The Secret of Eternal Life: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:00 This is the fourth promise that will cause you to be a participant in the divine nature. I have added to that check on your sheet: keep the law. Matthew 19:17. I was witnessing to a Southern Baptist this week, and, uh, I love to remind Southern Baptists how their church got started: slavery. It broke away from the traditional Baptist because they said the Bible approves of slavery. He said, “Oh my God,” he said, “I’ve never heard that before.” I said, “You need to do research, you need to know what, you where you’re going, what you need to know things.” Man.

▶ 0:45 And then we had a great discussion, and of course, as you know, fundamentalists and Baptists believe in once saved always saved, who immediately asked me my stand on that, and I says, “If I can show you one person that was saved that later wasn’t saved, it destroys your doctrine,” and I can show you at least five in the Bible, and that got his attention. See, how many, you know, it helps to know the scriptures when you’re going to talk to people. See, it helps to kind of understand their background, where they’re coming from. Hallelujah, anyway. I trust you are witnesses for Jesus Christ every opportunity, you tell people about Jesus and about truths. Anyway, the Bible also says to keep the law. When he said, “What must I do to have eternal life?” Jesus said, “Keep the commandments.” The guy says, “Which ones?” And Jesus laid them out, seven of the Ten Commandments, laid them right out to him. And so we not only got to believe, but we got to, what, obey the word for eternal life. Okay, and then these scriptures are the scriptures I used to lead people to Christ, which I did Friday night.

▶ 2:13 Eternal life is very important, so we will give you the definition of eternal life. Over here in my little cartoon, these guys climb the mountain to the Hindu group, they get up there and there’s dry bones, and the guy behind says, “No, remember, ask him the secret of eternal life.” The guy’s dead. So is Muhammad, so is Buddha, so is the founders of Hindu, there’s many of them, just a bunch of stuff thrown together. So are the witches and sorcerers, so is Joseph Smith. Jesus is alive. Amen. And someone who died and came back to life can tell you exactly about eternal life. Can I hear an amen? There’s no other one. I don’t have to go anywhere.

▶ 3:14 Titus 1:2: “In the hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began.” Before we ever were created, before Adam was created, Eve was created, before the sphere of the earth was created, before there was any water, God promised eternal life. And that’s very important for you young people to know, because this stuff about “before the world began” shows you the Bible is powerful. And let’s talk about that before we talk about eternal life: other things initiated before the world was created. Acts 15:18: “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.” He didn’t have a plan B.

▶ 4:13 He knew exactly what he was wanting to do. You know, these people said, “Well, God messed up, you know, Adam and Eve, you know, they sinned, you had to go to a plan B.” No, no plan B. God had promised eternal life before the world began. He knew his plans in the beginning of the world, and it wasn’t just to create a globe and a sphere and plants and animals. John 17:24: “Father, you loved me before the foundation of the world.” God loved Jesus when? Before the world was made. So Jesus was in God’s plan before anything was done. Now, young people, that is powerful. There is no book on earth that can back up these kinds of things but the Bible. Jesus, the beginning of the creation of God. See, it backs it up. He was loved before the foundation of the world. Jesus was in God’s plan before the foundation of the world. He was going to come, God was going to come live in the flesh, die for the sins of the world, rise again, and build a church in the earth and his kingdom. That was his plan.

▶ 5:30 1 Peter 1:19: “The blood of Christ, who was foreordained before the foundation of the world.” Foreordained, you know, arranged beforehand. God had Jesus dying before he ever said, “I create the heavens and the earth, I create light, I separate the waters.” Before he ever done any of that, Jesus was his plan. Matthew 25:34: “Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” When was the kingdom of God thought of? Before anything was done. God wanted you to enter into the kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, a kingdom of power. Amen. That was foreordained. You see, this book is a powerful book, young people. This isn’t men’s intellect talking, this is God setting a plan out and had the power to carry out the plan from the beginning. Hallelujah. And you need to be reminded of these things. Now, in Revelations 13:8, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” And so I asked people that argue with me, what, did Jesus really die before the foundation of the world was made, his blood shed back there before Adam and Eve were created?

