A Revelation of Christ — B.H. Clendennen

Over half of my life I spent behind a pulpit here in Beaumont in this church, and it's good to be here this morning. We're home. We have to go back on the 26th of this month. We go back to begin the school again.

We have 150 students already registered, twice that many that wanted to get into it. It's on last night, I guess it was, or whenever, the night in Moscow on what they call the Moscow broadcast, over 50 million people, they sent a television crew out in our graduation and filmed the school, a part of it, and they ran it on that last night, or whenever that works out.

We're the time difference, but they run it there. They said between 40 and 50 million people watch that telecast. People have said to me, how did the word about this school get out so well? I really don't know, but everybody knows about it.

It's been one of the most wonderful experiences. We graduated 102 students. We gave them their certificates on the 26th day of December. We had a big Christmas dinner with them on the 25th. That was the last day of classes.

Then we have the graduation on the 26th. That is where we gave those diplomas to those 102 students. Now we have 150 coming in because our facilities, we were to have 150 all the time, but there were people there that occupied part of our apartments part of the time.

It was Assembly of God, the life publishers, Bob Hoskins, many of you have seen him, their Assembly of God, and they had come into that complex. But because the Assemblies of God didn't prove us as such, they told them they couldn't stay there anymore.

So that gave us room 50 more students. We were very happy about that. We didn't, and so we got 150 registered. Every one of them had to be, we specified and gave to them, coming there with the intent of planting a church when they leave.

We had 20 in the first group out of the 120 that did not. Four of them were teenagers that were going to be associate pastors for a while. Six of them came as youth ministers. They trained, which was very good, and we had some as missionaries into an island outside of Russia.

But 82 of them, 82 churches were planted and being planted this month out of that first three-month school. Thirty-five of them will be Bible schools. We videoed 140, I guess close to 140 hours of the school, and as the school progressed, I watched those that I deemed to be the most spiritual and those that I felt like could accept the responsibility, and we are giving them the equipment and the videos to begin video Bible schools.

But this time next year when we're at home, we will have at least 150 video Bible schools across that land. You know that world has 11 time zones. You have three here, so you can imagine how big it is.

We had two men flew in to Magadon. That's along the coast of Japan. Now, when they got to Magadon from Missouri and Arkansas, they were 10-hour jet flight to Moscow. So that's the reason we sent them that direction.

But up there where nobody's been, we have students, and those two men are there going to plant eight churches in that world, in that Kamchatka area that's been closed all the time. Nobody was allowed in there at all, all of those years of communism.

Nobody was allowed in there. So they are there now. They arrived on the 7th of this month. We had a crew arrive yesterday in Moscow that are going to plant churches. Then we have those that will arrive about the time the wife and I get back.

But all of it is churches in a world where there are no churches. Tens of thousands of cities and villages, cities of 100 to 200, 300 ,000 people, not one single evangelical voice there, no church whatsoever.

But with these schools in place, when they're in place, right now we're going to be planting about 150 churches every three months. But then with the 35 schools that we're planting now, if they just have 10 students each, we'd plant another 350 churches.

But when all of them are in place, it is not only probable, but altogether possible that we will plant at least a thousand new churches every three months across that land. And you have to know we started the church when we first began the Bible school in the little village of Dabrowski where we are.

Not any crusade, without anything, just rented an auditorium in the school and began. And we have, Igor told me we had around 200 in it last Sunday. It is self-supporting. They are born again, people.

You know, when they're really born, you teach them. They never taught them to tithe, but just to teach them, he said, my sheep know my voice. That's the reason I know people that don't tithe in a church like this are not saved.

They're not His sheep. They don't hear. That's just all it is to that. My sheep know my voice. You preach it, and a man born again, he hears that, and he obeys that if he belongs to God. And so we know with, you know, 82 churches, probably 20 ,000 people will be in the kingdom of God by the middle of February because of that school that we just went through.

That's what we're doing. That's why we're there. And it is one of the most exciting times of our life. Oh, I think that all that we've ever did has been to bring us to that point in time. The only real problem with it, the ice.

