God Doesn't Give Up on Children Who Fall — David Wilkerson

This message is one of the Times Square Church pulpit series. It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times Square Church in Manhattan, New York City. Other tapes are available by writing World Challenge, P .O. Box 260, Lindale, Texas 75771 or calling 903 -963 -8626.

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God Does Not Give Up on Those Who Fall

I'm not going to be speaking to the whole church this morning, I'm going to be speaking to a select few, and yet the message is for all in a way that we're learning something about God's heart toward people who fall, people who backslide, people who are down, people who have been shipwrecked or ruined.

My message this morning, God doesn't give up on his children who fall. God doesn't give up on his children who fall. I presume that many of you here have never fallen, and I presume that you will never fall, that you'll be faithful to the Lord, you'll love the Lord, but you know people who have fallen, and this is a message that you need to bring to them.

I trust that you absorb it and take it into your spiritual being, and this will be ammunition that you can use, and I hope it will mold your own thinking and how you approach those people who have fallen, backslidden, those that might have known the Lord and now that could be out on the streets or whatever.

We pray this morning that God will use this word. God doesn't give up on his children who fall. Let's pray. I'm so glad, Lord, that you don't give up on your children who fail you, who turn to the world or go back into sin.

You do not give up on them. And Lord, there are people sitting in this church right now who have fallen. You made it clear to me that you can design a message, prepare a message even for one person, somebody that could travel across the world or across the country and place them in this church this morning and cause the whole congregation to sit and listen while you deal with one individual.

I've seen that happen over and over again. Lord, I don't know who you're speaking to this morning, but in a way you're speaking to all of us in our attitude toward those who have fallen. Lord, let us know something of your heart this morning.

Touch me, anoint me, Lord, sanctify me, purge me by the power of the blood of Jesus Christ and give us ears to hear what the Spirit of the Lord is saying. In Jesus' name, amen. Now, I grieve over the many children of God who've been falling away from Christ in these last days.

It's a tremendous grief to my heart. It's a grief to any Christian and especially to any pastor. Christians who've fallen back into sin and Christians have fallen back into sin in every generation. Adam, the first man fell into sin.

And ever since Adam, God's children have been falling away from grace, away from God, away from Christ. Many who have been delivered out of the kingdom of darkness return to the kingdom of darkness, back to their old sins, and almost daily.

Now somebody brings me a report of another child of God who has slipped and fallen, and some go back to drugs, some go back to alcohol, some go back to pornography, they go back to their old darkened streets, and there are some that, when they bring the report to me and I hear it, I say, oh no, not him, or not her.

I thought he was so strong, he seemed to be doing so well, wanting to do so right before God. How did it happen? Or I'll hear of some sister in the Lord who has fallen, and I say, I can't believe that, because there seemed to be such energy of Christ and such a love for the Lord, how did it happen?

And suddenly they're gone. They have fallen, they've turned their backs on the Lord, so to speak, and they're back in their old habits. And I've had to shake my head and disbelieve and say, I can't comprehend that.

Increasing Temptation in the Last Days

Now it's true that this end-time generation that we're in right now faces greater temptation, greater stress than any past generation, because the Bible even says, evil men and seducers shall go worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.

The Bible also predicts wickedness shall abound, and that means increase and multiply. And we're in a time now where it's reached a point called critical mass that's spinning out of control, literally spinning out of control.

And we see a time now when new kinds of sin and seductions and temptations are being introduced that you and I never even dreamed of or heard of just twenty years ago. The devil is getting very subtle, the seductions are getting stronger, the temptations stronger.

Addiction and Despair on the Streets of New York

You know, yesterday, Saturday, I was down at Isaiah House with Mark and a few workers and looking out the third-store window over, you can see 42nd Street and up 8th Avenue, and all I saw was grime, dirt.

I saw pushers on the corner of 8th Avenue and 42nd Street pushing their drugs to derelict human beings that could hardly walk. And I saw later when I went out in the street, I had gone just a little bit and I saw two alcoholics and one was trying to help the other, and he was just, blood was just flowing out of his mouth.

He was vomiting blood all over the streets, and the other guy who didn't know whether to lean him over, and another alcoholic came along and said, stand him up. And those poor men, they were all coughing, all diseased, all absolutely just a few weeks probably away from death in the grave.