▶ 7:05 No. Well, what’s he talking about? He’s talking about his plan. Jesus had, God had planned for Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, to die before anything else was done. Hallelujah. And so Jesus is the big guy, he’s the important guy. Bible definition of eternal life, John 10:28: “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish,” never die, “neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” John 11:26: “Whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”

▶ 7:54 Now, we know that people die, the body dies. But what is Jesus saying? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob still lived. Okay, Matthew 22:32: “I am the God of Abraham, I am the God of Isaac, I am the God of Jacob.” God is not the God of the dead, but of the what? Living. These guys were still alive. Their bodies were dead, their bodies were in the grave, but they were still alive. See, their spirit did not die because they serve God. Are you there, church? Hallelujah. Now, when Christ comes, that body is going to be reunited with that spirit. Moses and Elijah still lived, Matthew 17:3: on the Mount of Transfiguration there appeared unto them Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus.

▶ 8:58 Moses was taken into heaven without dying. Elijah was taken up without dying. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they all died, but all three of them were what? Still alive up in heaven. So whether we’re raptured or whether we come out of the grave, we’re still, when you die, your body dies, but you live. Yes, that’s eternal life. From the time I was conceived, [unclear] in the womb, I was destined for eternity. Wow. So mothers better take care of that baby in that womb; that is a child destined to live with Christ for eternity. Hallelujah. You young people need to understand you were born into eternity.

▶ 10:03 You’re going to live forever one way or another. It isn’t like the atheist and the humanist say, you just go to the grave and life’s over. Uh-uh, honey, you got to stand before a judge that’s going to decide where you spend eternity that you were born into. Hallelujah, that is eternal life. Another definition of eternal life, John 17:3: “This is eternal life, that they might know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,” that they might, what? Know God and know Jesus. And this is what I was telling the Southern Baptist guy. No one ever told me I could know God. My parents took me to church, but I never heard any preaching about knowing God.

▶ 11:02 You can actually know God, or I missed it. One, I said, but when I went to that altar call at that Assembly of God church and asked Christ to forgive me my sins, I had an encounter with God. I go, “My gosh, this thing is real, God is real.” See, God came to take away my sin, it wasn’t some intellectual thing, it was a spiritual thing. And I went up to the altar on the scientific method; I finally decided, “I’m just going to go up and prove if this thing is real or not real,” and lo and behold, God was real. Next week I was water baptized, and the week after I got baptized in the Holy Ghost, and wow, did I know God was real. Wow, the power of his love was just tremendous. No one ever told me that. If they had told me that, I’d probably have been saved as a teenager. I didn’t get saved till I was 20, because I never seen anybody really hanging in there and living a Christian life.

▶ 12:07 I just thought it was just, you know, believe and hang on and hope for the best until the end, because the church was just a bunch of mixed-up people, inconsistent, and I didn’t want that. And then I found Jesus was real, and folks, you have been promised the promise to know him. Amen. Not just hear about him, but encounter him, know him; he’s a real person. Now, let’s elaborate on this a little bit. We’ve showed you in lessons recently that by this you know that you know him, if you keep his commandments. Okay, we already taught you on that.

▶ 12:58 We’ve showed you that people can do miracles, preach the gospel, cast out demons, and not know him. Jesus said, “I never knew you.” These people that prophesied, preached the gospel, did miracles, they said, “Lord, we did all this in your name.” See, they used his name, but they didn’t know him. He said, “I never knew you, depart from me, I never knew you.” See, eternal life is not only living forever, but it is knowing Jesus. You can’t have one without the other. I mean, you can have eternal life, you’re going to live forever, it’s just whether it’s in the lake of fire or heaven, and the lake of fire in the Bible is death. You say, so you do die, a spiritual death, if you don’t follow Christ. Are you with me? You understand? Now, we’re going to elaborate on this, knowing God. All right, so get your ears open, we’re going on a roller coaster ride.

▶ 14:07 Here, John 10:1: “He who doesn’t enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” Now, in this parable Christ is going to list seven people that come in to the sheepfold. Okay, he’s going to list seven people that come into the sheepfold. All right, the sheepfold is the church, the called-out ones. The church is very important. The church is not the Baptist, it’s not the Independent like us, it’s not the Catholics.

