said, Samuel, don't pray anymore for Saul, he's
through.
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 tract 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 this modern idea that if
you pray long enough, everything will be okay.
It's not right, but the saint 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 practice in formation.
But the idea that I can hang on
to things and then pray the cloud away
while I'm hanging on to the cloud, no
no you can't look.
Then 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 it's if
your child's likely to have polio, or whether
you're likely to lose your job, or whether
Russia will send a guided missile and destroy
Chicago.
Remember, always the fear is a child of
unbelief, and fear over your head is a
cloud of obscurity, and hides that smiling face
from you.
It doesn't, it doesn't turn the faith away,
for the blood of his own that kept
keeps his faith 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
a thing, because self-love is a cloud
of concealment, a cloud of obscurity.
And even the Christian who has offered himself
to Christ and 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, I don't mean an
accident, I mean a hurt.
It hurts you like falling off a and
then self-gratulation, and self-admiration, these self
-sins.
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 who
can do anything about it.
And yet we cry within us, oh that
the my soul might burn bright things in
the now, oh that I might know the
divine illumination of my savior 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, personal, pleasant, lasting fellowship
with Jesus Christ that lives us, and where
it irradiates our heart, and yet we can't
because we admire ourselves, and we're not going
to have anybody disturb us, and we congratulate
ourselves, or and we love ourselves.
And then there's money.
Money these days gets between thee and thy
God, as the brothers called it, gets between
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 mountains, and go clear to
the top north of the great smokies, and
with two dimes shout out all the glorious,
green, rolling, blue-capped vista of the great
smoke.
Just put them in front of your eyes
and put them close, and that's all it
takes.
The mountains are still there, smiling and sunny,
but you don't see them because there's dime
in front of each eye.
It doesn't take much money.
We who don't have much money are always
taking a snide remark that's a 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 is
concealing God from you.
And then there's people, just plain simple.
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
this.
Constantly a cloud of fear.
They want to fit in.
They want to fit in here in this
society, and the sociologists tell us we must
do this, that they 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 a position we hold, whatever
it may be, and then there's our loved
ones, and this is the tenderest, and perhaps
the hardest.
But that's all you've got to do.
You say, then what do I do with
it?
If this cloud is over my head as
a cloud of concealment, and my father's smiling
at me, and I can't see his face,
what what shall I do?
Well, the old brother suggests, and I borrow
it and suggest 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 as 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 clouds, and if they'd been in front
of him, then he'd shut out God, but
he put them behind him.
His deceit, his mistake, his blunder, his error,
his wrongs, the times he'd fallen on his
face, and the time the Lord had to
rebuke him for his pride, and all this,
he put them behind him and under his
feet as a cloud of forgetting.
And the old man, as God says, put
them under you, and did not have them,
not because he and thy God.
Life, Paul put a cloud of forgetting beneath
him, between him 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, and
are going to do something about it.
Others are not.
Others have come up to the cave-ish
barnier once a week for years, and have
turned back into the wilderness, and wonder why
they're sand in their shoes.
It's because you would not go on the
cave-ish barnier, right?
So, put a cloud of forgetting beneath thee,
and all this that had been a cloud
of confusion, now becomes a cloud of forgetting.
Now the face of God, I repeat, is
smiling still, and not all the cloud I've
missed, 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 afflict you,
and the face of your God, experientially.
But remember that God is waiting within the
veil, or to change the figure, he's waiting
for you to move up, to move up.
I remember getting on a plane at McGordy
Field in New York some years ago.
It was about, I would say, three 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 it would get here
sometimes, just plain miserable.
And he said, now we are leaving in
a moment, and he said, the situation is
this, friends, in 15 minutes we'll be in
the sunlight.
In 15 minutes we'll be in the sunlight.
And he says, the weather report shows that
it will be clear from here to Chicago.
And sure enough, it was.
We had a strange weather.
And so we got into that plane, almost
feeling our way there through the smog and
the mist, and in 15 minutes we had
put the cloud under our feet, and the
bright shining sun above, and as we rose
even the cloud became quite big.
You who've flown a lot have had the
experience of seeing that gray, gray billows of
whipped cream that are underneath you, white the
thick eggs, and when you were underneath them
and looked up they were a misty, miserable
smoggy thing that cut out the sun.
But in 15 minutes you put them under
your feet.
An old brother is admired to take off
in the most annoying and fly all the
way 900 miles in the sun.
Now that's what I mean.
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.
And yet I wonder if you are, I
wonder if I'm not contradicting myself.
So he says he wills I'll do, but
look on him and let him worry.
I wonder if it is better, more accurate
to say that if you'll consent to put
the clouds under, he'll put the clouds under.
What does a man do in an airplane?
Now I, being of the nervous type, I
help the pilot.
I keep balancing the thing as we turn.
Now really, I do.
But what help am I giving to the
pilot, that great big good-natured fellow sitting
up there dreaming?
What does he care about a little fellow
weighing 159 in the summer, a little less
in the winter?
What can I do to that great big
four-cylinder, four-engine monster?
Not at all, but I help him the
best I can.
But he gets up there into the sunshine,
look on him and let him alone.
That's all.
But you've got to be willing that cloud
get under your feet.
I know a lot of people that'll never
go up, a lot of them.
They'll have every suit in the wide world
to get not going up.
They'd rather stay right down here in the
smog.
And they do.
The sun shines brighter and they think the
sun will be shining when it is.
Now put it under you my friend, put
it under you.
What is it?
Well I've said money, people, friends, position, loved
ones, fear, all that I claim and call
my own, ambitions, pride, stubbornness, self-will, and
anything else the holy ghost may point to
in your life.
