Heirs of the Kingdom: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:01 We have been taking the Scripture in 2 Peter 1:4: “Whereby are given unto us exceedingly great and precious promises, that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” It’s a powerful verse. And I gave you a little quotation that I use when I witness to people, and I’m going to give it to you again. I start out with, “If there is a God, can he lie?” They go, “No.” “If there is a God, he can’t lie.” Okay, God says the Bible is his Word. So the Bible is God’s Word, and God can’t lie. So God is who the Bible says he is, he’ll do what the Bible says he will do, we are who the Bible says we are, and we can do and be what the Bible says we can do and be, including taking on the divine nature of God and escaping the lust of this world.

▶ 1:13 Amen, amen. And so with that, let us go to the sixth promise. The sixth promise is that we will be heirs, recipients, of the kingdom. Now, whether the Bible uses kingdom, kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, kingdom of his dear Son, kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, it’s all the same kingdom. I trust that you don’t have a [unclear] Bible and let that guy lead you astray. All right, God says that we can be recipients of the kingdom. Okay, we’re going to go to James 2:5-8. In this chapter he is going to give us seven definitions, or definition, of the poor. Seven ways he’s going to define what the poor is, all right, and he’s going to define what the rich are, all right.

▶ 2:23 And we all know that he starts out by saying, if someone comes in to the service that is rich or that is poor (and poor there means they got dirty clothes on, they’re so lazy they don’t even wash their clothes, okay, that’s the word that James is using), and he used the word “if.” He’s not saying the church did this; he’s giving an allegory, an illustration of a truth, just saying, if this happens, you got to respond, right? He didn’t say the church was doing this at all. It only took me 10 years to figure that out, and you guys got it in 10 seconds. So, after saying that, the rich man comes in and the poor man comes in, and you sit the poor man in the back ‘cause he stinks, and he’s dirty, wrinkled clothes and so forth, and you bring the rich man up front and you give him honor. He says this is a respecter of persons; this isn’t good. And then he defines what the poor man is.

▶ 3:37 All right, he says, “Brethren” (that’s the church, that’s the believers), “God has chosen the poor of this world,” and then he starts defining the poor. Number one, they are rich in faith. Number two, they are heirs, recipients, of the kingdom, okay, “which He promised to those who love Him.” So number three, the poor love him; they love Jesus. All right, and then he tells us this is one of my promises that make you a recipient of the divine nature of God. This is one of my promises to you, and the poor have it: it is the kingdom. All right, now, folks, there’s a lot of poor people that aren’t rich in the faith. You see, I’ve been in churches where poverty is spirituality. Well, you’re not poor unless you meet the definition of the Bible poor. Are you rich in faith? Do you love Jesus? You know, you can be poor and have none of those things. Are you with me? Yeah.

▶ 4:58 So it’s not just any old poor; it’s a special kind of poor person. All right, they don’t have a lot of money, that’s basically what he’s saying; they’re not rich, they are not Billy Gates or whatever, you know, they just scraping by. But you, the brethren (see, the brethren, he’s talking to you, the brethren) have dishonored the poor man. If those poor people come in and they’re rich in faith, and you don’t treat them right, you are shaming and discrediting and dishonoring that person who loves me, is filled with faith and is an heir of the kingdom, just because he doesn’t have the money that the other guy has. Are you there? Now, so here is the fourth definition of the poor man: the poor, rich in faith and heirs and love Jesus, will not dishonor those who are rich in faith, heirs of the kingdom. They will not dishonor them who love Jesus. They won’t do that. By defining that, there’s another side; he’s implying the poor won’t do that. Hallelujah. So when you talk about poor, there’s some standards you need to live up to.

▶ 6:28 The poor people have to live up to the standards, is what he’s saying. Are you there? Yeah, the Bible standards. Now: “Do not the rich?” Now he’s going to define the rich, and he’s defining this from experience; they’ve already experienced these things. Rich people, prominent people, people in stature and public places and so forth: “Do not the rich oppress you?” They dominate you, they afflict you, the brethren. They oppress you, they want to dominate you, they want to afflict. Isn’t that what Paul did before he was converted? He went around oppressing the believers, afflicting them, hurting them. And so the fifth thing about the poor is they won’t oppress you, they won’t dominate over you, and they’ll do nothing to hurt you. Isn’t that beautiful?

