The Overcoming Saint — B.H. Clendennen

It's a good day. God has started right, wonderful prayer meeting. Everything works out if you begin right. You know, most of us, of our life, we give God the leftovers of our life instead of the early morning.

He said, seek me early, and I will be found of you. But most of the time, we give Him that wore-out part of our life. We've did everything we want to do, then we come to God with a little lay-me-down-to-sleep prayer and wonder why He doesn't give us His best.

But it's so wonderful coming here before every service, before we begin, with an hour of prayer, talk to God, then let Him talk to us. That is the whole key of our getting on with God, is putting Him first.

You know, we give Him the leftovers, and nothing ever happens. It's when we give everything that the miracle comes. Resurrection only happens on the far side of the grave. My wife and I were driving through Alabama years ago, and she was sitting there about half asleep, and I spoke to her.

Living the Cross Through Death and Resurrection

I said, you know, if we would learn to live the cross, just live it. I heard one of America's most famous celebrity preachers say, you don't have to cling to that old cross. When the cross ceases to be central, then everything comes in.

S .D. Gordon said, if you make it to heaven, just outside the gate, there will be a cross that says to you, nothing enters here that's not Christ, nothing. That cross means death to all that will die.

And the only thing that won't die is Christ. And as we live that cross, there's a constant death and resurrection taking place. You know, it's not an accident that Paul put death at the end when he said that I might know him in the power of his resurrection, fellowship of his suffering, being made conformable to his death.

You see, death precludes, resurrection rather precludes that there's been a death. But the whole thing was, he said, there can be death without total destruction. It is the very nature of life to rule out all that's death.

And when you allow this life to work in the leadership of the Holy Spirit, he always leads to calvary. Amen. There where God deals with that which is not Christ. When God looks at us in the service this morning, he sees nothing but Christ.

And all of his working with us is to rid us of all that's not Christ. Because no matter what we think, we can misjudge the long-suffering of God, but that's what it is. Because in the final analysis, there will be nothing left but Christ.

Everything else will be in hell, all that will be. This whole universe shall take on the character of Christ. Paul talked about everything filled with Christ. When everything is filled with Christ, everything will act like Christ.

And that's God's desire and God's working. You know, I've listened, our pastor preached. I told him going home last night, I said, you should preach those one at a time. Let us repent slowly. You know, you climb up out of the hole you've dug for us with all of them.

Very difficult. If you'd take them one at a time, we could repent much easier. But what a message God's dealing with. You see, always the order. We mess up the order, so God leaves us. Christ is the order of God.

And when Paul said, let everything be done decently and in order, that don't mean a man can't get happy and run around the building. You know, that's what the dead folks say. You know, did you get happy?

You know, it's all out of order. But Christ is the order of God. And when he said, let everything be done decently and in order. And so you have to look at his life to see the order. The order is very plain.

When he went into that temple, the first thing he did, took him a whip, cleaned the temple up. You've got to clean it up first. Amen. You may not like the cleaning, but that's the way it has to be. Nothing happens till the temple is clean.

Cleansing the Temple and Restoring the House of Prayer

To renew that church, nothing's going to happen in the street that doesn't first happen in the upper room. You have to clean up the temple. Amen. You've got to deal with everything that's in the temple.

Once you get it cleaned, then restored to its proper order, my house shall be called a house of prayer. It's become everything but a house of prayer. But he restored the order. He said, my house shall be called a house of prayer.

You made it a den of thieves, but I'm cleaning it up. But then, once it was the order, the house of prayer, they brought the sick. They brought the lame. The power was there to heal and deliver. Then the praise came.

We've tried to go from praise to power. I've watched people for the last 30 years come to church on a Sunday, go through the mockery of praising a God they haven't talked to all week. Amen. You couldn't drag them into a prayer meeting, but they'll get up.

They choreograph everything. They know when to kick just right, when to laugh, then go to sleep while you preach the gospel. I've watched that all up and down the line. But the temple has to be cleansed.

Once it's clean, then make it a house of prayer, and you won't have to beg God to heal the sick in that temple. It will happen. I went to a city years ago. I'd just begun to preach in 1954. I didn't know anything but Jesus.

