Bearing Fruit

I'd like to show you a portion of Scripture that has been of great concern to me. In fact, some of you may have already received it. I sent this message out to our friends on the mailing list.

I haven't had the time to observe it. I've preached it, I think, twice. And each time I've preached this message, it has stricken my heart.

The great responsibility that Jesus Christ is putting upon us in this. You know, I've heard it said that Jesus in the New Testament is only speaking to the Jews. I can't buy that.

He's the incarnate Word. He's speaking to humanity, to all generations. And He's speaking this to us.

And I want you to begin the first verse. I am divine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch of me that beareth not fruit, He taketh away.

Who takes it away? He, not the devil. Don't blame the devil on this one. He taketh away.

That's very powerful. And every branch that beareth fruit, He purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Look at verse 6 also.

If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered. And men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. Now look this way, please.

I want you to keep your Bible open to this 15th chapter. I'm not going to scream at you. I'm not going to yell.

I'm not going to jump across this stage. I'm going to stand here and deliver His Word. And His Word will pierce your heart if it's open.

You know, I've read and re-read this 15th chapter, John, and I can't escape the convicting power of it. It's so awesome, the responsibility of it. It's such an ominous warning that I said, if that's true, we'd better deal with it.

I read it and re-read it, and even when I preach it, there's a trembling in my heart. The Holy Spirit brings me back to this Word of Jesus. My Father is the husbandman.

And every branch of me that beareth not fruit, He taketh away. Now, Jesus said that my Father is the husbandman who stands over this vine. Jesus is the vine.

This is the vine of God. This is His choice vine. And how He guards this vine and all the branches.

We are the branches in this vine. And God, the Heavenly Father, stands jealously in guard over this vine and its branches, looking lovingly for any sign of blight, of cancer, anything that would hinder the life flow from the vine into the branches, so that nothing would hinder the life flow of Jesus, that the fruit of the Holy Spirit could be manifest in our lives. And He sees what no one else can see.

He sees the blight. He sees the sin. He sees the spirit of death at work in many who call themselves Christians.

Jesus said, I am the vine. You are the branches. And it's all seeing eye watches, daily, moment by moment.

Without fruit, it's impossible to please God. In fact, this matter of bearing fruit has to do with everything about discipleship. It has to do with pleasing the heart of God.

And I think this is the bottom line. I think this is the one thing that so gripped me. More than any time in my life, I've come to the place where it's dawning on me that it's possible for a believer who walks with Jesus to make the heart of God glad.

You know, when the disciples came home, they had been given, they had been mandated to go out and spread the gospel. They came back and said, even the devils are subject unto us. And Jesus said, don't rejoice in that, but rejoice that your names are written in the book of life.

I wish we knew that in charismatic circles. We don't rejoice because of miracles. We don't rejoice because demons are cast out.

We rejoice because we're in union with him and our names are written in the last book of life. And, you know, I just have this soul pressed in me that the Lord says this has to do with discipleship, has to do with pleasing him. And Jesus, then when he went aside, began to rejoice.

He rejoiced greatly in the Bible. In the Greek, it says he leaped for joy. Can you imagine Jesus leaping for joy? I see Jesus hiding from all his disciples, and he's jumping up and down, and he said, Father, you have revealed this to babes.

And I see Jesus jumping for joy. Now, he grieved, he wept, and if he grieved and wept, he was touched with the feelings of our infirmities. He was God incarnate, yet he was man.

Certainly, he jumped for joy at the sight of God manifesting himself to these poor, ignorant disciples. Remember what it said when God wanted to move in the time of the Jews? Caiaphas and Annas were high priests, but the word came to John? He bypassed the whole religious system and found John out in the desert, shed the glory of God, and the word came to him. It's amazing how the word comes to those who are shut in by the Lord.

But this has to do with pleasing his heart, and I want to please the heart of God. Without bearing fruit, it's impossible to please God. It grieves God.

And he said the more fruit, much fruit, gives him greater glory, greater joy. Stop and think about that for a minute. That it's possible for you and I to make God's heart glad.

We talk about God blessing us. We think of God ministering to us, but to think of ministering to him. To think that God could look down in Times Square tonight, in Town Hall, about 1,500 people gathered together in his name, and not because of something they're doing, other than walking in his righteousness and trusting his holy word to bring gladness to his heart.

Not just because they sing and shout and talk in tongues or clap their hands, but because there's a drawing and a wounding in their heart, and they want nothing more than to please him. I don't know about you, but that's what I want. I want to please the heart of God.

And that can't be done without bearing fruit. Herein is my Father glorifying, verse 8, that ye bear much fruit, so that ye be my disciples. Look at verse 16.

You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and I have ordained you, that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain. And whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he will give it you. Now, look this way for just a moment.