I fell but come out better than my wife. All of us fall sometime. She fell and broke her arm. But otherwise, we've had a very wonderful time and a very exciting time in history to see what's happening in that world.

The possibilities there are unlimited. And nothing, no program I believe that God has going has any more possibility than what we're doing. We're happy to be a part of that cutting edge. Glad to be here.

Out of here is where we begun, and we're happy to be back here with you this morning. The church is doing wonderful. Always, you know, in the change of things, sometimes there's some new ones come, some old ones go.

But you'll find out in the final analysis that everything does work together for good to them that love God. Amen. Whatever went on somehow worked in it. And I'm just thrilled to see what's happening in this church.

Amen. To hear the youth program and all that's happening. Amen. It's wonderful. It's wonderful to be a part of God in this hour, isn't it? I'm glad to be saved, and I'm glad to be a part of what He's doing.

A Fresh Revelation of Christ as God’s Answer

I want to read to you from the book of Ezekiel. Now, you... I've got all this kind of worked out for me, so I don't have to thumb through here. If you want to write it down or turn, you do it quickly.

But in Ezekiel chapter 40, I want to read down through from verse 2, 3, and 4, then go to chapter 43. What I'm going to talk to you about this morning has governed everything that we've done in that Bible school and everything that we've intended to do and what we wanted to do with those students that sat there.

Impossible for me to tell you the revolution that took place in their lives in 12 weeks. Now, you live with them and talk with them. It's impossible for you to understand what 75 years of communism done to that mind.

But to see the Holy Spirit in 12 weeks, to break that mold and release them into a world. One thing for Gorbachev and his perestroika to give them freedom. It's another thing for a man's mind to really know that he's free.

And it's another thing to know what God can do. But in those 12 weeks, if you would have been there the day that we opened that school and not seen them again till the day that we had the graduation, it'd be impossible for you hardly to recognize them as the same people as to what God has done for them in that school.

The curriculum and the discipline of the school was such that you have to be called to stay there. Prayer meeting every morning like you do here only seven days a week. Every Friday night is an all-night prayer meeting.

Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday night from 8 to 10 are prayer meetings. Anytime you get up at night and open our door, we live in that complex. You could hear them praying somewhere in that dorms. They'd be praying, waiting upon God.

They have become the truth that we taught them. That's the whole key. Analytical Bible studies have never changed anybody. It takes this experience of this truth to make a difference in life. In verse 2,.

"...In the visions of God brought he me into the land of Israel and set me upon a very high mountain, by which was as a frame of a city on the south. And he brought me thither, and behold, there was a man whose appearance was like the appearance of brass, with a line of flax in his hand and a measuring reed.

And he stood in the gate. And the man said unto me, Son of man, behold, with thine eyes, here with your ears, set thine heart upon all that I would show thee, for the... to the intent that I might show them unto thee art thou brought here.

Declare all that thou seest to the house of Israel.". And in verse... chapter 43 and verse 10 we read again,. "...Thou son of man, show the house, to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities, and let them measure the pattern.

And if they be ashamed of all that they have done, show them the form of the house, the fashion thereof, the going out thereof, the coming in thereof, all the forms thereof, all the ordinances thereof, all the forms thereof, all the laws thereof, write it in their sight, that they may keep the whole form thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and do them.".

Then turn into the gospel of John, chapter 1 and verse 1. In this wonderful gospel of John we read these words,. "...In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was a life of men, light of men.". Then move into verse 14,. "...And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, as the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.".

Then in verse 51,. "...And He said unto him, Barely, barely, I'll send you hereafter. You shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.". God's answer to every problem, especially in a time when there's backsliding, when the church is in a place of decline, God's answer has always been a new revelation of Christ.

Never any other answer. It isn't just merely describing how wicked the age is. There has to be brought to that generation of people a new, fresh revelation of Jesus Christ. And the first work of the Holy Spirit in all things is to present to us the object of God, what God is after.

That's always been the work of the Holy Spirit. Whatever He does, the first thing is to bring to the people what God is after. This is the way of God of bringing us into things, making us see what He wants.