Wished I hadn't ever learned anything but Him. You know, along the road, you let a lot of things come in you think you might impress somebody with. But the only impression, the only effectiveness of life is the measure of Christ that we bring.

Nothing else. But, you know, I went there. It had once been a great revival church. Now 40 people. There's 40. That's all that's left. When I got there on a Saturday, those days you didn't lock a church.

There wasn't anything in there worth stealing. They had no PA system, not even the phone in the thing. That one, I think, did. Amen. But I went in, the wife and I. The place stunk. Songbooks tore up. You know, the toilet smelled.

I said, it's dead, been dead for I don't know how long. I said, we're in a war here. I didn't know much, but I didn't know I'm among the dead. I began to preach. This is 1954, not 2004. Amen. I couldn't believe what I'm saying to them people.

I'm plowing, preaching, digging up the worst kind of sin. Well, about Wednesday, my wife said to me, when are you going to pour the oil? I said, as soon as I wound them. I said, the axes are bouncing off of that hide.

Amen. No need to pour. You know, it's just nothing. Well, I preached on to Friday. And sometimes I'd seem like I'm looking at myself. And I said, you know, I can't believe I'm saying this to them people.

I'm dealing with adultery, fornication. 1954, old line Pentecostals. Well, I preached on Saturday night. The pastor told me, in the morning's communion. And he said, when I give it to you, just you keep going.

Don't give it back to me. Just call them in. We were staying with the pastor those days. Because the evangelist either stayed in the parsonage or Sunday school room. That's the way it was. And there we were in the parsonage with him.

And I told her, I said, well, I'm going to preach on communion in the morning. She said, I'll be very happy. She splintered the pews. She sat right on the front always with them babies. And so I went to bed that night.

I woke up at 4 o 'clock, just like that. And God said, you won't break bread with anybody until you break it with me. I got up out of bed. I knew what He wanted. She woke up and said, what are you doing?

I said, I'm going to the church. You come with the pastor. And I told her what God had told me. Well, I got down there and began to pray. And He said, I want you to read 1 Peter 4, 17. That will be your text today.

So I opened it up. It said, judgment must begin at the house of God. I said, my wife ain't going to like this. You know, it's going to cut across things here. You know, I never had time to do what I do ordinarily.

You know, kind of work out and outline the thing. I just had to pray it through. Well, He gave it to me at 10 minutes past 11. And it was like you turned a hydrant on. So one hour and 15 minutes at 1125, it stopped just like you cut it off.

But I couldn't believe what I was said. You know, I could tell my wife, she'd duck her head every now and then, look up at me, frightened, you know. He told me, He said, don't call me back. Just get them in for the communion.

Well, it just shut off. Dead silence. Forty people had come all week. Not one visitor, just those 40. They'd come. I learned later that one of the men had said they'd planned on catching me when I'd come outside and beat me up.

Well, it never worked out that way. You know, but they had got pretty upset with what was going on. But it just cut off. You know, that's through. So I said, the pastor told me not to call him back, that we're going to have communion.

And he wanted you to come. Ushers, would you come prepared to serve? You folks come to the altar. Nothing. Nothing. I said, I spoke Spanish. I know I did. So I'll say that again. So I said it this time in Texas English.

I mean, I said, the pastor wants us to come take communion. Would you please come? Neil Usher's come. Nobody. Nothing. Total silence. You know, I don't, I'm just very new. I started preaching in September 1953, and this is about February 1954.

So I've not run into anything like this before. I have run into it since. But at that point, I hadn't. And I said, you come. They never come. Well, the pastor and I had two big high back chairs, chairs that high, back of them.

We were both in it. And he was sitting there when I started preaching. And you know, when you look at a thing, you know what it is, and you turn, then you don't see nothing. It's not what it was. And when I turned around, he was not in that chair.

And I said, he's left me. You know, I thought he had left me. But I looked a little closer, and he was underneath that chair. He had crawled down underneath both chairs. And he was down there crying, just weeping.

Well, I got under there with him, and I said to him, Pastor, I said, Pastor, what are we going to do with these people? I said, what's wrong with these people? And he looked at me, weeping, and he said, Son, you have killed every one of us.

That's his exact words. And I said, well, what are we going to do? He said, I'm not going to do nothing. That's just you, whatever you do. I'm doing nothing, laying right here. Well, I got up, and I said to myself, I'm going to one more time.