The real message here, and it may sound harsh, and I think it is, but you see, we've whitewashed the teachings of Jesus so much. We've made Jesus, we have created in our minds an all-American Jesus. This all-American Jesus loves the Dallas Cowboys, he drinks wine, he's a back slapper, and he just says, go out and do the best you can, and he winks at sin if you fall most of the time.

There's no such Christ, there's no such God. It's a concoction, a cultural Christ that we've created in America. The all-American Jesus, I call him.

There's no such being. But the message here is bear fruit or burn. And you can't get away from it, and you'll see it.

It's so clear. Every branch of me that beareth not fruit, he taketh away, and every branch that beareth fruit, he purges, that may bring forth more fruit. And look at verse 6 again.

If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered, and men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. Now, there are teachers today of false security that would tell you, Now, that can't be because they could have been in the vine. They pretended to be in the vine, or they imagined they were in the vine, but they weren't in the vine because once you're in the vine, you're always in the vine.

Now, I don't want to get into any doctrine on this, but Jesus said these were branches in him. Every branch in me. They were there.

Jesus put them there. Is that what it says in your Bible? These were already in Christ. But they were burned, they were fruitless branches, and my heavenly Father does not allow death on this vine, lest it move through the body.

Never. He does not endure the cancer of sin in the body. He taketh away, he prunes it.

First of all, he comes in his loving way with his Word to prune and cut away that which is unlike Christ. Jesus saw a fig tree one time, remember? And he went up to the fig tree and he cursed it. Well, let me read it to you.

And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it and found nothing thereon, but leaves only. And he said to it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforth forevermore. And presently the fig tree withered away.

Jesus didn't curse the life that was in that tree, the remaining ebbing life. Jesus cursed the spirit of death, the dominant spirit of death that had already moved. That tree was beyond pruning, and Jesus could see what no one else could see.

He saw underneath the leaves when you turned it over, the spots. He saw in the sap the spirit of death that was moving through it. And Jesus was actually saying, There's death at work in that tree.

It's beyond pruning. Speed on its way. Bring it to its ultimate destination.

Bring it to its course. Let that death speed up that process. It's going to be burned.

It's going to be cast out. Men are going to cut it down. It's going to wither and die.

He cursed the death that was in it. And I see that so clear when the Lord comes to his Christians, to his children, and Jesus says, Where is my Father's fruit? Where is my Father's fruit? And friends, when I begin to see this, I begin to reason with the Holy Spirit. And it goes something like this.

If bearing fruit is synonymous with true discipleship, in other words, I can't really be His disciple unless I'm bearing fruit. And if bearing fruit brings much glory to God and more fruit, more glory, and I want to bring Him glory, I want to know what that fruit is. And furthermore, if being barren and fruitless is going to bring the knife of the husbandman down on me, if it's possible for me to wither and die and be cast off as a branch, and I believe, brother or sister, in a literal physical hell.

I believe there's a hell. You walk these streets, you better know it. There is a literal physical hell.

And I want to do everything in my life. I want to make every change that I have to make. I want to do everything to line up with the Word and the commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Because the thing that really shakes me is Jesus says, He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, He is the One who loves me. But how can you keep them if you don't know them? He that hath them. He that knows them.

And I heard people say, well, it's all wrapped up in just love. Oh, it's so much more than that. He said you're going to take up your cross and you're going to die.

There's going to be self-denial. I can show you Scripture after Scripture of these loving commands of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you don't know them, how can you keep them? And how can you love them? You have to know them and keep them to love Him.

Now, I'm not putting a heavy burden. I've heard someone say, Brother Dave, you make it sound so hard to be a Christian. Folks, I'm not preaching it near as hard as Jesus preaches it here.

There's not a preacher in America laying it as heavy as Jesus laid it down here in the book. You say, well, Brother Wilkinson, are you motivated by fear or are you motivated by love? I want to be motivated by love. You are loved.

You are loved. We've been told enough about how much we're loved. We are loved.

There's no question about it. There has never been a revival in the history of America or the world that hasn't been accompanied by searing, convicting, preaching against sin. Never.

There's never been a revival. The puritans believed that you nailed, you had to take the hammer of God's Word and nail and nail in the slumbering apostate heart of sleeping Christians. And I'll tell you what, that's going to come from here.

I had a minister friend who said, Brother Dave, are you going to preach in Times Square what you've been preaching in your newsletters around the country? You go there and nobody's going to come! We're going to be here preaching what He's laid on our hearts. This is our Word. I'm not trying to be hard.

I'm just afraid we don't even, even the hardest we preach, we still don't line up to these commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ that He's laid out before us. But if I know my heart, I am motivated by both. By the love of God for me, but just as much the dread of a holy God.

And I don't believe that you can know the joy of the Lord until you know the grief of God. It's impossible. All the joy I have comes out of grief.

We were in Toronto last week, all week with Crusades at Queensway Cathedral. Somebody had accused our group of being kind of sad. Someone said, Brother Dave looks so sad and he doesn't have any joy.

