Knowledge of The Bible: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:00 It’s a negative title, because most Christians in America have no understanding of the scriptures at all, including many of you this morning. And if we know why we don’t have knowledge of the scriptures, then we can, what, reverse it and get knowledge of the scriptures. Hallelujah. And you just try to figure out right now the answer. Just say in your mind, “I think I got the answer to that,” and then see how it matches up at the end, when you get God’s answer. Is that a good one? Yeah, all right. Yeah, you know, you need to learn how to get involved in these things. All right, so we go to Isaiah chapter 5, and here God is going to talk about his vineyard, and he told us in Isaiah 5 that we, the people of God, are his vineyard. See, so the vineyard is a parable, an allegory, a metaphor of the truth of God’s word.

▶ 1:06 So when you go to the vineyard in the Bible, you know he’s talking about what? The church, unless he specifically says it’s a wild vineyard, talking about sin. Okay, so here we are. This vineyard is producing bad fruit. So who is producing bad fruit? God’s people, believers. And Jesus said, “You know them by their fruit,” so fruit’s important. Your works are important, what you do and what you say is important.

▶ 1:44 Number one, they replace justice with oppression, with tyranny. You don’t know, they want to dictate their own life, they want to dictate everybody else’s life to conform to them. Instead of justice we have oppression, we have tyranny, and we’ve got a lot of church leaders that do nothing but manipulate the people. They’re tyrants. It’s their way or the highway, they just lead. You know, who is our real leader? Jesus Christ. Who’s the real shepherd? Jesus Christ. All the rest of us are under-shepherds, we’re just delegated people, and we need to get off our high horse and point people to the real what? Shepherd. All right, Jesus knows how to lead and rule over us and give us the freedom to choose. Amen. And his ways are always right.

▶ 2:48 Number two, they cry for help instead of righteousness. They replace righteousness with welfare. Most churches in America are on a social, a community social, uh, uh, program: helping the poor, ministering to the, uh, drug rehabilitation. Uh, our, our United States government, by the way, has over 70 social welfare programs, I think it’s 79 main ones. See, we replace doing right with [unclear] them to do wrong. Are you out there? Okay. Social programs, and boy, if you’re helping the drug addict and you’re helping the poor and the, and the homeless and all that, oh, what a Christian you are. And without righteousness you’re not beans. I don’t care if you help the poor or not. Justice and righteousness are high principles in God’s word, and when the church is preaching the gospel and turning people to righteousness and to justice, they’re doing their priority job, whether they ever do anything else or not. The church has not been given social programs. Right? But every church on TV and the big popular ones, that’s all they push is social programs. That was a good amen, but anyway, it might have went over your head.

▶ 4:29 We need God, and we need the power of God in the church, and we need the gospel of righteousness and justice. Could that be an amen? Doing right, doing just, doing, that’s what’s going to bless your home, bless your life, bless your children. Number three, intoxication and music. Boy, is he, is he seeing the American church right now, thousands of years before we ever existed? This is the American church overall, most of the churches. This is it: it’s okay to drink, get intoxicated, and the world’s music. In fact, bring the world’s music in and we’ll come to church, and your seeker-friendly churches are built on pleasing you. So you like country music, we’ll have country music, and we’ll have all the seekers that seek country music to come. You like rock music, we’ll have rock music, we get all the rock people to come. That isn’t Bible. Are you out there?

▶ 5:35 And America is drugged on music and intoxication. They go together. “Give me a beer and give me a song,” ain’t that right? And then they call themselves believers, and God says the vineyard is producing bad fruit. They call evil good and good evil. Wow, isn’t that what we’re doing in America? They’re saying homosexuality, “God made them that way, and it’s an acceptable lifestyle.” They’re calling what God said is evil, good. Isn’t that what America is doing? Killing innocent babies in the womb because they don’t have self-control to begin with, making it a contraceptive on demand. No Jesus, no Bible is accepted in public places. Jesus is good, the Bible is good, and they call that evil. Is that America? Absolutely.

