Cranbrook 1993 10-3-93 Am — George Warnock

I've known this young man since he was probably about 16 or 17, I can't remember, and we've been through a lot together. And I just asked him to share what the Lord's been doing in his life and saying to his heart.

And I believe it will be a warning maybe even to some of the young people here to take heed. Amen? Your mother, Jim, would use your area as you will, and I'll try to get through this. Well, over, when I first received baptism in the Holy Spirit, really when I first began trying to walk with God at the age of about 16, I dearly loved to read the Word.

You know, I would spend, during the summers then, you know, I had a lot of free time, and I would just sit and read for hours and hours. And one day some unknowing soul, who intended no harm whatsoever, walked through and said, I guess they were concerned about my mental state or whatever, they said, you know, you don't have to read that all the time.

And that, you know, I didn't immediately just put the thing down and go about my way, but that planted a seed in my mind, and I thought, well, maybe I am being a little, and so over a period of time, I began to, I read less and less, and I was still going to services and worshipping the Lord and all that, and I didn't, at the time, I didn't think much about it.

But anyway, over a period of years, some things happened, and I had some, what I consider to be some pretty severe failures, and I really got away from the Word as a source of strength, and when I would go to the Word, I would read the Word out of a sense of duty or whatever, and I found lots of condemnation that was a fearful thing for me.

And this went on for a number of years, and finally here recently, I just needed to seek God about some things, and I knew that I needed my own answers, I didn't need somebody else to tell me a bunch of things.

And what came to my heart was that I should know, I should know the answers, and I thought, well, how can I do that, and I thought, well, you just need to read the Word, you need to go to the Word and find out what the Word says about it.

So I would get up at night, sometimes after I would work late, long hours and all like that, but I would wake up about 2 o 'clock, 2 or 3 in the morning, and I'd jump up and grab the Bible and go in there and see it, and I would read for hours at a time.

And through doing that, the blessedness of the Word has come back, and the joy of reading the Word has come back, and the deliverance and the peace that the Word can bring, and the appreciation for what God gave us.

You know, whatever that's worth to you, I don't know, maybe you've never been through any, you know, may not have taken the steps that I've taken, but I know this, I'm a seldom parson, I guess at one point I knew this, I believe that even if you read this without faith, but if you just sat down and read, and you read enough to give it a chance, it will create.

And I, you know, I've often, I've heard that over and over, that faith come up by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, that there truly is something alive and wonderful about the words written in this book, and I don't understand it.

I lean towards, I'm not that smart, but I lean towards an intellectual approach to life in virtually every area. I don't pretend to understand, I can't imagine how mere words can change your life, but I know that they can, and if you're not reading, if you're not reading because like I was, it has become a fearful thing to you, or because maybe you think you're not getting what you need from it, probably the problem is just that you're not reading enough, or you're not spending enough time when it really is.

Because speaking virtually as someone back from the dead, it can bring life and deliverance when it doesn't appear, when there doesn't appear to be any, to be had.

Thank you Jesus. Thank you Lord.

Hallelujah. And if I have a thankful heart this morning for anything, it's just for the fact that I again appreciate the Word of God, and that's something that's been missing for a long time. Amen. Thank you Lord. Amen. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord.

Thank you Father. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord Jesus. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Oh Father, thank you Father.

Thank you Lord for rejoicing in me. Amen Father. One thing I'm convinced of in this hour, is I remember the parable of the hundred sheep. And the Lord had 99 of them, but one of them wasn't there. And he said he left the 99, and he went and found the one sheep.

The parable of the prodigal son, I think speaks of what God's going to do. He's going to go out and find his children, isn't he? Every last one of them. Amen. And bring them home. I think we need to pray that those that are out in the high plains, you know you've been out there for a while, you don't know you're starving to death.

You don't know you're living with a swine. You don't know that you have just hushed to eat, you know. And that's what it is when you backslide and you go into the world, amen. But finally, the prodigal son, by the grace of God, I think God opened his eyes to realize where he was, and it seems like it's strange, it took him a long time, but all of a sudden he remembered what?

