Our Pattern, Trials & Growth — John Follette

Conscious Lord of the opening of our whole inner being, if there be any impediment, anything that would hinder it, clear it away, clear it away, whatever it may be, so that some way there shall be fresh access, fresh access to Thee, O God, Thou who art Spirit and Light and Light, Thou art not too remote, far off, but Thou dost say we live and move and have our being in Thee, therefore Thou must be very present surrounding us, not a god off in heaven on a throne, but Thou art immediate, Thou art immediately by us, desire, we have the privilege of cutting off the traffic of the outside, we can sever that traffic and instantly Thou art there to receive us, we thank Thee for the day, for all that Thou hast brought to us, we committed the day to Thee, of course, all of us, before we ever got up this morning, we committed it to Thee, when we wake in the morning, our first thought is to commit our heart, commit this day, commit ourselves to Thee, we want to feel that contact is made right fresh, right there, then we venture out in the day with Thee, and of course, dear Lord, we're occupied with so much, it isn't wrong, it isn't harmful, much of it concerns Thee and the purposes You have for us, but even those things can become an accumulation, so that it just, it clogs, don't let even the good, legitimate things clog up the good clog, this pathway, it's open, and so we praise Thee for this day, for Thy presence with us, for the supply of all things that pertain to us in life, and so now we just gather again at Thy feet, we like to sense that You've come into this room, You've been in this room so much since this retreat, we've felt Your presence so very much, You're here, we want to be in Your presence, so that You can minister to us, minister to us in any form, if it's prayer, or praise, or psalm, or testimony, whatever may be contributed, and if it's through the breaking of the bread, which is the bread of life, and that's Jesus himself, if You can come to us that way, we want to be receptive, therefore, open all the avenues possible, that as You flow, move toward us, we should be able to receive Thee in every angle, in every form, every shape, every approach, we should respond to Thee, bless the word if we go into that, so that the evening shall be well spent, and we shall be fed, and nourished, we need that, we need it so very much, but it isn't that it's reflected again upon us that we'll be blessed, blessed, blessed, that God, if Thou dost know, it's only through that that we are able to bring back again to Thee, the praise, and the adoration, the thanksgiving, the self-giving, the giving of all that we have, flowing back to Thee, that's only made so because You have to come first, we have to give back what You've already given, and so be pleased to bless us this evening hour, quiet our spirits, quiet our poor minds that work and become so agitated, touch us in spirit, soul, and body, every department, we need Thee, we ask that Thou will do that so that in return we shall be qualified and able to come closer to Thee, able to receive Thee, and Thou will in the end be glorified, exalted, and lifted up who we desire at dawn with all of our heart, therefore we'll commit our thinking and all that we have to Thee, for Jesus' sake, amen.

Any of you something on your heart that you want to contribute to give? Has the Lord been helping you with anything that you would like to share with us, that you feel, well, I found this and I'd like to share it with you, have you?

I want you to feel free in this little, it's a very homey circle, it's just a little informal gathering, it isn't church, it isn't school, it isn't a prayer meeting, it's a little fellowship gathering in His name, and I want us to feel that each has something, if you feel free to contribute it, and if as I've said before, there are angles of the morning message, and I have the slightest idea of what I want to talk about.

What did we have? I don't know, no kidding, I really don't know. Oh, that was one thing, yes. We had to have the lamb before the king, that was a part of it. We have broken bread, you know, in here. This is all broken bread, it's so broken up that you can hardly get any of it put together, but at the least it's bread.

And the natural often flares up, we had an illustration of that again this morning from last evening. Any other bits of it that you might want opened a little bit more? Temptation? Yes, that's right. How many got a little help on that?

That idea of His pushing, being pushed through the temptation period. Now, this might help you, that's starting me on something now, this might help you. People often say, well, why did Jesus, the Son of God, come to have such a terrible experience as that if He's God?

You see, we have to know something back of that. He is eternally God, God the Son, and God cannot be tempted, and God never tempts us. Now, that's scripture. Well, then, if He is God, why did He get tempted?

Well, it isn't the God in Him that is being tempted, because you can't tempt that. That God the Son became a human being, and is bearing the whole of the human, and is becoming built up into the last Adam, and that suffers temptation through the devil.

Can you get it now? It's not Jesus as the Son of God being tempted, because you can't tempt. You can't tempt God. But when He has been pleased to assume, for the time being, this human frame, the human set up, I call it the concept, because it is more than the body, the whole human nature concept.

