Heredity - Part 1

I want this afternoon to share with you, along the lines that I have already indicated, I don't really know what kind of a title to give to what I have to say. I have called it Psychological and Spiritual Laws of Heredity. I don't know whether that's the right thing to say, but you know, beloved, I discovered some time back in my life that if people, clever people, scientists, psychologists and so on, really wanted to help mankind, had studied their Bibles, they wouldn't have made what they've made, because they have, and they wouldn't have needed to write their books, because God's already written it.

I mean, what I mean is foundational teaching books. It's all here. Norman informs me that a good doctor friend of his remarked to him the other day, listen to this carefully, because I haven't been talking to this doctor friend, well I did have a little conversation with him once or twice, he lives in a part of the country that's nowhere near me, and he said to Norman, everybody's trouble starts in the womb.

That's a very, very significant statement. Everybody's trouble starts in the womb. Is that what he said? And there's so much about it that is true.

Now let's get right down to the book, shall we? And I want to start with you really in the New Testament, and I should be going right back, I trust, to the Old Testament, and right back to the beginnings. Have you noticed in reading the Roman letter, for instance, how Paul, I trust you've read the Roman letter, and read it many times, how that Paul, he doesn't do what so many people seem to think he does. He doesn't keep going back to the law, although he was a Pharisee, and he was born under the law, and he was trained in the law.

He kept going back to nature. Have you ever noticed that? You know, beloved, we that are teachers and preachers, and we want to reach men and women, we've got to learn a lesson. The average man, for instance, hasn't got a clue about, say, the tabernacle, or anything like that.

By the way, the speaker is ringing a bit. They haven't got a clue about that, and yet we persist, you know, we cart them off to churches where people stand up and they expound at great length things about the Old Testament that the man in the street hasn't got a clue about at all. Now, when Paul, for instance, was raised up to be the apostle to the Gentiles, he didn't go back to Moses so much as he went back to nature.

Let's go back to the first chapter of Romans. And in the first chapter of Romans, you've got this great truth, that he's not ashamed in verse 16 of the first chapter of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one believeth, to the Jew first, also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, that just shall live by faith.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them. For God has showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

Because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, their foolish heart was darkened, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness. Now you see where it all comes from? This is talking about mankind, and why it all came.

God gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. You say, now where did that all begin? It began in the Garden of Eden.

We'll see that a little later. And you see he's not appealing to the law, for he says in the third chapter, he's writing to Gentiles, the Romans you see, he says to these people in the third chapter, verse 19, we know that whatsoever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law. The law had no message to people outside of Israel.

It was given, the law was only speaking to those that were under the law. The law given by Moses had no message for the rest of mankind, none at all. God just gave his law to a privileged people for the purpose of keeping a pure strain in the earth.

And it seems as though he'd almost lost it too, except at last he found Mary, so that he could bring his son into the world. And this is one of the great reasons that God did this. But he never gave the law to mankind in general, he gave to his people.

So when Paul speaks about these people, speaks to the Gentiles, this is how he talks. It says in the second chapter, going back, in the end of verse four, having said in verse one, thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest. Amen.

He says that no man can judge in the things of God, none at all. We're all inexcusable along these great lines, and in the end of verse four we're told that it's the goodness of God that leads us to repentance. After our hard hearts, our impenitent hearts, we're told, we treasure up unto ourselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds, to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life.

But unto them that are contentious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation, and wrath, tribulation, and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first and also of the Gentile, for there is no respect of persons with God. As many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law. This will show how God will deal with people at the great white throne.

Those that have sinned, who've never received the law and have never yet heard the gospel, they will be dealt with by God, they will perish without law. They won't incur the punishments that some will incur. I tell you, hell's a dreadful place.

There are degrees of punishment in hell the same as there are degrees of life and glory and blessing in heaven. Keep this very clear in your hearts. And as we go on, he says, as many as have sinned without law shall perish without law.

As many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law. Verse 16, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel. Now we'll read the parenthesis.

13. Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness and their thoughts, though meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.

So he, you see, goes back way beyond the law. He goes back to nature. Amen.

And this is a great and powerful and necessary thing for us to understand. And when we're dealing with men, beloved, oftentimes we haven't got, I was going to say, the common sense to really deal with them upon the ground upon which they can be dealt with. You remember that when Paul went out amongst the Gentiles to preach, he didn't pick up a Bible and start to preach them from the Bible.

Have you noticed this? Okay, obviously there wasn't a Bible in any case, as we know it. He said, you know, you ought not to do this. God's not left himself without witness.

He's given us rain and fruitful seasons. He appealed to nature, not to inspiration. Always.

Because this is a ground upon which everybody can be approached. Praise the name of the Lord. This is a very wonderful thing.

And those of us blessed missionary brothers and sisters that are working amongst heathen that have never even heard, they know the difficulty of trying to get over to them the things of the Bible. But you can bring over to them the things of God and of Christ in salvation if you can approach on the right grounds. Illequipped often are people when they go out to preach.

