Now, again in this lecture 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, forgetting those things which are behind,
and reaching forth unto those things which are
before, I press as of the high calling
of God 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, something had happened evidently, because the
man of God said that here, that he
knew, and that he had fought a good
fight, and that he had kept the faith,
and that he was now ready.
Now, that something happened in those two years
to the man of God.
Now, you have been listening to me over
these last years.
And again we ask, what is the pastor
advocating?
What is this that he preaches?
I am concerned that it be nothing else
but Christ, because anything anybody offers you, if
not just more of Christ, is false.
I am concerned that his doctrinal foundation would
be the Scripture, and in its whole spiritual
mood would be apostolic, and that it be
in harmony with the best in 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, what is this, before I enter in
really to the message for the night?
But I wanted to tell you that about
a general textualism captured the gospel church.
By the gospel church, I mean the fundamentalists,
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 in churches, and they all went,
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 verbal,
inspiration of the Scriptures as originally given.
And you'll be honest with me, there's no
reason to quote me, quote this, that I
believe, and have always believed, as a responsible
Christian teacher, in the plenary, verbal inspiration of
the Scriptures as originally given.
But the thing was, and still is, that
the, by school I don't mean in particular,
the thought, the verbal inspiration, rigor
mortis set into it.
And with the result that we were, we
were, the religious imagination was sultified, the learning
was choked down, the religious aspirations flapped down,
and the longing aspirings of the children of
God were clipped like a hen in a
hen coop, and we were told to shut
up and like what, this was it.
Brethren, do you know what happened to this?
The resulting, with the language of the New
Testament persisting, and the spirit of the New
Testament green, do you know what happened?
Well, I'll tell you.
There came about a revolt, a revolt against
the two directions.
The masses of evangelicals revolted without knowing they
were revolting.
It was the gasping of a fish in
a bowl where there's no oxygen.
The masses revolted with entertainment, until the gospel
churches are now camping on the doorsteps of,
and then over against that and on the
opposite side, some of the more intelligent fundamentalists
revolted into evangelical rationalism, which is already built
with liberalism.
And the result is that you just don't
hear what the rest of the time is
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 revelers sinking
their way perilously near to the borders of
liberalism.
The New Testament message, objectives, and methods have
been relied on it.
And in the name of the lordship of
Jesus, which is lordship in name only, we
have produced our own message, our own objectives,
and then have thought out our own methods,
achieving those objectives which are in many cases
not scriptural at all.
Now, my brethren, is it heresy to yearn
and pray and long after God?
Is it heresy to constitute a radical mind,
to yearn and pray in spite?
Do you remember when I read the first
night the great prayer in the cloud of
unknowing?
God, I beseech thee, show me the intent
of mine heart, with the unspeakable gift of
thy grace, that I may lovely and wordily
praise thee.
To long perfectly to love God, to wordily
to praise him, is a mean more than
words when you say it, meaner everything.
Is that heresy?
Should they put a man in jail for
it?
Should he be ostracized in the light of
our hymnody, in the light of our devotional
books back to Paul, in the light of
the prophecy of the saint?
No, I think not.
Now, I want to read to you just
very briefly from Necepharis, from a book called
the Philokalia.
He starts out, he wants to move forward
to know God, to do what the cloud
calls being one with God, united with God.
Now, I want you Christians to ask yourselves
the question, could I go along with this?
Now, this Necepharis was a Greek.
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 Coptic, nor
a Mexican.
He belonged to over on the Greek side,
but he was a saint to help people
to go along with God.
And he said, You who desire to capture
the wonder and illumination of our Savior Jesus
Christ, you believe in this, and you seek
to feel the fire in your heart.
Now, here was a scholar and a saint,
and he wrote it into a book in
the, I think, which is a classic, and
is recognized as such, and he dared to
use the word, you seek to feel the
divine part, and strive to sense and experience
the feeling of reconciliation with God, who in
order to unearth in the field of your
heart, and to gain possession of it, have
renounced everything worldly.
You desire that this soul should burn brightly,
even now, not in the future.