And my wife was sitting there. The door was right there to go out, one of them. And I said, if they don't move, me and her are going to leave. If they owe me anything, they can mail it. You know, I'm getting out.

I don't know what to do with this. It's totally beyond me. And so I said to him, I said, Come, let's take this communion. Nobody moved. Well, I started around and got right here. You'd have to be in hell to hear what I heard.

An old man in the back. I never heard such a scream. I'm telling you, your hair stood up. He'd come down that aisle screaming, and he throwed a handful of money at that pastor. God have mercy, he said, I swore I'd starve you to death.

And he fell on that floor and began to writhe and cry and groan. And the whole thing broke. They put hundreds of dollars on that altar. I mean, hundreds of dollars. Those three girls, all in love with the one unsaved boy, all three of them fornicating with him.

I mean, all of this come out in that altar. I stood there till 2 o 'clock. I've never seen such an agony. They come to me, forgive us, we've wondered how to get rid of you, what to do with you. You know, but the 2 o 'clock, it was all cleaned up.

They'd repented to the pastor. We went home, come back pastor and I a little early, the house was full. Not an ad on the radio, not in the news, there wasn't no television much then, but the house was full.

And when we began the song service, I've never saw it before, I've never saw it since, but a cloud just eased down out of that roof and stopped just outside of the reach of a man's hand and everybody was filled in that house.

Everybody was filled. The next morning, the pastor's eyes in that church, I had a phone there, and I told you the phone rang. And a Catholic lady lived, you know, it was in San Antonio is where I was, and it's Mexican, almost totally Catholic people, wonderful people, but mostly Catholicism.

And the phone rang, and the pastor answered. He said, What's going on down there? That's the first I've heard out of that place in 4 years, you know, the noise that had come out of it. But you see, clean up the temple.

You're not going to, He's not going to come till you clean up that temple. Make it a house of prayer. Then God will come. I didn't have a message, though it is a message, isn't it? Get the order right.

Make it a house of prayer. Turn it back to what it belongs. I want to read from Revelation chapter 12 and verse 11. I want to talk to you this morning about overcoming saints. We find out how to do that, but I want to talk about the overcoming saints.

The Overcoming Saints and the Word of Their Testimony

Revelation chapter 12 and verse 11. Thank you, Jesus. As we read this word this morning, thank you for the prayer meeting this morning. Thank you, Lord, that you look deep inside of me. Oh, God, help us.

May we never forget Gethsemane. My God, may we come to see what really happened there. Most of us never have even seen what went on in that awful hour when you agreed to die for me. Oh, God, please help us this morning to see what you want to say and what you want out of our lives in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus.

Revelation 12, 11, They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto death. Seven times in the two chapters in the book of Revelation, the word overcomer is mentioned.

Now, the word overcomer speaks of defeat somewhere because it never was God's intention to have a church and a church within a church. God never intended that there be one group of people had the victory and the other folks dragging around.

That just speaks of defeat, amen, somewhere something lost out. It is the will of God that all overcome because only the overcomer will be in that rapture. In the 23rd verse of the 3rd chapter, it said, To him that overcometh will I give to sit with me in my throne.

Now, to overcome is to overcome one thing, U-S-E-L-F. All along the line, it is God dealing with us, what we are. To overcome is to overcome what we are because that has no place. There's nothing of the natural man.

The natural mind, no matter how educated, is still a natural mind. It's not the mind of God. It is always a natural will is a natural will. The first work of the Holy Spirit to deal with a human being is to reveal Christ to the heart.

Now, that's the first work, reveal Christ to the heart of that individual and then he begins his work as he reveals the object. This is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. He revealed that to the heart.

And then he comes to us and shows us how other, how different that Christ is than we are. That you are not what you are best. You are not what he is. But this is what I'm going to make you. This is what I'm going to do with you.

This is the whole will of my life with you is to conform you to this that I've revealed to that heart. Then he begins to show us how impossible that is without a miracle. And so from that moment till you get to heaven all of the working of the Holy Ghost with you is to bring you into that image of Christ so that it's not you but Christ that lives in and through that life.