▶ 6:51 Wise in their own eyes. They’re wise in their own eyes. Everybody thinks, “Well, I believe.” Isn’t that the famous statement of most Christians in America? “Well, I believe it this way.” And because they believe it, it’s supposed to be. Okay, we’re supposed to believe what God told us to believe. Amen. We can’t add to the word. I can’t go and say, “Well, Lord, you said this way, but this is the way I see it. Now bless me. If you want me to be a Christian, then do it my way.” Well, he’ll just say, “Hey, son, it’s my way or no way.” I found I had to conform to his way, and you’re going to find you got to conform to his way.

▶ 7:43 The bad vineyard goes into captivity. Isaiah 5:13: “For this reason the bad fruit, my people,” whose people? God’s people, should be a capital M, “have gone into captivity.” Past tense, they have what? Gone into captivity. Why? Because of these fruits, “because they have no knowledge.” So this captivity that he’s talking about is not the Babylonian captivity to come, the earthly captivity unto another nation. It’s the captivity to bad fruit, it’s the captivity of sin. Didn’t Jesus say, “They that serve sin is the slave of sin”? And a slave is a what? A captive. They’re forced against their own will. Hallelujah.

▶ 8:47 Now then, God always in the scriptures gives us a way out. He always does, because that’s who he is. God’s way of avoiding captivity. How many don’t want to go into captivity? Captivity just sounds bad, doesn’t it? Even if you don’t understand it scripturally, it just sounds bad. You don’t want to be a slave of anything, let alone sin. Here’s God’s way of avoiding captivity. All right, first, in Isaiah 6:1-4, “the year King Uzziah died.” You say, “Well, what in the world, what’s that got to do with anything?” Well, if you know your Bible and remember all things were written for our learning, our admonition, you see, our examples. And so it is important that this statement is understood: there has to be a death of the old thing before the bringing in of the new thing.

▶ 9:53 It’s all through the Bible. Remember Saul, and King Saul and David? King Saul was evil, had an evil spirit. David was a man after God’s own heart and appointed by God to be king, but it wouldn’t happen until what? Saul was dead. Are you there? Remember Moses, see, God promised to bring him into the land, but they couldn’t go into the land till Moses died, and then Joshua, the new thing, God, the fresh thing God was doing, moved them into the land. Are you out there? Okay, let’s look at Jesus. Jesus had to die before the church was raised up, before the new thing. Are you there? Hallelujah. The Bible says that we got to die to ourself before we can get in the thing God’s doing. “If any man be in Christ, he is a” what? “New creation. Old things are passed away, all things are become new.”

▶ 11:14 And church, listen to me, we got to stay in the new thing, and the word new just means the fresh thing, it’s what God is doing. It may be an old thing that God has brought up to make it a fresh thing. We don’t even think when we pray that God may be up to something new, and I happen to know he is, and I don’t know what it is, but I know he’s up to something. And I don’t want to be trying to resurrect the dead horse when he’s got a live one ready for me to train and ride. Hallelujah. Now, that was good, I’m just letting that sink into you. God’s got to do this thing in you, and so we need the death of the old thing. The revival, the awakening of the late ‘40s to the ‘70s has died. I don’t know if you know it, it’s died. Okay, I’m just going to tell you, it’s dead.

▶ 12:33 And what are we doing? We’re trying to hang on to the past, and God is wanting to blow a fresh and do a new thing, and we need to be looking to what? The fresh new thing. Can I hear an amen? Hallelujah. People still want to do what they did years ago when God is wanting to bring something new. Wow, that was is good. So you see, this is an important statement. When you read your Bible, you just go, “Oh, the king died,” and you go on, you don’t even think that God is trying to tell you something. Now you know he is. Amen. Didn’t, doesn’t the Bible say that there had to be the death of the Old Testament for the birth of the New Testament? Didn’t he? Yeah, he said the Old Testament’s done away with and the New Testament is here. Most Christians cannot tell me what the New Testament is, and it’s powerful. You should have that memorized. Is that challenging? Hallelujah.

▶ 13:48 Now the next thing that’s got to happen is we got to see Jesus. “I saw the Lord sitting on the throne, high and lifted up, and the train,” the tail of the train, the Lord, part of his robe filled the temple. We couldn’t handle it all, so he just let the lower part come in. Folks, we got to see Jesus. We got, we got to get our eyes off of ministers, we got to get our eyes off of great speakers, we got to get our eyes off big churches. Whatever our eyes are on that’s distracting us from Jesus. And a lot of us have just got our eyes on ourselves. We only care about ourselves, we get up in the morning to please ourselves. We got to get our eyes on Jesus Christ. It’s not the Baptist church, it’s not the independent church, it’s not the Catholic church, it’s not the Presbyterian church, it’s not the people that hate church, it’s Jesus we got to see.