In my Father's house, there's plenty of food to eat. Even my Father's hired servants are better off than I am. He said I know what I'll do. I won't even claim to be a son anymore. I'll go back and hire myself out to my Father.

Of course we know the Father would not accept that would he? He received him back as a son. Killed the fatted calf, gave him a robe, which I believe is again the robe of righteousness, amen. Put the signet ring on him, which means he gave him back authority, didn't he?

And took him back. May we, as God feeds us, may we be burdened by the Spirit, cry out for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, amen, and for the prodigal son, and plead that God will restore.

Them and bring them back, amen.

You may not be touched by this as much as I am, because you have to know some of the history, some of the things that happened, but this has blessed me so much. Amen. Well, the Lord bless you, and we hope you're enjoying the services, the word that God is bringing to us.

We hope that you're feasting on the table that God set before us, amen? Amen. So, anything else I need to add? I don't know. Again, we're going to have food after the services. If you'd like to stay with us all afternoon, the church is going to be open.

And again, service tonight at 7, and then it's 7 o 'clock each night next week, okay? So, without any further ado, we'll turn it over to Brother George Warnock. Hallelujah.

The Written Word and the Living Word

I know these days we're emphasizing a lot the Spirit of Truth. We haven't emphasized the Bible as such, because there is a great imbalance between the written Word and that living Word that God wants to bring forth.

But we certainly honor the Word of God, the Bible very much, steam it very highly. And people say, well, the letter killeth, just the dead letter. The Spirit giveth life. So, let's concentrate on the Spirit.

And Paul isn't dividing the literal Word from the Spirit. He is saying that if you divide the Spirit from the Word, then the letter will kill. He isn't saying it's not necessary. It's very necessary. They tell me that's a pecan tree out there.

I don't know if you've ever seen one, but I've worked with pecan wood. It's very, very hard stuff. But it has a shell on it, and that shell is totally essential. You wouldn't have... I don't think the kernel would develop without the shell developing around it.

Very essential. But the shell has to be cracked open before you get the kernel. Amen. And so, as a young man, knowing that God had some purpose in ministry for me, and I never was a speaker, a preacher.

I didn't have that kind of eloquence. I thought, well, I'll just memorize Scripture. And one time, when we moved to the coast from the parish where I grew up, I grew up in a little town and landed in that big city of Vancouver.

I had to find a job, and jobs weren't plentiful in those days. Anything I hated was looking for work. I like work all right now. I don't mind work, but I hate looking for it. So I grew up in that big city and go to half a dozen places looking for work.

And I was scared, you know. Goodness, I don't know if I could work in this place. Glad when they said no, there was no... I'd go home and memorize the Scripture. I did that all one summer. And then in fall, I got somewhat of a job.

So about three months there, I memorized Scripture almost every day. In which time, I memorized about a chapter a day. Started with a book of Romans. I memorized in that one summer most of Paul's epistles.

Romans, 1st, 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, 1st, 2nd Colossians, 1st, 2nd Thessalonians, and Hebrews. Thought, well, I'll leave the smaller ones till the last. Titus, Philemon, 1st, 2nd Timothy.

And then I sort of got bogged down. And since then, I don't know if I've done hardly any memorizing. And I can't say I can go through it all now. But I do thank the Lord for that. I know it was just a letter.

And it didn't mean that much to me as I read it and memorized it. But I knew enough about God's ways that I knew He honored this book very highly. He gave it and I came across a writing concerning Ivan Panin and I got his works on it.

As a mathematician and a very godly Christian, it come to him that if that Bible is the infallible Word of God in its original writing, it had to be mathematically correct. And he spent the rest of his life, he spent 50 years proving that the original Scriptures in the original Greek and Hebrew were perfectly mathematically correct.

So that gave me, not that I studied it a lot, but it gave me added assurance. And he also says according to mathematics, there are 66 books in that Bible and no more. That's the canon of Scripture. You come across a writing in the Old Testament.

You know, is it not written in the book of Jasher or whatever, isn't it? And people say, oh, we've got to find those books. They're lost books. So they come up with supposed to be books that belong to the Bible.