Jacob would never have found the plastic that he found with my good friend, Pastor Runyon too, on the street. If we had been what God wanted us to be. As I prayed in that morning prayer meeting in Thailand, saw that woman bowed before a Buddhist priest and it's so registered.

And I wept in that prayer meeting. And I said, Oh God, that woman kneeling before that devil-possessed priest. He said to me, The priest is devil-possessed, but she's not. Amen. She's looking for me and the only reason she doesn't know me, you never told her who I am.

You never obeyed me. I'd give the orders 2 ,000 years ago, but you was more interested in the comfort of your own self than you was. You'd spend millions on playgrounds for Christians to destroy them while she went to hell looking for me.

The only reason she worships, she's looking for me. But the whole working of the Holy Spirit with us is that Christ be seen, that we come. That is the overcomer. When they can take knowledge of you and I that we have been with Jesus.

You know, faith is not confined to the doing of God in the past. True believers are those who translate creeds into life, divine promises into reality, and the happenings of the day to the fulfilling of God's promises.

Amen. He'll make us know that prophecy is not something God's trying to make happen. You go to these prophecy conferences, you'd think that's what's going on. But that isn't something God is trying to make happen.

He's just saying to you and I, you may not know exactly who the person of the antichrist is today, but if you'll stay with this light, it's an upward-onward movement. He'll deliver you from the torture of the details.

Just walk with God. Don't spend your life trying to know what He didn't tell you. The highest form of knowledge on this planet is to know there's some things you cannot know. Amen. Just walk on with God and believe it anyway.

The Gospel as God’s Answer to the World’s Needs

And the overcomer. The Bible foretells of a day when the spirit of antichrist becomes so powerful that, He said, the whole world will wonder after that beast. They said, Who is like unto that beast? Who is able to make war with him?

Now, in the midst, though, of the seemingly hopeless situation that you read of here in the book of Revelation, come to those who are searching for a divine solution to the driving demands of our time.

There's never been a civilization with more pressure upon it than the one we live in now. I'm thrilled when I read of what God did for Mary Magdalene, for Brian Bartimaeus, all of them along the road, but I don't live in the first century.

I live in 2001. And the problems are bigger now than they was then. I want to know, is this God the same? Can I expect the same today as happened back there then? That's the cry. They don't come for you to discern to them the politics of the day.

They come with problems. Man, it is why both have to work to feed their family. The husbands of drunk kids are on drugs. The woman comes to church wanting to know, does God have anything to say to me?

And all she hears is a story of the politics of the day. That's not the gospel. The gospel is God's answer to the heart of every human being. Amen. And right in the midst, amen, in the midst of this seemingly hopeless situation, amen, there comes a message, amen.

Now, and here's the message. Now has come salvation and the strength and the kingdom of God and the power of His Christ, for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before God day and night, and they overcame by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.

Now these are flesh and blood people in mortal combat with the antichrist. Satan externalized in men and women. Satan externalized in men and women, and the Bible said they overcame Him. What a story.

What a message. The Bible said they overcame Him. They overcame by the blood of the Lamb. Now the blood of Jesus speaks of a purifying passion. Amen. It speaks of that which drives the heart. The passion that keeps a person moving in spite of everything.

Everyone, every human in this building and every human on the street out there lives in the grip of some passion. There's something driving that life, no matter who he is. Amen. It may be passion for money.

It may be passion for vainglory. Everyone's life is motivated by some passion which furnishes the drive and causes that person to act like they do. It has something inside. They're acting. They are. What they are is what's coming out.

You know, we talk about women gossipers. Well, men worse. If you get one of them, I had one of them. Every time I turned around. Amen. There's some new story going, and I confronted him one Sunday. I got home, the phone rang.

Amen. And here he was at it again. I come to church that night. He was kneeling at that altar. I pulled him up, almost untied his shoes, getting him up. And I confronted him. He started the same old thing.

I don't know why I do that. I said, I know why. That's what you are. You are a liar. You are a gossiper. You don't know nothing about God. You're here at an altar in a pretense. You see, all of us, what we do is what we are.

Amen. That's the whole of it. If you lie, you're a liar. That's all there is to that. That's the reason you lie, is because you are a liar. If you steal, you're a thief. But if you walk with God, that's because that's what you are.

