Preparation I — George Warnock

Let's come to that place where the Holy Spirit is in charge, where we gather together. We've got to come to that place. Is it too low? I can fix it. Oh, you need two of them? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know one was for the people and one for the...

Preparing a People for the Lordship of Christ

Oh, how we've longed in these gatherings that somehow the hearts of the people would be so prepared that God could just come in and assert His Lordship from the very beginning. And He is Lord of the Church, you know.

He's Lord of the Church. And He's never delegated His Lordship to any apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher. He's never delegated His Lordship. He'll distribute ministries. He'll distribute gifts.

His purpose being that through the administration of those gifts and ministries, the Lordship of Christ should be established. And so we're just going to seek the Lord a while. I know you've all sought the Lord before you came.

But unitedly, calling upon God to... Well, yield to the Holy Spirit as you're praying. And then we know it's effectual. Just yield to the Holy Spirit as you're praying. We found it easy to yield to the Lord in talking tongues anytime.

Anytime you wanted. It's something that's just been established. And, you know, singing, we don't find it difficult just to flow along. And just, you know, someone gets a song. But in prayer, we don't always find it that simple.

But it's just as simple. And so let us yield to the Spirit and everyone feel free to lead out, call upon God. And if this turned into a prayer meeting, that would be great. We have no programs arranged.

But we are very concerned that the Lord Jesus Christ will be exalted in our midst these days. We're living in the end of this present order. And it's so necessary that there's a prepared people for the very sudden and cataclysmic change that's going to come on the earth and in the church.

And so let's all just, in your own way, loud or soft or... I don't care and God doesn't care. Reach out unto God and lead out in prayer. And loud enough so that people can hear you. Isn't it enough that God hears?

That's most important. But it's also important that the people hear. Paul says, if I'm praying in tongues and you're giving thanks, all right. But the other's not edified because he doesn't understand.

Well, I'm just praying. Yeah, but Paul says the other's edified if he understands. Because as you pray in the Spirit, the rest join. And so it isn't just one prayer going up. The whole congregation is praying with you the same prayer.

So just for a few minutes now in a way, everyone seek the Lord and feel free to lead out. Call upon God. He will work in the midst of his people in this hour. Thanking you for your mercy and your great love toward us.

Dear Lord, we thank you for loving us just as we are. Dear Lord, for it is not of us that we do what we do, but it is of you. Father, we thank you that we count in your kingdom. Dear Lord, and you love us with a love that is beyond our understanding.

Father, I just pray that a travail of your Spirit would lay hold of our hearts. From the beginning of these meetings, oh God. Dear Lord, and as this sister prayed that we will once again come into that area.

Father, of truly laying hold of the horns of the altar. Dear Lord, and we will hear from heaven. Oh God, we don't want to just repeat what one another says. But we want to hear the voice of the Spirit as it quickens our spirit.

Dear Lord, that we might speak after the oracles of God.

Dear Lord, we hold up these two children before you tonight. Oh God, that your hand of mercy and of healing would be extended toward them. Dear Lord, that we might see the hand of God moving in our midst, oh Lord.

Doing mighty things, dear Lord. Grip our hearts, dear Lord, that we might weep as though it were our own children, oh God. Oh, because of the compassion of your Spirit that fail not. Oh, heavenly Father, we bless you, Lord.

And ask that your presence would be very present in these meetings.

Dear Lord, anoint each speaker, oh God. That they might be quickened with a live coal off of the altar, we pray. In Jesus' mighty name, amen.

Dear Lord, that you help us, oh Lord, to lay our hearts open before you. We invite you, oh dear Lord, to work in our hearts as you see fit. We just pray for those meetings, oh Lord, that after they're over, Lord, that we just might more act, Lord, like you.

Not know more about you, Lord, but act more like you. That you might work to such an extent in our hearts, oh Lord, that we will not be the same after these meetings. Because we're longing, dear Lord, to walk as you walk, to act as you act, oh Lord.

So let us pray, Lord, that you help us, Lord, that we might truly come before you. That we take off our mask, oh Lord, and face you, Lord, face to face, and say, Lord, we know you are a Lord of mercy and patience.

You deal with this, oh Lord. You deal with my heart, oh Lord. Because we know, Lord, we are an imperfect people. Lord, we are a people of confusion. So, Lord, we just pray that you work within our hearts.

That you truly might come forth. Because we want to see you come forth from this earth, the shepherd of Israel. Not one man, but you coming forth from this earth, oh Lord. So we just pray that you minister every heart being present here, oh Lord.