We go to the 10th chapter. I just want to bring this out for you, that you can see clearly these great things. In Romans chapter 10, again he's on this great truth.

There's no difference, verse 12, between the Jew and the Greek. For the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

How then shall they call on him in whom they've not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they've not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. But they've not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah said, Lord who hath believed our report? So then faith comes by hearing.

Not reading, you notice. Faith comes by hearing. And hearing is only granted to people to really hear when God is speaking.

Hearing by the word of God. That's when these films of vice are penetrated. This is where density because of ignorance and blindness and hardness and centuries of heathendom.

This is when they're reached, when God speaks to them. Nothing else will do it. Nothing.

And here we go. Have they not heard, verse 18? Yes. All the heathen have heard.

What? Go into all the world and preach the gospel. Yeah, they've all heard. What have they heard? The voice of nature.

Here it is, God speaking through nature again. Their sound went out into all the earth and their word down to the ends of the world. This is what's known as an elliptical quotation, grammatically speaking.

That is, you've got to go back to the psalm, 19 as you will know it comes from, and you're told about the son that goeth forth in his strength. Their voice, there's no nation, there's no clime where their voice is not heard. Amen.

And we're back on nature. Every time. The voice of God speaking through the natural creation.

Amen. Now we know there's a curse on nature. We know there's a curse on that, but Jesus Christ came to remove the curse.

All the curse, glory be to the name of the Lord. Oh, to see that men and women of God are moving in an entirely new realm. No man can be a preacher of the gospel unless he goes in this power, better for him if he understands that in which he's moving as well.

For right understanding normally will enable right application and right use. But the Lord wants to lead us back onto this grey, grey, big truth. That he's really dealing with every man upon the basis of his grey, creatorial power.

All right. And here then is the line of preach. For beloved, it's quite clear to see, as we read in Romans chapter two, that everybody has the work of the law written in their hearts.

Verse fifteen. The work of the law was written in their hearts. Amen.

And this is how God made Adam originally. He made Adam like this. What a lovely thing.

The work of the law was written in Adam's heart. Amen. And therefore ease, for she came from Adam.

It was all there. And all the trouble in the whole wide world stems from this. That people are, by sin, we'll show this more clearly in a moment or two, acting contrary to their own life.

This is where the conflict comes, this is where the confusion comes, this is where all the psychological muddle comes from. And we're reaping the results of this. And we're far down the ages now, beloved.

Time is running its course. And in these days we may expect this thing outworking itself in grosser darkness, in greater corruption, in bigger muddle. All the time, all the time, the next generation from yours, you young people, that'll grow up and be mothers and fathers, will be in a bigger muddle still.

Expect it. That's if the Lord doesn't come back. It must work out this way.

It must. There's nothing to stop it. It's all written inside here.

When God gave the law to Moses, he merely put down on two tablets of stone the fundamental way in which human beings should function. He applied it ethically and morally to his chosen people. That's what he did.

But when he created, he created man with this law already written in his heart. Of course men are in a muddle. Of course men are in a terribly tragic state.

Of course people are always breaking down. Of course they're needing sorting out by clever doctors and scientists. Not that they themselves are free of their troubles.

This is it. But beloved, for us, you and I to see that God has met this thing in Christ, that the miracle of Calvary is the greatest miracle of everything. God has met this thing in Christ.

Now then, in the beginning, you'll know that God is a great one for going back to the beginnings. I hope you are aware of this. And you are aware, I trust, that in nature there are only two men in the earth.

There are only two men in the earth, the old man and the new. These are the only two men in the earth. That is all.

And you either belong to the old man group or the new man group. One of the two. It's got nothing to do with whether you're a sandwim or, yeah, you know the rest.

Some of you have been put through it in the name of being taught in a Bible college or something. Words I never find in the Bible. Or a melancholic or something like that.

It doesn't matter about that. You see, we're grouped up like this, by observations from without. But Jesus Christ has given us the revelation in the scripture.

And, beloved, how wonderful it all is. You hear such phrases as, the mother-child relationship. I expect you've all heard that one.

And when this was sort of discovered a decade or two ago, they wrote books about this, I tell you. And Freud used to come out with statements remarkably like the Bible. I believe he'd been cheating, really, in reading in the Bible.

He must have been. For instance, statements like this, that the fathers have eaten a sour grape and the children's teats are on edge. That's Freud.

Plain Freud. It isn't. It's Jeremiah.

It was written a long time before Freud stumbled on it. God said it. And it's absolutely true how lovely it all is, beloved.

And you do realize, don't you, that this is precisely the reason why God brought in his son into the earth from a completely different seed. You see? His father never ate sour grapes. And so his son's teats were never set on edge.

Amen. That's the loveliness of it. And I trust that those of us who were together took note the other morning when, or was it the other evening, the first night we were together, and we read in Psalm 139, where the psalmist said, Thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.

That's right. That was vital. That's absolutely necessary.

Because of the mother-child relationship. This is why the Holy Ghost had to come on Mary, because of the mother-child relationship. You think the Lord was born of Mary.

