Two Pillars of Christianity

I've been so blessed to be here. I'm going to read to you tonight from Romans chapter 6 and verse 23. I want to talk to you about the two pillars of Christianity.

I believe God has given, I know this is an evangelistic night, all of them are, but when particular emphases are placed upon that, there have to be, and I felt much and prayed much coming up here after I learned that I was to have the privilege of preaching here to you tonight. So here in Romans chapter 6 verse 23, Father anoint the reading, preaching, hearing of the word of God. Oh God, help us tonight to will to do the will of God.

Our lives must be that as we come absolute obedience to what we hear, open us up to hear, to receive and do in the name of Jesus. This very short verse, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. Now I read somewhere that death is fallen out of correspondence with the environment.

That's one of the definitions of death given by the biologists, but how true that is in the spiritual realm. You know, if a man goes blind, then he has died to part of our environment, all of sight, a person that's in death, they are dead to a part of the environment. The sound world is dead to them.

When Adam sinned against God, he fell out of his environment. We have to understand what the fall was before we can ever recognize the greatness of redemption. In that fall, man fell out of the environment.

He fell out of paradise. He fell out. His environment was God and he fell out of that.

And the tragedy was he carried the whole of the human race with him. All of us wind up in Adam. We're all, every human in this room and every human that's ever graced this planet or will grace this planet was in Adam.

So it's no need to look at each other with Askins. We all came from the same place. Some of us raised in one part of a world that caused our skins may be a little darker than others, but all of us came from the same source.

All of us was in Adam that awful day that he ate of that wrong tree and all of us died toward God. We fell out with Adam of the environment with God. There's no amount of religion, no amount of education.

You cannot perfume, cologne the old man and make him right. He is forever lost. He fell out.

God drove him from that garden representing the presence of God, put a cherubim and a flaming sword at the gate that said your kind can never come back here. Impossible for that nature ever to approach this God again. This, this is the key.

In the fall, Adam fell out. He took all of us with Now the whole of Christian religion stands upon two great pillars. Number one, the greatness of the fall and the other, the greatness of redemption.

Until we understand where we fell from and what we become in that fall, then we can never appreciate redemption and will bring in a form and modes of religion and lead a man or a woman to believe that just going to church. We do not believe in Darwinian evolution. I can tell you the modern Pentecostal church has come to believe in a spiritual evolution.

Somehow they believe if you go to church long enough, hear enough Bible that somewhere along the road you become a Christian. But the law of Biogenesis is that life only comes from life. There is no, there is no life apart from life and every single life on this planet produces after its own kind.

It's impossible for the God life to produce what's out there without God tonight and it's impossible for that life out there to produce the life that God gave me 59 years ago. There has to come a realization as what happened to us. All the reasons of deep humility, of penance, self-denial lie in the knowledge of these great truths.

Every single thing about the Bible or every bit until these two truths, the greatness of the fall and the greatness of redemption are opened up to our minds for the reception of divine light. All conversions are superficial. I made a statement in a message that I believe, I know there's exceptions to the rule where a man of God preaches a gospel, then the people are going to come to know God.

I made a statement that I believe that 85% of the people in the modern Pentecostal church have never been born again. That was my statement. I said they've never been born again because they have no real desire for the spiritual.

This is not their, this is not their desire. They do not have a desire for the spiritual. We've come to a place that discipleship is an hour in church on a Sunday morning.

This is what we've come to. What a day, what a sadness of the time. All of this says it's simply because we don't understand what I want to tell you tonight.

In the fall of man, it was the life of God that was lost. God walked with Adam, had this life in him or there'd be nothing to regain. God walked with him, but in that fall, he lost the holy life of God.

And in that loss, he took on inwardly the nature of the devil. That's what? Outwardly, the nature of a beast. That's the reason you got to have multiplied thousands of police officers in this city.

You got to have jails to put him in because that's his nature. That's what he is. Leave him without a restraint and there's no bottom to that depravity.

That is the truth of God's word. In the fall, the hellish nature of fallen man subsists in four elements, covetousness, pride, envy and anger. That is his life.

I don't care who he is, everything. We talk about separation. I've made a study recently, very in depth of Abraham's life, how that that man, his failures of his life could become the friend of God.

We read the Bible and because there's not that long period of time given to us, we read Abraham got up and left, went to where he was going. But we don't realize that 15 years of rebellion, he never got into that land till he buried his father. I think that's the type of the flesh, but just the same, he never crossed in.

When he got there, there is a famine in the land and he went to Egypt. That's the opposite of faith. He lied down there and said, Sarah wasn't his wife, it's his sister.

