Message 3 of 5 - New Zealand — Keith Daniel

The last thing you will ever do as a preacher is want to watch yourself. I'll never forget preaching in Scotland, 1986, in Edinburgh, in D. L. Moody's church that he built, Corrubbers Close, where the great revivals of D. L. Moody took place, and we were blessed to have that pulpit, but upstairs was my children, and so after I preached, Stephen Alford was the main preacher, I wasn't the main preacher, I was young, but they asked me to preach in between, well, with him, but that was a great preacher, that man.

But anyway, I went upstairs with my wife to find our little children, and there was a big screen for all the mothers and babies and children, and they were replaying the message, and I thought to myself in horror, who is this preacher screaming like that?

You know, it was just very annoying, so I looked up and I realised it was me, and then I felt a bit scared to ever look at myself again. I've never sat through one message I've preached and looked. I've looked at minutes, sometimes seconds, and then thought, that's enough.

So, I have to, by the way, they're asking me to edit over a thousand messages where the masters have been kept over the years for all these websites, so I'm going to have to sit and age as I watch myself leave the pulpit and can't hear myself.

Okay, there you are. I'd just like to mention that we put out a newsletter, it's not much in comparison with some of the newsletters we see in America, etc., beautifully done, but this is sent to many thousands of people across the world every time it's posted.

If you'd like to receive it, there are extra copies of the last newsletter of December. If you'd like to just take a copy and pray, this is something of our work, every two months we send out the itinerary, so that people in many parts of the world will know exactly where we are.

If you'd like to do that and pray for us, put your name and address down on a little piece of paper I've put back there, just if you'd like to pray for us. Please don't put your name and address down, if it'll become junk mail to you in no time, only if you know what it is to groan on your knees for souls, not to groan on your knees just for yourself, otherwise you've never groaned on your knees and never will in your life.

But if you do for souls, I'll be very grateful if you put your name and address down, because you will be used by God to protect our ministry, so you'll be very welcome to put your name and address down.

Prayer for Mercy and Spiritual Hearing

Father, in mercy on all of us here this morning, please protect us from Satan, demons and disturbance that in any way will keep us from hearing God's voice. By the Holy Spirit, visit us. Each heart, we're so desperately wicked, left alone, that we honestly just look to Thee and cry out, or we walk out the building the same as we came and we may as well not have come.

So we put our expectations in God's compassion and grace and mercy and long-suffering and patience upon all of us. I especially in my weakness and baseness ask for compassion and help, Lord, that I can concentrate and have liberty, because of the blood of Christ's and the Holy Spirit's anointing and the mercy of God on all of our hearts.

In Jesus the Christ's name, Amen. Man that is born of woman is of few days. Man that is born of woman is of few days. If you don't know that yet, you're in for a shock any moment now. The greatest shock you're going to have in life is how short it is.

Man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, God says. Full of trouble, God says. Job 14 verse 1, a man born of woman, a man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward. Then Proverbs 18 verse 14 says these staggering words, the spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, his weaknesses, will carry him through the troubles.

God gave you something in your spirit that protects you to survive. None of you will escape in this world. It's like the immune system, physically. God says the spirit of a man, he's made your spirit that you will survive.

The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but, now here's the tragic part, a wounded spirit, even God asks this question now, who can bear? How will you survive if the devil can get that to happen?

If that which God has given you that will enable you to survive is wounded somehow by Satan and life, how are you going to survive then if the survival kit is broken down? Wounded spirit, who can bear?

Accepting Responsibility for the Destruction of a Life

I was deeply sorrowed a while ago at the news of a family that I'd known for many years, the tragic news that came through of this family that we had known for many years. You see, the mother of that home committed suicide in the most gruesome way, but our sorrows were worsened a hundredfold at the funeral, where her eldest teenage son, in that funeral, publicly broke down, sobbing uncontrollably, and shouted at his father in the funeral, in the service, you killed my mother, daddy, you killed my mother.

You've always found fault, you've always undermined her, you've always condemned her, you've always criticized her, and no matter how hard she tried, daddy, she tried so hard, but you just, she lost the will to live, daddy, you killed our mother, daddy.

I'd like to address this fearful question in this meeting, that perhaps you'll never ever be asked to address again, when we must accept responsibility for the destruction of someone's life, when we must accept the responsibility of the destruction of someone's life.