▶ 7:32 “And they drag you into the courts.” Isn’t that what happened to the apostles? They were dragged into the court by the affluent religious people, by the Romans, dragged into the courts, accused of things that they were not guilty of at all; they’re just serving God. But people with money, people in levels of position in government and so forth, in society, they oppress, because they that preach the gospel threaten them, because they tell them they got to change their lifestyle. I’ve been to court four times because of my faith. Four. And there’s a track out: if you were taken to court over your faith, do you not have enough faith that you wouldn’t be convicted? Well, I’ve been to court four times; I won all four times.

▶ 8:42 “Do they not blaspheme,” speak evil, speak bad “of that name by which you are called,” that noble name? And what name is that? What name? Jesus. Jesus. Use that name. Be careful about using “God” in this generation; everybody takes God as anybody’s God. But Jesus will get some lumps on your head, ‘cause that separates all the other gods, just like that, that name of Jesus. I use the name of Jesus most of the time. And that’s what they did back there; see, they tore down the name of Jesus. And today we have the same problem too. They who’s attacking and oppressing and taking to court, speaking evil of the Bible, Jesus and his followers? Who is dishonoring, shaming, defaming and discrediting the poor man who is rich in faith, heirs of the kingdom, they love Jesus? Who is discrediting the followers of Christ, real followers? I’m not talking about people just take the name of Jesus. Isaiah is very clear on that: there would be some virgins that will just say, “Just, you know, we’ll wear our own apparel, we’ll take care of ourself, we’ll provide for; just let us be called by your name.” There’s a lot of Christians like that. They don’t want any commitment, they don’t want any responsibility, obligation; they just want the name. Hallelujah.

▶ 10:22 It is the wealthy humanist, which is 20% of our population; hedonist, the atheist, 5%; the homosexual activists are 2%; religionist (way I figure it, no one’s got any stats on that, but my stats is over 50%). And what a religionist is is a person who follows their own opinions, their own ways of worship, their own doctrines, or the doctrines of their church or the doctrines of their denomination above the Bible and Jesus Christ. They worship ministers, they worship leaders, they worship music, and they got their own little doctrines: “This is what I believe.” Okay, that’s a religionist, and in a lot of these things they oppose Christ. You see, Christianity is not a religion, because Christianity, real Christianity, does not follow man-made things; they follow the Bible things. Once we make the Scriptures, twist them to our opinion, what we like, we become a religion, yes. But when you’re a true believer and follow the Bible and follow God, you are not a religion. Just thought I’d throw that out; I’ve thrown it out a hundred times over the 40 years.

▶ 12:01 Liberals are 19%. They went down from last year. I was on their web page; liberals think I’m a liberal; everybody thinks I’m who I’m talking to, they think I’m it. And they’re bragging on their web page about gaining ground, and I go, “Hey, I got records of last year, you were 22%. You going back some, so last year you either lied to me.” And then they make it look like they’re gaining ground because the younger generation is rejecting, yeah, conservatism and the Bible and so forth, so liberal is gaining ground. They lied. I told them, “You’re lying right on your own page; you’re basically stagnant.” The Darwin evolutionist is only 32%. These are people that believe in the Darwin evolution theory, okay, survival of the fittest and so forth. There is some evolutionists believe that God evolved us, and I have to tell them, how can a supernatural God, why does he have to evolve anything? I mean, what kind of supernatural God he’s got to first make us a piece of dust and an amino piece of acid and then a rock, and then somehow all this liquefies and comes out and these living things come out of it? I mean, come on.