▶ 14:51 The church is the body of Christ, the called-out ones, and when they meet together, that’s when they are the church, when they assemble together. All right, so it’s important for us to assemble. Now, how many people is he going to talk about coming into the church? Seven. All right, the first one is a thief. He starts out with a thief; they don’t enter the sheepfold by the door, they climb up some other way, as a thief. Okay, all they want is money, possessions, sex, you know, people come in to look for the opposite sex to take out of the church so they can have sex with them. I mean, I’ve been a pastor of a church, a leader of a church, for years, and, man, that’s one of the big things. These people come in, they want to get your women, they want to get your men, they’re not interested in getting Christ, or they want money, they want handouts, they want possessions.

▶ 15:57 You see, they’re not interested in the [unclear] life, they want somebody to get intoxicated with. These are thieves; they come to rob the church. You know, they don’t want to repent or change, they just want what they can get from church members, mainly money, any kind of possession. They’ll get you to give them a car, they’ll get you to do all kinds of things. These are thieves, all right. They don’t come to give, they come to get. Judas was a thief. He did miracles, he preached the gospel, people were saved in his ministry, and, but he was a thief, and he betrayed Christ. See, he never knew Jesus.

▶ 16:53 He knew the message, but he didn’t know Jesus. In Jesus’s life [unclear]. Hebrews says, once you taste of the heavenly gift, been partakers of the Holy Ghost and so forth, you fall away, it’s impossible to come back, because you got to crucify Christ again, you got to admit you were wrong, you got to go back to the cross, and they don’t want to admit they were wrong, they want to say, “I’m still saved, I’m still a believer.” You see, because nothing is impossible with God, it’s their problem. Hallelujah. And the Baptist boy just looked at me like, “Where did you get this stuff?” I said, “Your problem, sir, is you just listen to your circle, your inner circles, all you ever hear, so they keep telling you the same thing over and over. You never go out to find somebody else’s view on these truths to challenge you and get you to dig.”

▶ 17:59 I said, “You need to branch out.” Could that be an amen? We need to hear. You can’t honestly say what people say unless you go and find out what their view is, and then you might change your view. Verse 2: “He who enters by the door is the shepherd.” So the second person is the shepherd, and that is Jesus. All right, “to him the doorkeeper opens, the sheep hear the shepherd’s voice,” Jesus’s voice, “he calls his own sheep by name.” That’s how personal he knows you. He knows you as an individual, “and he leads them out, and the sheep follow.” Who, the thief or the shepherd?

▶ 18:54 The shepherd. Only people that don’t know the shepherd follow the thief. The doorkeeper is a servant. Okay, the sheep don’t belong to him, he’s put there by the owner of the sheep to guard the gate. Let me give you an illustration. 1 Samuel 17:34: David said to Saul, “Your servant kept his father’s sheep, and there came a lion and a bear and took a lamb out of the flock, and I went out after him, smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth.” You see, he was a gatekeeper, he was a doorkeeper.

▶ 19:48 The sheep didn’t belong to David, he was a delegated shepherd, but he took care of the sheep like they belonged to him, like the owner told him to take care of. We ministers, us servants, whether you’re a pastor or just a servant in the congregation, you don’t have a right to treat the sheep any different than the way the Father says to treat them. Wow. And not only that, you will put your life on the line to protect that sheep. Hallelujah. Now, David didn’t get paid to do that, he was a member of the family. Are you a member of the family of God? Yeah. What are you waiting on?

▶ 20:48 Fall in love with the sheep, put your life on the line for the sheep. You don’t have to give money to be a minister in God’s house; I ministered for years before they ever paid me. Are you there? Rachel: I believe in women pastors, and here’s one of the reasons. Rachel came with her father’s sheep. Who did the sheep belong to? The father. What was Rachel? A doorkeeper, a gatekeeper, a delegated shepherd.

▶ 21:36 She kept the sheep, and I would rather have a woman pastor any day, that’s a genuine woman, female pastor, than a man that isn’t genuine. Amen. What I need is a shepherd. I need someone who cares for me, someone that will instruct me, someone will lay down their life for me, spend time with me. I need a shepherd to grow. Hallelujah. And so this gatekeeper is a very important, very important person in the body of Christ, and he’s there to make sure they go through the gate. All right, the gate’s very important. In Luke 16:11, “If you’re not faithful in that which belongs to another,” if you’re not faithful in that which belongs to someone else, who do the sheep belong to? God.