Now, that has to go through a process of discipline, training, and testing, as the original Adam was supposed, but fell down in his first test. Therefore, it says He is led into the wilderness by the Spirit, but tempted of the devil.

He's not led into the wilderness by the Spirit, and tempted of God. Well, why? Because He is in God's plan. He is in God's purpose. It is in God's purpose that He be led of the Spirit into that wilderness.

Not that the Lord can do anything with Him, not that at all. He has to be exposed to the terror of all of that, for the sake of bringing to its perfection this human thing that He's bearing. It is perfect in its first sense, such as a babe is a perfect human being as a babe, but it has to be subjected in life to all things to mature to manhood.

Now, that was like with this human nature which Jesus bears. It had to come through. That's why we say He learned and He grew. Well, a divinity can't learn anything. It is omniscient. A divinity is finished.

It's that. But this thing that He is bearing can do that. So He learned. He had to. He is limited to that. He prayed, not for an effect. He prayed because that was the avenue which God had made for humanity to use as the means.

And He is humanity. He is taking place of humanity for us, so that He has completely finished all of that for us now. And that is made good to us because we are in Him, and we have the benefit of His victory.

They have to be brought out in us, but the victory is His, which He gives to us. He is made unto me the righteousness, which I cannot do, but He does. He has that. That's the way He works. That's the way He lives.

So many times we forget that. That's a phase of truth. And so He has to have that. Well, in that temptation, God uses the same incident, the same episode. God, from His side, will use exactly that same thing for the proving and the culture and the building up of the man, while Satan uses exactly the same thing for its destruction and its death.

All the things that move from the approach of the enemy is negative. He has come to steal, to kill, and to destroy. Do you remember that? That's His objective. The manifestation of the enemy in the life in the world today is unto what?

A destruction. He has come to steal, to rob, to kill, to destroy, because that's the eternal antagonism of evil over against righteousness. But when God comes, His is in the sense of righteousness unto life and light and deliverance for growth.

As we said the other night, who planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? It wasn't a satanic thing at all. That thing in itself is a neutral thing. The tree in itself is purely a neutral thing.

The whole thing depends upon who is operating through this media. If the enemy comes, He is using that situation. He is using the very thing that God planted and is intended to use for Adam. The enemy is going to use that too.

So when the enemy uses it, that is negation. He is bringing this in the form of a temptation, for the enemy tempts. A temptation is always unto a depletion and unto a death. He tempts to destroy using the same apparatus and exactly the same setup, exactly the same thing that God will use, but from God's side He uses it as the stimulant to cause him to grow.

And yet it's the same old tree, the same fruit. But when the enemy comes, why, He uses that very, very occasion. And God had planted that as His occasion to prove Adam, not tempt him. When God comes with trial, with testing, with proving, it is never to defeat us, it is to cause us to grow.

And if we could interpret the trial, the testing, the proving that God permits in our pattern, we would grow. But we never seem to interpret them. We confuse them and try to eliminate them from our pattern.

When we become conscious of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which the enemy is using as a means of tempting us, instantly we all want somebody to chop the tree down and take it away. But he never chops the tree down because we can't tamper with God's business.

Well then we get all the promises and prayers and all the saints praying to destroy this awful tree. Please let the tree alone, because God planted the tree. We have no business uprooting or destroying something that God has planted, that's a part of His economy.

What must I do? Learn how to look at the tree enough to interpret it. And when you can interpret your tree, you will know how to handle it. Most think that anything that is of that nature at all, especially if we are Christians, and baptized makes it still worse.

If you come into a life like that, this idea of living in God and living in the Spirit and trusting God, there is a strange, funny idea, it's prevalent even among our people, that that is some kind of a charmed life that excludes you from trouble or sickness or temptations and all that.

Where is your victory? Where is your God? Did you have that? You'll hear it all the time. If you're a child of God, why are you doing sick? What are you talking about? Don't you know God at all? Well if you know God and you live in the Spirit, you wouldn't be sick.

Oh, what a lovely, funny, funny fairy tale that is. I always say, well where have you lived the last hundred years? Did you ever read the Bible or did you ever read the lives of God's saints and the way He develops them?

Don't you know that He can use all in Him that could do that? God is not the author of evil in any form. Well, of course the human, yes, the human man is created with that power. He's given the power to choose.