But out of all of that, he become a friend of God and no human ever lived on this earth outside of Christ as a man that has more people to claim him than Abraham. But all of God's working within three elements of his life, one separation, the other holiness and the other obedience. That makes up a human life.

Without those three, and I don't think you can change the order, that is what makes it up. Separation. We've made it, I don't drink coffee, I don't smoke cigarettes, I don't drink alcohol, neither do I. But anytime I move, for me and not for God, I'm as whirly as a man on a bar stool.

I have a young couple about to leave the church. I mean, they're going to move away. His job, they offered him a much better position.

I said to them, young people, have you checked out the spiritual? Where are you going? It's difficult to find a church, ladies and gentlemen, like this one. I can tell you, we're in a world, just before the Wesleyan revival broke out, the man that wrote the commentaries on law said, I've searched London in vain, looking for a gospel church. I can tell you, you can search Houston almost in vain, without finding a gospel church.

You understand? This, you know, look, separation is a separation unto God, that every choice I made, they hadn't looked. They went through four churches. Now they find one that's tolerable.

I said, you're as whirly as a man on a bar stool, because you're not moving for God. You're not considered God. Every movement you're making is that you're going to have a better life.

That is whirliness. Separation means that if God wants me here, then here I'm going to be. Doesn't matter.

Preachers change churches every two years, looking for a bigger salary, looking for a bigger parsonage. That's his world, is a man that's drunk out there. His life is God's life.

I'm birthed of God. He bought me body, soul, spirit. I tell this body where to go.

I tell it what to eat. I tell it what to look at. I tell it what to say.

This is God's purpose for a life. He must possess that life. Abraham, Abraham's life was made up of those three things, separated, holiness, and obedience to God.

If you don't do what he tells you, you believe absolutely nothing. The hellish nature of fallen man is these four elements. Now these four elements, which nourish, keep up the life of the fallen man, are also the elements of hell in which demons dwell.

Those things, if we can just come listen to them, these devils can no more exist outside of these four elements of covetousness, pride, envy, and anger than a fish can exist outside of water. They just cannot live. And that human being, without God, every single move of his life is for himself only.

It is a covetous, selfish, envious, anger spirit that rules him in every moment of his life. When man lost the life of God, did he become a dark root of self that has these four elements of hell in it? And it's by having these elements in it, his reason demons can so communicate with him. It's because of these things.

This is in a man. It's not out there. I don't sin because of temptation.

If I'm a sinner, that man out there, rather, without God, it's because of what he is. It's a seed of the serpent on the inside. After the fall, that makes you what you are.

And no religion can lift you from that, folks. There's no amount of Sunday school learning. You must be born again.

Man must have a new nature. And because this truth has not been preached in its reality, it's been lost today on the mind. We've got a user-friendly, purpose-driven, secret-sensitive, every kind of a situation, trying to bring man to a place that he cannot go.

You die, Christ lives. This is the answer. This is what it's all about.

Every motion in the element of envy and wrath empowers the devil to touch your life. That's the reason God said, don't let the sun go down on that anger. Because if you allow it, you have opened up the door for that hellish spirit to torment.

A man is never possessed until those demons touch that spirit. But any one of these, unforgiveness, envy, strife, malice, coming out of these four, give the devil a beachhead in your flesh where he's attempting to touch that spirit. The old man is a dark, fallen nature.

He not just made a mistake, Adam become an altogether different person. When Adam fell, he fell out of fellowship with God. His spirit was so violated, it sank down in subjection to his soul, and he become an altogether different man.

It wasn't forgiveness. He must be born again. That nature can never be redeemed.

It's because of the fall and the greatness of that fall. God created man in his own image. When God came into that garden, he could see mirrored in that man, Adam, the image of himself, father, son, and Holy Spirit.

That was how we were created. That's how Adam was. That's what he fell from.

In that man, God could see mirrored all of himself. But in the fall, that was lost. I said, that was lost.

And with the loss of that holy life of God came this awful, devilish, hellish thing. Man's a beast. I can tell you if parents don't raise them right.

We're in a time of Isaiah, when children rule their parents, and you don't have to wonder why they're wild. Why they do. You listen.

You don't have to teach that baby to tell the truth. You got to teach him not to lie. He's born lost, and that's the way he's going unless you put restraints on him.

I said, unless you put restraints. And in this generation, when parents don't know what to do with their children, I don't wonder that they're shooting each other out there on the street. I read the newspaper in one of the major newspapers on an airplane.

I don't know where the place was. On the same page, a man raped his little six-month-old baby. That's what he said.

And on the same page, an 18-year-old boy raped an 85-year-old woman. That's demonic. That's bestial.

Make no mistake about it. There is no death that will not go. Just read the newspaper.