Man, after the meeting Sunday night, I danced all over the pulpit and the glory of God came down. I'm the happiest man there is and we're a happy people. But you look at this.

These are serious things. Here's a city with 10,000 people dying with AIDS, that have AIDS in this city. 283 children and 87%, I think the figure last night, 87% of them have already died this year of AIDS.

You look out there and see the crack. There's a new drug out here called Phenytol. It's 2,000 times more powerful than crack.

It's a designer drug. There's a new disease now called Chlamydia that shuts the woman's womb. There may be 2 million American girls already affected with Chlamydia.

And God is trying to say if you're going to abort your babies, I'll shut your wombs. And He may shut every womb for every abortion. One for one.

I don't know where it's going to end. But you see these things and you can't just say, let's go to church and the preacher's job is to make us happy. No.

We've had enough joy-pop religion. God wants something much more, much, much more than that. You see, Isaiah gets a vision of the holiness of God and those created beings, the seraphims, are so awe-stricken at the dread of that moment.

And He appears in His holiness and those seraphims cover their eyes and their feet. And Isaiah looks at that dreadful scene and he falls on his face and he says, I'm a dead man. Woe! Woe is me! Here's a man, if you read the first 4 chapters before that appears in Isaiah, you hear some of the greatest prophecies against sin that a man can preach.

I wish I could preach like Isaiah in the first 4 or 5 chapters. And then after all this preaching against sin, you see him saying, I'm a man of unclean lips. I dwell among a people of unclean lips.

Woe is me! Because he saw something of the holiness of God. And Isaiah said of men, fear them not. Don't be afraid.

Speaking of men, but of God, he said, sanctify the Lord of hosts Himself. Let Him be your fear. Let Him be your dread.

And if you don't believe that, when you go home, mark it down. Isaiah 8.13 Let Him be your dread. And you know what that word dread means in Hebrew? Shake terribly.

Shake terribly at the thought of a holy God. A God who's loving. A God who's merciful.

A God who's kind. But a God who will not wink at sin. He's a holy God and He does judge sin.

And if He judges in the world, if the righteous can't be saved, where do we stand? The apostle asked, where do we stand in this matter? The burning bush when God appeared to Moses, it said He trembled and He durst not look. He didn't even dare to look. He knew that there was a dreadful thing taking place.

God was appearing in His holiness. And he said, this is a dreadful sight. David suggested, he said, I tremble at His word.

I shake terribly at the word of God. You remember when Jacob had the dream and he saw the ladder ascending and descending and he saw the Father at the top of the ladder? Here's what he said. Surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it not.

And then the thought dawns on him. He had seen such an awesome, dreadful sight. And he says, how dreadful is this place! This is none other than the house of God.

This is the gate of heaven. Daniel, a praying man who set his face to seek the Lord by prayer and suffocation and fasting and ashes, but listen to what Daniel said of his father. No one prayed like Daniel.

You know, it says that Daniel prayed out the window. Gwen and I live on the 22nd floor in Upper Manhattan. And every night I pray out the window looking out over this city.

I look out over the Dakota. I look out over some of those way out there along the park, Central Park. And I remember a call from a woman who says, don't forget the wealthy people in this city.

She said, there's just as much drugs, suicide, and despair among the rich as among the poor. Don't forget the rich. And I remember Daniel and as much as my heart bleeds, as much as I pray out that window, I think of Daniel when the children of Israel are taken captive and go into Babylon.

Same kind of spirit as we have in this city. Babylonian spirit. And he looked out and I think the thing that broke his heart, he saw the Jews, those God's special people being absorbed into that Babylonian system First when they came they wouldn't even bring down their harps.

They wouldn't play. There was no song because they said we're strangers here. But he saw them getting cozy, getting comfortable and fitting right into it.

And that's one thing God helping me, this staff, we've pledged before God will not be a part of this system. We'll love the people. We'll not be a part of its theaters.

We'll not be a part of its television. We'll not be a part of any of that. Those who want to hear from the heart of God have to be absolutely shut out from that spirit.

Absolutely removed from that kind of spirit. And you hear, listen to what Daniel says. This man who looked out the window and prayed because he saw the children of God being mixed up with the world, so wrapped up, they didn't know the difference between the holy and the profane anymore, the clean and the unclean.

Such apostasy, such mixture. Daniel says, listen, and I prayed unto the Lord my God and I made my confession and I said, O Lord, Thou great and dreadful God, Thou great and David said, The Lord reigneth. Let the people tremble.

Let them praise Thy great and terrible name for He's holy. Through Isaiah, God says to this man will I look even to him that's poor, the contrite spirit who trembles at my word. And I emphasize this dread of God now and this holy fear of God because a lot of people said it's just respect and awe of God's awe.

It's an awe of God. It's respect for God. It's much more than that.

Do you think when Isaiah is on his face it's just a sense of awe? No, it's a dread in his heart. We serve a holy God who will not wink at sin. You know, if we trembled at his word we couldn't take this matter of bearing fruit lightly.