Have mercy upon us, we pray in Lord Jesus' name.

Prayer Born of the Heart

God doesn't hear the eloquent prayer. It's not necessarily the long prayer or the loud prayer. It's a prayer that's born out of the heart, out of the spirit. Hannah had prayed, I don't know how many years, for a son.

And I suppose the time came when she was just so weary. She sat there before the temple just mumbling. Just moving her lips. Just moving her lips. That's how distressed she was. Eli looked down on her and he says, put away the wine.

He says, this is no place to drink wine. She says, no, my Lord. Out of the anguish of my heart have I prayed. He says, go and the Lord grant your request. And though Eli was a leader of an apostate system, somehow she accepted it as the word of the Lord and she went away rejoicing that God had heard her prayer.

And so there's a Hannah people in the earth. And they're crying unto God and they prayed much and they're getting weary of it. But God sees the moving of the lips. And it is a very eloquent prayer by the time it reached the throne of God.

Don't think your prayers have to be eloquent. Because if you're lining up with the will of God and moving in conformity and in line with the moving of his spirit in the earth, before your prayers ever reach heaven, God has ordained an angel to set your prayer afire with a coal off the altar, with incense.

And there he stands adding incense to the prayers of the saints, feeble as they may be. That little incense turns the prayer into something that's mighty before it reaches the throne of God. And I'm quite aware that this is an hour when God is about to perform something unheard of in the heavens and in the earth.

And therefore, he's preparing a people as he always does in the time of change, in the time of calamity. And we, with our earthly minds and earthly eyesight, limited vision, we see conditions and situations and read the newspapers, see the TV, radio, what's going on.

And we don't realize that there's something going on in the heavens, that it's related to what's going on in earth. But that's where the action is taking place. That's where God's plan is being fulfilled.

And so God wants the people who are going to settle it in their hearts. They're going to begin to hear from heaven. They're going to walk with God. They're going to come to the doorpost and yield their ear to their master.

Say, I want to be your servant. Drill my ear through with an awl. And that act in the Old Testament signified that that man was the bond slave of that master forever. There's no getting away from it. No place after that when he could assert his freedom and his liberty.

Because he discovered that all the time that he was a slave of his master, that was the only true freedom he had. And when he got his freedom, he discovered he couldn't handle it. He went back to his master.

So when you're saved, God gives you freedom and liberty. And for a while, the Lord just overlooks everything. Do what you like, God just overlooks it. Suddenly you find yourself in bondage again. You wonder why.

Because you haven't discovered that true liberty only comes when you become a bond slave of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I know Paul was an apostle and all that. But in all his epistles, he said, Paul, a bond slave of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He'd found the one whom he wanted to serve all his life and he found that to be true liberty. That's the only liberty that you and I are going to enjoy. When we forsake all these ideas that because we've got gifts and ministries we can go ahead and do what we like to try to promote the kingdom of God.

The Holy Spirit is still Lord of this church and he's looking for a people who will come to him and have their ear drilled through with an awl signifying, I will not do anything on my own. I will listen to the voice of the Spirit.

I will obey him. Like those little Selahs we have sometimes. Like we had in the song service. You read the Psalms. Some people, all they can see in the Psalms is a lot of big noise. There's a lot of noise in the Psalms.

Well, let me tell you, there's a lot of heart searching. There's a lot of crying unto God. There's a lot of depression. There's a lot of deep places. There's a lot of miry places. But David learned that in every hard place, every difficult place, there was a lifting up.

For every casting down, there was a lifting up. For every persecution, there was the oil of gladness that would come his way by the Spirit of the Lord. He had learned what Paul learned years later. That out of death comes life.

That if we do not yield to the disciplines of the Lord and follow in the way of the cross, we'll never know true life. Paul learned that when he was weak, then he became strong. The psalmist would be singing some psalm, perhaps filled with praise and exaltation, perhaps one of dejection and filled with a sense of his rejection by his brethren.

And why art thou cast down on my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? And suddenly there's a sylla, which means just stop and think this over. It always bothers me when I hear a big sing-song somewhere and there's no sylla from beginning to end because you're not supposed to stop and think things over.

Preparation Before Times of Change

God says stop and think it over. There's a great change coming in the earth. There's a great change coming in the world. Great change coming in the church. And in every time of change, God has a prepared people.

I'm not talking about future things particularly. I'm talking about God's eternal purpose. People say you're always futuristic. I want something now. I'm talking about now. God's preparing a people now.