My wife and I met a man many years ago now, who startled us because his wife was so mentally retarded that it was unnerving. He had to bathe her, he had to clothe her, he had to spoon feed her, his wife, she couldn't pick up a spoon, she was like a baby, open your mouth now, he had to lead her from the room to the bathroom, she couldn't find her way or somehow mentally be able to even know how to get there, and he had to watch her all the time, we watched him always concerned, because a minute of not watching her, she was running like a child, always for the streets, and would be killed instantly, and our hearts broke for this man, and my wife one night looked at him and compassionately asked him, what happened to your wife sir?

Obviously he would never have married a woman in this condition, what happened to her? He put his head down, and after a while he said it was her children, the children did this to her, they caused her so much distress, so much distress in their rebellion, and their lack of respect toward her, and her convictions for the home.

One night she was so distressed that she broke down sobbing uncontrollably, and as she did, she just crumbled physically on the floor, sobbing, and something happened to her mind as she lay there, as her mind just collapsed, we took her to psychiatrists, therapy, mental institutions, homes, anything that was advised, Christian psychologists, anywhere, anything, but she just deteriorated her mind until she became like this, like a vegetable, unable to function as a human.

We sat in silence, and after a while I said, did she profess to know Christ as her saviour when this happened to her? Did she profess to be saved? Oh yes, for many years, for many years, and then I said, did her children profess to be saved when this happened?

Yes, but they will never forgive themselves, whenever their mother comes near them, they hang their heads in shame and sorrow as they look at what they did to her. When we must accept responsibility for the destruction of someone's life, you say that's extreme, young man, that'll never happen to your mother, won't it, won't it, young lady?

You sure of that, sir? Your children won't cry at the funeral, you killed her. When we must accept responsibility, it's not easy, if that ever happens, but it can happen. I want you to consider it today.

The Destruction Caused by Marital Unfaithfulness

We had a preacher in our country, a very loved and revered preacher, who was so uncompromising and so fearless in the pulpit that he was revered across the land, and then he fell into terrible sin. He left his godly wife, and oh, she was godly, I stayed in their home on occasions when I preached in their pulpits, large pulpits as they ministered across the country.

He left his godly wife with this young woman, young enough to be his daughter, and of course, the shame and the shock that went across my land at him, not just a preacher, but this man, the stumbling block he was in our nation at what he did, and oh, a life of standing up fearlessly and paying a great price.

To be fearless like that and uncompromising, everything was buried. Oh, the disrespect that was shown towards him, he was ostracized, not able to preach again, not allowed in the pulpits, and everywhere he went, with his face shown, the people just looked at him, this man who was once so respected, in total despair and disdain that he could have left such a godly beautiful woman and his children, in one moment threw everything away.

For a young woman, I remember seeing his wife in a very large gathering, and after this place where I preached, I went into this hall where they had tea and serving refreshments, and there she sat with a whole lot of preacher's wives surrounding her, and I walked slowly up to her, and I expressed to her my shame at what he had done to her, my sorrow and my grief for her, and the shame he had brought on Christ's name across our land, but I said, Lady, you are still loved and revered as never before, no matter what he did.

Tears welled up in her eyes, and everybody else just put their heads down as I spoke to her, looked away from me, and then she said, Come here, Keith. So I walked towards her, I knelt on the floor in front of her, because there was no seat.

Listen carefully to me, my boy. I need to tell somebody this. I've told nobody, but I need to tell somebody. I've had much time to reflect since he left me for this woman, and brought all this shame on us, and on the Church of Christ in this land.

I've had much time to reflect on everything, and Keith, I want to be honest, it wasn't altogether his fault, Keith. You see, I suppose in weariness of life, I don't know. I had become very negative to him for a long time, Keith, and given him no love.

In my negative frame of mind, I criticized him all the time I found fault, and this was a long time. He'd get no warmth, and just me criticizing, condemning, and not giving him the love a man needed. I became so weary in life, and my mind so negative, and I just took it out on him, Keith.

And I suppose when this woman looked at him, this young woman looked at an old man, and was attracted to him, I suppose the warmth and the love she wanted, it was so much for him to say no to, because he hadn't received it from me for a long, long time, Keith.

I'm not excusing his sin. What he did was shameful. What he did was wrong and evil. I don't excuse his sin, but I don't want you. Because he didn't go out looking for sin, Keith, when he went to that woman whose husband had forsaken her for another woman.