We have become so distant-minded that we've
pushed everything into the future, everything into the
future.
But this man says, You who desire your
soul to burn brightly, even now.
And Peter said, In this present world, for
this purpose have renounced all this world, who
wish by conscious experience, conscious experience in modern
psychology, 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 believe?
And if a man has not the Spirit
of Christ, he is none of you.
And the riches of the Lord lie potentially
there.
But we have been forbidden to believe it,
or forbidden to think.
We have been choked down, and the oxygen
cut off, and our wings clipped, and our
longings killed.
And that's why, when I say it sounds
different and strange, and people say, What is
this new doctrine?
It's an old doctrine.
Ah, my brother, I want to talk a
little bit tonight about the cloud of concealment
that has made full atonement for us.
Let's start there.
Christ has made full atonement.
Christ has, for sin atonement, made a wonderful
Savior.
Would you like to hear it said for
you by somebody else that could say it
better than this little lady, Julian?
Here's what she said.
The precious amends for satisfaction are for man's
sin, turning all our blame into endless honor.
Could it be said sweeter than that?
The sins our Lord hath made for man's
sin, turning all our blame into endless honor.
Say it a little differently.
He said where grace abounded, sin does what?
Oh, where sin abounded, where grace does much,
turning all our blame into endless honor.
Now, God's face is turned toward us.
Think like that tonight.
Don't let the devil cheat you.
Don't let doubt beset you.
Don't let anything I say or anybody has
ever said cheat for his knowledge.
But the face of God is turned toward
you.
And as a Christian, the smiling face of
God toward you.
Why then do we not enjoy, now to
use these words again, why then do we
as Christians not wonder at the divine illumination
of the Savior Jesus Christ?
Why do we not feel the divine fire?
Why do we not strive to sense and
experience, or why do we not sense and
experience, feel affiliation 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 word,
your position and your possession.
But that can get so cold as dry
ice.
Why is it that the candles do not
burn more brightly even now?
Why is it that we do not have
the conscious experience to leave the kingdom existing
within us?
Well, I'll tell you why.
Because there is the sweet smiling face of
God without the clouded concealment.
Now, my friends, there is never such 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, have you heard it?
That they will give all that rum, that
day's rum to the newspaper, free of charge
if the sun doesn't shine somewhere.
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.
But there are dark days and misty days
and cloudy days and days that get so
dark you have to light, days that get
so dark that in the country the chickens
go to roost, I think.
Now, there are dark days and yet the
shining just as brightly as on the brightest,
clearest day in June.
Why then does it not shine on the
earth between the sun and the earth, the
clouded concealment?
The sun is all right, the sun is
up there and brimming broadly and just as
bright and just as hot as red in
the desert.
But he doesn't get through to the earth
because there is a clouded concealment, this cloud,
my brothers.
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.
What is this cloud?
Atonement has been made, there's nothing to do
for it's all been done.
Not a drop to be shed, not a
spear needs to enter a holy heart, not
a tear nor a groan nor a drop
of sweat, not agony, death has no more
dominion over him.
It is done, it is finished, it is
forever done.
God shines down upon us.
And even upon Christians, there's that cloud or
above cloud of concealment that puts thee in
thy God, as the brothers say.
Now what is that cloud?
Well, it's a cloud in thing, it may
be many things.
There is the cloud of pride for ages.
You are your father's child, your home.
And yet for a lifetime, you may go
without the wondrous divine illumination of the Savior,
without feeling the divine fire in your heart,
or sensing or experiencing the healing of wretched
God.
And without the candles of your soul burning
brighter, because you allow a cloud of pride
over your head.
And the devil says, well, God hates you,
God turned his back, the devil lies.
There have been turns to a child of
God and to a repentant sinner since the
hour Jesus groaned and died and said, it
seems to God he's turned all away.
But we allow this cloud of pride and
the cloud of stubbornness, that are just plain
stubborn.
They will not bend, they will not kneel,
neither to man or God, or to anybody,
law and death, they will not.
And so this cloud of stubbornness, God complained
about Israel, it cracks, and the forehead is
high, and he couldn't get them to kneel.