Today. God's word is always for a people who have ears to hear today. He has tomorrows, but God's tomorrows will not be glorious for you and I unless we're prepared today. God's got tomorrows. We talk about God's tomorrows, but the principle is today if you hear His voice.

Harden not your hearts. Do what God says. Get ready. Joshua stood before the people for he was commissioned of the Lord to lead the people into the land. They've come to a time of change and he says sanctify yourselves for tomorrow.

The Lord will do wonders amongst you. Get ready today. Sanctify yourselves today. Set yourselves apart in the Lord today so that tomorrow He might do wonders amongst you. So God wants us to hear His voice and He wants us to know that God has a plan and a purpose for the universe.

God's got an eternal purpose. He brings it down into the realm of time and He speaks of it as something already accomplished because it's an eternal purpose. And that eternal purpose He tells us is that under the principalities and powers and heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God.

God willing we'll be speaking more on that later. I think the Lord has been showing me a few things in that area. Drop that old slogan you've been carrying. Don't get so heavenly minded that you're no earthly good.

That's one the devil made up. Because we're earthly minded that we're no earthly good. When we become heavenly minded, and I mean totally heavenly minded, we'll see God's Word promoted, God's work promoted in the earth.

Jesus lived in the heavens. He walked in the heavens. Yet He of all men in the face of the earth was the one who redeemed mankind. God wants us to become a heavenly minded people, a spiritually minded people, a people who have the mind of Christ.

People whose carnal mind has been rooted out by the impartation of His Spirit. Until we think in the Spirit, and speak in the Spirit, and walk in the Spirit. I'm not putting this off to the future. I'm saying God wants us to have that now.

And when we come to the recognition that we don't have it, then there's cause for alarm. How God's been sounding an alarm in His holy mountain. Trying to alarm His people. Trying to awaken them. Trying to cause them to see that things aren't going to carry on the way they are.

That what you've got isn't sufficient. Quote all the scriptures you want about what we have in Christ Jesus. I know what we have in Christ Jesus. As far as the Word goes, unmeasurable riches. God wants us to begin to know how to begin to possess our possessions.

How to lay hold upon what God has given us. Instead of rejoicing in the bank account you've got with a million dollars there and you don't know how to go down to the bank and draw it out. God says, I know I've given you everything.

There's infinite treasures in Christ Jesus. He's spread a table. There's nothing lacking. He's given us everything. I know that. But He looks down upon a Laodicean church and they're saying we're rich and increased with goods and in need of nothing.

And God says, you're bankrupt. You don't know it. He says, you're blind and you don't know it. He says, you're naked and you don't know it. He says, you're poor and you don't know it. And He counsels them to buy of Him gold tried in the fire that they might be rich.

Don't we have it in the Lord? Yes. But they don't know how to use it. Because the only way you can buy God's gold is to surrender your old life. The only way you can get those fine garments of righteousness is to surrender your tattered garments.

That's what you've got to give is exchange. The only way you're going to tap the riches of Christ is when you come to Him in poverty stricken and bankrupt. Declare bankruptcy. Then He's got it all there for you.

So the burden of the Apostle Paul. I'm talking about the Apostle Paul now who for years had ministered faithfully in the work of the Lord, had seen signs and wonders and miracles and shook Asia with the Gospel, cries out that I might know Him in the fellowship of His sufferings and the power of His resurrection.

And he says, I want to apprehend that for which I'm apprehended of Christ Jesus. Didn't he have it all in Christ? Yes, but he said, I want to lay hold upon it. So God help us these days to begin to learn how to lay hold on what He's given us.

Not saying we don't have it, but having it and living in poverty. And as you'll discover as we go along these days, it's not a simple case of name it and claim it because it's yours and you just name it and claim it.

Some things you can do that with, I know. But the hidden treasure that God has, it's a little different than that. It's coming to Him and laying down everything you got before you claim it. But the most encouraging thing to me that I began to see a little in God's Word was the fact that though all through the Scripture there's change after change after change in God's dealings with His people, in every time of change, God has made a diligent preparation before that time came.

But only those with eyes to see could see it. And when the calamity came, people were frustrated, upset. What's happened here? They didn't know what was going on. God had a people all ready. They knew what was going to happen.

When calamity came, they were ready. Step in the gap. And there's great calamity coming upon the earth and upon the church. The cry is going to ring through the corridors of heaven one of these days, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city.