This generation perceives God as some kind of a doting grandfather. All he's there for is to make sure that we get our rights. We have this doting grandfather type image that he doesn't expect much from us, but he's there to simply give us our rights.

And we heard a preacher just the other day, and Bob was heart-stricken. I was heart-stricken when I heard of it. He said the covenant is instituted the moment you pay your tithe.

One of the very, very well-known among us. Ladies and gentlemen, that's nothing to do with the dread of a holy God. That's nothing to do with an Isaiah on his face and he sees this holy God and he looks at himself, even though he'd prophesied, even though he'd cried out against sin, he still sees deeper in his heart things he never saw before.

God's merciful. God's kind. He's merciful to all generations, but he's also a judge.

He's a holy, holy judge. Now, what is this fruit then if it's that important? Well, turn to Philippians if you will. Philippians.

First chapter. Philippians. If you go to Colossians, you've gone too far.

Turn back. Alright. Philippians 1.11. I want to show you the fruit.

Don't take my word. Take it from the word of the Lord. Here it is.

Philippians 1.11. Did you have it? Being filled with the fruits of what? Fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ under the glory and praise of God. Now, look at me. What does it say? What are the fruits that He wants from us? It's a walk of righteousness.

It's a walk of holiness before the Lord. It is the fruit of the Holy Spirit who convicts of sin and righteousness and judgment. Now, here Paul helps explain this passage in John.

How different. Isn't it true the idea that we've been taught of fruit is success? The idea of having fruit is to always be growing, is always to be having activity around us, ever-increasing money, ever-increasing activity, that that is supposed to be fruit. That's so far from God's concept of fruit.

Actually, bearing fruit has more to do with what we're becoming than what we're doing. Oh, there are going to be many, many doing great works. They're going to be casting out devils.

They're going to be healing the sick and doing great works. And they're going to come before the Lord. And they're not even going to know this.

There's such deception set in. They're so blind. Their eyes are smeared.

They don't even know that they're living in corruption. And the Lord's going to say, I don't even know you. I don't even know you.

How is that possible? To cast out devils, heal the sick, and do all these things and God doesn't even know what He's saying. I don't acknowledge you. I don't acknowledge you.

You've been cut off the vine. You're cut off the vine. Some of you heard a message driven to darkness.

I was invited by this so-called Christian rock singer and I love the boy. Brother Phyllis has been ministering to him and counseling him. And he's been trying for two years to come to my office and talk.

I said, okay, come. And he came a few weeks ago. You've got to come to my concert tonight.

I said, look, I'm tired. I've made my statement. I'm going to New York.

I don't want to be a part of that anymore. I've made my statement. But he pressed.

So I went that night and I listened to two or three devotional songs and they sounded so good. He sounded so sweet. The words were just right.

They were right. And I said, Lord, I must be an old fogey. Maybe, God, You're doing something.

There's rock and roll and You might be doing something. I'll have to get up and apologize. The Lord just said, be still because if there's leaven in it, there's evil, it'll always show itself.

You can be sure of that, brother and sister. If there's any evil in a church, it'll come out. If it's in the pulpit, it'll be exposed.

It's being exposed on national television right now. It'll be exposed. God is patient.

He'll go a long time and then finally He brings it all out. Nothing is hidden from the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Brother, sister, if you can believe anything, you can believe your sins are going to find you out.

Yes, they are. Nobody can hide it. And so, all of a sudden, I sat there and they turned up the speakers and started the smoke machines and they started singing.

It was supposed to be a song about the coming of the Lord. He's going to open the skies and He's going to come down and I couldn't understand the words. I couldn't believe what I was seeing on stage.

It was so incredibly evil that I was standing on top of the hill about 3,000 young people and the Holy Spirit just slew me. I fell to the ground and I got up and I looked at the stage and I saw demonic spirits just emitting everywhere and I was going to run to my car. I said, Lord, I don't want to be near this.

Instead, the Holy Spirit directed me. I ran through the crowd knocking over chairs and yelling, Ichabod, Ichabod. That means the glory of the Lord has departed.

And nobody was listening. They laughed. They thought I was a fool, a fanatic.

Nobody knew who I was until the next day. But, you know, yesterday I got a magazine from this young man and I went through it. And the first ten pages sound so beautiful.

It's so much of Jesus. But then suddenly there's a whole page of something right out of the pits of hell. And it's that mixture.

It's that mixture. And if you don't have discernment, if you're not sitting with God knowing His grief and knowing His heart, how do you discern it? There are going to be many, many coming. We've done these works.

We've cast out devils. We've played the multitudes. We've had the Aldersville.

By the way, God never judges anything by how many people at the altar. He judges everything by its crystal clearness. That city that comes out of heaven prepared and adorned as a bride was crystal clear.

He judges everything by its clearness. If there's any mixture in it, God won't touch it. I am bearing fruit when there's nothing hindering the flow of the life of Jesus Christ.