I believe in this we have the canon of Scripture. Not to say there are not valid historical records. Paul wrote a letter to Laodicea, told the Colossians to read it. It's not in the Scripture. It wasn't intended to be part of the canon of Scripture.

And so I believe we have that evidence that it is the canon of Scripture. And I didn't intend to go into this, but when I was a young man in Vancouver, I sat under the ministry of Brother Ern Baxter who has just gone on to be with the Lord and found great profit from it.

And I believe sitting under his ministry was the beginning of a sure foundation of the Word in my own life. Hallelujah. Not to say that there is any increased revelation beyond what God had given to the church at that hour, but he had a great ministry of bringing forth the established truth that we knew in those days.

And he took a study in the tabernacle in the wilderness, and so I made a model of it, which I still have. It's pretty well beaten up now. It's traveled far more miles than the tabernacle that Moses built in the wilderness.

And it's got beat up a lot. But I made it from the Scriptures. Oh, I'd look up a Bible dictionary if I thought I'd need a little help in other versions of Scripture. But when it came to the candlestick, it was quite difficult.

There was no dimensions, and it sounded a little complicated. And I'd see diagrams of it in Bible dictionaries, and I couldn't seem to get that to conform to what was written in the Bible. So I just went by the Scriptures when I built the model of the candlestick.

And I came up with something like this. It speaks about the bowl, the knot, the flower. The bowl, the knot, the flower, and the candlestick. In other words, each section was in three. A bowl, knot, flower.

And I don't know what it was. It seems to have been different forms in which the almond came forth. And so there was a bowl, a knot, and a flower. And then a bowl, a knot, and a flower. A bowl, a knot, and a flower.

Four of them. Bowl, knot. I'm not an artist. And it was on a stand. And then it said, out of the candlestick, there was a branch with three parts in it. A bowl, a knot, a flower. A bowl, a knot, a flower.

One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three. And each one was in these three parts. And the same on the other side. That's right. That comes under. Don't cough, they did. It came out of... In between them, like.

Oh, I'm getting all confused here. These all came in between here. This one, two, three. It came in between here. And so there's... Each one of these was in three. And there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

Three threes are nine. Threes are 27 pieces. And the other side, 27 pieces. And one, two, three, four in the middle, which I believe is the Christ, the stem. I am the vineyard, the branches. He's the light.

And there were lamps on these seven. You see the lamp. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven lamps. And then so 27. There are 27. One, two, three, four times three is 12. 66. And I wasn't looking for that.

I wasn't looking for anything. I was just making it the best I could from the scriptures. It comes to 66 pieces. And to me, that was a confirmation of the canon of scripture. And then this tremendous finding by Ivan Panin, confirming that the Apocrypha does not belong to the canon of scripture.

Not to say it's not historical, but God saw fit to have 66 books. So I honor that. And I don't encourage people to read these other writings. I've read a bit of the Apocrypha. I don't accept it on a level of the word of God.

There's perhaps historical facts in it. But I hear people getting all excited about getting to know the book of Thomas, for instance. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong. I haven't read it. But these people don't necessarily know this book and Paul's writings and Peter's and James, but Thomas.

We've got to hear what Thomas has to say. And it's not proven to be part of the canon of scripture. But you see, they weren't all pinned together, welded together, all these pieces. God says take a solid piece of gold and beat it out of that.

So there were 66 parts, but it wasn't pinned together. It wasn't welded together. What a tremendous amount of work. And there's no dimensions to it. All the other things, there's dimensions to it. No dimensions to it.

Because it's the word of God, yes. But it's dead in itself. But it is necessary to carry the lamps, the Bible. But it's more than the Bible. It's the living truth. It's Jesus. Jesus is the word. He's not the Bible, but he's the word.

And the Bible, like the candlestick, is that instrument, that vessel, intended of the Lord to reveal the Christ. And so Genesis is the first book of the Bible and Revelation is the end. Because the whole sum and substance of the Bible is to reveal Christ.