▶ 14:55 And he wants to reveal himself to us. I got to see Jesus, and I got to see he’s on the throne, he is Lord, and if I’m going to serve him, I got to be his slave. Amen. I got to be his citizen. I got to quit looking to ministers, I got to quit looking to groups, I got to quit looking to books and tapes, and I got to go to Jesus Christ. That’s imperative, because without him you can do what? Nothing. Nothing. Say it: nothing. Nothing. And yet we try to all the time.

▶ 15:37 Now, the seraphim, those, those winged creatures in heaven. Angels don’t have wings. I’ve been trying to correct the church world for 40 years. You know, women decorate their house with angels with wings, not in the Bible. The angels don’t have wings. Seraphim and cherubim have wings, angels don’t have wings. And these, these false churches, Pentecostals that I am in, charismatic tongue-talkers, they say, “God visited us and a feather was left from the wing.” I go, “That’s stupid. Angels don’t have wings, how can they leave a feather? You put the feather there.” It’s true. I mean, I have to, I have to have, I got to solve these things, people call me.

▶ 16:34 And you know, and then they have jewels appearing, you know, “God comes through with his [unclear] and drops diamonds and precious stones all around.” That ain’t Bible. We’re the stones that he’s interested in. He’s not interested in diamonds, he wants to make a diamond out of you, idiot. And us tongue-talkers, I tell you, we got some weirdos in the Spirit-filled church circle, I tell you, we got some real hamdingers, but you non-spiritual people got some hamdingers of your own. Amen. Yeah. And gullible people that don’t know the gospel believe this stuff, get caught up, especially women. They have something about women, they want to get into the sensationalism instead of the truth.

▶ 17:28 And these seraphim are crying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” They’re not thinking it in their mind, “Well, I want to enter into my closet and pray in secret.” That worship isn’t the time to be secret, and corporate prayer is not a time to be in your closet. It’s an attitude. I’m not praying for people to hear, I’m praying to my God, and they’re praying to their God. Are you there? Hallelujah. And so we got to join in. The Bible says we have come to an innumerable company of angels, to the church of the firstborn. We join the angels in heaven, and they’re lifting up their voice, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the Lord God Almighty,” and we lift up our voices with them, and then it brings the vapor of praise to God, and then he reigns down upon the earth and he does mighty things. Are you there?

▶ 18:36 We got to become a worshipper. Didn’t Jesus say, “The hour is here that they that worship God must worship him in spirit and in truth”? So are we in the season of worship? Yeah, but we’d rather be entertained with some rock band upon the platform, or some country band, or whatever, instead of giving one chord and just praising the Lord. “Holy, holy, holy, holy.” We want another song. “Oh, Hillsong, send us another fresh song, the other ones are old, we want a new one. Hillsong, come on,” or some other sort. Hey, just lift your voice and begin to exalt Jesus. “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world. Worthy is the name above every name.” Just begin to sing, church. Hallelujah. And you’ll find deliverance in God, not in man.

▶ 19:39 So we got to worship, we got to see Jesus, and we got to die to ourselves, and we got to die to the past, whatever that is. “The whole earth is full of his glory. The whole earth is full of his glory.” Wow. Is the whole earth full of his glory? It’s prophetic. Doesn’t the Bible say that the glory of the Lord shall fill the earth as the waters cover the sea? That’s in the future, but here he’s saying the whole earth is full of his glory. What in the world does that mean? 2 Kings chapter 6, verse 16. Elisha is in a city with his servant. They get up in the morning, and the servant goes out on the city wall, and behold, the army of the enemy has surrounded the town. The servant runs back to the man of God, the prophet Elisha, and said, “Elijah, we’re surrounded! What are we going to do? We’re in big trouble!”