And on the third floor, you look up 8th Avenue and you see these cheap little porno theaters where AIDS-infected girls go through their boring routines, they're bored, many of them very unattractive, and you see these poor souls going into these porno houses, and it's heartbreaking.

In fact, it's like an image out of Dante's Inferno, a literal vision of hell, and it just turns me off. It's a depressing thing. And yet, one young man who just took a fall this past week or two said to, I think it was to Mark or to one of our workers, but you don't understand, you've never been on the streets.

You see grime and you see dirt, and this turns you off, but that's temptation to us. That's temptation. I've never been able to understand it because I have served the Lord since I was a child. I've not lived on the streets, and I've never been touched with those kinds of temptations.

But here in New York City, those temptations, they say, are getting stronger and stronger. I don't comprehend that kind of temptation, but whatever your temptation is, however the devil can seduce you in your particular area of seduction, it is getting stronger, it's getting wider, and it's spreading and causing more and more of the children of God who've been saved and converted to fall back into their old ways.

Backsliding in Families and Churches

Last week, I was reading letters that pour into our office from all over the United States. We have, as you know, over 800 ,000 people on our mailing list, and we get 40 ,000, 50 ,000 letters in a month.

We sometimes get 10 ,000 in a week, and reading some of these letters, it's just heartbreaking. Something has happened in the past year, especially the letters from wives who tell us that their husbands have just picked up and ran off, leaving them with their children, taking off with women half their age, and now he's backslidden.

One preacher's wife said, My husband, a pastor, we've been married for over 25 years, now he's backslidden and he's living with an unsaved girl half his age. Pastors running off on their wives, wives running away from their husbands, and the children caught in the middle.

One wife wrote, she said, We've been married for over 20 years, three children, and my husband, I found out, has been cheating on me ever since we've been married. He's now left us, and he's living with some girl, not married, but living with her.

She said, I can't explain the rage that came over me, but I took it to the Lord, and God took all the rage out of my heart. I've forgiven him, and now I'm praying for him to come back. I'm not going to give up on him yet.

I believe there's still hope. Now, most housewives, most of you married ladies that are sitting here right now, say, No way, that's a skunk. There's no way I would ever take a creep like this back into my home.

And I understand that, and the same if you're a man and your wife was promiscuous like this, it would take some special kind of grace. You say, No way, he's cheated me on his life, he has done things against me, and he doesn't want me.

Let him go. I'm so glad, though, that God doesn't think that way. Because you see, many of us have turned to other loves. Many of us have cheated on God, and there are some of you sitting here right now, you have been cheating on the Lord, you have fallen into a sin.

And I believe God gave me this message primarily from my own heart, because I had been rather discouraged lately. I've been going through a time of discouragement, not from the ministry, not Times Square Church.

The discouragement is because I have seen so many, the letters that are pouring into us of the backsliding, the turning away from the Lord, ministers that are falling and people that are falling. I hear from my friends from California, from Texas, from all the United States, when they're on the telephone and when they visit here and they have even ten minutes with me, they say, you remember so-and-so, they'll name couple after couple that I wouldn't have known 20 years ago, on fire for God said, they don't even go to church now.

They go to one of these super churches and they go Saturday night. So they say, we have all day Sunday to ourselves now. So they can go boating, they can go and do their thing, especially in California, California.

The big thing now is Saturday night church. So you go and have the whole day for football. You have the whole day to yourself. Go and soothe your conscience on Friday night, get a little bit of a 15 minute sermon on how to cope and then go out and have ball games, do anything you want all day Saturday.

And my friends tell me how grieved they are, those that are going on with God, all of their California, their Texas friends and others in some of these states like Florida saying, now we have all day Sunday to do our own thing.

The zeal of God is gone, falling left and right, coldness setting in their hearts, wanting to go to a church where there's no convicting message. Folks, I believe there's some churches that if Pastor Carter and I went there and preach some of the sermons and message we preached here of Holy Ghost conviction, preaching against sin, they'd either run to the altar or have the congregation get up and run out, scared to death, many of them not wanting to hear it because it would ruin their Sunday.