That's the nature that man become when he fell from God. That's the reason, you understand, that dark spirit. Every end time, and there's been many end times, Christ has come to his church and not for it.

But every end time is marked by the same. Increased perversion, homosexuality becomes rampant, a worship of sports always. I'm not up here to decline or declaim.

I'm just telling you, it's always been an entertainment, entertainment. The whole nation believes that if it could just collapse in a paroxysm of laughter, everything would be all right. You know what that is? See, that dark spirit, in that fall, that man become exactly what those angels when they fell.

And the only light of that human is the sun. In that flesh and blood, there's no light in him. It's the light of the sun.

And the only way he keeps his sanity is by modes of religion and constantly have to be entertained. Simply because he knows when he leaves that body, it's darker than midnight. That's the reason demons said, why have you come to torment us before our time? They'd rather live in hogs than be out there in that dark.

That's where it's at. That human spirit is the same, ladies and gentlemen. Make no mistake about it.

That's what those angels come when they fell. That's what man became, but now housed in this body. Listen, you and I have the light and life of God.

When we leave here, it'll grow brighter. This body is hindering that light, but that's all the light that he has. That's the reason he has to be entertained.

He has to have modes of religion and the world is full of it today because the further we get away from this God, the darker, the darker, the darker it gets. It is a diabolical nature only softened with flesh and blood, quieted and comforted by the light of the sun. But he can only see the outward images of things.

He cannot see beyond that veil, that lost person, that man without God. I was 27 years without God. I never knew I was insane until I was born again.

God said it's not right. God said he gave us a sound mind. Amen.

I got the testimony out of this choir. You know you was insane. Amen.

You thought shooting that needle in your arm was making you happy. I'm drunk. Come in one night, 10 yards of barbed wire on the back of my car.

I've run over somebody's fence. I don't know who it is. Don't know who I may have killed.

Think that's a good time. Gentlemen, that's insanity. I didn't know that till I was birthed of God.

Hallelujah to God. Once I was born, born, born of God. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. A new creature. I said a new creature.

I needed no halfway house. No, no. I went in there drunk at that altar that night.

I found this Christ. I walked out the new creature in God and 59 years later I still walk with this God. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. Thank God for this great salvation. There's nothing on earth like being born again.

I can tell you I died and I was raised. My little boy was born. My first child.

I looked at him. He was born October the 14th, 1948. He was born.

I looked at him. I grew up in a world that they taught the boys wrong to weep. That's what my dad taught.

They taught all of it. If you stump your toe, bite your tongue. Don't cry.

Girls cry. Boys don't. Well, it's wrong, but that's the way we were raised.

But when I looked at that boy, I wept. You know why? I did not want him to be what I am. I did not.

My wife said to me, once you've got more, you have got more willpower than any man ever met in my life. I said, how's that? Said, you quit drinking five times last week. Amen.

Yes, sir. You dropped it right now. Amen.

I can tell you I didn't want to be what I was, but I couldn't change it. I'd turn over the leaf. It's this dirty pasture on the other side.

They were nothing about me good. And I wept. But you know, that little fellow was born in October, January of that next year, 1949.

I met the Christ. I knew now he must be like me. I said, he must be like me.

I walk with God. My son will walk with God. Amen.

Our home was a church. It wasn't somewhere we went, ladies and gentlemen. We had an altar in our house.

We walk with God. They knew what God was because God became our life. That's a new creature.

It's not a religious somebody. Not going to church once a week. It's more than him.

That old man may be a historian, a poet, or a politician, but in spite of these trappings and endowments, he's wholly shut up in a dark prison of selfishness. That's what he is. It will come out, ladies and gentlemen.

You miss that rapture. That good-natured neighbor of yours won't be so good-natured anymore. Everything will change without the restraint of the Holy Spirit.

One of the great messages I ever heard in 59 years of listening, Pastor Conlon preached it a couple of years ago in the convention, closed it out with this thought that you'll never know how much hell you've permitted in your neighborhood because you were there. A righteous man, a righteous woman. You don't know what's been stopped, but when that restraint is gone, if you think it's bad in New York, Washington, Houston tonight, let us leave here, folks.

It will be a hell upon this earth because that's the only nature will be without any restraints whatsoever. Amen. The old man, he's an animal full of earthly sensual passions and tempers and can only favor such things that gratify that nature.

Everything, every decision he makes, he wants good children because he don't want him to disgrace him. It's not that he wants them for God, but he's just selfish. He don't want those children to get out there and do something to disgrace the family.

I know that love, but I'm talking about a love of God where our whole desire is that God Almighty be honored in our lives, and that is the attitude of a new creature. Absolutely and totally. This Bible said that the only work of Christ was to do the will of God.