And then there is self-will.
Now, self-will is a very religious thing.
And it may become religious, get converted, and
enter right with you into the church when
you join, and bring you into the chamber
when you pray.
Self-will, and self-will you'll note, is
good natured only when it's getting its own
way.
And it's vouchsafed and ill-tempered when it
is crossed.
Think about that.
Is your surrender to God sufficient?
Yes.
So that you can be, to even swing
your cross.
And then there is ambition.
And you know there's even religious ambition?
People that are religiously ambitious for something perhaps
that isn't in the will of God, or
that's for self-aggrandism, and the result is
that it's a cloud above them, between them
and their God.
Now, there's a little proverb, a Knox translation,
it reads like this, it rather amuses me,
because it's so true, and it's a good
picture of the human heart.
It says, Cripped by, cripped, C-R-I
-P-P-E-D, Cripped by his own,
a man eats his heart out, finding fault
even with God.
And you'll find Christians like that.
Cripped, golly, 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, at heart, 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 to give it up, and let it
ride away on any sermon I preach, or
any position I take.
I dare not, my job as editor of
the weekly, my position in the religious world,
I must put everything on the block, and
ready to go.
If I own it, it is a cloud
over my head.
It becomes a cloud of obscurity that nothing
will penetrate.
When people try to 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 died for political reasons, just sheer,
downright stubborn.
And there are those who, you try to
fast, you can't do it, brother.
The cloud of concealment, if it is something
that you say is yours, and you want
to, 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.
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 days later, they stopped praying.
Did you know that?
Said, no use.
There was a man, Saul, and he was
praying and praying.
God came, put his hand over his mouth,
Saul, Samuel.
Said, Samuel, don't pray anymore for Saul.
He's broke.
Don't pray for him.
Shut him up.
And 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.
God says, well, she'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 crowd.
And then I'll bless you and save all
that lying around groaning.
So remember that this modern idea that if
you pray, 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 the soul seeks his desire.
And the breath of the Saint and all
that I believe and I think practice in
some ways.
But 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 do it.
So nothing will get to it.
And then there is fear.
Fear is always a child of unbelief.
No matter what, 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 she will send a guided missile and
destroy Chicago.
Remember always that fear is a child of
unbelief.
And fear over your head and hide that
smiling face from you.
And then
there is self-love.
Self-love.
We make a joke out of it, but
we never should make a joke out of
it, friends.
Because self-love is concealment, a cloud of
obscurity.
And even the Christian who has offered himself
to Christ and has been reverted, that Christian
can keep a cloud of concealment over him
simply by loving himself.
And to fall out of love is an
accident.
That is, it is not only an accident,
I mean a hurt.
It hurts you like falling off of something.
And that's relation.
And self-admiration.
It's self-esteem.
They're there, 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't do anything about it.
And yet we cry within us, Oh, that
the candles of my soul might burn brightly
even now.
Oh, the divine illumination of my Savior Jesus
Christ.
And we groan with the groan that goes
back to Paul in Philippians, that goes back
to David, that we might come into a
warm, personal, pleasant, lasting fellowship with Jesus Christ
that lifts us and irradiates our hearts.
And yet we can't because we admire him
and we're not going to have anybody disturb
us and we congratulate ourselves and we love
him.
And then there's money.
Money these days gets between betwixt thee and
thy God, there's a verse, betwixt thee and
thy God.
Some revangement years ago in my hearing pointed
out that you can take two dimes and
shout out, you can take two dimes with
you to the Great Smoky Mountain and go
clear to the top knob of the Great
Smoky.
Shout out all the glorious, green, rolling, blue
-capped, this smoky.
Just put them in front of your eyes
and put them close, that's all it takes.
The mountains are still there smiling in the
sun because there's a dime in front of
each eye.
It doesn't take much money.
We who don't have much money are always
snide remarks that the rich man.
But brother, you can be rich and only
have ten dollars because if it is between
you and 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 who are Christians
with a cloud of fear above them.
Constantly a cloud of fear.
They want to fit in.