It would ruin their camp camping trip. They'd be under conviction all day. I'm not trying to be facetious, but you know, I've heard lately of so many backslidings, so many falling. It discouraged me. And then it was not only that, but seeing even in Times Square Church, even in this church, many Christians who've been saved for a number of years, and you've had a past of abuse.

Maybe your father abused you, your mother abused you. It could have been verbal abuse, could have been sexual abuse. There are others of you that have gone through terrible situations in your marriages.

You have been wounded by some devil, like this one I mentioned here, who's cheating and mistreated. Maybe you were mistreated. Some of you have carried wounds and hurts for years. Some of you are part of a program here called Restoration in this Church.

It's a good program. God is blessing it, and many of you are being helped. But the thing that concerns me and the thing that brought some discouragement upon my heart, I see some of you that have been coming here listening.

We started here almost ten years ago, and some of you have been here ten years. Some have been hearing us preach. I've been preaching to so many for five years, and Pastor Carter's joined me, and he's preached for at least two years to you.

We preach our hearts out to you. We go to God's Word. We don't bring you psychology. We don't bring you something from another man's head. We bring it from the throne room of God. We pray, and God moves upon us, and we stand here.

I'm not preaching out of notes right now. I'm preaching to you out of my heart, and I'm telling you, the discouragement is that I see people go year after year praising the Lord, raising their hands, talking about victory, hearing messages on overcoming power of the Holy Ghost, and yet you still carry the burden around as though you were in the hand of the devil rather than the hands of God, almost as though there is no victory, that you have to go all your lifetime leaning on somebody, all of your lifetime weeping, all of your lifetime carrying this burden and never laying it down, never coming into a place of victory.

That concerns me, that is a pastor, that deeply concerns me, that you are not, you can have friends around you, you can have people you call, you can have support groups. I'm not against going to counselors if you get good godly counseling.

Now if you're getting half Holy Ghost and half Freud, you're going to be in a mess. We got a lot of people using Freud in the gospel, and all they do is take Freud and put a little gospel to it, and it's nothing but pop psychology, and it's not going to heal you.

You're going to just have, you're just going to have somebody you lean on for the rest of your life, and I'm telling you, it's time to start leaning on Jesus and getting healing, and that's what this message is about today, that you can step out of that hurt, step out of that because God hasn't given up on you, and you're not in the hands of the devil.

That's what we're going to talk about this morning, especially those who, married couples that are here right now, you're in a mess in your home, you fight all the time, you don't even believe you're in love with one another, and all you do is coexist in the house.

It's like the Cold War. How many of you had it out this morning, and you sit here now, nobody knows, because both of you smiled, and you may have even held hands when you walked in here, but just wait until you get back in the car.

And I'm not trying to be cute, but I'm telling you now, there are people who go on, there are some of you who have been coming to this church for ten years, or at least five years, and heard all this gospel, there's not been any change anywhere.

You haven't been changed. Your marriage is not improving, you are saying and speaking the same language you spoke five years ago, the same discouragements, the same, you just tell everybody about your problem, you were saying the same thing today you said five years ago, and that should not be.

That should not be, that's not God's plan. I hear these stories from all of the United States, letters from every state in the Union, children of God who love Jesus, they want to do right, but when you listen to them talk, you hear the language of fear, there's no happiness in Christ, they live in misery, and then I'm tempted to ask the question, God, what's going on?

Certainly, all Christians face temptations, all Christians face trials, all marriages are tried, all marriages go through difficulties, we face persecution and hard times, but why are so few of God's people coming into the promised rest that God has promised in his book?

Where is that rest? Where is that peace? Where's the victory? Where is the growth? When do you move out of that? Or do you come to Jesus and say he has all power, he has all majesty, he has all power over the devil, and then live the rest of your life in misery and make it to be a lie rather than the truth?

I agree we face more stress, we face more evil intention, deception, immorality than any other generation, but God has promised us clearly that where sin abounds, his grace will much more, much more abound, that he's made provision for all of these things.

It didn't catch God unawares that times would be evil as they are, God knew it, he prophesied it. Now, the devil has a clever strategy to keep fallen Christians down, it's the same device he uses to convince the bruised and wounded Christians that they can never be totally healed.