And so since that's true, God permits this situation, that tree, you see, whatever form, I suppose we all have trees, I don't know, I've got a whole forest of them. I don't have one, I've got a whole wood full of them.

When we meet them, of course in self-defense, this creature doesn't like disturbance. The ego never likes that. He would like some kind of a safety or escape. But there's no escape when you walk with the Lord.

The minute you open yourself to God, you're exposing yourself to trouble, to testing, to proving, to all of that, you're exposing yourself to it. And you should. It is not an escape mechanism. People think that even prayer is merely a means of escape.

They use it as that. Are you in trouble? Oh, let's pray this thing right out. Is this something? Pray it right out. Well, where will you go? Where will you grow? You can't grow that way. You have to learn to interpret the thing.

And if you can sense God is in this thing, God has permitted this thing, he is here. And this is really for my edification and my good, by my siding with God against that thing, and saying, I see this Lord, by thy grace I say no.

By thy grace I say no. By thy grace I say no. By thy grace I say no. By thy grace. Do you know how you grow? That's the way you grow. Now that's the method of growth. Growth doesn't come because you pray, oh Lord, make me stronger.

Well, don't pray that unless you mean it, because he's going to put something right there to do it. You say, oh Lord, I want to be an overcomer. I want to be a strong Christian and an overcomer. What does he do?

He blockades your way with a great mess or something. And then we get to surround it and tunnel it and do everything. What is an overcomer? It's one who comes over. Not one who goes around or goes through, he goes over.

And so don't pray that unless you mean it, because you are subjecting yourself to that, and then don't be surprised. As I said, I never knew there was so much of the devil and trouble and everything in my life until I had the baptism of the Spirit and came into the realm of spiritual reality.

Then I discovered more trouble than I'd ever had in the world. Devil and demons and everything, never noticed such a thing. Well, I was coming into the realm where I belonged and God knew that I had to have that in order to release me, to train me, to teach me.

So with your tree, don't cut it down and don't ask your friends to come and cut it down with all their prayers, but learn how to interpret the tree and then take your attitude as God would have you, a positive attitude, and God helps you through it.

Well, you say, is that all? No, because just as soon as you get your victory over that tree, whatever form it is, I used to say to the students, don't let the glory of this victory blur your eyes to the battle that's right down the road, because you're going to have another tree in a very short time probably.

And you'll say, well, Lord, I just got through. And oh, well, he says, there are 2 ,928 more trees down the line, but I don't want you to see them because you'll backslide and you can't take it. So I'm going to give you a lollipop today and bless you terribly.

Well, when that all evaporates, he says, do you see your tree yet? I thought I did, but Lord, open your eyes. Oh, I see it. Well, come on. Then you go with it. And I think it's wonderful. Maybe I am wrong in it, but I'm getting through a lot of things because God has helped me to do this.

So many times he says, come here with me. And it's just like an art of detachment. I become detached even from myself or from the situation. And I go someplace over here with God and I look at that whole situation from his angle and this entirely different perspective.

Absolutely. Because I begin to see it as he sees it. Now he says, do you see that? I say, yes. Well, now go back and tackle it. But if I start performing in the midst of it, before I can get my bearings, I lose a lot of time.

Does that include every kind of attraction? I mean, it's the loved one who is terribly in the grip of evil. You're praying for them. Or someone who is suddenly ill. Or someone who is attacked with a mental illness.

Yes. God gives you the prayer for those things. And sometimes it's this, in short. Resist evil. Resist not evil. Now those are both attitudes that God tells us to take. For there is a time when we are to rise up in faith because he will give us that.

He will give us that intuitive thought and notion. This is a thing that is to be resisted. Rebuked. Absolutely. And then there are times when he gives me no liberty at all for that. But to endure the things by the practice of grace and patience.

And the love and the endurance that God will put in me. And then he will clarify the thing. He uses a prescription, I was going to say, according to the immediate condition. Not one formula. You take one kind of pills for that.

He doesn't. Really, every one of them is peculiar in itself. That's right. Every last one. And the trial has a peculiar reaction in you and me that nothing else can do. He's made it that way. That's the way God works.

Then don't sit down and say, well why does God, I get really tired of that. Why? Why? Don't why God worship him. Can you remember? Don't why God worship him. Even when you don't know and you are tempted, why?

Just say, worship. Let it come out that way. Originally that's true because that's what we were made for. And you can't be out of the Spirit and away from God when you do that. You're surely on the right track because he says that's for us.