Not a lot of knowledge about him, but to reveal the living Christ. So that in the revelation, in the consummation of the book, it's the book of the revelation of Jesus Christ. The unshining forth of Jesus Christ.

That's why John saw him in the midst of seven lampstands. Standing in the midst of the seven lampstands. I believe we often wish somehow, and I know, I believe the time will come, when the book of Revelation will be that in the midst of his people.

Instead of a book of obscurity. A book of the revelation of Jesus Christ. And we're going to see that because as we come closer and closer to the time of the revelation of Jesus Christ, God is going to be pleased some day to come forth and stand in the midst of this candlestick.

Hallelujah. As he does in the heavens, stands in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. So in our gatherings together in his name, we want to see him revealed. Because what goes on in heavenly places, it's the office work of the Holy Spirit to take that which is transpiring in heavenly places, that which is in Christ, and reveal it to his people in the earth.

It's the ministry of the Holy Spirit to do that. Know how we long and pray for that day when we'll be so aware of that, so conscious of it, and that the burden of it will become so great upon our shoulders that we will just, we won't want anything else but for the Spirit of God to take the things of Christ and reveal them to us.

God will be all forms of gimmicks, entertainment, all that music, all the rock and roll, and all that stuff that they use to try and bring people in. And God's bringing forth such a measure of the Spirit of God in the lives of his people that people won't come in, and you won't go trying to bring them in unless they're seeking God, unless they're seeking the light.

Because God is going to have a brilliant light in the midst of his people. And in the early church, no man dared join themselves to the congregation of the saints unless they were ready to forsake the darkness.

They were coming into the light. They couldn't stand it unless they were ready to see the Lord dissolve that darkness. They weren't out, come, come, come, come to our meeting. No man dared join themselves to the people of God unless they were really seeking God, unless their hearts were open towards him.

Sinners would come, yes, we want the light, and they would come. And so we look for that. We look for the Son of Man standing in the midst of the candlestick, this candlestick. Here, right where you are.

The Son of Man to reveal himself in such a way that there's a shining forth of a light. And that's what the Word is supposed to do. And so God gives great instruction that this candlestick would be made according to proper form.

We thank the Lord that he's seen fit to give us this holy book that is intended to be in God's time and in God's way that candlestick from which the light of God might shine forth. And so, you know, you memorize it, you read it, you read it.

Virtually, people say, I'll just study the Bible. Virtually, just read it and memorize it. And I thought once I should get books and get a little bit of theological understanding. And I did get a few books.

But somehow, you say, why do you sort of speak disparagingly of books when you write them yourself? I'm not really speaking disparagingly of books. But I'm saying most of it is theological. It's not the shining of a light.

And I'm not saying there's no value for that. Perhaps there are certain theological books that God intended to lay out certain patterns and structures and so forth. As long as we recognize that God's desire is not for theology, but for the Theos Logos to be revealed in our midst.

Because that's where we get theology from. I'm not high on Greek either, but Theos is God and Logos is the word. And that's the word from which we get theology. That's where the word theology comes. The word concerning God.

The science concerning God. Psychology. The word, the science concerning the soul. But it's not my job to do that. And I don't want to condemn any theologians who feel it's their job to analyze the Scriptures in that way.

But God doesn't want us to be theological. He wants us to know Him. He wants us to know the Theos Logos. The word that was with God and was God. In the beginning was the Logos and the word was with the Theos.

And God, Theos, was the Logos. The same was in the beginning with Theos. He was God. And He was with God. And He was God. And He was with God. And He was God. And the word became flesh. The Logos became flesh and tabernacled among us.

The Logos became flesh and tabernacled among us. And so, the Logos is higher than the Bible. Because this tells about God. And it gives us instruction concerning God. If perhaps we might seek after God and find Him.

And you can read the Scriptures and find God if your heart is open for God. You won't find if you just read it to criticize or to refuse the Bible. But nevertheless, you're in dangerous ground if you start reading it for that purpose.

That's right. Because there's dynamite there. And you might, God by His Spirit, might see fit. Like Arthur Katz mentioned one time. He was brought up in Orthodox Judaism. But he was constantly confronted with Jesus.