And all the nations of the earth are going to mourn and lament when they see the disaster of Babylon, which includes the whole religious, social, economic, and political realm. If you realize that, you wouldn't mess around with politics.

That's part of Babylon too. God's preparing a people who are going to rejoice when Babylon falls. Rejoice, ye heavens and them that dwell in it. Find your dwelling place in the heavens that in that day you'll be able to rejoice when the economy crashes about you, when there's anarchy on the land.

Don't worry about the mark of the beast. You get the mark of God on your forehead and you'll be immune to the mark of the beast. God's got a mark to put on the forehead of His people. We read about it in Ezekiel.

God commissioned a man clothed in linen with an ink horn by his side. Before the time of judgment, He says, go through the city, put a mark on the foreheads of all those that cry and that sigh because of all the abominations that are done in the city.

And he went out and another man followed him with a slaughter weapon in his hand, commanded to begin to smite and destroy. And so many saw the smiting and the destruction. And there was calamity. There was wonderment.

But there was a people that were marked with the mark of God. And the Hebrew says, put a taw. It's like a figure T. I don't know much about Hebrew, but the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet is something like our T.

Pronounce it taw. Put a taw on the forehead. Finality. Completion. Last letter of the alphabet. Jesus says, I'm the Alpha and the Omega. If you translate it into Hebrew, you say, I'm the Aleph and the Taw.

Translate it into English, I'm the A and the Z. For He's the beginning and the ending. What He began, He's going to finish. And if what He began in the beginning was good, what He finishes is going to be good and better.

God has an eternal purpose that runs all through Scripture, which we must go into in greater detail. And He hasn't deviated from that purpose. And that purpose is a people who shall become a habitation of God by the Spirit and a people in whom God will dwell, a people who become God's house, God's home, God's temple, where God dwells in all His fullness.

I say all His fullness because that's what Paul said. The fullness of Him that filleth all and in all. The church, the body of Christ, the fullness. We're talking about the future. That's God's eternal purpose which has no relation to past, present, and future.

It's what God has in mind from the beginning. What He's been working towards. What He's been producing in the hearts of men. Paul didn't attain to it. It didn't alter the fact. Though Paul died without attaining to it.

It didn't alter the fact. It's God's eternal purpose. Paul won't miss out because he believed it. God accepts his faith for the fullness. Abraham won't miss out because he believed it. God accepted his faith for the reality of it.

We might die without seeing it, but God's going to have a people in the earth who are going to rise in the image of Christ. If we die without seeing it, it's still true and we won't miss out on it. So God moves along in a certain realm of His dealings.

The time comes when God recognizes a need for a change because what He said in the book of Genesis was not intended to be taken as God's final word. In the book of Genesis, we have the seed of everything God would do.

But as God unfolds His plan through the centuries, we discover it was just that, a seed, not the fullness. But it's good to know that God's a good gardener and when He plants a good seed, He's going to have a good harvest.

It's good to know that if God's a good gardener, He's going to have a good harvest. And by good, of course, I mean compatible, comparable, in the image, in the likeness of the seed that was planted. That's not difficult for you farmers, you know.

Plant a seed, you get registered seed, good seed, clean seed, because that's what I want when I come to get the harvest. But it's so difficult for Christians to believe that God can be quite as exacting as that good farmer you know here on earth.

The Seed, the Harvest, and the Image of Christ

And so God planted a good seed in the earth 2 ,000 years ago. I don't like to spend much time in imagining things. I don't have all the theological twists to it. But the fact remains, when Jesus was here on earth, He had a will to choose and to decide.

And from that standpoint, He could have chosen to live on in the earth God's perfect man. Perfect in love, perfect in holiness, perfect in truth, perfect in mercy, perfect in kindness. Well, just not lacking anywhere.

Perfect in humility, meekness, gentleness, justice, long-suffering. He lived on and on and on. God's perfect man. But God says, No, I want many brethren like Him. Are you willing, my son, to lay down your life and become, as it were, a kernel of wheat planted in the earth?

If so be, I can bring forth many other kernels like you. And He accepted it. Yes. I come to do Thy will, O God. Jesus Christ, living that beautiful life, going to the cross and dying and going down into the grave, is God's guarantee to humanity that there shall arise in the earth a corporate people in the image and likeness of Jesus Christ in the day of harvest.