▶ 13:41 But that’s Christians who want to be on the safe side of science, so-called, instead of just the Bible, period. When God spoke, “Let there be light,” did it take four billion years? No. What kind of God takes four million years to create something? Now, those are our opponents today, and you can see them over on the wall. And “the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord lifts up the standard against him,” so he drives him away. All right, so we’ve got to lift up the standard. We know who our enemies are. Now let’s look at the prerequisites for the kingdom. Matthew 3:2, John the Baptist is talking; Matthew 4:17, Jesus is talking and saying the same thing: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” You got to turn from your wrong way, turn from your ways and turn to God’s ways, the right way.

▶ 14:43 All right, Matthew 5:20: “And let your righteousness exceed...” Now here we go. Okay, we have to have a conditional righteousness in us. American churches are leaning way too heavy on positional righteousness: “I’m righteous by the blood.” Yes, you are, but what good does it do your children, your wife, your husband, your family, your community, if you just stay positionally righteous and you live wrong in this world and hurt all these people? And what kind of God can only have the power to make us positionally righteous? What kind of power is that? I need a God that can change my brain, change my actions, change my talk. How about you? Yeah. And so righteousness has to exceed the scribes and the Pharisees. The scribes were the Bible scholars of their generation, just like today we got all these people lifted up as Bible scholars. A hundred years ago we had other people lifted up as Bible scholars. All right, the Pharisees, they believed right, but they just didn’t do it. Jesus called them hypocrites. He says, “You say and do not.” You tell the people to pray; you don’t pray except you want to be seen with the people, then you pray. Are you there?

▶ 16:18 And so, see, he’s saying you got to come above the scribes and the Pharisees. Jesus said these guys were sinning, they are their father the devil, because the deeds are your father, you’re doing sinning. And so he’s saying to get into the kingdom, your righteousness has got to come up to a conditional level that exceeds these guys, and then you’ll enter the kingdom. These people rejected Jesus, they killed Jesus, they twisted the Scriptures, and there’s people doing this today, and they have millions of followers. Ephesians 5:5: “No fornicator” (any kind of sexual immorality), all right. The homosexuals say that Jesus didn’t say anything about homosexuality. When Jesus used fornication, adultery and all that, which is any form of sexual activity outside a man and woman in marriage, you got that? All right: “Unclean person, nor covetous man” (greedy man), “who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ in God. Let no one deceive you with empty,” worthless “words.”

▶ 17:45 And a lot of this stuff going on in the name of Jesus is a lot of empty words. There’s no substance to them, there’s no changing power in them. It’s either motivational teaching or psychology teaching, you know. So these are prerequisites. Matthew 7:21: “Not all who say to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven.” So the prerequisite is to do the will of the Father, and the will of the Father is for you to speak right and live right. Isn’t that correct? Not hurt yourself, not hurt others. Matthew 18:3: “Unless you are converted.” Ooh, converted. And this word conversion here, I never noticed it before, but it’s a different word, and it literally means to turn and change your beliefs to the one you’re turning to.

▶ 18:47 Wow. Turn from your beliefs, turn from the erroneous beliefs over who you’re following, and turn to God, turn to Jesus and get his beliefs. Isn’t that good advice? Yeah, I don’t care what Bible scholars say; what I need to know is what Jesus said. So I got to be converted to get into the kingdom. I got to turn and embrace his beliefs, not my church’s beliefs, his beliefs. And if my church is believing his beliefs, then I’m fine there too. All right, not my beliefs but his beliefs, “and become as a little child.” Now remember when we taught the level of growth: a little child is one that learns the Word. That’s the childhood before adolescent; they’re learning the Word, they’re obeying the Word, they’re growing in wisdom and in spirit, they’re in that growth process. Yeah, they don’t know it all yet, but they’re moving on up the line. And they understand: remember who the antichrist is? And everybody’s talking about the antichrist, and the Bible says little children, not even mature ones, know who the antichrist is, and they know there are many of them, and they know they are people that oppose Christ, not somebody born over in China and, you know, going to be a big boogeyman that’s going to raise up like that money-making movie back there. I forgot what name of it was, but [unclear] and some other ones made it. What was the name of that thing? Left Behind. Yeah, you know, it all sounded good and we all got [unclear], but there was no facts in it at all.