Because I'm connected to the vine and I have to draw because I'm a free moral agent. I have to draw. Now, I differ from some of the old time preachers and writers who said, you can't do anything but sit there and you can't draw.

You're just passive and that will fall by the fact that you're there. We are free moral agents. We have to draw on that life.

How is it that you can say that you can bear fruit, you can stay in that vine even though there's all kinds of blockage, even though there's death and there's sin and there's corruption blocking that life flow? How can you say that you're still bearing fruit? No. In what the Lord is saying here, now you're clean to the Word. Look at verse 3. Now you're clean.

Go back to John. Keep John 15 on. I'm going to keep coming back and we're going to keep pounding on this.

I hope you didn't come for a 15-minute sermonette. If you come here, you come to hear the Word. Look at that verse 3. Now ye are clean.

That means pruned through the Word which I have spoken unto you. Some people have the idea that when the Lord prunes you, He comes down and He's going to kill somebody in your family. Or He has a knife and He's going to smite you down.

No, He's talking about the real knife of God is this living Word. This is the two-edged sword. This is the pruning knife.

How can you be pruned if you're not in it and don't know it and don't love it? This is what prunes. If you're walking in the Spirit, you've made up your mind before a holy God that you're going to line up your life to this Word. How do you do that sitting watching Dynasty in Dallas? You know what gets me and bothers me? They did it up in Toronto in front of thousands of people.

You know, they joke about it. The pastors will introduce me. In fact, the way they introduced me, everybody will be singing and clapping and everything, and I'll say, well, brother, the day's come.

We've got to get serious. And I got up because I didn't know I was a wet blanket. And they do that almost every time you preach prophetically, you preach against sin.

There's this sense, well, that's His role. We've got to have somebody playing that role. So, brother, come and play your role.

Come and scream against television. Come and do your legalistic trip. And I'll tell you, the church is the height of apostasy when it calls obedience legalism.

No clapping, please. You know, we are so hung up on this terrible word works. We're so afraid of works, we won't obey.

We're so afraid of legalism, where almost every time a preacher comes now and says, hey, here's what Jesus says. Line up! And the Holy Ghost comes and makes it clear. Some of you remember in your early Pentecostal days.

You know, when I first came to New York City, the only people who would support me outside of Glad Tidings Tabernacle and a few others were the Spanish, the Latin people. And in those days, many of them were preaching about makeup. You know, holiness was not wearing trousers for women and not wearing earrings or lipstick and so forth.

I still don't like to see women dressed as prostitutes. You know, I mean, so that's what it almost looks like. You go down here and you can see that.

But, you know, there's a tendency, I've seen it in the Latin churches here, and I love every Spanish brother, but some of you dear folks that are here in New York City, you so rebelled against that, you went the other way. You have a tendency to say, I don't want to hear that kind of preaching anymore, and you went the other way. But there is a preaching that God is raising up in the land now because God's getting a holy remnant together getting ready for the coming of the Lord, and He's bringing forth the strong word so that we'll not be parked in front of our television sets wasting our time when Jesus comes.

Getting rid of that or not sitting there. That doesn't make you holy. That's not meritorious.

But it removes the barriers so the life can flow through the vine, through the branch. It's removing the idols so the life of Christ can flow. You can say amen all you want.

Hey, Don, I used to work with Kathryn Kuhlman. Remember the great healing? Anybody remember Kathryn Kuhlman? In one of her services, people wanted to express themselves so much in their preaching, she wanted to preach so bad, and she gave people American flags away. I don't care if you... Just don't clap, but if you want to say amen, say amen all you want.

We're not putting any bondage on that. But my point is now, the reason we refuse to be a part of the drinking, the entertainment thing here, the disco, all of these things that people are going to now, even Christians all over the country flocking, trading wine lists, the big thing now is going to nightclubs for Christians in California. That's the big thing among Pentecostals.

And usually they go to follow their Christian rock group who's there. That's very, very true. But the reason is not to say well we don't do this, we don't do that because necessarily we're saying this is our standard.

We're saying that you have got to remove everything that hinders the life, the flow of life. Because life ministers life. And I want to minister to life, to others.

And if I have death in me, I minister death. And I want to remove the barriers. Hallelujah.

You say, well all this abstinence and all this talk about separation, aren't you getting away from righteousness by faith? Isn't all our righteousness just filthy rags? Yes, the Bible makes it very true. The branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine. No more can you except you abide in me.

But here's the problem. There are thousands of preachers who are lying to their people about this idea of abiding in Christ. And a lot of Christians are going to, those who think they're Christians are going to be damned because they have been misled on this idea of abiding in Jesus Christ.

He said, if you, look at verse 10, chapter 15, verse 10. If you, do you see a big if there in your Bible? Is that in yours or just in mine? I don't have a special edition. Come on now, is that the if there? Verse 10.

What's the first word you read? If. If you keep my commandments, you shall abide. Is that it? If you keep my commandments.