Only you know what it is.
He is a jealous rival, and he he's
a jealous lover, and he suffers no rival.
And whatever rival there is is a cloud
between thee and thy god.
I don't say that that you're not going
to him.
I do not say that you are not
justified.
I say that this we've talked about, this
wondrous divine illumination, this ability perfectly to love
him and wear the lucid face that has
been choked out, and smitten down, and taught
out of his generation.
This, this we lack, and we lack it
because we will not put under our feet
the cloud of the spirit.
Let it rise between us and our god.
My brethren, if you will put it under
your feet, why you'll find that it hides
all the past, and all that that bothers
you, and that that changes you, and worries
you, and dreams you.
It's down there, and it's out, and it's
gone, and there's nothing but the clear sky
above.
But if you have put the cloud under
you, then who wills I'll do but look
on him and let him alone.
Simpson wrote a song that nobody ever sings
anymore, for two or three reasons.
One is it seems bad, and the second
is nobody experiences it much.
It is, I take the hand of love
divine, I count each precious promise mine, with
this eternal countess prime, I take thee under
my feet.
I take thee, blessed God, I give myself
to thee, and thou according to thy word
dost undertake for me.
Christ doesn't have to die again, no cross
needs ever to be erected again, no value
needs to be added to the attainment.
The face of God smiles on his people,
but the cloud hides him.
You're a cloud, my cloud, but you say
that's true sinners, that's true back-blooders, but
that couldn't be true good gospel people.
It is true of the masses.
And because that cloud has been above them,
and because they've been taught they can't rise,
they've rushed to get a little heartbeat from
the theater, rushed to get a little bit
of warmth, a feeling from jubilee, ballads, religious
songs, and theatrics, and all the rest.
I don't blame them, they've been cheated, and
the liars have wronged them, as in the
days of Jesus.
Jesus walked among men in that day with
his eyes, Christ in his beating feet, and
he said to them whatever they tell you
do, because they're theologically right, but don't be
like them.
And they said we'll kill that man, and
they did kill that man, but he rose
the third day and sent down the holy
ghost into the world, and he's mine and
yours, our sweet possession.
Don't you let anybody tell you how much
you can have of it.
Only God can tell you how much you
can have of it.
Don't you let anyone take you aside and
tell you now not to get excited and
not to get fanatical.
That you've got all that there is, and
brethren, don't you let any of that happen
to you.
Just as sure as God is not here,
just as sure as God is, if we
continue in the direction we've been moved in
evangelical church, gospel church, that which is now
fundamentalism will be liberalism in a short time.
We've got to have the holy ghost back,
and we've got to have the face of
God shining down, and the candles of our
souls burning bright, and to sense and feel
and know the wondrous divine illumination of him
who said I'm the light of the world.
Does that make a fanatic out of you?
Come on, let's stop little fanatics, just go
and be joyful in the Lord.
If that's fanaticism, what a sweet fanatic it
makes out of a name.
What a happy, wondrous thing to be a
fanatic.
No, no, that's not fanaticism.
It's fanaticism when you repose against the scriptures,
imagine things, go to weird things, and misinterpret
the word of God.
But you can't go where one line of
the word of God has been misinterpreted, by
what I say.
Not one line.
It's all here.
The doctrines of the faith, the faith of
our Father's living spirit.
So what about it?
I take the undertaking.
Now, if you're willing tonight to put that
cloud of self, and cloud of self-love,
and cloud of fear, and cloud of stubbornness,
and cloud of pride, and cloud of greed,
and cloud of ambition under your feet, then
there's nothing for you to do.
Nothing.
There's nothing for you to do.
You can't climb to heaven on a rope
ladder.
There's nothing for you to do.
I take the hand of love divine, I
claim it, praise it, promise mine, with this
eternal comely sign, I take the undertaking.
I take and bless it, Lord, I give
myself to thee, and thou according to thy
word that undertakes for me.
How do you want him to undertake for
you?
Some of these dear Christians have been walking
around under a cloud for a long time.
You can't get above it.
You just can't.
Because you tried to permeate your way above
it, you tried to believe your way above
it, but it doesn't work that way.
You can't.
You've got to put it under feet.
You rise above it.
You put all your sins to pitch thee,
and all who preach it, God evermore.
And look away to the sunlight.
Then you realize there is nothing you can
do.
What can a man do?
He can't sell himself as a whole goat.
He can't sell his own heart.
He can't crucify you.
He can't.
God has to do it, and he will
do it.
He waits to do it, and he waits
optimistically and friendly and on your side, wanting
to help you, willing to do it, anxious
to do it.
We could use the word anxious to cut
you off.
But you sit back, and with a spirit,
you agree, and you've been to so many
altars, and you've read so many books, you're
all confused.
Until the sun shines, until the cloud hovers,
until God's poor people won't crowd in under
their feet.
Into this sunshine in fifteen minutes, said the
boy, into this sunshine in fifteen minutes, says
this man who's brought you tonight, that you
put it all under your feet.
Dare to put it under your feet, and
look at all that the Lord needs.
Not trying to tell him what to do
nor how to do it, but look on
him and let him work.
And over the next hours and days and
weeks, you will move upward into a place
of spiritual restfulness and power such as you
never knew before.
And you'll have a marvelous deliverance from bondage,
a marvelous freedom.
You'll believe in the scriptures, you'll believe in
the word of God, and you'll verbally parade
this full, clean air of joy.
You'll believe in it, and just out of
it there will come fragrance and radiance and
illumination which you never dreamed of before.
I'll give those here that can say amen,
that know what I'm talking about.
Amen?
No, no.