▶ 20:48 I’m amazed at how people will look at Christian movies, read Christian books and still of the Bible, and believe what these people are telling them to believe instead of going to the Scriptures and making sure that’s the truth. Anyway, we got to have some growth in us. Amen. All right, and if we’re growing, we’re fine. You don’t have to be mature and perfect yet, but we got to be growing to get the kingdom in us. Now Matthew 19:23: it is hard, not impossible, it’s difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom. Now remember, these rich in James, they oppressed, didn’t they? They took believers to court, the brethren to court, and they spoke evil of the name of Jesus. So there’s many rich men in the Bible who did not oppress, did not speak evil of Jesus; they served Jesus. But the Bible does say the love of money is the root of all evil. When you trust in your riches, you lose out, ‘cause you got to be trusting in God, in his Word. And so there’s rich people who are rich and it doesn’t affect them at all in their walk with God. Can I hear an amen? Abraham was one, David was one, come on, there was a lot of rich men in the Bible. Luke the physician was one.

▶ 22:20 Now John 3:5: “Unless one is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom.” So I got to be birthed, I got to be reborn, I got to be brought forth by two things, and what are they? The water and the Spirit. All right, now we know everybody teaches about being born of the water, I mean born of the Spirit; the Spirit comes and, you know, convicts us and so forth, so we understand the Spirit’s got to be involved. 1 Peter 1:23: “Being born again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible,” being born again by the eternal Word of God. See, I keep telling this church, you need two things in your life and in the church, and that is the living presence of God, the Spirit of God, and the living Word of God. That’s what you need. Amen. ‘Cause it’s these things that will birth people, these things that will change people.

▶ 23:36 Ephesians 5:25: Jesus loved and died for the church that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of the water by the Word. You see, we’re born again, but the eternal Word of God, his Word will never pass away, and that Word is referred to as water. That’s why I try to get people to read that Bible. You read that Bible, it’s a cleansing agent, man, it’s a wisdom agent, it’ll make you wiser. You can’t get people to find time; they got time to watch movies and sports, but no time. “I’m just too busy to read the Bible.” Well, then your spiritual man is really lacking. Now let me give you some examples of born again by the Word and the Spirit. Acts 2:37, this famous one. They didn’t do anything when the Holy Ghost filled these people and they were speaking in tongues, but when Peter stood up and preached a simple gospel about Jesus Christ, they heard Peter’s words, they were what? Pricked, stirred in their heart, and responded and said, “What shall we do?” You see, the Word is that initial birthing and that continual birthing of God. Are you there?

▶ 25:23 Now, folks, you got to understand, no one got saved here and no one got their heart pricked when they heard him speaking in tongues in their language. They got moved, and they became believers, but when he stood up and preached Christ and crucified, then the Word pricked their heart. All right, so we need both, don’t we? They had both that day, the Spirit and the Word. And this is one of the weakness of the Pentecostal charismatic movement: they were strong in the presence and weak in the Word. Yes, and you’ve got to balance them out. 2 Corinthians 3:18: “We all” (how many all?) “are changed into the same image of Christ from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord.” All right, how’s that Spirit work? Titus 3:5: “By his mercy he saved us,” and everybody stops there. “I’m saved by grace, his mercy. Hallelujah, mercy, mercy, grace, faith, mercy, grace, faith, hallelujah.” But he gives clear instructions how he saves us because he is compassionate to us, and how? “By the washing of regeneration,” rebirth, all right, and what’s the washing referred to as? The Word. Okay, “and renewing of the Holy Ghost.”