▶ 22:40 If you can’t be loyal and faithful and reliable to God’s sheep, who will give you the true riches? Who will give you what’s your own? Your own is the promise of the true riches, but your involvement with his sheep is what will open up the true riches of wisdom and love and knowledge and understanding. Are you there? Man, church, that’s good stuff. You ought to be excited that you’re getting cut up today. Do you understand that principle?

▶ 23:26 If you don’t get concerned about other people, then God has no obligation to give you the true riches, and that’s a powerful scripture, and I can back it up with other scriptures, but I’m going to try not to be long-winded today. All right, let us continue. Elaboration: verse 5, “Yet they will by no means follow a stranger.” So here we have the fourth person, the stranger. The stranger, man. “They will flee from the stranger, for they don’t know the voice of strangers.” Now, we know what a stranger is in the natural: it’s someone from a different location, a different culture, a different lifestyle, a different governmental system, and so forth. And that’s the way it is in the kingdom.

▶ 24:27 See, God has a governmental system, God has a cultural system, a lifestyle. God has a kingdom of light, all right. A stranger is from the kingdom of darkness. See, a stranger lives a sinful lifestyle. A stranger believes in a government that is different from the Bible, and the Bible’s very strong on government. Government is there to protect us from invaders, protect us from criminals. Government is not there to give us welfare not to work. Government is there to make sure jobs are freely available and the business people do it honestly; that’s what the government is for in the Bible, and Christians have to stand up for biblical government. Can I hear an amen?

▶ 25:48 You see, a biblical government praises the right-doer and punishes to correct the wrongdoer, yes, because God’s always out to correct the wrongdoer. He’s a restorer, he’s a savior, he’s a deliverer. I don’t care how bad your sin is, and I don’t care how many times you’ve done it, this Jesus cleanses from sin, washes it away, delivers and sets you free. If you’re once a saved person and you went backwards, he is there to restore you, and I’ve seen many Christians restored in my 40 years simply because someone told them that Jesus was the restorer of paths to dwell in.

▶ 26:42 Yes, we mess up our life, but he will restore you like an old T-model Ford that was in the junkyard and somebody restores it. It brings it back to its original condition, even though it’s been outdated for decades, and that’s what Jesus will do for you. He will restore you, Christians. Amen. And that’s the message, that’s what we got to offer people. We can offer them restoration, we can offer them salvation, we can offer them eternal life, we can offer them that they can know God, God will work with them. We can offer this because that’s what the Bible offers. Amen, church. But we got to get in love with the sheep, and that means the black sheep that come in. I’m not talking about race, I’m talking about sin. You can’t get panicky because drug addicts and prostitutes and all that come into the church.

▶ 27:38 They’re supposed to come into the church, they’re supposed to get saved, they’re supposed to get taught, and they’re supposed to be treated with respect and love. Wow, that was good. And that’s what these people need, they need respect, they need to be appreciated and wanted. So you got to look beyond the sin, don’t you? Am I talking to the right group this morning? Hallelujah. Okay, we don’t follow strangers. The kingdom, as I said, the lifestyle, the government, the religion, and even finances. You know, the Bible says if you don’t work, you don’t eat. I don’t know where these Christians get off of approving a poverty program that doesn’t require the people to do something to get it, because in the Bible the poor person had to beg, he had to do something. Here, he had to go to the field and reap the corners of the field, he had to do something.

▶ 28:51 Are you there? And it sounds really Christian to just give away things, but if you want people to get some self-esteem, give them something to do, because a real person wants to work, they want to get something by their own efforts. Amen. Hallelujah. And guess what verse 6 says: “They didn’t understand the things which he spoke to them.” How many of you ever read the Bible, didn’t understand the things you read? Oh yeah, I’ll raise up two hands. Why? And maybe you heard a sermon and other people are going, “Wow, hallelujah, amen,” and you’re over there going, “What?” Yeah, they didn’t understand. So what did Jesus do? He repeats it. I mean, oh, we got to keep hearing it. Teach, do review; review was my model in school, and it would finally get through to the kids, and it’s the way it is in church, you got to just keep teaching and then get them applying it and keep teaching before they ever get it in them.