▶ 21:01 And Elisha looked at his servant and says, “No, no, we’re not in trouble. There’s more for us than there is with them.” The servant goes, “Elisha, have you look, come, come on, use your eyes, use your common sense, there’s an army out there all around the city, we’re doomed.” He didn’t see the glory of the Lord. Elisha saw the glory of the Lord, and Elisha said, “Lord, open his eyes, open his eyes to see your glory,” and God opened the eyes of the servant, and behold, chariots of fire were all around Elijah, and the army of heaven, the angels, were all around that army on earth. The glory of the Lord is truly here, you just need your eyes open to see it. Wow. And that’s worth missing TV at night for. We got all this time for what we think is important.

▶ 22:16 And we wonder why we don’t see the glory. Because we don’t put God, ask for one hour a day. I was teaching the young people this week, one hour a day. He’s not, and then one day a week, he, that’s for one hour a day and one day a week, and we can’t even give him 60 minutes a day, and then we wonder why we don’t have anything to contribute. Are you there? Hallelujah. How many raise your hand and say, “I’m going to bust my butt to give God one hour a day”? That’s the word, prayer, and worship, the three work together. See, the word is where you get truth and understand it, it’s the worship and the prayer that the Spirit ignites it, and the Spirit gives you revelation of what you read. It’s a, it’s an important team. “The whole earth is full of his glory.”

▶ 23:19 Hallelujah. “Their voices shook, and smoke filled the house.” So the house, the temple of God, was shaken, and the house was filled with smoke. The glory, we, we understand that in the Bible, when God revealed his glory, it was a demonstration of his power. It was some kind of verbal, audible, visible demonstration. And folks, we need the glory of God, we need a demonstration of God, not just thinking in our minds, but we need a demonstration to hit us and experience. Now in Acts chapter 2, remember, they, 120 were in the upper room, a mighty wind came through, a rushing mighty wind, that was a noise, that was a noise, and then tongues of fire came, and then they spoke in the languages of that day the mighty works of God. See, there was a visible demonstration of the glory of God.

▶ 24:32 When the wind blew, you could see it, they had to hold their coats on, and it was a rushing, it was a noisy wind, and the people weren’t doing anything yet. They weren’t making noise, I mean, they were praying, but it wasn’t a noise, didn’t come from them, it came from heaven. And then fire, tongues of fire lit on each one. Why are we so skeptic of a supernatural God doing supernatural things in America? Is God the same yesterday, today, and forever? If he did that for the early church, can he do things for the present-day church? Does he want just to repeat the rushing wind and tongues of fire, or is it possible he’s got a fresh glory to reveal to his present-day church? It’s very possible. We haven’t seen things yet that God can do in our generation.

▶ 25:38 Then you go over to Acts 4. They’re in there praying, and they’re all praying audibly, and they were praying that God would grant unto them that signs and wonders would be done by the hands of the apostles. Then the place was shaken, and they spoke the word of God with confidence, and sure enough, the apostles did great signs and wonders. They asked for it, they got it. There was a, there was a witness that God heard their prayers by the shaking and by them having the confidence to speak the word. Are you there? Hallelujah. And church, we need a shaking, and we don’t need to be looking like it’s going to happen like it did in Acts 4 or in Acts 2 or someone in [unclear] or somewhere else. We just need to say, “God, shake us the way you want to shake us today.” Amen.

▶ 26:40 See, reveal yourself to us the way you want to reveal yourself to us today. You are a supernatural God, we are not going to limit you to our feeble mentality. You do, here we are, Lord, you do what you want to do. Is that a good attitude? Yeah. We got to break away from yesterday. You got to break away from the Baptist, from the Pentecostal, from the charismatic, from the Catholics. You got to break away and see this man Jesus and get into his glory and be a vessel of that glory. Wow, that was good stuff.

▶ 27:23 Church, God’s way of avoiding captivity always has this one. Isaiah is a prophet, okay, he’s a holy man, he’s a man that’s in tune with God, hears what God is saying, and yet when the glory of God shook the place and shook Isaiah, and the revelation of the smoke of God, the glory filled the place, this is Isaiah’s response. Who? “Hey, I saw the glory! I saw the glory! Get me on TV, get me on TV, man! Oh yeah, put me out on tape, get me out on tape, I saw the glory, I saw the glory!” That’s what us Pentecostals do. We get a little visitation and we go bragging about what we experience and we miss the whole message. And you non-Pentecostals, you didn’t even see, so don’t be bragging. Are you there?