But when we why him, no. No, no, no. So we have to learn in this pattern, this traffic pattern in which we are involved, there are occasions for resist and resist not. There's a time for a deliverance of a great miracle and there's a time not in God's purposes because he allows that and he knows the outcome.

Now, Paul and Silas were put into prison. Well, why? Because they were wicked? No. It had nothing to do with Paul or Silas' personal life at all. But they were very loyal to their testimony and to their preaching.

And as a result of their faithfulness to God, their faithfulness to God, nothing to do with anything to punish them. God doesn't give us trials to punish us. So many people feel right away they've got a sickness or anything's mattering.

God is punishing it. Now, please don't do that. Paul and Silas are not put in their jail to punish them. However, they are there as a consequence of loyalty to God. And God knows that. And God's going to teach them that God is greater than a prison and that through prayer miracles can be wrought.

And he gives them a great object lesson and a wonderful truth and a wonderful teaching. And he has the power of the Spirit. They have faith over this situation. And they can sing and pray. The prison opens.

They're released. That's all right. That's in God's thought. What? To get out of the prison? Yes. Who put you in there? God did. You see the immediate soldier putting you in the prison. No, it is God using the soldier.

You take a potato out of the kettle on a fork. How did the potato get out of the kettle? The fork. Why, the fork pulled it out of the kettle. You took the potato out of the kettle on a fork. No, you didn't.

It wasn't any fork that took it out at all. You took it out through the medium of the fork. But how many of you see that you were back to that? You're a fork conscious. God put them in there and God took them out.

They're his property. They are his people. And God took them out through the medium of prayer and faith. And they're delivered. Well, now don't make that a pattern. Don't get dogmatic right away and make a pattern because you cannot make a pattern.

John the Baptist was cast into a prison. Why? Because he was a backslider? No. Sinner? No. Failed God? No. Had nothing to do with John the Baptist's life at all. Was he getting punished? No. Well, who put him in the prison?

Well, Herod. Herod didn't. Herod was the fork. God had ahold of the fork and put him in. Can you see that or can't you see that? Well, why? Because God is greater than Herod and God is back of it. Most people become conscious of the immediate and don't do that.

Herod put him in. What do we do? Now let us all pray. Well, why? Why don't you know how God got Paul and Silas out of prison? Prayer was made and they were delivered. Hallelujah. Where is your faith? Oh, the prayer meetings I used to attend when we used to have deliverances and they were profound and wonderful.

And now this man is a captive. Why don't you repeat history? How many of you know you can't get John the Baptist out of prison if you prayed your head off? How many of you couldn't? You couldn't anymore get him out of there than fly to the moon?

Well, maybe if we fast, a good deal. Maybe if we get a prayer chain letter going around the world like this so that there's a prayer going around for him all the time and now we'll get ahold of God and get him right out.

Well, he delivered them. Why can't he deliver this one? I'll tell you, you want to hear it because he doesn't want to. Isn't it nice when God can do a few things that he'd like to do? No, we want him to be doing the things.

You couldn't get John the Baptist out of there. No, you can't. Well, why? Because in the purposes of God, this is necessary in John the Baptist pattern because his destiny is to be a martyr for the Lord's sake.

And you make martyrs by pulling them out of the prison and saying, now go out and preach and have a testimony of great deliverance. And turn the world upside down and they will all come to you because they have heard of your great deliverance.

That's 1959. Well, they don't. How can God be glorified? Listen, God can be glorified in a thousand ways that we can't think of. Could God be glorified in his death? Wherever the will of God is accomplished, he is glorified.

Well, then when God permits the death, we say glory to God. Well, why? Because his will is being done. Well, nobody wants that. We sing it in singing books, you know, but when it comes in, we don't want it.

Now, John has to stay in that prison. It's very trying. He's shut away and he searches his heart and there is no reason that he can see why in the world. After his loyalty and his love and devotion, and there was a great union between John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus and a great understanding.

Very, very real. Until Jesus gave that lovely testimony concerning the greatest prophet. He gave him a tremendous testimony, not in the presence of John so that he ever heard it. No, no, no, no, but those are the things God thinks.

Those are the things that God thinks and those are the things that Jesus knew too, but he didn't come to tell John that. He wouldn't come to John and say, among men born of a woman, he didn't. He said, get in the jail.