And he tried to shut it out of his mind. And he went to Jerusalem because he knew they'd have books there that would refute the idea of Christ being the Messiah. He walks around Jerusalem looking for a bookstore where he could find books that would refute the fact that Jesus was Messiah.

And he dropped into a bookstore. And it was a Messianic bookstore. And so, wherever he went, he was in trouble. And anyway, he took a New Testament. He thought, I'll read the New Testament. I don't know if it's on that occasion.

I'm just going to read it through. And so, he read it through. And he said something was grabbing him, you know. And he came to the story of the woman that was taken in adultery. And he thought, now, I'm going to close the book here for a minute.

He said, I can't see how he'll ever get out of that one. The law said you've got to stone her. And he knew by what he'd already read that Jesus wouldn't go along with the law. He's in a fix. And he closed the book.

And he thought, how will he get out of that one? And he couldn't figure out how he was going to get out of it. And he who was the Logos incarnate, who came to redeem man, who loved sinners, and loved righteousness and hated iniquity but loved sinners, and then said, where are thine accusers?

Hath no man condemned thee? First of all, he said, he that is without sin, let him first cast the stone. Infinite wisdom clothed in human flesh. Believing in the law of God, knowing that God gave the law of God, but knowing also that he came to change it, to fulfill it, and to bring forth what was the true substance of the law, which was righteousness and mercy and truth and loving kindness.

It was God's intention in the law. And so little by little it led him to Christ. Reading a book, reading it, hoping to find something that he could know for sure that he had an answer to contradict it.

And it became a trap. So we thank the Lord for the written word of God. Hallelujah. But now that we're anticipating and looking for the coming of Jesus Christ, and one of the words that's used very often concerning the coming of Jesus Christ is the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And therefore it's the last book of the Bible. And as we read that, if we bear that in mind, let's understand, it's the shining forth, the unveiling, the brilliant shining forth of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Logos, shining forth in the brilliant light, which is inherent in this word as a seed.

He comes forth in the fullness of revelation in Jesus Christ, who is the word, God's word in the flesh. So that this is inadequate in itself. It is the shell. Christ is the kernel inside. It's necessary, and God has preserved it through the centuries.

But God has preserved it that people reading it or hearing it, sent forth by the Spirit, might see the unveiling, the revelation, and that's what the word means, the unveiling of Jesus Christ. The book of the revelation of Jesus Christ.

The first book is the book of Genesis. The book of the seed. The book of the sowing of the seed. The last book is the book of the harvest. I know there's still a lot of mystery in the book of Revelation, and we know that God will in His time, and as we need it, will crack that kernel and cause us to see the substance in it.

But little by little we can derive much benefit, not only from all the other books of the Bible, but from the book of Revelation itself, if we're faithful just to read it, as John said, blessed is he that readeth and that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand.

And so I've read it many, many times. And very little yet do I feel that I've really understood concerning it. But there are glimpses of truth, there are rays of glory here and there that I think are very clear.

And God will be faithful, I believe, in the outworking of His purposes in the church to make everything that's in this book to be very vital in the congregation of the people. Because Jesus is that word, and that word has been pleased to take upon Himself to join unto Himself others.

For He is that Son of Man, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that center, that central stem, out from which flows these branches, the vine, and we're the branches, that in union with Him we would be the light of the world.

Yes, amen. Oh, you say Jesus is the light. I know. But Jesus said, as long as I am with you, I'm the light of the world. And then He said, you are the light of the world. We have no problem saying Jesus is the light of the world.

The problem is He's not here. He's way up there in heaven. We're going around telling people to somehow receive Jesus who is the light of the world. Where is He? He's up there in heaven. God says, as long as I'm with you, I'm the light of the world.

I'm going a way that you might be the light of the world. If there's anything that's a revelation of the Spirit of God for the church of this hour, it is this, that Jesus went a way that everything that's in Him, everything that He is, might be poured into the church of Jesus Christ in the earth.