I'm not talking about the law, I'm talking about these commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ to you and I. And by the way, I hear people say, well, I'm not under law, I don't have to keep the commandments. Well, which one do you break? I mean, which one aren't you keeping? The one about not having another wife or taking God's name in vain? Are you murdering? What is it? Which one are you breaking? How much liberty do you have? Which one? Tell me which one you're breaking. You say, I don't keep the law.

I do. I'm not saved by it, but I keep it. If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love, even as I've kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love.

Jesus abode in His Father's commandments. That's what the Scripture says. Even, do you want to read it? And abide in His love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide.

You see, Jesus Himself attaches obedience to the Father's Word, to abiding, even Himself. It's there. You can't deny it.

Why isn't it being preached? I preach like this in some churches and I see Christians coming to run the altar and grabbing ahold of something to stand up. We saw, Sunday night in Toronto, people falling in the aisles and smitten with Holy Ghost conviction. They said, I didn't know it was that clear.

It is that clear. Sorry, I don't see it that way. I don't believe it that way.

You know, sometimes there are pastors in America and there are some here in New York City that begin to preach holiness. They preach separation from the spirit of this age and people get offended by it. You know, many people, they pick up their wallet and their song book and they go and find a preacher who will preach the positive.

They are afraid of reproof. They are afraid to line up. We have literally dozens now calling from all over the country saying, Brother Wilkinson, I feel the same burden you do for righteousness.

I'm preaching what you gentlemen are preaching. And when I began to it, I saw family after family begin to walk away. And I began to see my congregation dwindle.

But I want to tell you, it may dwindle, but those who are left are going to have joy break out because of their obedience and walking according to the Word and that God will build upon that foundation. And Pastor, if you think it's something people are leaving you, what about Jesus? When He began to lay down the law, you know, when He said, You're going to drink my blood and eat my flesh. In other words, I'm going to be your source of life.

I'm not going to be first. I'm going to be everything. Jesus is not first in my life.

He's everything or nothing. And He said, You're going to... He began to say, You'll take up a cross. I'm going to be everything to you.

Everything you get out of life, you're going to draw it out of me. And they said, That's a hard saying. He's a hard preacher.

And from that day on, they didn't walk with Him anymore. And then Jesus turned His own side and said, You're going away too? Are you leaving? They said, Oh, no. You have the words of eternal life because they received the living reproof.

And brother, sister, He said, My yoke is easy. My burden is light. But that's only if you bend to it.

Only if you put your neck to it willingly and surrender. Otherwise, it's the worst thing you can do is put your neck to a bun. His yoke is not easy.

His burden is not light if you fight it. Only if you yield to it. But that's why there's so much apathy.

So much apathy in the church. He said, You're not abiding. You don't know My words.

You're not digging into the Word of God. There's not a day in my life that this Word doesn't convict me. Look at me.

You tell me you believe that Christ is coming soon. You believe that we're in a time of divine intervention and judgment on the face of the earth. It's happening.

How do you explain the plagues that we're seeing now? How do you explain the restlessness in people? How do you explain so many people who are so empty in this city they try everything. The drinking doesn't do it. Their friends can't reach it.

There's an emptiness in their heart. Such an emptiness. And you tell me, you come here and you say, Brother Dave, I believe that I'm walking with God and I'm walking in the Spirit.

But how do you maintain that communion? Because all service, everything that glorifies God comes out of communion with the Lord, shunned in with Him. How do you do that when you flood your mind with the things of this world? You know, there may be some right here, I don't know where you've come from. You've got that little box.

It's called a VCR. And Peter talks about those who go after strange flesh. And every time you go into that video place, you get that R-rated movie.

First it started with PG. And you just sat there passively while they took God's name in vain. And when they mocked fidelity in the home.

And you let that thing start vexing your soul and you became jaded and dull. And then you went to something a little more risque until finally you got the R and then you go to the X. And you stand here in God's house, if that's true, with lust in your heart and you've got blood on your hands. Because you've been chasing after strange flesh.

And how do you raise holy hands and clean hands before God? You say, well, that's all by faith. The walk of faith is a practical walk of God. And even the Plymouth Brethren.

I'm a student of the Plymouth Brethren, Stoney and McIntosh and Darwin, those great men of God. But after 50 years, I read J.B. Stoney, he said all these years we've studied the headship of Christ, we've talked about forensic holiness, we've talked about forensic righteousness, which means by faith and what he's done in the finished work. But he said we don't have any practical holiness left.

We can talk about it, but we don't know it. We don't walk it. You can talk all you want about the doctrine of righteousness, the doctrine of holiness, but if you're not living it in day-by-day life so that everybody around you can see it and when they're in trouble they'll want to come to you because they say there's something about that person there that's Jesus.

I see Jesus in that man. I see Jesus in that woman. And you can't do it in front of a VCR watching the smut and the filth of this world.