Ezekiel’s Vision and Repentance Through Seeing God’s Pattern

Now when the divine thought, as was represented by the temple and Jerusalem, was forsaken and the glory of God had departed, then God, in a vision, took Ezekiel back there. That's totally destroyed. The nation is in bondage.

God takes Ezekiel by the Spirit, in the Spirit, shows him a vision of that temple. He shows him what it is to be. It is here that God has given him His message and tells him to go back and tell the people what He has seen.

And if He can make them see what He has seen, then there'll be a repentance on the part of them. They'll repent of their iniquity. Man never is brought face to face with his own depravity until that man sees the holiness of God.

And when Jesus stepped the cross from His public life or His private life to public ministry in the fourth chapter of the book of Matthew, verse 17, a voice from heaven said, This is my beloved Son. God was presenting the object and the whole system was to conform you to that which you saw, the Son of God.

That was the purpose of God. And so the Holy Spirit's first work was to show you what He wanted and then began the process of bringing you into that revelation. Now the greatest truth that comes when the Holy Spirit shows Christ is the absolute otherness of Christ.

Till you really see Him by the Spirit, then it's impossible for you to know how different Christ is from you. That's the reason religion has reduced itself to just allowing men to make Christ a part of what they are.

Ninety percent of the church, Pentecostal-wise in America, I believe, is made up of people who are not birthed of God. All they've ever done is add Jesus to what they are. But once the Holy Spirit reveals Christ to you and you see how different He is from you and then you know that what God is after is to make you like that Christ, you know it cannot happen without a miracle.

You have to be born again. Nothing's so radical on this earth as to be birthed of God. Nothing does such violence to human nature as for a man to be born again. And the first work of the Holy Spirit in all things is to bring you and I face to face with what God is after.

And so a revelation, when He showed Ezekiel that temple, that's the church, that's the house of God, when He saw it totally measured, everything about it, then He said, You show the people what you have seen.

Ezekiel was caused to write the vision of a new heavenly house, a house in every detail measured and defined from God. That's always the first work of the Holy Spirit. Now when the church in the New Testament had lost its power, lost its glory, that's exactly what had took place when John wrote his gospel.

You want to know the condition of the church? Read the second and third chapters of the book of Revelation. All of this was already in place. John is an old man and God has caused him to write. And as he writes concerning that church, then John was caused by the Spirit to bring into view one more time the Lord Jesus Christ.

I can tell you if Christ is presented, there'll be a revival. But no matter what you say until men see Christ, they will not be changed. There can never be a renewal of anything until that person and persons sees the Lord Jesus Christ.

John’s Gospel and the Recovery of the Church

Now when the church in the New Testament had lost its place, God caused John to write. Now John's gospel, as I said, was written when the church was in a terrible backslidden state. And to that situation, God reacts with a new presentation of His Son.

That was the reaction of God to that situation, to bring Christ back into view. Now here is a new beginning into the view of His Son, not just as Jesus of Nazareth, but as a Son of Man, Son of God, and God's way of recovery, a full thought has always been that when Christ is seen.

Remember God's answer to every movement is in His Son, everything. This book is a book about Christ. This book from beginning to the end is a book about Jesus. When He arrived, He said to men, I am that bread of life.

I am the Sabbath. I am the resurrection. I am everything. All of the eight redemptive names of God have been brought into one name, the name of Jesus. All the sacrifices of Leviticus and Exodus, all of them were completed in the blood of Jesus.

Everything was in Christ. Christ is the answer to everything you need or ever will be. It's Jesus Christ, God's Son, made real to men in this hour. There is no other answer. All of the preaching is nothing unless finally that preaching presents Christ and makes this Christ real.

Everything for God and for us is bound up with the heart revelation of Christ. Till my heart sees Jesus, amen, till I see Him by the Holy Spirit that I learn Christ, and that's the whole system. Paul said, you've not so learned Christ.

Jesus said, my yoke is easy. Come, take my yoke upon you and learn of me. Paul put it in a little different word. He said, you have not so learned Christ, not learned about Christ, not learned something of Christ, but learned Christ Himself.

That's what the Holy Spirit's come to do is to teach us Christ, to make us know Christ, everything. This word, this book, the one key word to this Bible, understanding it, is the word worship, worship, worship.