He was born of the Holy Ghost. That's right. That's what the scriptures say.

The glory of Mary is that she was prepared to yield her body up for Jesus to be born of the Holy Ghost. I hope that sunk right into you. Hallelujah.

That's a marvelous thing. He was born of the Holy Ghost. He was covered in his mother's womb.

His father, as I have already said, had never eaten sour grapes to set Jesus' teats on edge. If the fruit be the fruit of the Spirit, well, Father had enjoyed some marvelous fruit throughout all eternity. And it was as sweet, as sweet, as sweet to him.

Amen. And he sent forth that fruit in his Son. For you know that Jesus Christ was the fruit of the Spirit, through Mary's womb.

Jesus is the fruit of the Spirit. Amen. And that's very lovely, when you really eat him.

I tell you, Jesus Christ is not only milk for babies, and bread and milk when we get a little older, and meat for men. I tell you, he's dessert as well. He's fruit.

He's the first course, the main course, and he's every course, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's everything. And this is what we have to learn.

And oh, how sweet he is to our taste. Amen. All right, now let's get right back to these great scriptures about it, shall we? You read such phrases in Romans chapter 8 as this.

In verse 6 of Romans 8. Now, I don't know whether you've wrestled with statements like that, as I used to. You see, I was a good believer for I don't know how long. And I used to read statements like this, and sort of read, well, now, I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and I'm saved.

And then I'd read, but to be carnally minded is death. Well, whatever is the boy talking about? Can I be saved and dead too? I couldn't make head or tail of it. Evangelical preaching never, never reached me.

It never answered the problems. It never did. Now, bless God it was right when they preached the blood, hallelujah, let's get our foundations right in this.

But it's like so many things that you speak about, they're all right so far as they go. But if they don't go far enough, somehow a wrong inflection is given. And we miss the boat, or miss the mark often.

It says here that the carnal mind is death. It's the mind of the spirit that is life and peace. So we've got to get the life mind of the spirit, unless we can't have life and peace.

Unless this Bible's not talking true. It's that that's life and peace. All right, now let's go on.

And this is the reason. The reason is because the carnal mind is enmity against God. The mind of the flesh, it's enmity against God.

It's not subject to the law of God. You see, so when God gave the law of Moses, he gave it to minds that weren't subject to it. That's the failure of the law.

It was weak through the flesh. That was the weakness of the law. In itself it was spiritual.

We know that the law is spiritual. It's I'm that's carnal, says Paul, speaking as a man under law. And that's the key to Romans 7. The key to Romans 7 is in the first verse.

He's never a man under grace, he's a man under law. I'm speaking to those that know law. And the highest position a man can rise to under law is if with the mind I myself serve the law of God.

But with the flesh, the law's sin. He was a schizophrenic, spiritually speaking. He was a split personality.

This is the tragedy. You know, some of these translations and paraphrases that are on the markets these days, Norman put it very succinctly last night, so far as me, I mean, some things we say about one another, we sort of pull one another's legs and we have a good laugh, but when he gave the reason why I use the authorised version of the law, he said as true as he's ever spoken about me. And he gave the reasons why.

But in some of these paraphrases and things, I don't go with. But nevertheless, there's one thing about J.B. Phillips' translation of Romans 7. If you've ever read it, you'll know it's there. If you've never read it, well, look at it so far as this is concerned.

This is how he rearranges Romans 7, where he says in verse 22, I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. Oh, and then he brings the end of verse 25 up and puts it before verse 23, 4, so it reads this way, I see this law in verse 23, and then I find this other law in my members, so then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And that's how and where he ends Romans 7. And he's right. Yes, he's right. He doesn't leave us in a confused state at the end of chapter 7. Bless J.B. Phillips for that.

Yes. Glory be to God. He puts it in its right order.

Amen. But, you see, the man and the law is like that, as it is in Romans 7, and that's why when you read through some of those sublime psalms of David, all of a sudden you'll pitch into a psalm that will give you an excuse for being up one minute, and down the next. You'll be on the heights of glory, and you'll go, ooooh, Lord save me, I'm in the depths, I am crying.

Why, that's, yeah, marvellous David. Because he had to speak according to his experience. In fact, somebody's already been to me today and said, you know, I think it will help us tremendously if you can tell us always how to stay on top and not go down.

I think it will help us all. What's the secret of it? I want to know. Please, I think it will help us all if you stay there.

Well, we might get round to it before we're through, but let's keep on this. Blessed be the name of the Lord, beloved. Dear old David.

He was a dear old man. He was a great man of God, hallelujah, but I want to tell you that your privileges in the new covenant are far, far greater than his. Amen.

What a tremendous thing it is. This is what confuses them all, you see, when they say, isn't this the son of David, they said, when Jesus was on the earth? Why? Why? If you read, if you read the section, you'll find he'd been healing the blind, and he'd been healing the blind, that's fine, healing the lame, he'd been doing a hill, he couldn't tie this up. They said, are you sure this is the son of David? Why, David said, all the blind and all the lame up there, go up and kill them.