▶ 27:00 See, it’s here plain: both the Word and the Spirit. And the Bible says the Word and the Spirit what? Agree. You tell me you getting something in the Holy Ghost and it doesn’t line up to the Word, move out of my way, I don’t even want to hear it. I don’t care if you got the shakes or whatever; when it doesn’t line up to the Word, I know it’s not the Spirit of God. Renewing is renovation. How many could use a good makeover? Yeah. How many’s been in a makeover process for a while? Yeah, yeah, that’s the way it is: a complete change for the better, that’s what renewing is. And the Pentecostals, charismatics use this word renewal, and they had no idea how powerful it was. Okay, but it’s a complete change for the better. And I don’t know about you, but I need a complete... my wife wants God to finish the good work he began in me. Believe me, my kids do. Yeah, they don’t need a dad to just say, “By grace, by faith and positionally righteous.” They don’t want to live with an idiot. Are you out there? Yeah, complete change for the better.

▶ 28:35 Now, moving on, possessing the kingdom, as we showed you earlier. Matthew 5:3: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the” what? Kingdom of heaven. They possess it. Okay, they’re what? Rich in faith, they love Jesus, they don’t discredit those who follow God, they don’t talk about him, put them down, they don’t oppress them and dominate and afflict them, they don’t take them to court because they don’t believe the way I believe, and they don’t speak evil of that name of Jesus Christ. Matthew 5:10: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom.” See, when you start living right, people start disliking you, and it start right in your family. You start really living right, and especially if you’re cocky and, you know, tell them that they’re wrong. Look at me, I mean that we’re supposed to just be a light.

▶ 29:49 All right, over the years I’ve seen so much, you know, I had, I have people say, “Well, my husband is the priest of the house, and I got to do what he said.” What? Who told you that? Some idiotic theologian. Jesus Christ is the high priest, my friend, and you better be following him, and your husband better be following him. Amen. And these women that have time to go to these afterglows and prayer meetings during the day and church services, and then the husband comes home and she’s their spiritual guide: “Oh man, you got to buck up, man, you got to, you need to pray more.” You hear the guy’s working his butt off and everything else, but never good enough, never good enough. Persecuted for righteousness. How many, you know, working is Bible. Yeah, you’re working; don’t pick at them. But it work 60 hours a week, so what? The Bible says you can work seven days; in fact, working six days can open the door of sin to your life. I mean the five days, ‘cause you’re not active enough. I’m just throwing the little things out because these radios and these TV people get us all messed up.

▶ 31:34 If you got a working man, you better hold on to it. I don’t care if he’s working five days a week, six days a week, 10 hours a day or whatever, you better love that, because he’s operating a Bible principle, and in this hour and day, when, because of our politicians not making the right decisions, the buck isn’t worth what it was in 1950. In 1950 my dad could support a family, have a car, owned the house, and Mom stayed home and did the cooking and taking care of the kids and everything else. So now, you know, they brag about being humanitarians and all this, and the truth is they robbed us of our value of our money, and now in a lot of homes both have to work just to own a house and just to own a car and just to be a normal American family. Are you there? And it’s the government’s fault. And now they want to raise the basic wage to $10 per hour. Well, why? Because they’re throwing money; they print money. You know, when you made a dollar an hour in 1950, it was a real buck, and you could survive on it and support your family on it. Anyway, just one of my little hobby horses that I don’t, I want you guys not led astray by the voices out there; there’s many voices.

▶ 33:05 Now let’s look at the signs of possessing the kingdom. Now, this is important, and this is what I’ve been trying to get the church to understand for 40 years. I got this revelation in my bedroom on Warner Street in Santa Ana when I was just a couple of years old in God, and I said, “God, whatever it takes, whatever you got to do to me to reach this goal, I’m open to it.” Boy, I didn’t know what I said then, and I went through hell on earth. But this is the high mark of the calling of God, along with God’s character. Matthew 12:28: “If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Wow. This guy says he’s down on the church. Why? American churches don’t even believe in demons. Bill O’Reilly said there was a demon somewhere back in Ohio or someplace, and they had the priest on, and the priest said, “Yeah, I put the cross on him and, you know, he went crazy.”