▶ 28:36 Now, here’s Isaiah’s response to the glory, to the dying of the king, the new thing coming, the worship. This is his response to the whole thing after the glory came: he confessed his sins. Church, this is the key. You got to admit you’re wrong when you know God says it’s wrong. Just admit it. Good Lord, stop justifying. Many of us spend hours justifying our failures to others instead of just humbly saying, “I’m wrong, I got to change this.” It’s not, “My husband made me do it,” or “my wife made me do it,” or “my children drive me crazy,” or “my parents are driving me crazy,” or “the community is driving me crazy,” or “the school’s driving me crazy.” Stop justifying your error. Just admit you’re wrong. And a lot of us, “Well, the way I was raised,” oh, cut it out. The power of the blood of Christ is higher than the way you were raised.

▶ 29:58 “Oh, it’s my daddy was that way, and my mama was that way, and I’m that way, and the grandpa was that way, all of us are that way.” Oh, get off of it. You’re just making excuses for staying dumb. Repentance. What was the first message John the Baptist preached? What was the only message John the Baptist preached in the coming of Christ? Yeah. What was the first message Jesus preached? Repentance. What do these mega churches and everybody tell you? Faith and grace, you don’t have to repent. And yet Jesus said, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Jesus said that. Unless you repent, unless you turn from your sin, unless you admit you’re wrong and turn from it, and if you mess up, you get up and you admit it and turn from it again, you’re going to be destroyed.

▶ 31:06 Repentance is the main message. Turning from wrong to what? Right. Turning from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, turning from Satan to Jesus Christ. That’s what it is, it’s that simple. And the key to it is admitting you’re wrong and turning from the wrong, and God will cleanse you, forgive you, erase the record. Isn’t that powerful? “Woe to me!” Isaiah cried. “Woe to me, I’m in trouble, I am ruined, I’m a man of unclean lips, and I’ve lived among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord God Almighty.” I’m in big trouble. See, he hadn’t committed adultery, he hadn’t stolen anything, he hadn’t dishonored his parents, he hadn’t worshiped idols, but he had talked wrong. And if Isaiah needed to confess and repent, don’t we?

▶ 32:31 And this is the foundation of having the glory of God come to you and having your eyes open to see Jesus: you got to admit you’re wrong. And a lot of us have a lot more to confess than the way we talk, and the way we talk isn’t good. The Bible says let everything be done to edifying, and we tear everybody down. Ain’t that right? Bible tells us to bridle our tongue, and we just tell everybody off. “Take that! That’s it, the way I am.” We commit idolatry by greed, we get drunk, intoxicated, we have sexual relationships outside of our marriage, we do all this stuff, and we think we’re going to go to heaven because of faith and grace, and, and these ministers have lied to you. I’m just going to tell you, they’re lying to you. You go to the Bible, it was repentance, turning from wrong to right.

▶ 33:40 I don’t care if you’re Catholic, Baptist, Pentecost, I don’t care what you are. I don’t care about the tag outside, or you’re just a non-church person. Nobody can be a non-church person, by the way. God has ordained that we assemble together to provoke one another to love and to good works and to exhort one another. We need to be reminded to live right. Isn’t that right? We don’t need to be told, “You’re okay the way you are.” No, the church is supposed to assemble together to build character and maintain character. I don’t care what group you’re in, there’s only one church anyway, and that’s the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s not the Latter-day Saints, that’s the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. You’re born into it, you’re birthed into it. I don’t care what the title is out on the door. Throw away the titles.

▶ 34:32 And then what? The angel brought a coal from the fire, the altar of heaven, touched his lip, took away the guilt, cleansed his lip, and atoned for his sin. See, you repent until God births repentance, forgiveness in you. Till heaven touches you, you can’t get a baptismal certificate, or a church membership card, or whatever, I ain’t going to do anything, but you repent, you confess your wrong until heaven comes and touches you and cleanses you, and that’s what we call being born again. Are you there? Hallelujah.