That worked out in miracles. It worked out in his death, but the whole thing, I come to do thy will, O God. Now being born again, filled with the Holy Spirit, then that glorified Christ has come to live in me by the Spirit, and as I walk in the Holy Ghost, then the only will of my life is to do the will of God.

You know, Matthew 28, 18, it says, Jesus said, all power in heaven and earth, all, A-double-L, that's finished. All has been given unto me. Then in Acts chapter 1, verse 8, he said, you shall receive power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you.

It isn't the power I received. I received a person who is the power, and as I let that person live, then that power functions. It's a person, all powers in him, and it's only as I learn to live, to walk in the Spirit of God that that person lives.

Here and only here, listen, lies the true distinction between the old and the new than the plain reason why the life of one is death to the other. Amen. You let that self rise up, it's death.

That means that life will not be there, but if I walk in the Spirit, it's death to the old. In this difference between the old man and the new man, we can see clear and solid ground of difference between what is called a historical and superficial faith, which is nothing more than Christian atheism. You hear me? A man's not born again.

He's been lied to by that church to make him believe he's well. No, no, this is a changed life, and if your life didn't change, then you have not been born again. You have not.

That cannot save the soul. It leaves it a slave to sin, living a real faith, bringing unto, is to bring in a new creature in Christ. But the church is full of people that simply believe.

They go to church, and they've been made to believe. They've been brought down, go through a little Roman road or some kind of a prayer. Let me tell you something, folks, confessing with your mouth is what you do, but believing with that heart is a conviction.

That's not just a matter. I say I believe. That means a commitment of my life.

If I believe on that Lord Jesus Christ, then that Lord Jesus Christ becomes my Lord as I walk with him. The only remedy, ladies and gentlemen, have that nature change. You're here tonight.

You're a religious man or woman, but you still love what you used to love. You're not born again. You may have been convicted somewhere.

You see, true repentance takes on two things. Number one, immediately conviction comes. There's a change of opinion about sin.

All of a sudden, I see sin like God sees sin, and I know it's worthy of death, but that doesn't bring repentance. Repentance brings a change of feeling. I hate sin like God hates sin.

Nobody ever goes back to what he hates. The reason you got people in an altar, go through the emotions of it. Two weeks later, you haven't seen them again.

They were only convicted. Conception is not birth, you understand. There has to be a change of opinion and a change of feeling.

If you're sitting here tonight, and you'd like to practice the sins that you used to practice, but you're afraid to, you're not saved. You're only convicted. A man born of God loses the disposition to sin.

He may fail once in a while, but that heart will smite him. He doesn't want to live that way. I don't want to fail this God, to say, I haven't make me a liar.

I've committed no adultery in 59 years. I've murdered nobody. I've stole nothing, but those little things, those attitudes, those things that are not Christians, we have to make right.

But I don't care how small it is. If you have this life in you, then there's something in here says that ain't the way I act. Amen.

There'll come a repentance. They'll make those things right. That is a new creature.

I said, that's a new creature. You need to look at your heart. If you're just religious, don't leave this house till you've been birthed of God.

That's a new creature. That's a new life. I love what I hated, and I hate what I loved.

You see, the new birth takes place in the spirit of the human. And for these elements of pride, envy, covenants, and anger are not without, but are death and hell springing up within us. You see, the new life takes place, the new creature, the birth, the new man in the spirit of man.

And we come to realize then that these four elements of pride, envy, covenants, and anger are not without, but they're the death and the hell springing up. That's what I am. If I walk with God, I'm a holy man.

That's what I am. I'm not trying to be holy by keeping the rules of religion. I don't measure people's hair.

I don't have no trouble with a man wearing a beard. I got no box to pour man in. But I can tell you, if you're born again, this is a holy life, and everything produces after it's gone.

Everything. If this is your life, you will be a holy person. And if you don't have regard for that, then you're not born again.

Everything produces after it's gone. You plant an apple seed, you'll get an apple tree. You plant an acorn, you'll get an oak tree.

You can't make either one of them do different what they are, and neither can you make this nature produce anything but what it is. It may suppress for a moment, but under circumstance, it will break out. The Word of God plainly teaches, listen, because the serpent is within us, rising up in the form of this fallen nature, so our Redeemer must equally be within us or there's no hope.

There is no hope. See the fall, we lost Him, but the new birth, He comes back to take that abode within us. And for me to overcome what that was, those four elements, all that make up that, there must be those things come from within and not without.

You act like you do because that's what you are. If you lie, you're a liar. If you're mean to your family, that's what you are.

See, just circumstance only brings out what we are inwardly. That's only. I know under provocation sometimes that old man rises up and we act a little out of order, but we're not mean.