If you go up and kill them, I'll make you topmost in my kingdom. Look at that. And here's Jesus, the son of David, complete opposite.

He couldn't tie that up at all. You know that the Israelites are bloodthirsty by nature. They're probably about the greatest fighting force on the earth today.

I almost certainly got the best espionage system in the world, KGB notwithstanding, but the lion of the tribe of Judah, hallelujah, I mean, we know it's spiritual application, hallelujah, but when this lion came, everybody was aghast, he was a lamb, they couldn't understand it. They couldn't understand it, he was an absolute lamb, they said, is this, is you sure this is David's son? Look, he's not saying, let's kill all, get all these blind people out, let's kill them, go on up there, I'll make you, I'll give you, I don't know what if you do that, not Jesus, it's what spirit you're of, is the important thing. Do you remember that his disciples, in Luke 9, Jesus is going to Jerusalem, and he sends a couple of his disciples on ahead to prepare the way for him.

So they come to a village of the Samaritans, and they go to prepare for Jesus, you see, and they wouldn't have him, because Jesus' face was going to Jerusalem, all right, if he comes to be the Samaritan's messiah and God and settle among us, it's all right. But if he's going on there, he's got to get converted to the Samaritans, see, that's what he's got to do, if you want him to have us, he comes on our terms, you see. And the disciples were aghast, they said, Lord, shall we call down fire from heaven and consume them, just like Elijah did.

He said, you don't know what spirit you're of, you're not of the spirit of Elijah, or perhaps they still were, until Pentecost. He said, I've come to save men's lives, not to destroy them. This is the whole glory of the truth, that God has to open our eyes.

I hear people preach, preach, they say, God, send us more Elijahs. I always say, oh, do they know what spirit they're of? That was all right under that covenant, but it didn't end this. I say, Lord, send us more Jesuses, send us more people like Jesus, Lord, that's what I want, glory.

There aren't many people you know like Jesus, not many, you can nearly count them on your hands. So, the Lord wants to reveal truth to us. I pray, God, like Paul, that the eyes of our understanding should be enlightened, and we should begin to see left hand from right, old from new, right from wrong.

The good from the more excellent. I shan't you the more excellent way, he says. That's right.

So that we may enter into the revelation of God through Jesus Christ. Now then, we'll go back to our Old Testament, and we'll sort out this bit about the carnal mind, and we'll go right back to the beginning, in Genesis. Where did this carnal mind, this mind of the flesh, come from? Well, we know the story of creation, in Genesis chapter one.

And at the end of chapter one, we read in twenty-six, God said, let's make man in our image, after our likeness. Now, no animal was made after our image. You see, no animal, so that blows the evolution theory up.

God was made after our image. I mean, Adam was made, sorry, Adam was made after this, our image, when God made man. And he was made to have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

So God created man in his own image. In the image of God created him, male and female, created he them. And so I want you to see that right from the beginning, God had woman in mind when he created Adam.

All right, he had her in mind. And it's when you get to the second chapter that you get this great creation shown. The Lord God, in verse seven, formed man of the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

And God did these marvelous things. He put man in the garden. I want you to notice, get this very clear.

Now, all you men, prick your ears up now, and get them wide open. You women go to sleep just for a moment, you'll wake up in a moment or two. Men, who did God put in the garden? Who did he put in the garden? Pardon? Adam.

Not Eve. Now, note, she's not there yet. He put man in the garden.

All right. He made man of the dust of the earth. And then he put him to sleep when he got him in the garden, and made a woman in a garden.

Oh, glory. That's what he did. God never created Eve from original dust.

He only created man. He took a rib of Adam and formed Eve in a garden. Now, Eve was not there when God, verse fifteen of chapter two, put man in Eden, to dress it and keep it.

The Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.

And the Lord God said, It's not good that the man should be alone. I'll make him and help meet for him. Stop talking about help meet.

Not in the Bible. Help. Every woman's to be a help meet for her husband.

To meet her husband's needs. Her husband's requirements. She's not a help meet.

She's a help. She is supposed to, now notice, she is supposed to represent the Holy Ghost, who was the paraclete. Who is the paraclete that comes down and he's called alongside to help.

That's her privilege. You women, that's why the Holy Ghost is always associated with the bride, everything. In your New Testament, I tell you, these great spiritual principles and truths are here.

And I tell you, you women, you're throwing it away right, left and center. A woman was taken out of Adam. I know the men are all ashamed of themselves, but we'll have a look at it in a moment.

I've got a, we've got a brethren's conference coming up in September. That'll be enough for them. All women excluded.

Amen. Look, beloved. He took Adam.

He formed him of the dust of any old dust of the earth. But he formed a garden and he put together a garden. Adam in the garden.

And then he took the rib out of Adam and he builded a woman. That's your word, builded. That's what he did.

And she came into paradise immediately. Adam didn't. You see what I mean? I know you might not say there's a tremendous time gap.

Anyway, time seems to be a thing that doesn't matter in these early ages. He put him in the garden when he formed the garden. But when he got him in there, now you see what you women are supposed to be, don't you? You're supposed to be beautiful and glorious.