The Devil's Lie That Fallen Christians Cannot Return

And I know that there are some of you now, you doubt that you will ever be totally healed. You've been told or you've been convinced by somebody or by the devil that you're going to live the rest of your life carrying this wound or carrying a hurt that as long as you live, it'll always be there, and you might as well go to AA because that's where they tell you once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.

And I don't believe that for a moment. I believe that the blood of Jesus Christ has the power to deliver, absolutely deliver from the memory, from the habit. No. And here's the lie of the devil. You can't go back to God because he's angry with you now, you sinned against him.

You can't go back. In fact, he's permitted me to take back the power over your life. You cannot go back. God really doesn't want you back. There's no way you can make it up to him. And this is the subtle lie of the devil that is holding millions of fallen Christians, millions of bachelors and Christians held, holding them in darkness and fear and anxiety.

This sense that I can never make it back to God. I'll never make it up to him. I'll never measure up. I have failed him miserably. I don't even know if he wants me back. I've heard some of them say, well, brother David, if you don't meet me on the streets and those are high pastor and they're high as they can be.

And then then I discovered they used to attend Times Square Church and they'll hug me and they still love. They say, I still love the Lord. I still love Jesus. But they're absolutely bound by this lie.

I, I have grieved him so much. I have heard him. And one young man said, well, look, you can preach that, but you have the slightest idea how low I've sunk. You have the slightest idea what I've done.

If you knew what I've done, you wouldn't even talk to me. You would never tell me. In his words, he was saying, you could never tell me that God can forgive what I have done. But I'm, I'm here to tell you that God does not give up on any of his fallen children.

No matter how low you sunk, no matter what you have done, God, by his spirit does not give up on you. Hallelujah. I'm going to prove that to you in the course of the message this morning. I want to expose this lie here and now, and I want to prove to you that any fallen child of God has not given up by the Lord.

And I want to prove to you that he has not given you over to the power of the devil. He's not giving you into the hand of Satan. I'm going to ask that every one of you here this morning have been bruised and wounded and discouraged and depressed, and you've been carrying pain and wound for so long.

And I'm going to ask you to trust God to let the word this morning, no matter how weak your faith may be, that you are not in the teeth of the lion. The devil did not have his teeth on you. What you're going through right now is something you're going to have to come out of by a step of faith.

And I want you to do it this morning. I want you to be God within the next 15, 20 minutes. By the time I am finished, you're going to rise up out of that, out of that grave of despair, because you're being held by a lie and nothing else.

When that lies exposed, you can rise up by faith. Now, in my reading of the Psalms, I read the Psalms every day, and this past week I came. I want you to go to Psalm 37. I came across some scriptures that encouraged me and took away all my discouragement, because you see, you get, just leave Psalm 37 open on your lap there a minute.

You know, when you see people falling, so many falling, and when you see so many Christians never coming into victory, this subtle lie, this subtle thought is, has the devil got some of these people in his hand?

Has the devil got that much power that he's going to be able to come in and just rob the church of Jesus Christ at his will? And I'm reading this. I want you to read with me two verses in Psalm 37, verses 32 and 33.

Verse 32, Psalm 37, the wicked watcheth the righteous and seeketh to slay him. The Lord will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when he is judged. Now I look this up now, the Hebrew, his, the wicked, where it says watcheth, it means really what he's saying.

The devil spies on the righteous. He spies on you, and I want you to know every step you take is being monitored by the principalities and powers of darkness. The devil can only be one place at one time, but he's got demon powers.

He's got principalities. He's got powers. He has ways, the powers of hell have ways to monitor your steps. Now the steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord, but they're monitored by the devil and all the powers of Satan.

Is the devil out to destroy you? Yes, he is. The wicked watcheth the righteous and seeketh to slay him. Now I want you to follow me closely, please look this way and listen, if you will. It's beyond question, Satan comes to spy out the children of God for any little compromise, for any little turning aside, to leap upon it, to judge you, to condemn you before the heavenly father, to condemn your conscience.

He will come with condemning power. The Lord says, the Lord will not leave you in his hand nor condemn you when you are judged. That means judged and condemned by the devil himself. He will not permit that, and I want you to follow me.

Satan's determined to upset your walk with Jesus, yes. Is he determined to try to get you to fall away from God's mercy and grace, yes. Is he out to ruin your life and bring misery and pain and heartache and raise up enemies against you, turn your friends against you, yes, that's all a part of his plan.