▶ 34:19 Church, demons are spirits. They could care the least if you touch that person with a cross, wooden, metal, plastic or whatever. In the Pentecostal realms, if you put the Bible on them, they, or they can’t say the Lord, and they go through the torch; that’s a bunch of baloney. Demons are spirits. And also in the Pentecostal world they vomit up demons; it’s really the phlegm coming out of their throat, and that’s a demon? That ain’t no demon; that’s your phlegm, you idiot. Down in Mexico they were casting out demons that came out as frogs. I said, “I don’t know what church you people are going to, but ain’t no frogs.” You read some scripture out of Revelation. Demons are spirits. Are you there? Hallelujah. You need some of these side issues sometimes. Somebody told me they took a picture of the Adam family. I immediately went home and looked on the Internet for this picture of the Adam; it’s a joke. Ain’t no picture, no Adam. Do you guys ever check things out? My goodness.

▶ 35:50 Anyway, the church should be delivering people from possession and oppression of demons. Power! The church should be powerful, and this why this young person said, “I’m down on the church.” You know, he went to it, and it’s just a bunch of theology, just a bunch of rituals and routines, and no power. And yes, church, we should be people of power. Amen. Right, Luke 10:9: “Heal the sick there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’” Heal the sick: physically sick, mentally sick, spiritually sick, emotionally sick. Jesus heals people. And people come in and we use psychology and we got these 12-step programs and seven-step programs, when the Bible says that the church can have power to heal. Are you there? And this is what we got to attain to, this is what we got to pursue: being a church that has the power.

▶ 37:11 1 Corinthians 4:20: “The kingdom of God is not in word but in power.” It’s not in speech, it’s not in words, it’s not all these words. When I led a young Muslim to Christ Friday night, I didn’t need a lot of theology. It took about five minutes. “Are you a sinner?” “No.” I said, “Well, let’s check this out. Have you murdered anybody?” “No.” I said, “Well, you’re looking good there.” I said, “Have you stole anything?” “Yep.” “Oh, really?” I said, “Have you told a lie?” “Yep.” I go, “Oh, two witnesses; you’re lying, you stole. What does that make you?” He looks at me, and someone beside me goes, “A sinner.” And then I told him the wages of sin is eternal death, eternal punishment, but there’s a higher law: Jesus Christ died on the cross. I says, “You Muslim, believe he’s just a prophet?” He said, “Yep, that’s right, we believe he was a prophet.” I said, “They’re lying to you. He’s not only the Son of God, he was God. And the Muslims are right, you can’t kill God. He had to lay down his life; that’s what Jesus said: ‘I lay down my life, ‘cause no one has authority to take it.’” And he laid it down so you could be forgiven, set free and so forth. We prayed the sinner’s prayer. Bam! Are you there? Hallelujah.

▶ 38:50 And I, they don’t need to know where Cain’s wife come from and what the horns on the altar mean. Come on, they need this power of Christ touching them. God has chosen the foolishness of what? Preaching to save those that believe, and the gospel is the power of God. The gospel is Jesus’ birth, ministry, death and resurrection for you, and any of us can share that. Hallelujah. Not in words. 1 Corinthians 2:5: “Your faith should not stand in the intellect of men” (they use the word wisdom, really means intellect) “but in the power of God.” See, Calvin, St. Augustine, Wesley, the popes, Joseph Smith, Muhammad, I could care the least. I’ve read the Book of Mormon; man, I got one-third through it, and there’s so many mistakes, I go, “Any idiot can see that this just can’t be an angel. Angels don’t make mistakes like this.” Are you there? I mean, ridiculous mistakes. And I am shocked that people will read Christian books and not the Bible. I’m just shocked that authors today are better than Paul, better than Peter; it just amazing me, when these guys were connected with Christ in person. Are you there?

▶ 40:39 Matthew 22:29: “You are mistaken,” why? Because you don’t know the Scriptures. And this is the big problem in America: Christians are passing on what these people are saying. I try to get people to read the Word; they just won’t do it. They’ll go to a church where they don’t tell them to read the Word. “You’re going to harp on reading the Word? I’ll just leave.” What do I do? The Bible says, “Seek out of the book of the law and read,” “study to show thyself approved.” What do you want me to preach? You young people, you need to know the Scriptures. You need to start early. Remember this: we’re born by the Word and the Spirit, and the Word, his Spirit, by the way. Okay, the second reason we make [unclear] is we don’t have the power of God: the power of the name of Jesus, the power of the Holy Ghost, and the power of the Word.