That's the key word because what God is after is a place and worship unrivaled in this universe. And when God looks at the church, He sees nothing but Christ and all of His work is to rid that church and you individually of everything that's not Christ.

That's all the working of God. Amen. All of His dealing, all of His working is to bring that church to this one place where there's nothing left but Christ. There's nothing about you. Amen. Nothing about you that pleases God.

Amen. The one thing you'll learn when you see Him is He's different from you. The best mind humans ever had, the most educated, brilliant person that ever lived is different than Him. It's a different mind.

The greatest will ever was is a different will than His. It is all different. That's what we have to come to know when the Holy Spirit reveals that to us. The next revelation is that there is nothing about you that pleases God.

It all has to go. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased has always been God's answer. There are plenty here in this world who have the New Testament doctrine, technique, order, but it's a dead, cold form.

They may learn how to jump. They may learn how to clap their hands. You may get the music right and they jump around a while. But I can tell you if that's all it is, if it's just a technical thing, it is nothing.

Nothing has ever come out of just analytical Bible studies. I've never in my life come to realize such a thing. I've taught preachers around this world, but when I have the responsibility and on that first day when I looked into the eyes of 102 students, the Holy Spirit placed on me for the first time the real sense of responsibility.

I began to understand as to what He was saying to me and it become a frightening moment when I realized that just an analytical Bible study has never changed anybody. Listen, I've been in this thing 43 years.

I've watched people who've been in Pentecost and Sunday school all of their lives. They went to Sunday school, studied the Bible, and they're still meaner than a junkyard dog. They'll leave the church at the drop of a hat.

Nothing has been changed about their life unless Christ becomes alive through this Word. It is absolutely nothing. I knew it can't be just a little analytical Bible study. There's got to be a revelation of truth.

Revelation Rather Than Mere Religious Knowledge

Amen. That's the reason we multiplied those prayer meetings. I couldn't tell you how many times I've walked through 102 students and laid my hands upon them. Oh, my God. On the first day of that school, I said, I want every presupposition dismissed from your mind.

I don't care what you think this church is. It doesn't matter to me what your teaching is being. I'm not saying that it's wrong. I'm just telling you that you and I are going to open this book and it's going to be like we have deserted on an island and we found this book the first time in our life.

We are going to return to what this book says. I don't care for your tradition. I don't care for my tradition. All I want to find in this book is God's Son, God's Son's will, God's Son's way. Oh, my God, that He had helped us this morning.

That He had stirred us to the realization. People have been in Sunday school 40 years, never been changed. They memorized the Bible, but it did nothing to them because I didn't answer to anything. No, no, this book has got to be birthed in you.

Jesus said, I'm the bread of life and if that life in that bread or if that bread does you any good, then there's going to have to be the same life in you that's in the bread. Do you understand what I'm telling you?

It's not enough just to know with the mind. Amen. God's way of glory is Jesus. God's way of life is Jesus. God's way of power is Jesus. God's way of the heavenly nature is Jesus. And the first thing that the light produces is life and that is in the revelation of His Son, Jesus Christ.

That revelation becomes real. God has shut everything of Himself up in His Son and it's not possible to know anything of God apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. Not possible to know nothing. Christ is known only by revelation.

It's not possible to have or know anything of all the fullness of God shut up in His Son without the Holy Spirit's revelation of that in an inward way. This has governed everything I've said to those students.

I've said to them, you can leave here with a notebook full of notes and facts and be nothing but if God, if God will reveal to your spirit what He put into me over a period of 40 years, I promise you that the church, listen, the church, life doesn't come out of the church.

The church comes out of life. I said if I can produce by the Holy Spirit a living ministry in this place over the next 12 weeks, if you leave here pregnant with the life of God, there's nothing that will keep a church from being born because the church comes out of life.

Life doesn't come out of doctrine. Doctrine comes out of life. When you change that, all you produce is Pharisees and hypocrites the same as Christ have to deal with. That's the reason people ship from church to church is because they've never met Christ and do not know what the church is.

Never come to realize. If you're in a place where He's not real, you need to find a place where He is. You understand what I'm saying. Just every time your little feelings get rougher, let me tell you this thing has to be birthed in the human.