God's guarantee. And that seed has been planted in the hearts of men. It's being planted today. That seed has been planted in your heart and mine. And the thing that has always troubled the heart of God, always that the people who are His people, who walk in His ways and begin to grow a little in the ways of the Lord, come to the place where they're stunted and they don't want to go any further, oftentimes because of the knowledge of their leaders or the lack of it, the knowledge of the theologians.

This is what God ordained. This is the way He does it. This is all we need for now. If God does something else later on, fine, we'll be a part of it. No. For the people whom God has ordained to be a part of that next move are the people whom He's preparing now, to whom He is saying today, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.

And so God ordained that a people would go down into Egypt under bondage. He told Abraham, gave Abraham a vision of it, that his seed, though he was faithful in giving him Isaac and the brethren, the twelve brethren, and a multitude after that, God said, they're going to go down into captivity and they're going to be in bondage 400 years.

But after 400 years of bondage, I will visit them and I will bring them back again. I'll bring them back to this land with a mighty outstretched arm. And so about 80 years before the time of their deliverance, God began in earnest to make preparation for it.

And all the while, the children of Israel were groaning in bondage, slaves under a cruel taskmaster in Egypt, crying unto God for deliverance. All the while. God waits 80 years and they're crying unto God for deliverance.

Eighty years. He's preparing a man to deliver them. When the 80 years have expired and the bondage is so severe that they can bear it no longer, God has already made a full and complete preparation in the man Moses.

See, that's the thing I want to emphasize a little tonight. There's bondage in the earth, unheard of bondage. I have no particular criticism of those who are in there trying to alleviate this bondage and try to alleviate that bondage.

And God is doing much in helping people in their distress. But you know very well that there's more bondage in the earth today than there was yesterday. You know that. You know very well there's more bondage, more corruption, oh, I don't know, more everything in the realm of evil today than there was last year or ten years ago.

And you also know that there's more of the Word of God being printed than ever before and more preachers than ever before. Bible schools are turning out more students than ever before. And there's more preachers on TV than ever before.

Why don't we just pause a minute? Selah. Doesn't add up, does it? Don't think that that's God's way. Just try and help a little here and try and help a little there, you know. Do a little thing over there if you see something.

I'm not criticizing anybody if God says go and do this. By all means, you've got to do it. But if God takes you like He took Moses and sits you down and says sit there and herd sheep, you stay there and crambrook and hammer nails, you sit there in the office and bang away at a typewriter, don't criticize them in it either.

Don't you think for one moment that Moses was back there in the backside of the desert of Midian by his own choice and that his heart wasn't heavy all those 40 years as he thought of his background raised in the royal court pulling wires?

My, wouldn't it be great if we got a politician on TV or something? I'm not criticizing that but I'm not glorifying it either. God prepared His deliverer in the backside of a desert where He had to unlearn all that stuff that He learned in the royal court until He came to the place where He lost all His eloquence.

He lost all His eloquence. He lost every ambition He ever had to deliver the children of Israel. Not because He didn't love them but because He knew He tried and failed and He couldn't do it. And it took God 40 years to prepare Moses and bring him to that place where he could say, Lord, I can't.

And then God says, You're the man I want. You've learned your lesson well. Moses said, I can't. God says, You go. I can't, Lord. God had found the man He wanted, the man who realized that with all his zeal, with all his desire, with all his heart, he sought to deliver the children of Israel.

He couldn't do it unless God spoke, unless God directed, unless God was in charge. It wasn't enough that he was a gifted man. He was eloquent in word and in deed, we're told. Profane history will tell us that he was sent by Pharaoh on military expeditions, a mighty warrior.

But God had to trim him down to the place where he knew he couldn't do what was required to deliver the children of Israel. And God says, No, this man's ready. I'm not intimating in any of this. I say this to the young people.

Oh, 40 years. Time won't go on that long. Am I supposed to wait 40 years? You're not supposed to copy anybody. You're not supposed to try to copy Moses or anybody else. God has an individual plan for your life.

And it doesn't need to take you 40 years to learn you can't do it if you'll learn from the experiences of men of faith in the Bible whose faith followed. But somehow, I don't know, somehow we all have to learn the hard way.

But it doesn't have to take long. I want to encourage you young people because God's going to have a mighty army of young people in this day and hour. And they're going to learn quickly. They went into Canaan under Joshua when the time of their deliverance came.

Young people went in. Same age as you people here. Some of you children. Same age as they went in and took the land. They learned from their fathers. They learned from the experiences of their fathers.

They learned from the last words of Moses. For Moses was with them up until the time of their going into Canaan. He gathered the people together. And he recounted all the history of the children of Israel because there were many young people there.