I said, we don't go back. We're not mean to people. No, no, that's not a part of this life of ours.

The Word of God plainly teaches that only the promised seed of the woman, that's the eternal Word or Son of God, made man, can bruise and kill this life. So there must be a rebirth of Christ within you. Has that happened to you? Do you know when there was a change, all of a sudden you hated what you were and all of a sudden there's a new life and the love was for the things of God.

You know, a man said to me, I'd like to be a Christian, but there's so much to give up. Oh, I said, there's nothing to give up, sir. You're just on the wrong side of the gate.

You'll walk through that gate. That'll give you up. You won't want that.

Oh no. I've never wanted to go back there. Not in 59 years.

I don't want to be what I was. I found a life. I found God.

I found a peace. Hallelujah. I found the peace.

I'm telling you. Oh my, I can't, I can't explain. You have to experience this to know.

And if you have, then you do know that this is a life. Oh my, the peace of God to be able to go to bed at night. Amen.

That everything is well, that all is well, can be perfectly said with God. Therefore, this word of God or son of God must have its dwelling in the grounds and essence of our nature, because that's where the devil is right there in that old nature. Amen.

All that anger, wrath, strife, covetousness, it's inside in that old nature. And there must be this life of God. We must know that knowing about the thing is not the same as possessing it, but being born of God gives the power to overcome.

I love out there. Only the truth makes free. Amen.

Only the truth makes free. Not just sets free for a moment, makes free. Oh no, I didn't have to go spend six months in somebody's halfway house.

I left that altar. I left that jug at that altar. I left that tobacco at that altar.

I left that cursing tongue at that altar. I walked out a new creature. Hallelujah to God.

I was in Maryland a few months ago, and the pastor wanted me to preach at a halfway house, a drug rehabilitation, nine months. Had about 80 people in there, but it was a 75% turnover. Most of them just come to get a meal, but they were there.

I said to God, what do you want me to say to these people? Amen. My belief is this. You don't have one problem that cannot be solved at this altar tonight.

This Bible said when I was born again, I was delivered from the powers of darkness, translated into the kingdom of God's dear son. There's no deliverance needed in this new creature. No, no.

It said, oh man, I've got to keep dead. I saw some kind of an idiot casting a demon of poverty out of people. I've never in my life saw such idiots.

I'm just being honest, folks. Amen. I said to my wife, I want you to look.

If Jesus would have been here, poor people called him poor. He'd have to cast the devil out of Jesus. I grew up very, very poor.

When I was seven years old, hypothetically, a man went to bed that night with a house that cost $100,000. He owned it. He woke up the next morning.

It was worth $10,000. And the bank never opened for three years, mister. Never turned the key in the bank again.

Poor people called us poor, but we weren't mean people. We just didn't know God. You see, being poor doesn't make people bad.

It's the nature of hell in them. And the only answer, whether you're rich or poor, is to be born again. A new life, a new nature must rise, listen, must rise from the seed within it, thus making it clear that regeneration of the new birth and can be nothing less but the recovering of the birth of son of God in that life.

That once more, the image of God is restored in that life. Christ lives in me. That's the key to life.

And as I learned, see, this is not a crisis experience. It's a continuous life. I learned to walk in the spirit.

I don't cuss. I don't drink. I don't fall out because I'm in this life.

There's no desire. But I was going to tell you, I was there. I wouldn't know what to talk.

God dealt with me, told me. Well, the next morning, all of them are sitting there. Amen.

Well, they drove up. They're all out there under the tree smoking. Amen.

And they come on inside. And I said to them, how many of you been born again? Every one of them raised their hand. Well, I knew that wasn't the fact, but charity tries to believe everything.

So I did too. I said, then I'm going to tell you something, gentlemen. You don't have to be in this house for you're born again.

You'll set your affections on things above and not on this earth. But I said, if you're sitting there dreaming about that needle, you're going to put it back in that arm. It says in the book of Hebrews, if you're mindful of where you come from, you're going back.

But if you set your affections on God, if you will set your affections on things above, you are a free person if you're born again. You are made free by the power of God. That new creature never drank a drop of liquor, never fornicated the first time, never had a needle in that arm, never cursed God one time.

That new creature was created in righteousness, holiness. Turn that life to him. Know God, walk with God.

That's the key to the deliverance of this life. Nothing can awake a sinner or mere professor, but a true sense of the inward possession and power that sin has in him and over him. Until he realized I'm bound, I'm a captive of the darkness.

Satan is my Lord. There's no way unless the preaching of the gospel, brings that man to the place where I'm lost. I cannot change this life.

I can go to Sunday school all of my life and still be mean as a dog. I know, I pastored a church long enough. People 30, 35 years in a Sunday school, that if you didn't do what they wanted, tear the church up.