You can't do it. He'll take the anointing and he'll let you dry and be withered and then he'll cut you off and there's a fire waiting. And I believe that.

I believe that with all my heart. I want to talk to you about the horrible consequences of not bearing the fruit of righteousness, of not dealing with it and saying, look, God's not going to wink. He's dealt with this thing in my life time and time again.

You know what Malachi talks about? He was weeping. He's talking to God's people. You come to my house and you cover the altar with tears and then you go out and deal treacherously with the wife of your youth.

You have adultery in your mind and in your heart and yet you come to my altar and you cover it with tears. And I want to tell you something. It's a dangerous thing to come to a house of God and raise your hands before God and act as though you're walking in righteousness.

If you have something that's attached to yourself that's not being dealt with and you're going to hold that one little place that's in your heart, that one dark spot, that thing of lust that's still grabbing a hold of your heart. No, God wants you to be totally delivered so that it can be a life flow through you. And let me show you the consequences of it not.

In Toronto, the other night, I had a young married man come to me backstage and behind the pulpit and he was terror stricken. His heart was broken because he heard preaching along this line. He said, David, my mother and father are in their seventies.

I think it was in their seventies. He said, they have lived so godly up to the recent years. My father had such a walk with God he counseled every pastor that came to our church, the pastor could look down and know he trusted a father in Zion.

There was life in him. My mother was one of those mothers of Zion, a white haired saint of God. She was so anointed.

She was such a blessing to all the young people. They had problems, they'd come to her. There were evangelists who would come from miles away to counsel with that man.

He had such a touch of God just being in his presence. And this boy was telling me about his dad and mom. He said, and he's head down, he said, you were preaching about being cut off, about barrenness, fruitlessness, death in the tree.

He said, you know what my mother's doing now? My mother sits all day watching soap operas. My father is so dead spiritually, doesn't even want to go to church now. He said, I can't believe it.

I look at them in their late years, I see them withering up and dying. What a shame for some of you here over 60, 65 to have nothing more in life than to sit in front of an idol and wither and die. He said, brother, I saw what that thing did to my parents.

I hate it. I won't have it in my home. I hate it and despise it because I see my mother there, she can't wait.

She eats and sleeps and lives that filth. And it so drained them. I hate to be around them.

Nobody wants to come around them and people weep for them, but there's death. There was a minister's wife contacted me from the south and somebody God pastored, pastored for 25 years, one of the major somebody God churches. And he was so on fire for God.

It was a life-giving ministry. But something happened to that man. A spot of cancer.

I mean spiritual cancer. The death of sin. Something crept into his life.

He got his eyes on a woman in his church. His wife loved him. She was a praying woman.

She loved her husband. The pastor had two teenage children who thought dad was the holiest man on the earth. But this woman, he got his eye on, had two teenagers too that sat there thinking the preacher was a great man of God.

But he gets up one Sunday night and resigns. Just resigns. Monday, he just told his wife, I'm finished, goodbye, and took off with this woman, moved to another state, moved anywhere, didn't even bother to get married.

And suddenly, death on all sides. Just flowing in all directions. Everything he touches now, dies.

Those two teenagers of that mother, that woman he's living with, have turned. They hate him. That wife is heartbroken.

She just said, I can't understand God. She's so bitter about the whole thing. His death ministered to her.

Those two teenagers hate him. His own children. And she called me after calling him, after he'd been gone six weeks.

And he was teaching Sunday school at another Sunday God church already. And she said, how can you do it? He said, oh, he said, I throw myself on the mercy of God. But everything that man touches, dies.

There's death coming out of him. There's a woman who was so on fire for God and her husband kind of leaned on her because she was stronger spiritually and her children leaned on her. But the same thing.

She got weary in her marriage. It wasn't bringing her the joy she thought it was. And she felt she'd missed so much of life and started doing her own thing.

And stopped praying, stopped reading her Bible and got into this despair of her marriage and wanted out. And sits there in total despair. Can't even raise her energy to do her housework.

Now her husband is not being ministered to. Her children are not being ministered to. And there's a spirit about that woman that's depressing.

It's hard to be around a person like that because everything they speak is death now. The life of Christ is not flowing through the vine. You know, if I'm a husband, I have a dear wife.

You've met Gwen here. I'm the high priest of my home and I'm attached to the vine. But you see, out of my branch, there's another branch.

We two are one connected to that vine. And then out of our branch are these little sprouts and other branches. I've got five children.

Those are five other branches. Our four children, I've got five grandsons. Those are other sprouts and branches off my branch.

And the life that comes through Dad and husband and grandfather, it's either going to be life or death that flows through me, that will touch, that will heal everything around me, or it's going to bring death. And this is the important thing and this is the crux of this message tonight. The need to remove everything.

It's unlike Christ. To allow the Holy Spirit to search us out. You don't have to cop a penny.

You don't have to invent something. But if you're righteous before God, God's not hiding. He will be faithful to show us these things that hinder the flow of life.