▶ 30:04 All right, and these are the big apostles, and they didn’t understand. So Jesus starts teaching them. Now, I have a sheepfold here; most sheepfolds were made out of stone, okay, with one gate, but out in the wilderness or when they were out away from town or so forth, they could build a quick one out of wood, but it always had one gate, always what? One gate. All right, now Jesus said, “I am the door of the sheep.” Now Peter’s going, “Duh, I would have, I would have got that if you’d have just waited another day or two, I would have got it.” “I am the door of the sheep.” So the door is Jesus, the door is eternal life, the door is knowing Jesus and God.

▶ 30:58 And that is the only way you can come into the kingdom of God, into eternal life, is through Jesus Christ. These people are wrong when they say the Muslims, the Hindus, and all that all lead to the same God. That is a lie according to the scriptures, because the scripture says there is how many doors? One. And who is the door? Jesus. It’s very clear, and as a servant of God I am obligated to lead people to that one door. Religion tries to do it through human efforts; I found out as a young Christian that doesn’t work. Jesus is what works, and they have to respond to him, they have to come to him, but he works. Hallelujah. I am the messenger, he is the mighty one. Even in the tabernacle, this is Moses’s tabernacle, there is how many gates? One gate. If you wanted to go into the Holy of Holies, how many gates?

▶ 32:04 One gate. Jesus is the way in, the only way in. Not Muhammad, not Joseph Smith, not some Hindu guru. “If anyone enters by me, he will be” what? Saved. You joining Mountainside doesn’t do beans for you. You joining Jesus is powerful, and the only power any church has, including Mountainside, is Jesus bringing people to him and letting Jesus work in their life. He’s the shepherd.

▶ 33:03 I am a delegated pastor, that is true, but I’m a delegated servant, and so are you. Jesus is the real shepherd. “He’ll go in and out and find pasture.” How many, you know, you got to go home and you still got to be able to eat and drink of the spiritual things of God, ain’t that right? You can’t just depend on a church service. “The thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy, but the sheep do not hear them. I am come that they may have life, and life more abundantly.” Okay, and part of that life is to, what, know God and Jesus Christ. Wow. And I met a lot of thieves when I, especially when you’re a young Christian and you’re vulnerable, there’s a lot of thieves in the church, they really are.

▶ 34:06 Man, no one ever taught me this stuff. Man, I thought everybody in the church was just holy, righteous, and true, and they weren’t. God had to open my eyes to the reality of the church. “I am the good shepherd who gives his life for the sheep.” You can always tell a real servant: they sacrifice their time, they sacrifice their money for the sheep, to extend the kingdom. They don’t need a sign over them saying “I’m a mature Christian”; their actions show the maturity. They put the time in, they seek God in the word so that when they are with people they have something to say.

▶ 35:03 Now, that was good. Hallelujah. They have something to give. That’s how you tell a real dedicated servant. See who’s washing the dishes, who was cooking the food Friday, who’s cleaned up afterward, who, yeah, who just came and ran home. Are you there, church? Hallelujah. Tell me, I know you guys are a very intelligent group. Who [unclear] sheep? Sheep.

▶ 36:00 It’s not the shepherd, it’s not the gatekeeper, [unclear] sheep. Sheep. Where is the sheep? Now, don’t get me wrong, when I walk down from this pulpit I am a sheep, and I have, and my eyes are on to encourage people, share the word with them. I told this woman I was talking to yesterday who thought she had a demon, first question, I said, “I’m going to ask you a series of questions, you need to answer me honestly. I said, how long have you been a Christian?” “A year and a half.” I said, “What church did you get saved in?” They told me the church, so I knew it wasn’t the church’s source of demons, because some churches, they build, they build up demons, and when you promote demons, they actually show up.