He didn't realize when he sat with her that he was suddenly going to be alone, because that's something he had never done. He didn't know a circumstance would be created where this woman was broken and smashed and crushed, and in a moment something just happened between them, when he tried to show her compassion.

He wasn't looking. I know that. It's a very costly thing for us to be honest when the world condemns our husband, and we know. Perhaps we had a lot to do with his destruction, spiritually, morally, for our wives.

What's altogether his fault, when we must accept responsibility for the destruction of someone's life? It's not going to be easy. It's not easy. I was in a very godly home. I have been in a few thousand of the godliest homes in our lifetime, in this generation, across the world.

I have no doubt of that. For some reason, it was the godliest of the godliest of the godliest of God's people who invited me to their towns, their pulpits, and who attended. The bulk were the godliest, the cream of the conservative, deep children of God.

That's been my privilege. But in this one home, I noticed that the children, large family, were so godly in a very natural way, that your heart was just lifted up at the beauty of these children's character, and the godliness of this family, all the children of this large family.

I commended the mother. The father wasn't at the table. Not every Christian home can have all these children, all serving God like this, the way these children love Christ. In this mother, whose husband was a preacher, she said, Keith, this isn't all my children.

The ones you've never met won't go to the meetings, don't want God. And then she said these words, when I was a young Christian, I wasn't submissive to my husband. I refused to be in subjection to him.

I stood up against him and argued in front of the children. I wanted my way. I wasn't willing to be what God asks of a woman. And I watched how it broke down that home. I watched how those children were being affected, and I watched how my husband was crumbling as a priest of the house just ahead of them.

And in fear, I began to seek God, and I sought God so earnestly for grace to be in submission. Now, Keith, from the time I was in subjection to my husband in obedience to God's word, every child that came in this house loves Christ.

Until that, though I was saved, and though he was a preacher, the children before I was willing to be in submission do not want God. You see, it's easy to say, all my children are godly, but those who aren't godly, it's their choice.

But tell me, when we must accept responsibility for the destruction of people's lives, that costs. In America, about two years ago, I met an old lady, ninety years of age, and she hobbled into this convention, large conference that I preach every year.

Virginia Johnson and a Mother's Influence

My wife also speaks to the ladies. Her name was Virginia Johnson. What a lovely soul, what a radiant, beautiful face at her age. And she said how her husband, when he was alive, used to drag her across the country whenever I used to preach at the beginning of the tours I had of America.

And he's dead now, but her son said he would bring her. So they travelled a long way to get to this convention that she hadn't heard or been to for many years since her husband's death. So there was her son, and I said to her, son, what does he do?

Oh, he's a missionary, Korea or somewhere. And then I said, how many children do you have? So she said, nine, all boys. Everyone is a missionary. They did nothing else from their schooling, they went into the mission field and they stayed there now all these years.

Every one of my children is on the mission field across the world. I said, lady, not many Christian homes worldwide can say that every one of their children chose to serve Christ from schooling, from boys, from young age.

You must have done something right as a mother, as a Christian mother, that that happened to all your children, all nine. She looked at me, she said, you know, I have made many mistakes in life, but I did one thing right.

I never ever told those children, he made mistakes, but he loved God. She said, I'm not saying a godless man wanting the children to do devilish things, just being subjective. But my husband was a Christian, but he wasn't perfect, and he made mistakes.

There were times I used to think, I used to say something, but I asked God for grace. No, I'm not going to stand up in front of the children and stand against his authority and stand with the children against their daddy, not once.

And I never did once. I asked God for grace daily, and he gave me the grace I needed to obey his commandments to every woman who professes to know Jesus Christ as their savior. But then I noticed something.

I noticed preacher's children rebelling, fighting, becoming the shame of the father's ministry, again and again. And I would sit down with the wife at some point and ask them, are you in subjection? I'd read the scriptures, are you in submission?

And everyone where there was rebellion, children destroying their lives, the testimony, everyone said, no, no, I haven't found the grace to do that. Then I found something else, where all the children followed God in preacher's homes over my lifetime.

In Christian's homes, I asked them the same question, did you find the grace as I have found and asked God to give me daily as a wife to be in submission and not to be the authority of the home and fight him?

And every single home where the children followed God with all their hearts, souls and minds, said yes. When we must accept the responsibility for the destruction of our children's lives and not just blame them, that costs, that costs.