They're never born again. They're just religious people. There's nothing to that.

Nothing meaner than religion. It was a religious church that murdered 68 million of us simply because we were born again. Religion is that.

This isn't religion. This is life. This is Christ.

Come to live within a human being. He must see that sin lives in the first forms of his life. He's chained to the jaws of death and hell, unable to alter his state.

Impossible. You cannot change. You may restrain it, but it isn't going to stay restrained.

He must not be left there. Along with the knowledge, he must be made to see that the pre-grace of God has provided it Calvary, a way out. Hallelujah.

That's the life that God has made provision. No man ever sunk too low until he become a reprobate for what God couldn't save him. How wonderful it is.

When you look back at the grace of God, you know, the Benjamites are the ones that become perverted. Every kind of a thing. You know, they had to kill him and steal wives for him.

But what a wonderful thing. Out of the depth of all that came the apostle Paul. The grace of God is beyond our estimation of how the worst conditions sometimes come the greatest things of life.

It is here, ladies and gentlemen, turning back to God. We must not be left there. Along with, we must know that this grace has given him the holy blood and life of Jesus to enter into his being and change the first forms of that life.

That I now have overcome that. I don't have to live like that anymore. When once a man truly knows these two truths, he will know and feel the power of Christ's life within him.

The greatness of the fall. I lost that life. The greatness of redemption.

That life, that person, that son of God is restored, is restored within me. You know, the general, in general, the church of our time is made up of dead, superficial consenters to the history of scriptural doctrines. That's mainly.

I hate to have to say that. But the truth is the truth. As a whole, they're unwilling to allow the spirit to be the animating power of the life and service.

Amen. Refused to part with the form of religion, despised any kind of a self-denial. They're fond of worldly ease, indulgence in riches, and want you to tell them they're still all right with God.

That's where we are in this world. Unwilling to be called the perfection of the gospel, they profess and practice a religion merely as a fashion and custom of the so-called church, whichever one it is that they go to. California, there's a church, they come to Sunday school in bikinis because they weren't going to church.

They weren't going to church, they were going to the beach. So they pay a little favor to God by running by the church and made to believe that's going to make them all right. What a tragedy.

There'll be a lot of people in hell looking for that preacher. All of these areas. If some rest in the outward forms of religion, if some expect to be saved by certain changes in their outward behavior, if some content themselves with a lukewarm spirit, others depend upon their work.

These are delusions that must happen to those who do not know and feel the true nature of their fallen soul and what kind of redemption alone can save it. Only this life of God, Christ in us, is the only hope of a man or a woman of ever coming to God and to know God. The multiplied millions that are deceived into believing that somehow religion can save them.

The knowledge that it is a hell within his own nature that must be destroyed. He's then intent upon bringing about such a destruction and conviction saves him from false religion. When the pastor preaches like he did this morning, then a man recognizes what it is to be a Christian, born again, a new creature.

I sat there and said, amen. Never one time had to say, oh me. I knew, I knew where he was and I knew where I am.

The knowledge that this redemption takes place in the innermost depth of the heart produces the atmosphere and condition for spiritual growth. I have this life within me as I feed it, nourish it, pray, then I can grow. That's what you can't separate Christian education and sanctification.

Sanctification is not an it, it's a growth of the spirit and that's what sanctification is. As this spiritual man grows, then he's able to command the soul and the body Godward. That's what sanctification is all about.

This truth makes man always approach God as the God of his heart. Therefore, what does he offer God? His heart, everything. He knows God is a God of the heart.

He don't offer him, I'll play my fiddle for you if you'll save me. No, he don't want your fiddle. He may play it or don't play it.

He wants you and all you have to offer him tonight is an empty possibility. No matter what you think you are, no matter how educated, how smart or how ignorant the world may think you, you have nothing to offer to God in this altar tonight but an empty possibility. Just say, Oh God, I cannot.

Like the leper, if you will, you can make me whole. I'm beyond redemption and myself, every self-effort has failed me. But now I cast myself upon you without resignation.

If you will, you can make me whole. Amen. Given his heart, given that heart, this keeps his focus always employed, intent upon the true work of God, ever occupied with the fitting and preparing the heart for the operation of the Holy Spirit.

This is God. The result, he is a true inward Christian who has the kingdom of God within him where the state and habit of his heart is continually worshiped of the Father and the truth. Amen.

Now God is saying to us, tell us, I believe tonight if you're saved, you know you're saved. If you're not, you know you're not. If you're just religious, you still love what you used to love and if you weren't afraid, you'd still go out there.

You're sitting here and dream tonight about something you used to do and like to do again. You have not been born again. No, no.