They want to fit in here and the
sociologists tell us we must do this, that
we must adjust to society.
And the schools are breaking the history and
writing and reading and arithmetic and all the
rest.
They're teaching the children to not to be
queer and to get along well.
Well, if you've got that as your goal,
you have heart, my Christian friends.
And then there are our friends.
And then there's a position we hold, whatever
it may be, to our loved ones.
And this is the tenderest and perhaps the
hardest.
But that's all got to go.
You say, then what is it?
If this cloud is over my head, is
a cloud of concealment?
When my father's smiling and I can't see
his face, what shall I do?
Well, the old brother suggests, and I've to
you as a beautiful illustration, he calls it
a cloud of forgetting.
He said, put this cloud that's above you,
under you, as a cloud of forgetting.
And Paul said exactly the same thing.
Forgetting those things which are behind.
Force under those things which are before.
You see, the things which were behind Paul
were a cloud.
If they'd been in front of him, then
he'd cut out God.
But he put them behind him.
His deceit, his mistakes, his errors, his wrongs,
the times he'd fallen on his face, and
the time the Lord had his pride, and
all this, he put them behind him, and
under his feet is a cloud of forgetting.
And the old man, as God said, under
you.
And he said, now have them not betwixt
thee and thy God.
Like so he put a cloud between betwixt
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 about it.
Others are not.
Others have come up to me, Acadis Barnea,
want to reach to me, and have turned
back to wonder why they're standing in their
shoes.
It's because we would not go on Acadis
Barnea.
Right?
So forgetting these things, and all this that
has been a cloud of confusion, now becomes
a cloud of forgetting.
The face of God, I repeat, is smiling
still.
And not all the cloud I've mentioned, and
not all the cloud the devil can blow
up there.
And the devil can come and put it
between you, betwixt you, and the face of
your God, experientially, but that God is waiting
within the veil, or the king, the figure,
he's waiting for you to move up, to
move up.
I remember getting on a plane at LaGuardia
Field in New York some years ago.
It was about, I would say, three o
'clock in the afternoon.
The smiling, relaxed, friendly pilot came out and
made a little speech.
He knew that old doctors like me would
worry about because it was raining.
It was a miserable day, like as we
get here sometimes.
Just plain miserable.
And he said, now, I'm leaving in a
moment.
And he said, the situation is this, friends.
In 15 minutes we'll be in the sunlight.
And he says, the weather report shows from
here to Chicago.
And sure enough, it was.
And so we got into that plane almost
feeling a little smog and a mist.
And in 15 minutes we had put the
cloud under our feet.
And the bright above.
And as we rose, even the cloud became
white beneath us.
You alone a lot have had the experience
of seeing that gray wood trees that are
underneath you white as whipped egg.
And when you were underneath they were a
misty, miserable, smoggy thing that cut out the
sun.
But in 15 minutes they put them under.
And oh brother, is it nice to take
off in the smoke and rain and fly
900 miles in the sun.
Now, that's what I mean.
You're going to have to put this under
your feet.
Get busy about it.
Do something about this.
And more than sit and take in some
more, you're going to have to work on
yourself.
I wonder if you are.
I wonder if I'm not contradicting myself.
For he says he will but look on
him and let him work.
I wonder if it's true.
Wouldn't it be better more accurate to say
no consent to put the clouds under will
put the clouds under.
What does a man do in an airplane?
Now I, if I help the pilot, I
keep balancing the thing as a return.
Now really, I do.
But what help the pilot, that great big
good natured fellow sitting up there winging, what
does he care about a little fellow winging
159 in the summer and a little less
in the winter.
What can I do without him being a
four cylinder, four engine monster.
Not at all.
But I help him the best I can.
Into the sunshine, look on him and let
him alone.
That's all.
The kids ought to be willing that cloud
get under your feet.
I don't ever go up.
A lot of them.
Oh, they have every excuse in the wide
world that he's not going up.
They'd rather stay right down here.
And they do.
The sun shines brightly and they think the
sun will be shining when it is.
Now, put it under you money.
What is it?