Neglecting Family for Ministry and Career

I was at the bedside of a man who was dying, who I was deeply fond of, a very godly man. And he was weeping and I, he said, Keith, my son just left before you came, a godly boy. And he said to me, Daddy, I know this is not the right time to tell this to Daddy, but I have to tell you, my wife has betrayed me with another man.

Daddy, what are you going to do, Daddy? I need Daddy to tell me what to do. Daddy, I waited all the years praying for God to keep me for the woman that he was. And Daddy, even you, Daddy, believed it was God's choice, you were so godly.

I kept myself, Daddy. I waited, I believed it was God's will. She loved God, she was clean and pure. And Daddy, she's been, how am I going to stay with him? How am I going to love him? I need in my life, at this moment of my life, to hear from my son, who never once gave us troubles, never once hurt us.

To hear it from him, I said, my boy, forgive her completely. Ask God from your soul for the grace to utterly forgive her in such a way you will never, ever remind her till the day she dies of this. Tell her you forgive her, tell her you watch God for grace, and let her know you utterly forgive her.

But my feelings, what about me? Don't I matter? No, you don't. You don't matter. Your feelings don't matter. When you're a child of God, all that matters is God, what God wants. My boy, you leave her, you divorce her.

Do you think you'll be happy? Do you think you'll find happiness with someone else? I said, Christian, do you think she will? Do you think she'll have hope to ever get up again and look the world in the eyes of the Christian?

Oh, selfish man. You will have grace, and you will love her. It's God that matters, my boy. It's what God wants, not what you want. Your feelings do not. Now you go, and you seek God, and then you go to her, and you tell her, and then you love her, and you never, ever remind her of this till the day she dies.

And one more thing, stop believing her. Stop believing her the way you do, for your work, for your ambition. Oh, you're prospering, and you're wealthy, as a young man shouldn't be. And they will lose her forever.

Responsibility, you know, someone else, who when it turns on us, like Nathan with David, when suddenly we, I don't know how many preachers, I know, whose wives and children hated them before they died.

Why? Because they left their wife and children for the Lord's work. Two preachers, whose wives took guns, and when I stood with those men, both of them almost said word perfect. Keith, you know one of the most famous preachers in the world, I won't name his name?

His daughter once stood with me and said, my daddy was never home. My daddy so hurt us that if he had committed adultery with another woman, and forsaken my mother and us for another woman, it wouldn't have hurt us more.

Be careful what can happen. A few months ago I was shaken when I prayed with a woman who had been brought to me with other godly women who were caring for her, whose life was so destroyed, her children so destroyed, and her husband was always away, just totally destroyed.

I had to pray for them. Then they contacted me, this one lady, and said, do you remember her, the lady you prayed with and talked to? Her husband said to her and the children, I've destroyed this home in my pursuit of my career.

I've neglected you. I've just pursued money, wealth and position. I'm getting out of the business world. I'm getting out of all the responsibilities. I'm resigning from my position, and I'm going to be the father you need, and I'm going to be the husband you need.

When he died the next day, you think you can somewhere along the line suddenly make up. Brother, it's too late. It was too late for that man to become a father and a husband. He destroyed them. When he thinks now it's time to do something about it, I remember being introduced to a man who was so intelligent he would be what we would call a genius.

Now on theology, doctrine, there's nothing you could tell him. He could quote Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, write down. He could tell you church history. He could tell you the doctrines, the evolving of the doctrines of the Calvinist versus the Almanist.

He could give everything. He knew everything about everything. And so he was so good that he couldn't bear listening to anybody preach, because no one could teach him a thing. But his life was a disaster.

His marriage, his children, his home. He was a negative, self-destructive, just a mess of a human that went into this dark depression, and you couldn't tell him a thing, because he knew everything. So they brought him to this convention, explained things to me.

They said you were the first preacher in, I don't know, seven years. He's been willing to even come in here. And he sat there in the meeting and started crying. Now he wanted to speak to me, so we went up to some little rooms.

Spent a long time with this man, prayed with him, talked, and really had to talk to him. He died just under a month later. He wasn't sickly. And then his family said to me, for the first time, we looked at him and realized this is what a Christian should be.

All the years of knowing everything, he had never reached here until this last couple of weeks. If only he had known this from the beginning. Then I heard about the funeral, and I spoke to his sister and said, what happened to him that he was like he was?