That disposition, that change, not only of opinion, to know sin like God sees sin, but to feel, to hate it like God, that comes with true repentance. I've never wanted to go back to what I was. I hated, I hate what I was.

I didn't until I'd come to know God. But that, you come to that now. A decision has to be made.

A decision. See, life is a choice and our life will wind up being exactly the choices that we made in life. You have to make a choice.

This is the key. See, to sin against your will is to refuse to do what you know to do and that eventually leads to the unpardonable sin. See, when we are convicted, when God deals with our heart and we realize I am a sinner, that's not condemnation, that's conviction.

To convince you, you're lost without God. That's the first work of the Holy Spirit upon that sinner and it comes to you. And tonight if you're here and you say, I've never experienced that kind of a birth from God, amen, then you still need God.

So God is dealing with that heart. Now you're going to do one. You're going to will to accept him or you're going to say no to him and not accept him.

Now if you say no to God here tonight and he's dealing with your heart, then that decision is registered on the plastic cell of your brain. And the next time you sit in a service where God deals with that heart, your first, first action will be to say what you said the first time and you'll probably say no again. But if you say no long enough, the time will come when that's all you can say.

See, the unpardonable sin is not a special act indeed of the soul. It's a condition of the heart. Jesus said if certain people had watched a hundred miracles and wouldn't believe, he said, wherefore they cannot.

They reached the point that they could. The unpardonable sin. You see, that's a testimony of life.

If you take this arm, put it in a cast, nothing wrong with it. Leave it there long enough, not using it. Time will come when you'll never use it again.

An ophthalmologist told me if you put a patch over your eyes, let not one ray of light touch him for 30 days, you'll be blind the rest of your life. See, if you don't use them for the purpose of giving, nature will take them away. And there's no greater gift of God than the ability to believe.

And if God deals with that heart that says you can't believe, but that too can become lost. They come to a place they could not believe. I'm going to ask you tonight, have you truly been born again? Are you just religious? Are you recognizing you are the church? It's not some place you go, but you are the church.

I am the church. I'm where God lives. You're where God lives.

This isn't just some place. This is a building. This is a prayer house.

That's what God called it. We are the church. Are you born again? Is there a time when you truly knew that old things passed away? All things become new.

That's a new birth. Some of you here may become indifferent once you really were fired up for God, but tonight that's no longer so. You better recover that.

All it took to cost those foolish virgins their place in that bride, they never did what they were told. Father, in the name of Jesus, I just thank you here tonight for your great mercy. God, I believe you have talked to us tonight about this relationship with you.

You must be born again. And because we must, we can. That's the wonderful thing.

Oh God, we can be born. We can have this life. We can be free from sin, that it will not have dominion over our lives.

We can walk this earth free, men and women, because of this life of God within us. Tonight, save every man, every woman, every child in here that's not truly, truly been born again. Give us the very honesty to look at our heart.

Was there a time in my life when I understood that all things truly passed away? That I become a new creature with a love of things that I hated and a hate for things that drove me all of my life. God, let us be honest here tonight. And if that hasn't been a reality, don't let us leave this house until we have been born from above.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

I want you to stand with me. Just stand all over this great audience. I do believe that God has talked to us tonight.

I examined my heart in the light of what I said. I know that there was a moment in my life when I passed from death unto life. There was that moment.

Do you know that? Has that been true of you? I can tell you we're on the threshold of the most momentous moment of all time. Everything you see is going to come down in one hour, folks. Christ is going to take his church out of here.

You cannot afford to leave here tonight. You cannot afford. You say not tonight.

That's what those foolish virgins said. But Wednesday night never came. They may never be enough.

Today is the day. Now is the time. And if you're not born of the Spirit of God, then I just want you to move out and come down here tonight.

If you really sense your need of this great God tonight, I'm talking about to find God, to know God, to be born of God, then just step out of where you are and make your way down here in the name of Jesus. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

This is the time up in the balcony, wherever you are. If there isn't that time where you know that you pass from death unto life, then I want you to come. First of all, I want you to come.

You cannot afford to walk out of here tonight. That opportunity may never, never come again, but it is come tonight. God has opened up heaven to you.

All he's asking you to just come to this altar. Conviction brought you. You know that you're not right with God, but now at this altar tonight, all of that's going to change.

I said all of that's going to change. You come. Let us reason together.

Let's be born. You don't, when you're truly born, that's not a fragile thing, folks. I've watched religion treat that.

I'm watching. They almost want to put them in a hothouse somewhere, but there's a man born again and looked to me like only a one-day crusade and 2,000 hogs come out of that man. 2,000 hogs.