That we might be of one substance with Him, not mechanically joined together, but formed together in Him. Just as the branches of the scandal stick were formed out of Him. Mystery that we can't explain.

We're not trying to, but something God wants us to believe. I think David caught a glimpse of it way back there in the book of Psalms when he marveled at God's greatness and His power and His might. Then he goes off and he says something that can only apply to the Lord Jesus Christ and His body.

He says, My substance was not hid from Thee when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Couldn't have been speaking of Himself, but as God was forming this body, it was necessary that the head would suffer and die and go down, Paul says, into the lowest parts of the earth.

Then He came again from the dead, from the lowest parts of the earth and ascended on high giving gifts unto men. Giving some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, some teachers, all in the context of what Jesus did and going to the lowest parts of the earth that He might go down to the lowest depths to be raised to the highest heights of glory.

Giving gifts unto men, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ until we all come unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man mingled together with Him.

He went down into the lowest parts of the earth and ascended to the highest heaven giving apostles and prophets and so forth for the perfecting of the saints. Lord willing, we'll continue with that. Let's go back to what David saw.

My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret. God has made His church in secret. He's making His church in secret. There are many powerful churches in this country, many in this little city that, well, we're the church.

They might know about this little band of heretics here. I don't know. God is doing a work in secret. He's doing a secret work. Jesus said in secret, have I said nothing? And yet, few heard Him. So it was a secret that Christ revealed to those whose hearts were ready for it.

Paul says God made him to be a steward of the secrets of God, a steward of God's mysteries, a steward of the secrets of God. So it's a secret, but a secret is something that's known to others who are close to you.

But in this life, if you really want to keep a secret, don't tell anybody. But God wants to tell certain ones who are able to keep the secret. And so Paul said he was a steward of God's secrets. That you keep it and then share it as a good steward of the manifold grace of God.

Share it as a trust that's been given to you. Paul says, I have a stewardship concerning the mystery. A steward is one who has charge of a man's property. I turn it over to you because I'm going away on a journey or whatever.

You be the steward. It doesn't mean he just, oh, the boss is gone now. Runs out in the street here. Take this here. Come on in and help yourself. But a steward of God's secrets. God wants to share His secrets with others, but He can only do it with friends.

And so God sees fit in His own purposes to make us to be stewards of the secrets of God. Oh, yeah, openly declared. I mean, my books are available everywhere. They're getting around quite a bit. They're in the bookstore in our little town where we live.

I think a dozen will last them a year or so maybe. But I mean, they're there. They're open. But it's a secret, you see.

It's in plain sight, but it's hidden.

And so Jesus said, I don't call you bond-slave servants anymore. I'm calling you friends now because I've told you everything the Father told me. Everything the Father told me I've told you. So He wasn't keeping any secrets to Himself because the Father says, tell your disciples what I tell you.

And so they'd ask Him things, and He said, well, I don't even know that. Neither the Son of Man nor the angels know that. Well, you say wasn't He filled with all wisdom and knowledge? Yes. But under the constraint of the Heavenly Father, He was only able to reveal His secrets to those whom God says here.

Tell this secret to Peter. Tell it to John, James. Tell it to Bartholomew. Tell it to Philip, Nathaniel. And so God ordained His pathway. And God ordained the pathway of His servants. That they might be able to go as a good steward and tell God's secrets to those that God wants to hear.

Well, when you understand that, that you're a steward of the mysteries of God, it doesn't matter if you've got two or three people, a dozen, or if perchance God sees fit to gather together a hundred thousand, God can still declare the Word openly and only the friends of God will hear it.

So you see, it's no longer of any significance whether God calls you to minister to two or three people, a dozen, fifty, five thousand, a hundred thousand, or over TV, ten million. It's not significant.

The only thing that's significant is that you and I learn the voice of God, learn to do what He says, so much and no more. Just His will. You can't do any more. That would be unprofitable. Just to do His will.

That's why we emphasize that an agenda is not... You don't come up with an agenda because now God said, I'm going to be an apostle, so see now, I'll read what the Scriptures say about an apostle. Apostles establish churches, so I'll go about establishing churches.