You see, there's always a broader picture. There's no such a thing as a human is like that for no reason. Self-destructive, every bit of knowledge. He could have conquered the world for God. But what destroyed him?

Don't tell me nothing happened. What happened that made him what he was? Your sister, she was shocked. She turned in a half circle. Her eyes were up. It was my mother. She destroyed him. No one knows.

She loved the other children. She was everything. When my father lay dying, he said he thinks because the child labor when she gave birth to him, caught her so much suffering and so long, she just couldn't love him.

Whatever the reason, she rejected him, rejected his love, and didn't want him. Hated him. And no one ever could get it out of her, why she so hated him. One night, she was saying something loving, and he thought she was speaking to him.

And he stood up, a teenage boy. I'll never forget it, she said. And his whole face lit up. And he said, mother. She said, not you, stupid. Not you. He stumbled physically on the ground. He sobbed for days, through the night, through the sobbing, and nothing could stop him.

And from that time, he was the most negative, self-destructing, like a destroyed soul, right through to, you know, there's a verse in the Bible that says, he that hateth his brother is a murderer. You see, God sees the beginning of Cain.

You don't have to go and throw a stone in his head, or knife through him. You're a murderer in God's eyes, if you hate your brother. I want to broaden it, and I don't think it's doing wrong. You hate your son.

And are you a murderer? You didn't, you don't have to kill somebody, you know, with a gun to murder them. You can murder their son. You can be a murderer in God's eyes. Two boys came to a convention 15 years ago, two 10 years ago, Satanists, Mohawk hairstyle, and big metal things, and black.

When I left them, when they left me that day, I turned to their friend that had brought them, this young boy I'd known through the years, who's now a preacher, and I said to him, you know them, tell me who did this to them.

Don't tell me they chose, to me they chose Satan worshipers, just to be evil. Who did this to them? Tell me their life. Somebody made them, what they had up in his eyes, and he just looked at me, and he says, it was their father.

No one knows why, he just rejected their love. When their mother died, he told them to get out of the house, and they were boys, get out. By the way, sir, he was a preacher. Divide their attention in the time you give to them as a father.

There's no such a thing as a calling of God that says, forsake your responsibilities to your wife, to your children. Oh, they did so try to go through with God, didn't they, Jenny? Be careful. Be careful for whatever reason you have in your heart as to why you love this certain child and not the other.

Why you will encourage the one and have no time to encourage the other, just have undermining. Maybe they failed at sometimes. Maybe they did something to cause you hurt. Maybe, but listen carefully, you murdered them.

If you don't find grace by God to love the one as much as the other, even if the one is a perfect human and the other is a deserter, you will bury and encourage them. You know, Jacob did something terrible when he chose to make Joseph, who gets, he made his children murderers.

He made them murderers. Who? You think they're wicked? No, I think Jacob was wrong. You're wrong. What's the end of the negativeness? That which a child needs to not be destroyed is his mother and father's trust and love.

Demons say he's a mess. Were you the cause? Because you weren't the mother you should have been, the father you should have been. You know, I do not believe God commands us when he says husbands love your wives.

I don't believe there's any commandment there. I believe it's a compassionate cry for a monk. You know, God doesn't love, by the way. God is love. His harshest cry in this book of condemnation throbs with love for you, for souls.

No matter what he said, I don't believe God commands. I believe he cries compassionately knowing what you will do to your wife if you don't, if you don't to your husband. I believe there's a compassionate cry concerning your children's husbands standing up at the funeral crying out, you killed her.

Don't! Your fathers and mothers concerning your children. Fathers, you love your children, you see. Don't break their spirit. You can, as a father. Bring them up in the nurture and the fear of the Lord.

Christlikeness as the Measure of Holiness

You know what that means, literally? The closest in its context, that is. Not literal Greek. I believe God says, let me bring them up to you, child, that they know Christianity is what they need. By the way you bring them up, by the way you love them, respect them.

God, I believe, commands us as fathers, provoke not your children to anger. Why does God say? He never speaks to the unsaved. Have you noticed that with the commandments? The unsaved we reach. Until then the commandments are to God's people, all the New Testaments.

Fathers, provoke not your children, and you can do this, or God wouldn't ask this, to anger, lest they be discouraged, literally. Don't break their spirits by your failure, by the way you discipline, that isn't godly, that isn't Christ-like, by your judgment of them, by your reaction to their failures.