▶ 35:29 Now, so now we’re delivered from captivity. After being delivered from captivity, what’s next on God’s agenda? Hallelujah. “Whom shall I send to these people in captivity?” See, he is free now. He’s not going into captivity, he’s not in captivity, he’s free, and now God says, “Whom am I going to send to these people in captivity?” Does God always care for the people in captivity? Yes. Yes, church, he does. He’s always interested in them, but he has principles. Somebody’s got to go and talk to them. See, we can’t sit back and be non-involved Christians. We can’t be so worried about offending people that we are silenced by public opinion: keep your religion to yourself.

▶ 36:41 Why is it that every subject’s okay to talk about but Jesus Christ? Because Jesus Christ brings conviction, and you either get mad or you get glad, one of the two. There’s no neutral reaction here. It’s always, they are mad because they don’t want to change their ways and they don’t want to hear you, or they’re glad because, “Hey, thank you for showing me the way.” The response of Isaiah, who is now cleansed, delivered, atoned for, says, “Here I am. I’m atoned for, I’m clean, I’m forgiven. Here I am, use me. I don’t know what to do, but here I am, use me.” Do you ever pray that prayer?

▶ 37:34 Prayer in America, the, the prayers I hear, I hear this all the time: “God help me, God help me, God help me, God help me.” For 30 years people have been praying the same prayer. “God help me, God help me, God help me, help me to be a prayer, help me to be a worshiper.” Is God the hindrance here? No. We need to respond and say, “Here I am, use me. Make me a prayer, make me a worshiper, make me one that can speak the word of God with confidence.” But that requires responsibility to speak the word, you got to read the word. “Oh my gosh, I got to miss the soap operas, that’s a, that’s a big price. I’m going to miss my kid’s soccer game.” “Here I am.” What can you say? “Here I am, send me.” Let me hear it: “Here I am, send me.” Yes.

▶ 38:52 Don’t be afraid to speak with fortitude, church. Guys, we sing some of our songs so wimpy. “I’m a child of the King” isn’t a wimpy song, that is a prophetic song. “I am his, royal blood flows.” Sing it like that. Could that be an amen? “Go and tell these people.” “Okay, here I am, use me.” You got to go and you got to do something. “But Lord, it’s embarrassing to tell people about God Almighty, and the public opinion is keep your religion to yourself.” That’s America. Isn’t that America? Oh yeah. And look at the message he’s going to give him now. I don’t know if you remember this or not, but Ezekiel was given a message to take to the people, and God said, “They’re not going to listen to you.” You want me to go preach to people that are not going to listen? Yeah, church, it’s not your responsibility whether they listen or not, it’s your responsibility to speak the word of God.

▶ 40:00 Here’s the message: “Be ever hearing, but never understanding. Be ever seeing, but never perceiving.” Aren’t you just excited about this message? “I’m going to make your heart callous and your ears dull and close your eyes.” That’s the message I was given: the message, “[unclear] your heart, close your eyes, you can’t see, you can’t hear.” Oh man, can you just see the crowds coming to hear that one? Are you getting this? I would not want to go with this message. Give me the signs and wonders, man. “Otherwise you might see with your eyes and hear with your ears, understand with your heart, and turn and be healed.” Man, what kind of message is that? See, this is where you need revelation. Let me raise your hand right now and say, “Boy, this makes no sense right now.” The rest of you lying through your teeth. Wow. How many want to take this message to the [unclear]? Nobody.

▶ 41:29 Yeah. What is he saying? And then Isaiah responds and said, “Well, how long am I to preach this message?” How long? I mean, I hope it’s just one day or five minutes. And God replies and said, “Until the cities lie ruined without inhabitant, houses deserted, fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away.” Now you begin to understand that he’s going to take them into Babylonian captivity, and he’s going to give them a message where they can’t see and hear, unless something else is done. Are you there? “The land is utterly forsaken.” Then he gives an exception. Praise God for the exception. He always gives an exception.

▶ 42:43 Church, everyone’s supposed to go far away, and everybody wants to take the word of God literally without balancing it out with the whole word of God. He’s going to give us an exception, all right. “Though a tenth remain in the land, it will be laid waste, but as trees leave stumps when cut down, so” how many is going to be left in the land? 10%. How many want to be part of the 10 [unclear]? Well, to be that part, you got to follow what we just taught, what Isaiah was revealed. You need to die to the old, get in the new, hallelujah, become a worshiper, look for Jesus, seek him. Now the tenth, the tenth, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.