See, I know you can't help the shape of your nose or the size of your mouth any more than I can, but these aren't the particular thing. You're supposed to be the glory of the man. You understand? Instead of his shame.

How many men are ashamed of their wives the way they show their legs off? And I don't know what. Showing to everybody. His it is, anybody that wants to come and see.

Anybody. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. And you men are worse still.

You should stop them. I was driving in the car the other day. I don't know who I was with.

Probably Bob. He's my old henchman on this. And I said, now look at that girl over there.

She's got some clumping grace. You'd think she was a horse. I tell you beloved, you wouldn't tell them from a horse's hoof.

Are they crazy? Don't they know they're supposed to look beautiful and precious? Don't they know they're worse? Do they want to support evolution theory after all? If they can't be it properly, they'll disgrace themselves in their dress to do it. Get out of it. I charge you in Jesus name.

You were brought into life in a garden from somewhere here around the heart of a man. You were builded. Don't you understand? What's the world got to do with it? What's fashion got to do with it? If you can't get over fashion, I wonder if you'll get over sin.

I wonder. I don't believe you can. And neither does God.

This is the whole glorious truth of it. Anyway, let me carry on. I didn't mean to say that.

Let's come back. I told you I'm pretty cheap. I catch fire pretty quick.

And he formed this woman. And he made Adam. Out of the ground, verse 19, the Lord God formed every beast of the field, every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them.

And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not fowl and help meet for him.

You see? He named all the animals after he'd been in the garden a long while, before his wife came. So, God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam. I reckon they'd had a good conversation, hadn't you? What do you think of that, Adam? Oh, I don't want him.

What do you think of that? I don't want that. Get you to sleep, Adam. And I'll really make you someone to love and to have.

I'll take her right out of yourself. Amen. That's what he did.

He took one of his ribs, closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, buildeth he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman. Because she was taken out of man, not out of the dust. I don't see why they should call women the weaker sex.

I mean, I was only made from dust, but you, sister, were made from bone. I don't see why you should be thought weaker at all. This is a real misnomer, this.

And therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Now, the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

And he said to the woman, Here's the rottenness of the devil. See what he did? He set aside man's order, God's order. God said man, but he didn't talk to Adam, he talked to her.

And this is the curse that's got in the church. He put the woman at the top. He ignored, he bypassed God's order.

And you women, what you don't do it today, it's the spirit of the age in which we're living. He, it's the devil's work. He cut out the man, he ignored God, he slapped God in the face.

And there was Adam standing by her side. He hadn't gone out fishing. They didn't live by killing in those days.

Death came in at the flood. They were vegetarian until the flood. Not that you need get any queer ideas about food laws.

Paul says that everything is sanctified to us by the word of God and prayer. That's what he said. So you needn't get the bugbear in your head about you only eat certain oats and certain leaves and one thing and the other and spend twice as much on your food as you ought to because it costs twice as much.

Wasting God's money because you don't believe the Bible. Believe more in your health than you do in the ability for God's word to sanctify everything you eat. You can be very, very expensive if you get the wrong ideas and you're travelling back to Old Testament things all the time.

All this business about you mustn't eat pork. What's wrong with pork? Who has tapeworms? Well I know all about that. But I know other people that I call tapeworms.

I think tapes really have wormed their way into the church. We love it. Sanctification by the word of God and prayer is not merely saying your grace every time you eat your meal.

God can kill tapeworms. You're all right. Whether they be in a pig or even if you get them in your tummy.

But you won't get them if they're killed in the pig before you eat it. But God says, not that I'm advocating you should eat pig or anything like that. I mean Paul even talks about devouring one another in Galatians chapter 5. He doesn't advocate it.

He says it has to do with sin. But Galatians, the devil came and he ignored God. It is he that exalts the woman every time.

Deliver us from a Pentecost Lord that reverses your order in the name of freedom. There never was a bigger bondage than the bondage forged in the name of liberty. For that's deadly.

You can't even see it. And the Lord, he says this. The devil, he said to the woman, yea, hath God said ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? The woman said unto the servant, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden.

Now she wasn't there when God said this to Abraham. That's why I'm talking about you men. Your responsibility to see that your women get it right.

Responsibility is on Adam all the time. You remember old Paul said if she doesn't know anything let her ask her own husband at home. Do you remember that? It's lovely there isn't it? Of course Edom was their home.

And we go on and ye shall not eat of it. You shall not touch it lest ye die. Now God hadn't said that.

You trace that back. It's good for us to know exactly what God says. That's it.

And Adam had not reported it right or else she was not quoting him right. One of the two. And now listen.

The devil says in verse four, you shall not surely die. Still ignoring Adam. And he, poor soft individual he was, didn't even chop in his ear, look now, let's get this right.

Oh the weakness of the male. God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave the poor softy.

Yeah, that's right. Gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. That's where the carnal mind came in.

That was the mind of the flesh. It entered in Eden. His mind was on his wife.

What his wife said. How his wife tempted him. His mind should have been on God.