And then people will know it and see it. I know. I've got four children and their husbands and their wives.

There's eight there. My five grandsons, my wife, my mother's here tonight. There's Gwen's mom.

There's a whole circle of people that I touch. And here in this audience, those who will be coming to Times Square, we're the pastors and as we preach, we'll be touching your life. We're going to minister life or death.

And I know, and it causes me to tremble, that if I allowed sin in my life, if I allowed lust, if I allowed these things, it's going to hinder that flow. And somewhere down along the line, my children are going to know it. My grandsons are going to know it.

First of all, my wife would know it. And then, I'm not the high priest and I'm not ministering life. There's not life flowing.

I can't tell you how comforting it is for children to see dad and mom walking together as one. How comforting it is. How healing.

What life flows when dad and mom are not fighting. There's no divorce in the home, but they're reaching out to the Lord and they're ministering life in that home. Mom and dad are not parked in front of some Babylonian idiot box.

They've got something of God in them. There's life flowing out of the secret closet of prayer. And that's where the life comes from.

And that will minister life to everything you touch. You know, that young man, in fact, the young woman too, whose parents I was telling you about from Toronto, they were both heartbroken. They said, well David, if dad is sitting there and there's no life and he's ministering death, does that mean that all my children are going to have death? And I said, no, tell you what, you don't be like that.

You start a new dynasty of the Holy Ghost. You remove all of that and you get connected to the vine like you should, get anchored in Jesus, let the life flow, and you administer life through your children. Of course it's possible for all of these to repent.

It's possible for once again the life to flow through the vine. But you can't undo the damage once it's done. You can't do it.

I had a voice Sunday or Saturday night in the service, screaming in the prayer room. There was such conviction when Bob was dealing with the room full of converts. This young man ran out in conviction and he was screaming, Lucifer is God! Lucifer is God! I went backstage and they were trying to hold him down.

I said, let him go. And he came charging and he said, you're the one I want. You've got to know Lucifer is God.

And he was in pain and we asked Jesus to take dominion over that spirit. And he was just doubled over in pain, a demonic possession. But when he was told his battle was not with me, but with Jesus, the enemy had to obey.

And that boy began to tremble and weep. He fell in my arms. And he said, David, I'm Pentecostal.

I'm filled with the Holy Spirit. How could this happen? How could it happen to me? He said, I was walking down the street and the spirit just leaped on me. And he said, I want to go home and kill my wife.

And he said, I found myself screaming Lucifer is God and it wasn't me. He said, I hated it. It was coming from my innermost.

And he was broken. He said, I've got to run in that room and tell those kids to get rid of all their smut. And I found out that he was addicted to smut.

He was feeding his mind on it night and day. X-rated movies, everything he could get his hands on. Just feeding his mind, opening his mind to these things.

Thank God he was delivered. But you know, you can't bear fruit with these barriers. You can't bear it.

God wants to smite. God, and I'll tell you what, this is what I believe is prophetic. This is what I believe God is saying to us tonight before I close.

He is looking for a holy people separated from everything in this world. And I don't care what happens. I'm going the other way.

I don't care how many go that way. I don't want anything to do with it. I want to be able to minister.

Friends, we've not arrived. I'm so far from what I want to be in Jesus. The more I see of him, the less I sense of anything.

I have victory in him. We live in victory, yes. No fear, except the fear and dread of a holy God.

But if you have those idols in your life, God brought you here tonight to smash them. God brought you here to open up all the channels that you would be a ministry of life. How do you go out in the street? How do you talk to a sinner? How do you talk to a sinner if there's death in you? No, thank God for the blood of Jesus.

Thank God for the word of the Lord that comes and cleanses. The very word I preach tonight, if you receive it, can be cleansing. You can be cleansed.

The Teen Challenge guys have a kind of thing. I heard a boy, that's where I got it from, one of the boys, he said, if I were a car and dirty and had to be washed, I'd have to be hosed down. He said, that's what the word is.

It hoses you down. In other words, it cleanses you. This is the labor, where you get cleansed.

Hallelujah. The word, the labor, where you get in this and say, Lord, I'll abide by it. Glory to God.

You say, is this the only kind of preaching that's going to be here? We're going to have all kinds of glorious preaching here. Amen. But I'm not saying mine's glorious tonight, it's just that we're going to hear the glorious word of the Lord come forth.

Amen. Are you ready to repent tonight? If you need repentance, are you ready to open your heart and say, Lord, open up every channel? Will you stand with me, please? Amen. Let's bow our heads.

Just quietly in this presence. Lord Jesus, tonight, I thank you for your awesome presence. And Lord, we stand here tonight ready and open for you to do your work in our hearts.

We're willing and open to hear what you have to say to us. Lord, bring your Holy Ghost conviction. We don't want it to happen just through an emotional thing.

We want the Holy Spirit to do it. The Holy Spirit of a living Christ. The Holy Spirit of a living God.