Christ has become that life. Now, every one of us is motivated, which most of our passions are not purifying. They're not purified. Here is a people with a passion so pure it held no hope for personal gain, no selfishness, no self-centeredness, no seeking for an easy way out, no cowardice.

They just knew life is what it is, and they faced it. That passion was so pure that the Bible shows us that even their lives did not count. They had one objective for living. That was to overcome Satan.

Now, these overcoming saints had one weapon, the Word, of their testimony. But as our pastor spoke this morning, he confirmed to me that I'd come up with the right message when he talked to Jacob. And Jacob said, I saw so many plastic Christians.

I saw so much that didn't speak of Christ. I spent four years in the war. I knew nothing about God, but I was surrounded by religious people. Amen. We got through the canal. We went to Australia. We had to regroup.

We were stricken with malaria. We'd been killed. We were in terrible shape. They had to regroup us, get us ready for the next island. And here's all these religious people on Sunday morning. They want me to go to church with them.

I said, why? You're as drunk as I was last night. Amen. We fought over that one Sheila, that one girl. Why would I want to go to church with you? I knew nothing about God, but I knew I'd never make a pretense of such a thing.

That, more than anything, made me know. When I married my wife, she wanted to go to church. We went to a church where she, as a little girl, had went. It was dry as dust, pale as a corpse. I went through the ordeal of the thing.

We should have had a beer. That's right. That's a terrible thing to say. But it was hot. There wasn't no air conditioning in 1946. Amen. I slept through the thing. Then he said, I want Deacon Kelly to dismiss us.

Well, when Deacon Kelly got up, I worked with that joker. He's worse than I am. He's a drunk. He's a whoremonger. He's got a wife he runs around on. And I said to my wife, I said to her, Look, if you want religion, you go.

If we have any kids, you take them. But don't bother me with that anymore. I wanted none of that. Amen. But I'm talking about Christians. I'm talking about men to live as Christ to live. That the whole motive of that life is that Jesus be Jesus in me.

Hallelujah. These overcoming saints, the word of their testimony. But that word is nothing if that life is nothing. There's three things you and I can do to make a difference in this world. Number one, we can live.

That's number one. If you don't live, don't talk. Amen. If you're not living for Christ, then don't talk about Christ. That's a disgrace of all time. We can live. We can talk. We can pray. That is the key to our being the witness on this planet that God wants us.

But the first is, before I talk about Him, I must know Him. They did more, though, than tell the world about victory. They manifested that victory to such a degree that the world took knowledge that they had been with Jesus.

They manifested that life. This is Christianity. I said, this is Christianity. This is the character and image of the overcoming saints of all ages, wherever you meet them. And they are the only Christians.

He said, To him that overcometh shall inherit all things. What are all things? Just walk down the catalog from Ephesus all the way to Laodicea, and you'll find the final thing is the rapture. Amen. To him that overcometh will I give to sit with me in my throne as my Father.

But then after that, he said, To him that overcometh will inherit all things. Everything that he said in seven different overcomings, he will have. But it's only to that overcomer. And this is the character of the overcoming saints.

They saw Jesus and everything else becomes secondary. Amen. When Paul was struck down on that road to Damascus, conquered by light, the Bible said when he got up, he saw no man. And for the next 40 years or however long he lived, he never saw another man but Christ.

He was totally oblivious to everything else, conquered by light. His whole mind in being this one thing, I do become the testimony. He says, I know it is. Amen. That is the whole of it. We talk about fanatics over sports, fanatics over this.

The fanatic for Christ is what God has to have. People that have no other reason to live but for Christ to be made real on this planet. But I know when you speak to the average church today, that's a foreign language.

Amen. Christ is given one hour and a half on a Sunday morning and that's sufficient. What do you want out of me? I'll tell you what he wants. He wants you. Your life. All you are. All you have. All you ever hoped to be.

That's what he demands. But the payday is, he'll give you all that he is. They saw both the responsibility and greatness of being a bond slave to Christ. That was the overcoming saint. They saw the greatness and the responsibility.

These overcoming saints of all ages have seen that the holiness of Christianity consecrates all wealth and all activity under God. If you don't hear anything else I say, underline that and take it home.

They saw that the holiness of Christianity consecrates all wealth and all activities under God. Nothing outside of that. We've had that separation of things. We've had the Pat Boones to come along and tell us, my spiritual life is one thing and my secular life is another.