▶ 37:08 I could get demons here in about two minutes. All I got to do is start exalting them, they love it. So I said, “Where, where did you first hear of demons?” “When I was 8 years old.” I said, “Well, who told you?” “My mom.” I said, “Did she tell you from the Bible or she tell you from another source?” She said, “Another source.” I said, “What was that source?” “Witchcraft.” I, oh hallelujah, Mama’s teaching witchcraft in the home. So anyway, this woman is fantasizing about having a demon. I said, “Did you accept Christ into your life back there in that church?” “Yes, I did.” I says, “How much power does Jesus have?” She says, “Infinite.” I said, “You are right, all the power in heaven and earth. Now tell me how a demon can overpower Christ and come into your life.” I said, “You did nothing but fabricate this, think it up, make it up, you [unclear] it up, you acted it out, it’s not a demon at all, and the truth will set you free, and I’m giving you the truth to set you free.”

▶ 38:22 And she hung up, because what they want is some serious “oh Lord, deliver from the de[unclear].” They want that attention, they don’t give it to her. They got to come to Christ just like I do, and you do. Are you there? Yeah, as you can tell, I have a very active week, and I always found it’s easier to contact a real demon because I have the authorities in the name of Christ to cast it out, but when they don’t have a real demon, if it’s drugs or if it’s just a fleshly ritual they’re going through, they don’t want to embrace the truth, and that’s the only thing can set them free is the truth. I can’t, I’m not going to fake some prayer over them when they just need to honor a scripture. Amen.

▶ 39:19 Not going to feed into their, we feel real spiritual when we [unclear] in the name of Jesus, and we shake and we shake them, we feel real spiritual, but it’s the truth that sets you free. Now, that was good. Hallelujah. Now we come to the hireling. A hireling is one that does it for money, he’s not the shepherd, just like the gatekeeper, sheep don’t belong to him. He doesn’t own the sheep, he doesn’t even care about the sheep, he only wants the paycheck. And how, you know, in America we got a lot of hirelings in the church, they’re looking for a paycheck and a big one. Yeah, they don’t really care about the sheep, they just put on big shows and big demonstrations and big elaborate programs to, you know, entice the people looking for God, and they’re not interested in them, they’re not going to lay down their life for the sheep.

▶ 40:29 They’re not going to give up their million-dollar home to start that orphanage, they want you to give up your $30,000 home to start that orphanage, that’s a fact. Yeah, they don’t want to give up their Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow car, because nothing’s too good for the man of God. They want to get you to give up your VW Bug to reach people through television. And see, the sheep know the master’s voice, and the sheep know this is not the master’s voice. Blind people follow blind people. He sees the wolf coming. Now we have the hireling, a paid worker, doesn’t care, and leaves the sheep when he sees the wolf coming, and now we got a wolf.

▶ 41:30 And we know the wolf here catches the sheep and scatters the sheep, all right. We know in Matthew 7:15, false prophets, pretenders, liars, come to you in sheep’s clothing; false prophets, the wolves are pretenders, they’re false prophets, they come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves, robbing wolves. Matthew 24:11: “False prophets shall arise and deceive many.” You know, we’re so busy trying to figure out the second coming that we fail to focus on that before he comes, a lot of false prophets are going to come and try to take the sheep away, all right. They don’t have any interest in the sheep.

▶ 42:31 They will show signs and wonders, Matthew 24, insomuch that if it were possible they’d deceive the very elect, and this in the Pentecostal charismatic circles, we got them. Miracles do happen in third world countries and even here and all that, and these tongue-talking, and I’m just going to tell it like it is, these tongue-talking wolves in sheep’s clothing, even though God does an actual miracle, does not approve of their lifestyle. They are wolves, they look like sheep, but they’re not sheep. I’m going to show you the difference here in a minute.

▶ 43:17 One of them’s been on the screen for the last five scenes, all right. Is this the scripture? Yeah, us Pentecostals, we got to own up to our problems, we can’t just hide our head in the sand, and, you know, we got to confront these things, because we want a pure, real revival, move of God in America. Amen. Yeah. Now let me ask you this: where does the, where does the hireling go when he sees the wolf coming? He goes to the wolf. Where did Judas go when he betrayed Christ? Yeah, to the religious people that hated Christ, to the people that were robbing the leaders, that were robbing the Jews of their finances and their eternal life and everything else.