I should have said no, I won't. That would have been a spiritual mind. But he thought about flesh.

She was bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. But he was spirit of his spirit. For God had been spirited into Adam, and he was a living soul, because God had breathed spirit into him.

Breath. He chose flesh. He died.

That's where the mind, that's where the fleshly mind came in. In the garden. The carnal mind started there.

In that simple act, he betrayed us all. That's why Paul cries out in Romans 7, I'm carnal, sold unto sin. Adam sold us all out in the garden.

Sold us all out. And what a price he paid. No wonder there had to be a tremendous, terrible price paid at Calvary.

No wonder. This then, beloved, is here where the whole thing starts. In idyllic condifference, in a paradise, Satan comes in.

And he brings his seed, which is the word of Satan. Like the word, the seed of God is the word of God. He came, he sowed his seed into Eve and into Adam.

Look upon what grounds Eve made the decision. She saw that it was a tree to be desired, it was good for food, and it was pleasant to the eyes. It was very nice.

She was very aesthetic and artistic. She was wonderful. She was lovely.

And of course, she was providing for her husband, poor man. God save us. And this is how the whole thing's been reversed.

This is how, beloved, this is from whence comes the great terror that lies in the mother-child relationship. A strong leading personality, the dominant mind, the one that gives under the guise of submission, the one that takes the lead. It's been implanted and impressed in the whole of the human race since Eden.

Now, Christian women are supposed to know these things. They don't need to read Freud, or Jung, or Adler, or any of these people that have come up since to write their books. They only need to read the Bible.

And it's all there. And it's after this, you remember, that God comes down, crying out in the wilderness of Eden. You say, oh, it was a paradise.

There was a wilderness to God from that moment. Crying out for Adam. And they're hiding behind a tree.

And, you know, the whole story that went on and developed. I just looked at my watch. Isn't that terrible? Am I gone blind as teeth? God's calling after Adam.

And out they come. And man now is in a state of absolute frustration. The carnal mind has come in, which is enmity against God.

It has received a seed from Satan, who is God's enemy. The devil is the enemy of God. And they receive the word of Satan.

And they now have a mind that's enmity against God. It's flesh. Seeks flesh, flesh, flesh.

How many times, beloved, shall we need to remind ourselves of this? That had Adam, in the garden, chosen God and not Eve, God would soon have given him another Eve. But he chose Eve and let go of God. God would have given him another Eve, all right.

No trouble if God put him to sleep again and take another rib and heal him up. All sorts of things like that. No, no difficulty to God.

But he couldn't let go of the flesh for the spirit. He couldn't do it. And it was God that had given her to him.

Finger it. But she was contaminated now. Instead of being a help, she was a temptation.

Desperate. Anyway, God says, I'm going to put enmity, in verse fifteen, between thee and the woman, talking to the devil, and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, thou shalt bruise his heel.

Unto the woman, he said, I'll greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband. He shall rule over thee.

Unto Adam, he said, because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife. Not the devil. She hearkened to the voice of the devil.

He hearkened to the voice of his wife. And have eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it. Cursed is the ground for thy sake.

In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. Thou shalt eat the herb of the field, and in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, until thou return unto the ground.

For out of it was thou taken, thus thou art, and unto thus shalt thou return. Now listen. See the significance of this next verse.

And E. Adam then, after they were out of the garden, called his wife's name Eve. Listen. She was the mother of all living.

It was in sin that she was named Eve. Yeah. The mother of all living.

Mother-child relationship. Here it is. It's in the book.

Adam was never called the father of all living. Eve becomes the great prominent one in this. Adam loses his garden because of Eve.

Nevertheless, there is a sanctifying truth about this, and for this we shall have to turn to the New Testament. God bless. Oh, I would say, God be blessed forever for giving us this New Testament.

Praise His wonderful name. You know the whole glorious truth in 1 Timothy, where Paul writes to this young son in the faith. And he says this.

Let's start at verse 5, shall we, of chapter 2. I'm presuming on your patience, beloved, because I like to keep reading the Bible, and I'm hoping that our afternoons won't get too few for us to deal with the subject. But it's good for us to read the Scripture. There's one God, verse 5, one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for us all to be testified in due time, whereunto I am ordained a preacher and an apostle.

I speak the truth in Christ and lie not. A teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity. I will, therefore, that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting.

In like manner also that women adorn themselves in modest apparel. Now, you ask yourself whether you've got modest clothes on, little woman. Just ask yourself, and nobody need reprove you then, if you need reproving.

That you adorn yourself. Do you see there? Modest apparel is an adornment, not immodest apparel. Modest apparel is an adornment.

And with shamefacedness ends sobriety. Don't try and look a bold-faced hussy, will you? Not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array, but which becometh women professing godliness with good words. Let the women learn in silence with all subjection.

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first hauled, then eaten. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.

Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in childbearing, God's blessing on a true union in the true church. If they continue in faith, and love, and holiness with sobriety. See, you'll be saved in childbearing if you continue, there's an if.

In faith, and love, and holiness with sobriety. Amen. That's what God says.