▶ 43:39 I told you in the last message, it’s righteousness. It’s not being a Catholic, a Baptist, or Pentecostal or whatever, it’s righteousness that will protect you in any judgment or visitation of God. You don’t have to be a preacher, you don’t have to speak in tongues, you don’t have to prophesy, you don’t have to lead one soul to Christ. If you’re living righteous, God’s going to honor you, and by the way, if you are living righteous, he’s going to make you a fisher of men. The two go together. The holy seed. So repentance to do right, not faith in grace, that’s the one that’s going to escape the captivity. And when God judges America, and the road America’s on, on, I’m speaking this prophetically, by history and by the Bible, the road America’s on, God’s going to intervene. And I told you, Mexico can beat us militarily when God intervenes.

▶ 44:45 Nobody and no army can protect you when God decides that a nation needs to be humbled. Are you there? Remember, Jeremiah said, “When the Lord has determined judgment upon a nation, upon a people, if they will turn and repent, he will turn from the judgment.” So we can, what? Change this road we’re on, and the key is the word repent. Say it: repent. People in America need to turn from their wrong and do right. 1 Corinthians 13. You know that us Pentecostals, because we speak in tongues and prophesy and get a word of knowledge sometimes, and, you know, we see, go, God healed the sick and all that. 1 Corinthians 13 is very clear, though: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I’m nothing. Though I can prophesy and have faith to move mountains and do miracles and have not love, I’m nothing. Though I give my body to be burned, and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,” all these social programs that we’re into, drug rehabilitation, alcohol rehabilitation, prostitute rehabilitation, divorce rehab, all these social programs, “without love it profits me nothing.”

▶ 46:08 And then he describes love very clear, in great detail. “Love is patient.” There went 50% of us. “Love is kind.” There went another 50% of the 50%. “Love doesn’t boast of itself.” We all went. We want people to brag on us, and if they don’t, we brag about ourselves. Are you there? See, the tree was a stump, and it grew into a tree. The stump, yes. God will cut us down, God will trim us, God will correct us, but any stump left will start growing into a tree again. Hallelujah. See, when the tree is wrong and the fruit’s wrong, God cuts it down. He doesn’t cut us out, he cuts us down to size, and then he starts growing us again. How many could use a regrowth? Yeah, yeah. Isn’t this powerful?

▶ 47:40 See, I don’t care what God’s going to do, these Kansas City prophets and all these people with the blood moons and all this junk coming up, you know, scaring everybody to death. God doesn’t need blood moons or anything to consummate the end time. All he needs is Jesus coming through that cloud, and bam! Woo! Everybody is going to see. Are you there? And he’ll do it. He don’t need any planets lining up, he don’t need atomic bombs to renovate this earth, he’s going to do it on his own way and in his own time. So don’t believe that garbage, that’s just a, that’s just salesmanship. They make millions off of you guys, and when they’re wrong, they start all over again and make millions off the next bunch. Are you there? And in China, I told him, when one person told me, a Pentecostal, that they were following these prophets, I said, “Those are false prophets.” He goes, “They’re the nice people.” I don’t care if they’re nice people or not, they’re false prophets. I said, “You better be following James and John and Matthew and Luke.” Amen. Somebody’s got to say something.

▶ 49:09 Now, in conclusion, we’re going to give you the message that Isaiah was given. All right, and you can line up your interpretation that you gave at the beginning with the real answer. We find it in the New Testament. Okay, New Testament use of Isaiah chapter 6. “Why do you speak to them in” what? Say the word: parables. Remember, he speaks through shadow, laws, parables, metaphors, allegories, you know, uh, a historical report of Israel. He speaks to us through all these things. And so the disciples are saying, “Why do you speak to the people in parables? Why don’t you just say directly what you want to say?” Are you there? Are you with me so far? Yeah. Why did God use parables? Why did he just say what he wanted to say? “Because it has been given you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.”

▶ 50:23 Okay, he says, “You apostles, it’s been given to you to know the mysteries.” So are there secrets and mysteries hidden in the Bible? Yeah, the Bible says that, we taught you that before. Okay, why would God hide these things in the word? Why would he do that? Is that a good question? Why can’t I just open the book and, bang, I just get it? And, may, read Leviticus the first time and go, “Oh man, this is boring.” That was me. I couldn’t wait to get through it, it was torture going through Leviticus, just torture. Now when I go through Leviticus, bam! “For whoever has,” what’s the word? Has. What, what do these apostles have, these disciples have, that the other people didn’t have?