But why does the devil seduce the children of God back to habits that they hate? And why does the devil use every device in hell to take them back into darkness, back to cold, wicked streets? Does he go after the children of God that were rescued out of his kingdom?

Does he go back after them just so he can get them to serve him again? No. Does he go after them so that they can do honor to him and worship him? No, because the devil knows that God has made a covenant pledge that he will never let them go.

He will go after them. He will not give up on them. And what the devil is saying, I have a certain limited time and a certain limited power, and I'm going to go after him because I've been spying on him and I see some weakness.

He's not been reading his Bible. He's not been praying. He's really not seeking God. And he's kind of flirting with those old sins. And there's there is some ground that he's given to me. I'm going to move in.

And the devil not trying to get you, sir. He's not trying to get you, ma 'am, to come back and be a devil worshiper. He knows you will never worship the devil. He knows that once you worship Jesus, once that you always have that, that knowledge in you that the devil can't take away from you.

And he knows that God will not turn you over into his hand. So he has a limited time and what he wants to do. One thing he wants to kill you. This is the end of side one. You are you. That's why the Bible said that he's a lion going about roaring, seeking to devour.

Not to keep is his own convert, not to get worship to himself. He knows that cannot be. And he knows that if God has his way, the Holy Ghost is going to come and convict him again. And many are going to just go right back to the Lord because this good shepherd goes out to find the lost sheep, puts him on his shoulder and brings him home.

The prodigal gets tired of his sin, gets up and goes back to the father. And he knows that he's out to kill you. He wants you to be on drugs, you that have been on drugs, he wants you to get so drunk that you get your mind satiated, that you can't think straight.

He wants you to die on the street. He wants to kill you. He's out to destroy your physical body so they can say at least there is one who will never praise God again. And I have buried many. I have buried many.

I've been in the last 37 years, I've been to one casket after another where those who have fallen and I have had the pain of conducting their funerals. And you can almost hear the devil laugh. You feel the awful darkness of the room and all you can do is speak to those who remain.

And it's almost as though you hear the devil laughing, well, there's another who will never praise the Lord again, but you see, he cannot have them. And he knows, he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that God will not turn him over into his hands, not into the teeth of the lion.

David's Fall and the Consequences of Sin

You see, the devil really doesn't want you, believer Christian. He really doesn't want you because he knows God not going to let you go. He wants you dead. Now, David took a great fall and he sinned grossly, grievously committed adultery.

He committed murder. He lied and he covered it up. Now, I've named you five sins right there. And there were many, many more. David lied a number of times. David faked lunacy before the king. He was a man that failed God miserably.

Here's a man after God's own heart, the sweet psalmist who loved God more than life itself, he said, and he falls into deep sin. Now, folks falling back into sin, when you fall, there are consequences, awful consequences, and David's life is an example.

In fact, Psalm 38, the next one, is probably the most descriptive agony, describes the agony of a fallen child of God more than any passage in the Bible. Now, if you look at the if you have a King James, it says the psalm of David to bring to remembrance, David has already been delivered from from his sin.

He's been delivered from the situation that he's describing here, but he's going back and he's reminding of us, reminding us of the consequences of his sin and everyone who falls. I'm telling you now, God will not give up on you, but I'm telling you there are consequences because otherwise you would say, well, God's not going to give up on me.

I'll go out and have a time. He'll come back. And after I've had and there are some drug addicts who go through our program, alcoholics, and that's the thinking, well, I miss the old life. I'll go back a while and I'll come back because I know Jesus loves me.

I know God will bring me back. But they forget the awful consequences in the meantime. And listen to this man, chapter 38, starting the first verse, Oh, Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath, neither chasing me in thy hot displeasure.

Thine arrows stick fast in me and thy hand presseth me sore. And he's talking about the consequences of his sin. There's no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger, neither any rest in my bones because of my sin.

My iniquities are gone over my head as a heavy burden. They're too heavy for me. My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. I'm troubled, I'm bowed down greatly, I go mourning all the day long.

My loins are filled with a loathsome disease. There's no soundness in my flesh. And folks, I can tell you many, many drug addicts that were saved by the hundreds who went back for a week to stuck a needle in their vein and picked up AIDS.