Well, I've said money, people, friends, physicians, loved
ones, peers, and all that I claim and
call my own.
Ambition, pride, stubbornness, nothing else the Holy Ghost
may point to in your life.
Only you know what he's a jealous rival
and he's a jealous lover and he suffers
no rival.
And whatever there is is a cloud between
thee and thy God.
I don't say that you're not going to
it if you're not justified.
I say that this we've talked about, this
wondrous divine ability perfectly to love him and
wear him in his face that has been
choked out and smitten down out of for
a generation.
This, this, we lack and we lack it
because we will not put under our feet
the cloud under the Spirit.
We let it rise between us and our
brethren if you will put it under your
feet.
Why, you'll find that it hides all that
that's bothered you and that that changes and
worries you and brings you.
It's down there and it's out and it's
gone and it's a clear sky and it's
gone and it's gone and it's gone
and it's gone and it's
gone and it's gone and it's and it's
and it's gone and it's gone and it's
gone and it's gone
and it's gone and
it's gone and it's and it's and it's
and it's gone and it's And because that
crowd has been buzzing and thought they can't
rise, they've rushed to get a little heartbeat
from the theater, rushed to get a little
bit of a feeling from Hillbilly ballad scenes,
religious songs, and theatrical.
I don't blame them, they've been cheated and
the lawyers have wronged them, as in the
days of Jesus.
Jesus walked among men in that day with
his eyes bright and his beauty seen.
And he said, 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'll kill that man.
But he rose the third day and sent
down the Holy Ghost into the world in
his mind.
And he said, we'll kill that
man, and
we'll kill that man.
And he said, we'll kill that man, and
we'll kill that man.
Does that make a fanatic out of you?
Come on, let's not be fanatics.
Just go and sit there in the air.
That fanaticism ought to make a fanatic out
of you.
But I have to warn you.
No, no, that's not fanaticism.
Fanaticism is going against the scriptures, imagined things,
dreams.
And he has to interpret the word of
God.
But he can't go over one line of
the word of God.
Not one line.
It's all here.
The doctrines of this place.
The place of living still.
So what about it?
I take it and you take it.
Now if you can go and put that
cloud of self, and cloud of self-love,
and cloud of stubbornness, then
there's nothing to it.
For all of you have nothing to do.
You can't find heaven on a rope ladder.
There's nothing for you to do.
Take the hand of the Lord, divine.
I take it.
Take it.
Promise.
Mind.
The vision.
Change.
Come to shine.
I take.
Here I'm going to take.
I take it and say, Lord, I give
myself to you.
And thou according to thy word, there's only
a sin to it.
Go on and go on and take it.
So many great Christians have been walking around
that little cloud for a long time.
You can't get above it, you just can't.
So you try to permeate your way above
it, you try to believe your way above
it.
That way, you can't.
You've got to put it on your feet.
And rise above it.
And put all these Christians and all the
preachers God ever made, and look away to
the sunlight.
When you are alive, there is nothing a
normal man can do.
He can't sell himself as a holy ghost.
He can't turn his own head.
He can't crucify you.
He can't.
God has to do it.
And you do it.
And you wait, optimistic, and friendly, and on
your side.
Wanting to help you.
Anxious to go.
If you could use the word anxious, it's
such a good word.
But when you sit back, and you believe,
and you've been with so many authors, and
you've read so many books, you're all confused.
Until the sunshine comes.
Until God's cool, simple wind started on the
way to you.
Into this sunshine in fifteen minutes.
And that's the faith that man has brought
to you tonight.
If you put it all in your head
and in your feet.
And look away to the Lord Jesus.
Not trying to tell him what to do
and how to do it.
But look.
And over the next thousand days and weeks,
you will move upward into a pure, restful,
true power, such as you never knew before.
And you'll have a marvelous living.
A marvelous future.
You believe in the future.
You believe in the way that is dark,
and it's very bleak for us.
It's luminary for us.
You believe in it.
And yet outward that there will come presence,
and radiance, and illumination.
It's in you every day.
Are those words that you're saying then, you
know what I'm talking about, don't you?