▶ 41:41 Luke 5:17. Okay, let me set the picture here. The lawyers, the religious leaders will come down to trap Jesus. They’re always trying to trap him, all right. And they come down, and Jesus is there, and the Bible says “the power of the Lord was” (they added this word “present”) “to heal.” All right, the power was there. So that means it wasn’t always there. And, folks, when it’s not there, we should not try to fake it, all right? So they brought in a man that was paralyzed, he couldn’t walk, four people brought him in on a stretcher, and Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven you.” And these religious leaders and lawyers: “Hey, hey, nobody can forgive sins but God.” Well, duh! If you really knew your Bible, you’re looking at him; that’s God right there, Jesus. And so Jesus said these famous words: “Which is easier, to forgive sins or heal the sick?” Huh? Folks, both of them are supernatural. We can’t forgive sin and we can’t heal the sick, but he can do both. And so “the power of the Lord was present to heal.” That’s why we worship: to get the presence that will touch people’s minds, people’s souls, people’s spirit and change them. That’s why we want a living word, not some word from [unclear] or somebody, some book, you know. All these home Bible studies are using somebody’s book instead of the Bible book. We need the power of the Word; we need the power of the presence. And we can’t settle for anything less. And Jesus healed that paralytic man.

▶ 43:43 Now look at this powerful scripture, Luke 6:17. “A great multitude from all Judea” (60 miles away from where Jesus is at; he’s at the Sea of Galilee) “and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon” (these are heathen nations, heathen cities; they’re on the coast of the Mediterranean; they are 60 miles away) “came to hear him.” Folks, if they walked, it would take them two days to get there, and how did they find out where he was at? They had no TV and radio. Word of mouth, that’s right. When you got the power, when the power’s in the church, they didn’t need to advertise. God did his own advertising by healing the sick, casting out demons, saving souls, strengthening spirits, delivering minds. Amen. See, they didn’t need to sell you a Bible autographed by [unclear], or some trinket that you could put there and pray on, or some prayer cloth that cost you a hundred bucks. You could just bring a hanky out of the drawer and it works without the $100. If God’s in it, God only did that one time, and we make a rule out of it. He did it one time.

▶ 45:22 A great multitude 60 miles away, folks. No air conditioning; they either walked or they rode donkeys or they rode in chariots. Most of these people are poor; they walked, it’s hot, they sat in the hot sun to what? No nursery, no children’s program, no youth program, and the multitude will sit there all day and listen to him teach. All day they came. Number one, to hear him: Jesus had something to say. Jesus had a life-changing message. He had the living Word. And to be healed of their diseases, their torments by unclean spirits, not even necessarily possessed, just oppressed and tormented, and they were what? Healed. “The whole multitude sought to touch Him, for power went out from Him and healed them all.” See, he didn’t have a healing line. He didn’t have to go through these big dramatics: “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth, I pronounce your healing.” No, they just came up and touched him, touched him, touched him. No cameras, no fanfare, and the magic word is “touch.” Say “touch.” Folks, we can touch him today through worship and prayer, seeking his face, fasting. We can touch him today.

▶ 47:21 And these ministers that take credit for healings, I’ve been in a lot of healing ministers’ meetings. They take credit for something that Jesus came and did. He came and touched them and healed people, and the mighty man of God raised money saying he had the ability. Are you there? I loved it how God worked in Africa. My first visit to Africa, I’m preaching the gospel out in the church and all that, and I get done, and, you know, 15 or 30 people came up front saying, “God healed this, and God healed that, and God did this, and God did that.” And I go, “Hold it.” You know me, I’m a doubter. I go down, I start questioning. “All right, now you say God did this. Now who, who knows this was, who knows?” “Oh, I know, over here, over here.” It’s really happening. Yeah, no fanfare, no nothing. While you’re preaching, while the worship is going on, God comes and touches people, and amazing things happen. No healing line, nobody getting credit, the elders didn’t get up and put on theatrics: “Oh, hallelujah, I’m praying for you.” You know, “call the elders of the church.” Yeah, man, I’m one of them guys. Check me out, man. “De Lord!” and they’d get worse.