No, sir. There isn't but one life. And when you come to him, he bought that life, body, soul, spirit, everything. There is no separation here. There is none. He's either all or not at all. You're going to be Lord.

He's not your Christ. And that narrow gate isn't ten miles down the road. That's where a man gets in at. That's where we come into this. Now, that's Christianity. Now, these overcoming, they saw that.

They realized that our wealth is as much a gift of God as our hands and our feet. They knew that. And they would no more use that wealth wrong than they would use their hands and feet. They knew that.

They recognized up front, amen, that this is all. These true saints understand that the purpose of His being is that the Father may reveal His Son in and through them, nor the reason to be here, but to contain the Creator, that God's Son, Paul, who is the very objective of everything, the type of what all are to be as a saint, a type of the church as a whole.

He said, It pleased God to reveal His Son in me. And that's the only thing that pleases God. You know, the Bible said, As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God, or gave them power to become the sons of God.

I met a very beautiful lady 57 years ago. I mean, she's nothing masculine about her. Very wonderful, lovely lady. I used to look at her. How can such a pretty thing exist and such a dainty lady become a son of God?

Amen. How can such a thing be? But then He showed me, I only have one Son. There's only one I want to reveal, and He looks better in her than He does in you. Amen. Oh, yes, sir. That Holy Ghost reveals God's Son.

That's the only Son that God wants seen as we're led by Him. But they saw the responsibility of it all. He further understands that the manner we use, and you listen to me, and spend our money is such a great part of everyday business and everyday life that the common life must be of the same nature as how I spend my money.

I watch a man that has to have every trinket. I see a woman that has to have 25 pair of shoes. I see all of that. I can tell you that tells more about them than anything else. The way we spend our money and the way we use our wealth tells more about what we are than a thousand words.

Amen. We sing, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus as we went through that. Two thousand million people live on this planet never heard that word one time. Now, it may be more important you to have another pair of shoes, but I can tell you one day we'll stand there.

And how we spend our wealth, how we spend our activity is going to be the answer to everything. I said yesterday morning, the one question asked is did you have faith? If not, you said, I believe. The house is full of them.

But the rock bottom line is action. Faith is an act based upon a belief supported by continued confidence of believing that if God said a thing, God will do a thing. But how we spend our wealth, therefore these saints understand if reason and Christianity govern them in their stewardship, then reason and Christianity has got a great hold on them and will dictate the direction of their life.

They know that. If that's what governs them in their money. But if desire, pride, self-will are the measures of our spending, and given then desire, pride, and self-will will set the direction of the greatest part of your life.

You may come to church, you may be able to weep with the saints, but I can tell you that's what will govern the most of your life. Once you're outside, you'll be more interested in them all than you are in anything else because that is the thing that governs a life.

It is a driven thing. If we sow the pride and desire, we'll reap the sowing, which is corruption. We'll reap it. If we sow our fleshly religious programs, we will only add to the darkness. Amen. Go through it all.

We invent one after another. It's just a constant, different program, somehow or another, trying to make something work instead of just coming back and be children of God so the community can see Christ one more time.

They're not wanting you. They're not wanting your program. Belfast is not interested in abstract ideas. It is interested in the people that represent those ideas. A people that walk with God is a people that they're interested in.

If we sow into that, which is life and light, we'll open the windows of heaven upon us, not only of our money, but of everything we do if we sow into that. Light and life is what the church is all about.

Becoming Before Doing: Waiting for the Holy Spirit

Our message is, you must become before you can do. That has to be the message. We have sent them forth without sanctifying them. Jesus said, don't you leave Jerusalem until you've been endued with power from on high.

First he said, go ye into all the world and teach all nations. Now, any good English teacher, I don't know how it'd work out in your grammar, in diagramming that sentence, the main verb is not go, it's teach.

Amen. The whole thing. But we've made it go, and we send them without tarrying. We send people out totally unqualified to be out there to tell. Then we wonder why we shipwrecked the thing. We wonder why we've got what we have here today.

But it is that waiting, that waiting upon God. We understand nothing but the light of God's life can dispel the darkness of this age. Nothing, no program, no religious humanitarianism is going to break the shackles of Islam and Buddhism and Hinduism.