They'd heard little bits about it from their fathers and their grandfathers. But Moses went over the whole thing again in detail. And we have it in the book of Deuteronomy where Moses would say over and over again, Remember.

Remember this. Remember what happened back there. How they sinned against God. How God brought them into the wilderness to try them and to test them. To prove them. To prepare them for Canaan. Never intending that they should ever look upon the wilderness as their heritage.

But as a preparation for the heritage. And those children of Israel spent 40 years in the wilderness. As God prepared a new generation. But there were some of those little tots who spent no more than a week in the wilderness.

Or a day. They went into Canaan. What we want to emphasize. Changes come because God is working towards an eternal purpose. So all through the Scripture there are pictures of it. How God moves from one realm to another.

Never intending that that realm is ultimate. In fact, ordaining that that realm is a preparation for the next. The realm you're in today, the realm that God has brought you in today is a preparation for the next realm God wants to bring you into.

Water that was so bitter they couldn't drink it. Or come across fiery serpents that bit many of the people of Israel and they died. Many, many things that happened. As God would prove them and test them and try them.

That there might be a prepared people for the prepared place. And they never learned God's purpose for lack of vision. For lack of obedience, I should say. For if there was obedience, there would be vision.

So the solemn warning of Scripture is not to draw back. Not to fall short. They were redeemed. They came out of Egypt, a redeemed people. But they fell short of God's desire. So all through, God has to constantly come on the scene and exhort His people and stir them up and put a vision before them.

Not that they live in the future, but that they prepare for that tomorrow. Because God's got a tomorrow. God's got a change coming. He wants a prepared people. He's going to have a prepared people. This is becoming accepted pretty well in many areas of the church.

People are talking about the great move that's coming, the great revival. I remember hearing where this one brother expressed a concern. Are we going to be able to handle it? Are we going to be able to handle it?

Are we going to have enough preachers or Bible schools or teachers? There's going to be so many coming in. But if you just knew God, you know that God is prepared for everything that He's doing. But we're looking at the old order, you see.

A Spiritual House of Living Stones

And the way is now, you get a bunch of converts, well, you've got to build a tabernacle to seat them all. What would happen if everybody in Cranbrook turned to the Lord? What kind of a temple are you going to build?

You say, well, of course, those things don't happen. They happened in Paul's day. Everybody in this city turned to the Lord. You say, yeah, just probably a little city. Maybe so. But if God can do it in a little city, can He do it in a big one?

Try and build a tabernacle to seat everybody in Cranbrook? I'd like to see a church in every home in this city. People say, why don't we all get together? There's three or four groups represented here tonight from Cranbrook.

Why can't we all get together? I'd like to see a church in every home in the city. I'm not trying to excuse ourselves for our own stubbornness or lack of cooperation with one another, if such there be.

But that isn't the answer. Just to build a big building and get all the little groups together? God scatters salt in the earth. A brother said in a fellowship one time, you're making bread, you don't put a big lump of salt in one corner of it and put it in the oven.

You mix it well, and you're the salt of the earth. God's going to scatter this salt all over the earth and all over the cities. A little grain here, a little grain there, a little grain over there to be the savor of Christianity instead of the stench in the nostrils of God and man.

That's not a vision. Oh, if we could build a big building and get everybody into it that loves the Lord. God's vision is for a temple in which He might dwell. A temple made of living stones. For ye all, build it together as living stones or build up a spiritual house that we might offer up our spiritual sacrifices unto God.

Our royal priesthood, a chosen generation. God is forming in the earth a habitation for Himself in the hearts and minds of His people. A habitation for Himself for the simple reason that your mind boggles as you read National Geographic as they contemplate the way and the hows and the means in which the universe came into being.

It boggles you. The universe expanding and expanding and expanding from so many millions and billions of years ago and still expanding. I don't know if it's right or not. I don't care. But it boggles you.

God couldn't find a home anywhere there. He said, You've got to make a man in My image because man in God's image is the only home that will delight the heart of God. The man lost the image, but God didn't forsake his dream.

God knew before He made that man that he would fall. I don't like to say God planned it. Theologically, I'd have to say He planned it, but I can't charge God with doing that. I just leave it because I just realized that there's things that God does that we just can't put down in black and white like you can arithmetic.

But God knew all about it and He ordained a Savior before Adam was ever created. He ordained another man in His image and likeness. Only of a far higher order. A Lord from Heaven. For the first man was of the earth, earthly.