And Paul says, writing to this young pastor, how to discipline the church at Ephesus, because Timothy became the first bishop of the church at Ephesus. He told them how they were to behave themselves in the house of God. You'll get there at the end of the third chapter.

Great is the mystery of godliness, and so on. And he says, now you're not to allow a woman to teach, or to usurp authority over the man. He didn't say she mustn't teach, but she mustn't teach over the man.

She mustn't usurp authority over the man. That's what he said. Amen.

That's what she must not do. She's allowed to pray and prophesy in the church with her head covered, so the book says. I believe the book.

I don't know what you do. There are no specious arguments that can be brought up to deny the book. Or if they are such arguments, they're very specious.

The whole glorious truth lies here, beloved, that God wants us to see that the woman was in the transgression. She was deceived. But Adam wasn't deceived.

He deliberately chose. He exercised his mind in the choice. And he chose Eve before God.

And it's in this exercise of an undeceived mind, which knows deliberately what it's doing, and chooses to do it, that responsibility lies. God does not lay blame or responsibility where a person is deceived. He always lays blame and responsibility where a person deliberately chooses, as Adam did.

And from that moment, God refused to be called the God of Adam. He was never the God of Adam. He never goes back further in these things than calling himself the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

God is not the God of Adam. Hallelujah. He disowned him.

That's right. Turned him out of the garden. Yes.

And do you know what happened? Before long, they brought forth two children, Adam and Eve. They produced Cain and Abel. And Cain was a murderer, and Abel was a victim.

What a terrible thing. In one generation, just in one generation, this is the way sin works, beloved. This is the way it works.

The Scripture says that Adam knew Eve. It carries much more than a flesh union with it. Those two souls fallen in sin produced two sons fallen in sin.

That's right. And Cain was a murderer. All this knowledge.

What knoweth the things of a man? Who knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man that's in it? That's what Paul says. They connived in their sin. They went on in their sin.

And sin is an unstoppable thing except by God's grace through Christ. And oh, beloved, what terrible things it has worked out in the human race. Eh? Oh, it has.

Now, Paul, I'm sorry, Ezekiel puts this very clearly. Let's go into Ezekiel. In fact, Ezekiel is a very, very wonderful book.

And you will know that he prophesied in Israel when the nation had become all split up. You see, this schizophrenic splitting idea came right in. The nations all split up.

It's all in captivity when Ezekiel comes to prophesy. The centuries have run their courses. In fact, millenniums have passed since this great sin in Eden, beloved.

And Ezekiel is raised up to preach and prophesy. He prophesied from the throne of God. You'll see it there in the first chapter.

He had a revelation. Don't turn to chapter one except just to make a note if you want. I'm not going to speak from there.

But I'm saying that this is where it all happened. He was down by a river, Kibar, so different from the river of Eden that split up into four heads. But notice it was by a river.

Notice the consistency of God's truth. And there's the throne, and it's the throne of fire, and he sees the man on the throne, and he prophesies. And in chapter nineteen, he's told to take up a lamentation for the princes of Israel.

What's thy mother? A lioness. That's how it starts. Let's go down.

Ezekiel nineteen, verse ten. Here's the mother-child relationship. Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood, planted by the waters.

She was fruitful, full of branches, by reason of many waters. Oh, I tell you, who can tell the streams from whence our mothers have drunk? Often, when I deal with people, and they come to me, and I suppose you know that this has been God's choice for me over the past twenty years, I should think. Being privileged to talk, deal with, pray for, minister to hundreds and thousands, only I don't keep count, individuals of people, you know, and they'll come to me in a terrible state.

Perhaps they'll be under all kinds of drugs, bondages, they've been in and out of psychiatric establishments, they've been to every place they can go to get help. And I'm only talking as an individual, don't think I'm trying to tell you I'm the only one in the country or in the United States, I'm just telling you about my own experience. And this is it.

I'll find this over and over again. You may think I'm cheeky, I don't know, especially some of you mums and dads, you might find something rearing up in you that I ask these kinds of questions. I'll say, what's your family like, love? Don't want you to tell me any secrets, it's all right, and they never do, so it's all right, don't get worried.

They're very loyal, these kids, they really are. What's your mum like? Did she ever go along to a spiritualist meeting? Oh, no, no. How about your grandmother? Did your grandmother, was she, oh yeah, they tell me that she used to sort of, well, you know, she could sort of tell people's fortunes and this sort of thing.

Here, it goes right there. Right there. Or your father, tell me about your father.

I won't tell you all the questions I ask, not at this present juncture, you see. And again and again and again I found, oh, you know, these people, they've drunk by many waters, I tell you. They've read this thing, they've studied that thing, they've been interested in the occult, they've been along to spiritualist meetings, they lost their husband in the war and they went along to the medium or something like that to try and say where her husband was.

Or, here they go, yeah, they'll play with glasses on a table and all this and they'll get messages. You know, see, people are so stupid. Girls do this much more than boys.