It has to be a revelation. Whatever, listen, this summarizes the whole of John's gospel. This John, all of the gospels are about Jesus. But John, more than any other, was bringing back that revelation of Christ.

Ninety-five, six years old, looking back to that point when God's Son walked this earth, when they saw Him, when they saw Him buried and raised. Now He looks at a church that that glory is gone. There's nothing but a form of what used to be real.

And John's gospel is we beheld His glory. We saw this Christ. It wasn't words that we said. It was a reality. We touched Him. We handled Him. We saw Him. My God, He's pleading with them. This summarizes the gospel.

You can know it for there at the very center of that gospel is a man born blind. I believe every miracle in this Bible certainly is a testimony of God's power, certainly a wonderful thing that people are healed, certainly, but God recorded only a few of the miracles that Jesus did.

The Bible said if everything that could have been written about Him was written, worlds wouldn't hold that book. But God put those. They had spiritual meaning. It's not an accident that the first miracle after Pentecost was a cripple setting in the gate.

That's what Pentecost is all about, to put crippled Christians on their feet spiritually. That's what Pentecost is all about. But right in the middle of the gospel of John there's a man born blind, a man that's never seen, that Jesus heals.

I don't know how old he was, but that man had sat there, smelled that city, felt its streets, heard its sounds, but no matter what he imagined that city was like, it was nothing like what he saw when those eyes were open.

It's not, listen, that a man that lost his sight and sees again, it's a man that he never saw. I don't care, Mr. Jack, I don't care what you ever thought about this Jesus in all your years of religion, if He ever opens your eyes to see Him, it won't be anything like you imagined.

Hallelujah. I said hallelujah. It won't be anything like you imagined. When those eyes are open, you can imagine what you want about that son. Or you can talk and read the Bibles how He walked on water.

You can talk about how great that Christ is and indeed He's great. But when those eyes are open, my God, then a man looks in His eye. I said when it looks at Him by the power of the Holy Spirit, then that Christ is nothing like you thought.

I said He's nothing like you thought. When that man's eyes open in the streets of Jerusalem, all those smells and sounds has had to cause a visible image in that mind as to what it was all about. I can tell you that day when God's Son touched Him and those eyes were open, it wasn't the same.

No, no, it wasn't the same. And there's people in this audience this morning and in this television audience that they've been religious all of their lives, but they've never saw Christ. They know a lot about Him.

Whatever that man may surmise or guess or imagine, actual seeing is going to be something different. It's a new beginning. I said it's a new beginning. Nothing's going to be seen though saved by the miracle wrought within a man except a man be born again.

He can see that kingdom. That kingdom is Christ. No matter whatever else you might think the kingdom of God is, that kingdom is Jesus. Revelation can only come by the choice of the Son of God. Revelation, though, is always bound up with practical situations.

Christ Revealed in Practical Situations

You listen at me. Here in the next few moments the revelation of this book, everything that you ever needed came only as a new revelation of Christ. As that revelation in Scripture, whether it be healing physically or deliverance spiritually, it always comes in Christ.

I learned when I first got saved. I don't think I ever was an evolutionist. I just didn't know God, didn't know how it happened. But I know when I was born again it dawned on me the first time my eyes were opened I saw not just by hearing but my heart saw that God made me.

And in that moment I realized that if God made me every problem of my life is theological. All can be answered in the knowledge of God. Everything. Every answer. Amen. And God always those revelations are bound up in very practical situations.

You and I never get revelation other than which is connected with some necessity of our life. We're always whining when trouble comes. We're always complaining about life. But if we just realize in the most difficult times of life is when there's the greatest possibility of a real true again revelation of Christ.

It's in those times, in those moments that the possibility's never been greater. The principle, you look at the law of the manna is that God keeps revelation of Himself in Christ bound up with practical situations of a necessity.

And we're not going to get a revelation as mere teaching, as doctrine, or as any other thing. It's not going to come. Sound doctrine is an absolute necessity. But there's nothing sound to a man until he sees Jesus.