When you forget how many years God took in patience and mercy to make you what you are, you want them to be that now, or they will suffer. Oh yes, you have no patience with them, do you? When it took God long to make you what you are, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.

You can make them so angry that they fester in anger against your Christianity, because you are what Christianity represents. You bring them up in the nurture, the admonition of the Lord. Let God bring them up to you.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord. This is right. Honour thy father and mother. You have to, you have to. These things you have to do as a child. I don't know how many parents who don't think it's always the parent's fault.

What about the Elias? You think the ark was the reason he was killed, why he died? No. His sons murdered him. You want to know what the calamity, the literal Hebrew, the destruction of the father? Wicked children.

The heaviness of a mother, a mother that should have in her godliness known joy. All she knew was heaviness to a godless child, to a child who rebelled. Some even go for the destruction. A wicked son is the destruction, is the calamity of his father.

And in its context in Proverbs, he's speaking always of a godly father, comes to being destroyed by wicked children. And a godly mother who can be destroyed, who can go through life with so brokenness and such heaviness to a child.

Oh yes, we all can destroy, even godly. I know one of the greatest preachers in the world who walked from his pulpit and wouldn't go back. They made me come and sit with him in a restaurant. He had gone back to work in his little working clothes.

He had one of the greatest pulpits in the world, revered by preachers across America and the world who would go to hear him and say, this is the greatest pulpit in America. I preached to that pulpit many times, but he's gone.

He won't preach again. Why? His children. And I said, sir, but the other children love Christ. Just because your two eldest boys aren't right in doing this, doesn't mean you are a failure. They have the free will.

There's a moment in life, it doesn't mean you have to leave the ministry just because, if all, look at some of them serve God. You can't walk away from this pulpit. The people were leaving. The church is in mess.

The ministers were leaving. All the people in ministry. That church was lying in ruins. He said, Keith, I understand, but I could never stand up and defy God. I lose the right to preach if my children serve Satan.

Probably the greatest pulpit on earth of the evangelical conservative church worldwide. The man left the pulpit because they destroyed their father. Like Eli's children destroyed their father. They were so wicked.

He died. Maybe he had failed in certain ways, bringing him up, but they killed him. You want to do that to you, or you want to break your mother's spirit, your father's spirit. So they asked me to pray for that man, by the way, before he left.

So I said, God, do anything. It doesn't matter what it costs to make these children. They found out his wife was riddled with cancer. And as she was dying, those boys repented and didn't want their mother to die.

Broken hearted through this, and they repented. What costs for God to answer prayers, to do anything, to make children repent that their father, he went back in the pulpit, alone now without his darling wife.

Because God knew that was the only thing that would make those boys stop destroying. Christianity, fathers, children. What is it all about? Let me shock you now. Provoke them not to anger, but provoke them not to wrath.

Don't break their spirit, the Greek. You can do that because a Christian father is a preacher. You can have Satan worship, but you destroyed, you made them go and find love wherever they could. In the first place the devil led them was to Satan worship.

And then they become this mess. What does God mean? What is holiness? If I ask every one of you in the next hour to stand up and define holiness, you would be stunned at the interpretations each one would give of what a separation from the world.

Holiness, careful, listen now, is Christ. At anything it's heresy. I don't care who you are. I don't care what you say. Holiness, if it's anything else, run you with heretics. You think this modesty, that's holy?

No, oh no. Of course I want a woman to be modest and a man to dress like these people are not ruled by the world's fashions. Of course you look for it and you wonder if it's not there eventually. You grieve over it.

But that's not holiness. You can dress like a nun lady and be a devil. You can send your children and husband through hell and to hell. Even if you dress, that doesn't make you holy. These things have their place, but that's not.

Holiness is Christ-likeness. Full stop, nothing more to add. Anything more is heresy. The fruit of the spirit, what is the fruit of the spirit? Love, joy, longsuffering? No. The evidence the Holy Spirit is in you, the fruit, the evidence, that's the word, that you are controlled by the Spirit to the degree you're controlled, is Christ.

You see, the whole purpose of the Holy Spirit's work is not to glory. He will not speak of himself. His whole purpose in work is to bring you back to Christ-likeness, to be conformed back to the image of God, of what was lost.

You're predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. The whole thing in God's heart was to bring back what was taken at the fall through sin. Christianity makes you Christ-like, or you are obnoxious.