▶ 48:59 You see, we need to touch him. And like [unclear] said, “I am a vessel that brings God and people together.” And when people touch him, things happen. I liked what he said, and that’s what we are: we are vessels to bring God and people together, and God does his work. Hallelujah. Isn’t that powerful? So we can touch him. Now, young people, I want you to know, the early church, there was a big demonstration of power. All right, Herod was killed with worms; Ananias and Sapphira died because they lied to the [unclear]. Herod, because he took the title of being a god, took the worship of being a god. The sorcerer was blinded. Philip was transported 30, 40 miles; just beam me up, beam me down. Prison doors did open all by themselves. Peter’s shadow was healing people. The fear: the outsiders feared the church, that they would not say anything against it or do anything against it. That’s the power of God.

▶ 50:39 You young ones hearing this, this is what you need. You don’t need a lot of theology, you don’t need a lot of psychology, you don’t need a lot of words. We need the living Word, and we need that Holy Ghost working in the church and touching people’s lives. And we’ve gotten away from that, and this is my point to this guy. See, the church has gotten away from that, and we just do things that will bring the people in. We go to some kind of survey company and they do a survey how to build a church, and so we do these things to get people into the church, and we have 10,000 in the congregation, and they can’t handle life at all. I know, ‘cause I have to deal with them. They got no power in their life at all. They can’t even stay married. Remember Paul reasoned to Felix, the [unclear], self-control, righteousness and a judgment to come, and Felix trembled. He shook just hearing that simple message. Are you there?

▶ 52:00 And listen to this, this is what you got to get in your cranial vacuum, you ready? This is not a one-man show. God moved on the day of Pentecost because 120 prayed and worshiped him, not just Peter. God called Peter out to do the message, but it was the 120 that ushered in the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Acts chapter 4: the whole church was gathered together praying and saying, “Lord, grant unto us that signs and wonders would be done,” and God came and shook the place and granted unto them signs and wonders would be done, and they spoke the Word of God with power. You see, first the whole group prayed. See, this is a group. Are you getting this? You are important. We’re in America, we’re looking for the mighty man of God in the Baptist circles, the fundamentalist circles, the Catholics are looking for the pope and the priest, and, you know, we’re all looking for this one-man ministry thing. And all through the Bible it was the group. When Peter was in prison, he went to sleep, but the church didn’t. The church what? Prayed for him, and God came and rescued Peter. This is a corporate thing, and you are important.

▶ 53:28 If you want the church to be more than just a bunch of word and a bunch of rituals and ceremonies, then you have to decide to get involved. You have to decide to make prayer a priority in your life, worship and praise a priority in your life, the Word. You need to give one hour a day to God; that’s what Jesus asked for, one hour. There’s 24; that leaves you 23. You say, “Well, I’m busy all day.” Then get up at 3:00 in the morning, seek God for an hour and go back to bed. Nobody can bother you, kids are sleeping. There is solutions for every problem that you give me. The reason I know that’s what I had to do: sometimes I had to get up in the middle of the night to get the real time in and go back to bed sometime. Hallelujah. Church, are you getting this? Do we want to be just another wordy church, rituals, routine? We got our little ceremony; we dance, we lift our hands, we shout unto God with the voice of triumph, and we have no hope in it at all. Hope is his expectation. These are scriptural things to do, but when we don’t do them with a purpose, it becomes a ceremony. Ain’t that right? It just becomes a ceremony. Now, these people traveled 60 miles to touch Jesus. Some of you only have to travel six feet to come down to the altar, humble yourself, get out of your safe zone, separate yourself from everybody around you, to touch Jesus.