No matter what he knows. Revelation are not bound up. In just a little analytical Bible study, God has got to open your eyes and let you see something in this book. That book is a revelation, but it contains a revelation.

And those revelations are all in the choice of God's Son. And it's only, only as He opens us up and lets us see, amen, are we able to comprehend all that God is doing. The New Testament is the most practical book because it was born out of pressing situations.

Are you listening to me? I said it was born out of pressing situations. And if you here this morning that really know the Christ, if you were to testify, you would say the greatest truths that ever gripped your soul have been in times when it looked like that you're going to be overwhelmed, that you're not going to be able to go on.

But in your desperateness for God, there come a revelation of Christ that sets you on a course for victory. Out of those situations. That's the reason God never protects His people from the adversary.

He give us a life that cannot be destroyed. And He gave us a way that as we walk with Him, it's in these situations of life. The Lord is against our getting along on technical or theoretical lines. No, no.

I listened to a man preach years ago and he was talking about the technique of the Bible. That's what you have a great part of in this faith movement. You do certain things and you do certain things and then this is going to have to happen.

That's the business way of things. You know, you just, you put certain things here and there and then, but the only trouble with that it doesn't happen. The miracle doesn't occur. Amen. Because God didn't bound any technique of yours.

He's bound with His Son. Get a revelation of Jesus. Touch Him and pray and get a hold of Him. That's been the answer to God to every decline in all of history. Whether it be the church collectively, are you individually coming to know Jesus?

We have to come into the New Testament situations to get a revelation of Christ to meet that situation. It always has to be. Always has to be. The Holy Spirit's way is to bring us into living actual conditions and situations and needs in which only some fresh knowledge of God can set us free.

That's always been His way. We become too lazy. We forgot what it is, what the Bible really means about praying through. Amen. Our forefathers knew what that meant, brother. They prayed their way into Christ.

They saw Christ and when they did, things happened. And it's always the Holy Spirit's way of bringing you and I into those situations that there's no way out but a new and a fresh revelation of Christ.

I set myself to find Him, to know Him, to see Him, whatever it is. And it's in those situations that revelation comes. Amen. We're not drawing upon an it. We're not drawing upon a something. We're drawing upon Christ.

God didn't just give us a book. We have the Bible. But it's a person until it becomes a person. It doesn't mean anything. A letter kills. The Spirit makes Jesus real. That book comes alive. It's in those living circumstances that the reality of God, amen, becomes real.

God has not, first of all, as I said, written a book, though we have the Bible, but God has written a person. And until you and I see that person, until we see that person, then we're nowhere. This is an age of the ecumenical.

Robert was talking Wednesday night on CNN. They're talking about that baby boomer generation is turning back to the church, but they're redefining the church. They're making the church something they can use.

They're making the church something that fits into their little mold of thinking. And they're making Christ just a part of a great ecumenical something that's nothing. Let me tell you, Islam don't know the way Mohammed was lost.

He's in hell. Doesn't matter what anybody says. Amen. Mary can't save anybody. Amen. Only Jesus saves. Only Jesus heals. Only Jesus delivers. There's no other way to God. You can't talk to God. You can't know anything about God.

Everything that God has is bound up in the knowledge of His Son. Said to those early preachers, they went everywhere preaching Christ. They preached the cross on both sides, His death and His resurrection.

And the Holy Spirit came down upon that. The Holy Spirit always came on that. You cannot have the Constitution of Heaven except it be in the person of Jesus Christ. It cannot be. Remember, God always keeps the knowledge of Himself in Christ bound up in practical situations of life.

That's the reason we don't live in a glass house. We have to face everything everybody else faces. You run into things. There's no answer to these things apart from Christ. We become so lazy. Amen. We just want to run to a little healing meeting.

And if it don't happen, then get mad at God. Well, it may happen in a healing meeting. It may not. You may have to wait. You may have to tarry. You may have to pray. But if you ever seek Christ, whatever you're after will happen.

Ever seek Jesus. This cuts both ways. The Holy Spirit will bring us, if we're in His hand, into a situation which will make necessary a new knowledge of God. He'll bring you there. Oh, every time. Israel had been traveling six weeks, and they're further away from the Promised Land than they was when they started.