People get so tried at God's manner and way. You would say, well, when of all that, why doesn't he get a lovely testimony about it? Now he'll get one, but the testimony is going to be behind his back where he doesn't hear it.

What are you going to do with John? Well, he says, if you'll please let me alone a little while, I'm going to make a martyr out of him. Could you please let me do a few things? No, I want you to do it as I think would be well, because if you only knew, Lord, what a lot of things could be accomplished through what I have walked you to do.

If you would heal Susie, her husband's wife's daughter's cousin would believe and it would stir the church and we would have a testimony and the town would be set afire for God. Now, come on. And you do that, Lord.

And the Lord doesn't do it because he says, what a funny lot of trash you have in your head down here. What a lot of funny stuff you do. My thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways are not your ways. And you'll just have to get used to it.

Because I did that over there, that doesn't mean I got to do this. Well, I got a text for you. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever. Oh, I knew that old one. That's an old one. That's old hat.

I know that. What's he talking about? That God is under that word, under sort of a promise and a vow that he will do just exactly the same here as he did then. He's not. Did you ever read the context and know what he's talking about?

He's telling us that the nature or character of God is always the same. God is the same in nature, character, will, purpose, design. He is always the same in that field. Yesterday, today and forever. It was to characterize the in simple form that one unity in God, which is never changed nor affected in him.

There is no shadow of change in any form. He is eternally there. The purposes of God are there. The thought of God. All of that is the same. He is the same. Not he will do the same every day. Well, when they get that, then they go and hang it up in the tabernacle and try to perform a healing service under it.

And I think it's such a. What makes them do those funny things? Then compel God to do today what he did there because he is the same. We're not talking about the things he's going to do. He can if he wants to.

It's to tell of the nature or character of God, which is always the same, unchanging. That's what that has to do with. However, now, if he wants to, he may repeat ten thousand times a thing which he did yesterday or the day before, or he may not repeat it.

But we are such funny little creatures. We can't trust God out of sight or believe anything until we have a dogmatic statement that says, all right, that's the way people are made. I don't know. The more you get into God, the more horrible that will set up.

You have to believe God, walk with God, have faith with him in spite of all of this contradiction that we see. And you can't. We're not here to justify God or to prove God or to keep his glory showing up.

You just got to have these teachers and preachers out today. They're trying to keep God on the throne. Well, he's able to sit on the throne. We've got to keep his glory all shining all the time. Well, it's too bad he can't defend himself.

I haven't any kind of a God that I have to defend nor prove. How do you know there is? Don't let's not wrap around in that. We're not called to prove God. We're called to worship him and adore him. But we're never called to prove him.

We're never called to defend him. He defends himself. But they don't, as I say, your God is too small. Our God, to most people, he's too small. They don't have any sense of the bigness, the authority, the greatness of God.

We got to interpret him in the terms of our littleness of life. Now, that's right, and that's good, but don't push it too far. God is spirit, and the things of the spirit are only known to us, as he says, through the things which are seen.

He has to use the things which we see to interpret him. But this little interpretation which we have of the things seen is not yet that. Don't you see that or don't you? It isn't yet that. He is more than that.

In school, what did we used to call it? Anthropos means man. Anthropology is the study of man. And then when we interpret God through the anthroposite, that is the man, human way of interpreting, when we do that, that is purely the man fashion of interpreting an infinite thing, an infinite God.

And so we only know him through the interpretation which we have of the things of which we are conscious. That's why the great teacher that Jesus is continually used every commonplace, ordinary, limited form with which the people were familiar to do his most magnificent teaching.

He never gave them philosophic terms. He never taught them with a reasoning process. He was too big for that. He will reduce the most magnificent things in heaven to a little story. That's the art of the great teacher.

Then he leaves us 2 ,000 years to understand the thing that he said. It's so simple, you know. I've heard people say, well, I've read the book of Proverbs. I could make a book like that. I said, try it.

It sounds so. They say, well, the stories he told. House built up here and the wind blew. Knocked it down. What's profound about that? Well, I said, you don't know what a house is. But you see, now what I'm getting at is this.

God is too infinite. He's too great for us to interpret him with these simple little terms which we have. He says, the kingdom of heaven is like unto this. The things of God, they are like this. Well, then when we get a little understanding of this, we think we've arrived at that.

No, we haven't. For the this which we now understand is only the thing he says is like unto. This is like unto this. How many can see the difference? Heaven is like unto this. Well, when I understand this, have I got heaven yet?