This is the tragedy. And one of the first questions they want to know, this will show you how they're tied to the flesh, is, am I going to get married? See, it's all in that realm. You'll never ask a Ouija board whether you're going to heaven when you die.

Nay, nay, nay. All in the realm of the flesh, all a lot of it. Let's continue reading here.

She had strong rods for the scepters of them that bear rule. And listen, her stature was exalted among the thick branches. It was the mother that came out in the children.

There it is. It's her stature. She achieved her stature in her children.

That's what mothers do. How many families have I met just been ruined when a girl's married a man because the mother simply won't keep her nose out of her child's affairs? She won't do it. She will not let them go.

My advice to young people when they get married is move a hundred miles away from your parents. That's my advice to them. A hundred miles away is the best thing you can do.

Yeah. Some of you are weighing me up, aren't you? You be careful I'm not weighing you up. You might be found wanting in my balances.

The whole glorious truth, beloved, is just his. You see, she comes to her full stature. And so it goes on.

She's plucked up in fury, verse twelve, and so on and so on and so on. This is a psychological thing it's working out. Now she's plonged in again, in verse thirteen.

She's not going to give up in a wilderness, in a dry and thirsty ground. She won't give up. She's there.

She's there. Isn't this the thing? These things are laws. Look, I tell you they're in the Bible.

We needn't have consulted any of these books on psychology. None of them. They're here.

We'll go back in this same lovely book, shall we? Chapter sixteen. This is God speaking. You say, why isn't there a lot in this EQ here? You may read it with a different eye now.

God is unfolding spiritual truth. And right the way down through history, doesn't matter whether it's a year after, ten years after, a century or a millennium after, it's working out. That act in Eden.

It's out working. Which of course started from an act in heaven. Sin started in heaven, not on earth.

That's why it needed a heavenly remedy. It started in heaven with the devil's rebellion against God. That's where sin started.

It came onto the earth. That's why God sent someone from heaven to deal with it. She's lovely.

I can see. God's got an awful amount of common sense. He really has.

This gospel's so logical to me. I can't understand where people get all mixed up about it. They pretend to have problems.

Well, there aren't any problems. The only problem about the Bible is the moral problem. When you face it, whether you'll have the moral courage to come face it properly.

That's the problem with the Bible. The only one there is. And here in this chapter, in Ezekiel, it's so lovely here.

But let me look. Here's God speaking. Again.

He's speaking about Jerusalem this time. You see that cities, countries, nations take on the same characteristic. It works out in all levels.

Here it is. The word of the Lord came to me saying, Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations. Now, you know that Jerusalem, poor thing, was only bricks and things like that.

Of itself, it was amoral. So he's really talking to the people. All right.

Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem, Thy birth. There he is, you see, right back there. Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan.

Thy father was an Amorite, thy mother an Hittite. As for thy nativity, in the day thou was born, thy navel was not cut, neither was thou washed in water to supple thee, thou was not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. What does that mean if the navel's not cut? The umbilical cord isn't cut.

What does it mean? That's right. I tell you that the natural is an analogy of the spiritual. Put that down, if you don't put anything else down.

You make a note of that. The natural is an analogy of the spiritual. In the connection, the umbilical cord not cut, in the natural.

And in the spiritual, here's the spiritual feed in, into Jerusalem. They were still being fed from Amoritish and Hittite, Hittitish sins and perversions. This is the thing.

Well, justice, what I'm telling you, that when we're born naturally, the umbilical cord has to be cut so that we have a distinct severance from our mother, which we do have in the physical. Though most boys, if they're not very careful, will still find themselves with mother's apron strings tied round them. You see, because it's the spiritual psychic link, the natural link, this is what God's on.

Jerusalem was supposed to be the spiritual glory of God in the earth. But he says, you're not really joined to me by birth, you're joined to the Hittites and the Amorites. That's what he's saying to them.

And the sins of these people were being reproduced in the child, Jerusalem. And this is what he's saying, thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. None I pitied thee to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee.

For thou wast cast out in the open field to the loathing of thy person in the day that thou wast born. When I passed by thee and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee, When thou wast in thy blood, live. Yea, I said unto thee, When thou wast in thy blood, live.

And that fruited me. Years back, takes me back decades to the time when God fruited me with that verse. Oh, verse eight.

When I passed by thee and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love. Oh glory, amen. God loving something cast out to their loathing.

When I passed by thee, and it was suffering as a result of this lifeline, really the deathline, never being broken with the past. Never. He said, I spread my skirt over thee, I covered thy nakedness.

That's the essence of the Old Testament. It's always covered. It's still there, but covered.

The essence of the new Old Testament word, translated salvation, is to cover. How far? It was always there. Sin was never properly dealt with in the Old Testament.

It was covered. So when they used the great word atonement, they were only saying, my sins are covered. Why, David comes out with this, Blessed are the men whose sins are covered.

Not in the new. God's not covering anything up in this Testament. Hallelujah.

I tell you, it's radical here. Oh, hallelujah. I covered thy nakedness.

I swear unto thee, I entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest mine. Then I washed thee. I washed thee.