In one week came back to the Lord and then a year or two later discovered that they had AIDS and they know the only way they could have got it was that one week. My loins are filled with a loathsome disease and there is no soundness in my flesh.

I am feeble and sore broken. I've roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart. Lord, all my desires before thee, my groaning is not hid from thee. My heart pandeth, my strength faileth me. As for the light of mine eyes, it is also gone from me.

My lovers, my friends, they stand aloof from my sore. My kinsmen stand afar off. They also that seek after my life lay snares for me. They that seek my heart speak mischievous things and imagine deceits all the day long.

But I, as a deaf man, heard not. Verse 14. Thus, I was as a man that heareth not and whose mouth are no reproofs. Listen, folks, some of you. Are you looking this way, how many of you this morning relate to what David's talking about, that even now you are going through something?

I'm not talking about having fallen. I'm talking about you still carrying the hurt and the wound and the pain of something happened in your childhood or in a marriage previous. And here you are serving the Lord now that he's describing those who have not come out by faith.

He's describing what he went through when he fell. He's talking about restless nights. He can't sleep. He's talking about getting up all day long with this cloud hanging over his head that he mourns. There's a sadness that he can't shake off.

He's talking about the weakness that settled into his body, his mind, his soul and his spirit. He's talking now about friends that have abandoned him. And, you know, sin will do that will cost you your family, cost you children.

Ask those that go through Timothy House as those that go through Sarah House. Ask these who have lost so much. And there's there are consequences to to to falling. There's consequences to not taking a step of faith and coming out.

Otherwise, you live your whole life in this condition. David's describing a heart that has strength that fails the light of the eyes, no discernment, feeble, sore, broken, roaring all day long, disquieted, depressed.

No soundness in my flesh, I'm not a sound thinking person, he's saying, I'm a troubled man, I'm bowed down greatly with people come to church week after week, bowed down morning, grieving from morning to night, every waking hour, there's a grief that may have been caused by a past sin.

Yes, your sins may have caused that, but you don't have to live in it. You don't have to continue in it. There is victory. There is deliverance in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. But you see, this is a song of remembrance.

But you see, God didn't give up on David because you see, David didn't give up on God. Even though he knew he was in sin, though he was living in misery and paying for the consequences, he knew he was under the discipline of God, he was being disciplined and God will discipline you because he loves you.

And sometimes that discipline is your health, that discipline is the loss of all things. There is a discipline. But the point is, he does not give up on you. There is still hope. Because David in this same chapter says in verse 15, in thee, O Lord, do I hope thou will hear me, O Lord, my God, for I said, hear me, lest otherwise they rejoice over me when my foot slips.

Israel's Deliverance from the Enemy's Hand

You'll find David saying at the end, forsake me not, O Lord, my God, be not far from me, make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation. Now, I've got to move on quickly here. I want you to go with me. You know, in the New Testament, we are told that what happened is when the Old Testament is for our instruction.

How many know that's true? Everything you read about Israel is an illustrated sermon to us upon whom the ends of the world have come, at least three scriptures that prove that in the New Testament. So I want you to go to one of these Old Testament Israel examples, Psalm 106, Psalm 106.

Please let me hear the rustling of the leaves. I know you're following me. Let's start reading in verse seven, please. Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt. They remembered not the multitude of thy mercies, but provoked him at the sea, even at the Red Sea.

Folks, if you ever if you ever looked at that verse, they provoked him at the sea and then God comes on, says even at the Red Sea. In other words, the greatest miracle in the history of mankind, he opens up a sea and they walk over.

But even at the Red Sea, at the very site of the greatest miracle they'd ever seen, they provoked him even at the Red Sea. Amazing. Next verse. Nevertheless, he saved them for his name's sake, that he might make his mighty power to be known.

He rebuked the Red Sea also. And it was dried up. So he led them through the depths as through the wilderness. And he saved them from the hand of them that hated them. Because, you see, Pharaoh is a type of the devil, the armies of Pharaoh, a type of the prince of powers and powers of darkness.

And he saved them from the hand of him that hated them and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy. And the waters covered their enemies. There was not one of them left. Now, this is what God wants for his children.