▶ 44:29 See, the wolf does it in style. So the hireling sees more money he can get on staff over there, over here he’s making $2,000 a month, he’s taking care of people he don’t even care about, man, the wolf comes along and suddenly he’s making 10,000 a month. Are you there? Am I right? Yes. Judas betrayed Christ for how much? Money. 30 pieces of silver, 40 shackles of shame was the price paid for Jesus on the cross, he was slain, they beat him and mocked him. You see, it was money. What’s the thief interested in? Money. What’s the wolf interested in? Money. Do they really care about the sheep? No, they’ll preach fuzzy doctrines and fuzzy messages so that they keep the money rolling in, and the hireling will go to the next place. That’s why these denominations that have you go from, you know, the little church and prove yourself, then you go to a medium-sized church and you prove yourself, and you go to big church. In the Bible, a shepherd stuck with the sheep.

▶ 46:04 A real minister, a real elder, will stick with the sheep no matter what happens in that sheepfold, he will stick with the sheep because he cares for the sheep, and that’s how you separate real ministers from [unclear]. And it’s all here in this parable, are you seeing it? Okay, there’s the big bad wolf. Now, if he looked like that we would recognize him. The problem is he’s been on the screen all through this thing right here.

▶ 46:58 See, his ears are different because he don’t hear right. His eyes are different, see, there on the side, because he don’t see clearly, he sees his own way. The mouth is different, see the mouth, because he don’t speak right either. But a sheep has an ear to hear the shepherd’s voice, he has eyes to recognize and follow the leading of the shepherd, and he has a mouth to repeat what the shepherd said.

▶ 47:52 The rest of this sheep, this guy looks like a sheep; you would never know him except the way he talks, the way he hears, and the way he sees. Amen. Church. And he’s out to get what he can for, he’s not out to get them in a prayer meeting where they really touch God, he’s not out to get them in a real worship meeting where they really get in the presence of God and take on the nature of God, he’s not interested in that stuff, he’s not interested in real truth, telling the people what sin is and that Christ is deliverer and you can change your homosexual lifestyle, you can be forgiven for aborting that child, you can be forgiven, the guilt can be erased. You’re not interested in that stuff. Hallelujah.

▶ 49:00 And see, we got to decide what kind of church we’re going to be. See, now you can see this guy clearly, he’s a wolf. There’s no Satan or demon in this list of seven, it is people that come to steal, come to get what they want, come with a different government, come with a different culture, come from a different kingdom. “If anyone enters by me, he will be saved, he will go in and out and find pasture.” I got distracted by the “saved” here and I forgot to point out, anyone can. Anyone come to Christ? Yeah. This predestination thing is a bunch of, that’s a lie from hell. Anyone that comes to this door, anyone who comes through Jesus Christ, the gate, can be saved. Ain’t no predestination that, you know, you’re predestined to go to hell and you’re predestined to, you know, uh, accept Christ no matter what you do in life, you’re going to fulfill your destiny. That does not back up the scriptures. Anyone who comes through Christ can what? Be saved. And who is the Savior? Jesus Christ.

▶ 50:29 He is the door, he is the shepherd, and if you want to know the truth, he’s the wall around the pen. If you want to get deep into this, he’s everything. You see, he’s the stone that the builders rejected, he is that wall of salvation that Isaiah talked about, Jesus Christ. Amen. And there’s nobody else that can save you, deliver you, restore you, but him, and I am here to tell you, sheep, we can invite people to Jesus and Jesus will back it up and come to them and change them. That is their hope. Amen. And remember, the scripture says there’s 10,000 teachers of Jesus, you know, all of us can share Jesus, there’s not many fathers, but all of us can share Jesus, all of us can tell them the great news of Jesus Christ.

▶ 51:25 Amen. Here is the knowing, the eternal life: “I am the good shepherd, and I know my sheep, and I am known by my own, as the Father knows me, even so I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep. Other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I must bring, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd.” How many flocks are there? One. You can call yourself a Baptist, a Pentecostal, a charismatic, a Catholic, but that is just human tags outside the building.

▶ 52:16 You better be a member of that one body. Amen, that one church, and it doesn’t matter what the tag on the building is, and there’s one shepherd. How many shepherds? One. Savior. Amen. One Lord. Do you know him this morning?