▶ 51:32 You see, “whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have” what? “Abundance. But whoever does not have,” what, don’t they have? “Even that which he has will be taken away from him.” So the one who has keeps having more, and the one who doesn’t have loses even that which he had. So he’s below zero. What did they have? First of all, Isaiah was sent to speak to the people in what? In what? In parables. Say it: parables. He was sent to speak to the people in parables. Why? Why would God do that, and not knowing that the parables they would not understand? Folks, what they had was a response of heart. When Jesus came to the apostles and said, “Follow me,” they just dropped everything and followed him. They responded. See, they didn’t have authority over sicknesses and demons at that time, they had a responsive heart.

▶ 53:08 See, when Jesus preached “Repent and believe the gospel,” they responded, they repented, they believed. When he said “Follow me,” they just dropped everything and followed him. See, they had a response of heart, and every time Christ came with something new, they responded, so they got more. Are you there? And they that don’t have a responsive heart, you even lose the little bit you had. You might have knowledge of Christ, you might have knowledge of the Bible, you even lose that. Are you there? So why does God do this? Because parables have to be revealed by the Spirit, by Jesus himself, and unless you come to him, you can’t understand and be healed and be delivered, because only he and the Holy Ghost can open up the Bible to you.

▶ 54:20 Didn’t Jesus say, “No man comes to me except the Father draw him, and no man comes to the Father but by me”? You can’t skirt, see, the revelation of God’s word, the drawing of his Spirit, by human intellect. And God knows that those that come to him, then they are candidates to be revealed the parables and healed and set free. Are you there? See, the word of God is beyond human intellect. If you keep it in the human intellect, you’re not going to understand that Bible. But when you come to Jesus and humble yourself and say, “God, open my understanding, open my eyes,” he will. I can remember when parables of the New Testament were opened to me. I can remember the day, bam, God came, because I didn’t understand those parables, things didn’t make sense to me, and bam, and once I understood the key parable, I understood them all, and then the New Testament just opened up tremendously, just like the Old Testament, in shadow, laws, and, and, uh, historical events of Israel, just revelation came. Are you there?

▶ 55:49 See, why did he want Isaiah to talk in parables? Because the people must come to God to get the understanding, the knowledge, and that’s why American people don’t have knowledge of the scriptures, is because they don’t humble themselves, come to Jesus, come to God, let the Holy Spirit, let Jesus reveal the truth to them. You see it? Do you see it? Yes. See, that’s why you can’t get understanding just hearing me preach on Sunday morning. You need to get those messages and listen to them, like Mr. Barnes is trying to, been prodding you guys to do. You need to listen to them two or three times. You need to listen to them on your knees. You need to open that book on your knees, and you need to say, “Lord, open my eyes, open my understanding,” and he will. There’s no preacher has the authority and power to open your eyes and give you understanding. They are vehicles, they are vessels. The Holy Ghost is what opens your eyes. Amen. And see, if your heart’s not right, you’re not going to understand, and God’s going to discipline you. Are we here, church? Hallelujah.

▶ 57:10 Now, did you get it? Well, at the beginning you had it all figured out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Isaiah spoke to them in parables so those who were really genuine in God would understand and be healed and delivered, and those not, the religious people, didn’t get it. “Therefore I speak to them in parables, for they see not.” Now he’s quoting Isaiah: “and hearing they do not hear, seeing they do not see, nor do they understand.” And this is where the American church is. In them the prophecy of Isaiah’s fulfilled: “Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, seeing you will see and not perceive, for the hearts of these people have grown dull, their ears are hard of hearing, their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts,” their mind, the heart is the mind, the intellect, “turn,” what’s another word for turn? Repent. “So that I should heal them.”

▶ 58:13 And so God has all these mysteries and all these parables so that people have to come to him. And that’s the message Isaiah had. He had a message of parables, that if people weren’t genuine, they didn’t get the message, and people who were the tenth, they got the message, and they were saved from the captivity.