No, I've got an understanding of the thing which he says is like heaven. So it's rather remote after all. Rather remote. Well, that's the way he teaches. So we just let him alone. Let him take that. Now John the Baptist is in the prison.

Not with anything he's done. He could just as well sit there and get all cynical and grouchy at the Lord and say, oh, where's God? I've been faithful in this testimony and all that. Well, finally, after he'd thought that through quite thoroughly, do you remember his conclusion?

Just as human as yours and mine. He didn't jump up and down the prison and say, hallelujah, I'm in here because God has sent me and everything is well. Glory to God. He did not. He sat in the corner of that old prison house doing a terrible lot of thinking.

He did a terrible lot of thinking and reasoning. And what was it? Can this have all been a sort of a delusion? A myth? Is this reality? Like people do with their experiences in God. I wonder if that was just an emotional thing that happened to me or was there something real about it?

I think perhaps I was just disturbed emotionally. A lot of them wave a lot of things back that way. Now, what does he do? Well, he does what any of us would do. Questioned it. He questioned it. He had a right to.

Wouldn't we? Don't think it's anything funny to sit in the jail when you haven't any idea what under heaven you're there for when you're doing the very work of the Lord. And the Lord says, go and preach thus and so.

And when he does, he says, go to jail. And you say, well, what kind of a God is this? Doing his will and purpose and everything, bang, slaps him in jail and puts a bar on him. He doesn't come. No angel came in to talk to him either.

And there was no song in his heart. Well, now what does he do? Now, watch this. Well, his only way that he feels will answer is to ask him for sure. Are you really this one we have accepted? Is this really a truth that I have laid hold of?

This is when your truth gets a good test. You know, the truth that you lay hold of and dare to believe, you know, God will test it. He'll put you in a jail for it. He sure will. He's in jail for his faith in this truth.

If your truth hasn't yet been tested like that, it isn't worth too much. Your truth has to be. It'll go through fire. It'll come out. It'll go through its eclipse, but it'll shine so much more beautifully afterward.

But it'll have a period when it goes into eclipse, like our faith and like these things that have to go into their eclipse. Don't be afraid. We have so many examples of those who have gone through. Don't think that God's going to make you the exception in the universe.

I've taken them all through, but you, and I don't think I can get you through. And so you are unique. You're different from anybody in the world. Now don't do that. He's taken them all through. He'll get all of us through.

He who has begun a good work will finish it. He says so. He does. He says that. Well, now let's get back to John. Now, what does he do? A very natural thing. He wonders, is this truth that I have laid hold of and I've committed myself to and I've embraced and it's landed me here in this jail without any answer from the Christ?

No consolation? He doesn't intimate to me, you're going to jail, but don't be afraid. He doesn't do that at all. He just, oh, he's in the jail. Well, so he has to do that to answer this awful thing that's in him.

We all do it. Have any of you ever questioned anything like that in God? When a trial that has come over which you have no control and it is not due to anything that you have done? You've searched your heart and you can't find a thing.

Most have had it. That's gone very far with God. He'll get every one of us faced in proportion. So he writes and he says, are you Christ that we have been preaching, teaching, or is there yet another?

And the Lord sent a messenger and said, now don't be afraid, John. Everything is right and you will come out. And he sent anything about John, he doesn't mention his name. When Jesus answers, he doesn't even mention his name.

What does he do? He gives him something which will aggravate or increase the very condition in which he is now. He's in a horrible condition, sensing that Jesus is over there doing all this magnificent work and I'm left on the outside getting nowhere and there's Jesus blessing all of those people.

So what does Jesus do? He sends him a word which will aggravate and stir that up. Worse yet, because he hasn't had enough, John hasn't had enough training yet. Be careful, the first thousand years are very difficult, but after you get through a few hundred, we begin to catch on.

What does he say? Go back and tell him what a wonderful time we're having up here. The blind are able to see, the lame walk, the gospel is being preached, and we're having a tremendous time. This messenger goes back to John and John says, what did he say?

Well, he gave us the most glowing report of the things that are going on. Wonderful work. Answers to prayer. Answers to the hunger of their hearts. It is just tremendous. Did he say anything more? Oh yes, yes he did.

By the way, when he finished that he said, blessed is he who is not stumbled or offended in me. I always want to cry when I think of that. Do you get it? How many know that's sufficient? All that great big display vanishes, but John's poor, tired, tormented heart lays hold of that verse like that.