And the man said to Jesus, I won't go with you. No, no. I didn't save you to follow me around and stay here and tell these people.

See, it's not what I'm telling. To be born again is an experience of God. You don't just run back to that world because you come into a world of God, of joy, of happiness, where you can lay down tonight.

If the world blows up before morning, which it might do that, you'll be all right. This is God's night. This is God's night here at this altar.

Amen. Now you're coming while they come. Oh God bless you.

Lift those hands to God. David said, let the lifting up of my hands be as the evening sacrifice. Let my prayer be as incense.

God is just saying to us, put it all on the altar. Amen. Just put it all on that altar tonight.

I'm going to ask our pastor to come and pray with these tonight, to believe with them, to lead you, this man of God. Amen. He's going to come and pray with you.

If you're still not down here, please come pastor. Hallelujah. Glory to God.

Thank you. Thank you. The decision you're making this evening is the greatest decision you'll ever make in your entire life.

You're giving up the emptiness of living without God. You're accepting the fact that you've sinned against God. You deserve to be cast out of his presence into a place called hell for all of eternity.

Every sinner does deserve it. God is just in doing this. But because he's a God of love as well, sent his only son who went to a cross and took your place, and the wrath of God that will be experienced by those who have rejected his love was poured out on his own son for all the things that you've done.

As the pastor said tonight, coming to this altar is not just a mental ascent with truth, but I am giving the rights to my life to God. I'm opening my heart to the creator of the universe. And I'm saying, Lord, from this day forward, my life is not my own.

You bought it with the price of your blood on a cross 2,000 years ago, and I give you my life. You guide me, you lead me, you change me. Brother Condennen, when I came to Christ, it was just an agreement with what I read in the word of God.

And I'd like to share that the next morning after I prayed a prayer inviting Christ into my life, the next day I was on the road to work. The next day I got up, sat on the edge of my bed, and I was a different man, and I knew it. Nobody had to tell me.

I knew it. Something had changed. The power of a new life had come into my life.

Praise be to God. That's how you will know. If you truly are giving your life to Christ tonight, I don't have to beg you to go to New Believers class.

You'll go. You will immediately have a hunger for truth. You will want to grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

You will want to be filled with the spirit of God. You will want the will of God for your life. You will begin to that you used to love.

There will be such a radical change. You don't have to worry about putting your old friends away. They will put you away.

You can be sure of that. Praise God. I'm going to lead you in a prayer, and there's really no formula to this.

This is an issue of the heart. This is just a prayer that helps you to understand what it means to be giving your life to Christ, receiving the salvation that he freely offers you, opening your heart to God. And the Bible says that when you open your heart, God in the person of the Holy Spirit will actually come and live within you.

You'll become a new person. Praise God. Let's pray together, those that have come.

Lord Jesus, I am a sinner. I have lived a wrong way. I violated the laws of God, and I deserve to be eternally punished.

And I'm sorry for my sin. I don't want to live in sin anymore. And I thank you tonight, Lord, that you loved me so much, that you became a man, a sinless man, and you took my punishment, and you took the full weight of everything I deserve for the wrong that I've done.

You took it on yourself when you died to pay the price for my sin. You were raised from the dead on the third day as living proof to me that my trust in you is not in vain. As Jesus was raised from the power of death, so too I will be raised from the power of death and into a new life.

Tonight, Lord Jesus, I open my heart to you. I thank you for dying for me. I invite you into my life to be my Lord and my Savior.

I give you the full rights to my life. From this day forward, you are my Savior, and you are my God. I trust you that you will show me the path and give me the power to be the person that you have called me to be.

God Almighty, I am grateful in my heart, and I thank you with everything that's in me in Jesus' mighty name. Now give him praise and thanks for receiving you. Praise God.

Everybody in this sanctuary tonight, just stretch your hands towards these that are coming to Christ. Would you do that? Father, we ask you now to seal with the Holy Spirit a promise, this seed of life that has been sown in every heart. Don't let the enemy steal it out of the heart.

God, I pray that at this altar tonight, from this altar would come powerful testimonies of the saving and keeping power of God through Jesus Christ. God Almighty, let every man and woman have an awareness of this newness of life that has been given to them freely through Jesus Christ. Let a new song be on every pair of lips.

God, we're asking tonight that fathers that go home, their children would be stunned, their wives would be astounded, that new husbands would walk through the door, new sons, new daughters, new wives, new children, Lord. God, when we go to work, that people would be stunned around us, Lord, to see a change, a different heart. God, thank you, Lord, that you have a people in this generation, as in every other, who will turn to you in spirit and in truth.

God, we give you praise. We give you thanks. We give you the glory.

We give you the honor. We give you thanks in Jesus' mighty name.