The Methods of the Holy Ghost

And I'm going to study with you a passage of scripture. You're here for Bible study and information and challenge and recreation and fellowship, and I hope the Lord will make these next 30 minutes profitable as we study the 107th Psalm, the 107th Psalm. And I'm going to ask us in a moment to read it together.

And while you turn to it, the 107th Psalm, I want to give you an outline of it, and then after I've outlined it, I want us to dip into it just a little bit. Now, there's enough in this psalm to last all during the conference, but since I had not planned it, I thought maybe at least we wouldn't be wasting time to go through it this morning, this 107th Psalm. If you're interested, there are three different messages that could be brought from this psalm.

First, this psalm describes the way God in the future is going to bring the remnant of the Jewish nation unto himself. You could bring a message on that. Then, without doing any violence to the word of God, you could bring a message from the 107th Psalm on how a sovereign God is going to bring restitution or restoration to his Church.

My own conviction is, and this is simply my conviction, that we are shut up now to the building of congregations that can do what the Lord promised his Church could do, and that that Church for a while did do, and that is, bind Satan and loose men. My own conviction is that the book of Revelation pictures the true Church of the Lord as having to flee into the wilderness and have been in the wilderness in a crippled, withered condition under the grace of God for nearly 2,000 years. You and I are not acquainted with a congregation that has any power, are you? Talking about binding Satan, we don't know what it's talking about, and yet God's Son promised that I'll give unto you the keys of the kingdom and binding power, whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound and considered to be bound in heaven, and so forth.

I believe, although this is not my subject, this is my own conviction, that our past message is dead. I think it's dead as a dodo, and I think we're marking time, and I believe that a congregation, and its pastor, he's not here, but I believe that we'll be traitors if we do not give ourselves in these days when we're not getting the first base, and we are not. That's not pessimism, that's just the God's truth.

The churches of our cities are not making any impression on the spiritual or moral climate around them. Is that too bad? That's so. We're just not getting the job done.

If a church is a body of people through whom Christ manifests himself, then we are in a bad shape. I think this psalm describes how the Lord, and I believe the He said that he's going to have a mature, full-grown, holy, purified church with power to loose men and bind Satan, and that kind of a church, his church, that the gates of hell, the fortresses of hell, not be able to stand. That once again the Lord will have, as he had for a few years after he went back, a church which is his body that can penetrate into the devil's territory and bring captives to him.

And I believe he's going to do it by restoring the voice of authority in his churches. I'm going to speak about that the Lord willing tonight, and I believe that he's going to bring his churches, the inner remnant within all of our congregations, I believe he's going to bring us to such trouble that we'll actually turn to him. And that's the way of God's grace when we come to the end of our strength, and until we do, he does not work in power, and I think you'll see that as we come along.

But this morning a third message could be brought from this psalm, and I'm giving you this in reduction so that we can read it more profitably. A third message could be brought from this psalm, and not do any injustice to the word, for the word is bifocal and it is also so broad and big that we can't exhaust it usually with one approach. Here is a way described in this psalm whereby God saves men and women and brings them to himself.

He saves a sinner just exactly like he's going to save the Jewish nation, the remnant, or like he's going to save his churches. And I want with that introduction for us to read it together. I'm going to read one verse and then you read two, will you? I'd like for us to take the time to go all through this passage of scripture.

I want us to read verses 1 and 2 with the idea that here is a description of the people that God said that he would give to his son. Here is the psalm of thanksgiving, here is the work of God the Father, or God as Father, in the matter of salvation. Here it is, Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good for his mercy forever.

You notice the word endures in my King James version is there and it's in italics, it ought not to be there. He's giving thanks for the goodness and mercy of God which is eternal. And here we have the eternal love of Almighty God for the people he gave to his son.

Now will you read verse 2. These people greatly loved of the Father from all eternity. There never was a time when the objects of his grace were not the objects of his grace, and there never was a time when they were not the subjects of his mercy, when they were not the apple of his eye. His magnificent obsession is the object of his affections, and they are the people whom the Lord did something for, and the injunction here of the admonition is, let the redeemed of the Lord say so.

Don't have to make them, just get out of the way, and let such people as have been confronted with the saving power of God in Christ and are new creatures, let those whom the Lord hath redeemed, not who have redeemed themselves, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the enemy. This is salvation, the Christian's work of God's grace and a manifestation of God's power. And here the emphasis is on the fact that salvation is of God the Father through the redeeming work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then verse 3 gives us a description of the work of God the Holy Spirit in bringing those loved of the Father and redeemed by the Lord in the saving relationship to himself. And verse 3 reads, and gathered them, gathered is a Holy Spirit word, you get that wherever in the New Testament or the Old Testament we are gathered together, we use that expression, the connotation is that the Holy Spirit brought us together. Where two or three meet in my name, gather together in my name under my authority, brought there by the Holy Ghost.

And the Holy Spirit gathered them out, he went out after them out of the lands, and he went over here from the east and from the west and from the north and from the south. Here is the work of the Holy Spirit. Before you read verse 4, beginning with verse 4, down through verse 42, here is my outline before we continue to read, we have a fourfold description, I guess that's a good word for it, a fourfold description of the work of the Holy Spirit in going out and rounding up, using whatever methods he deems it wise to do.

But he does not do it in the way that he does it. And anybody that is in on that is just an instrument or a messenger boy of the Holy Spirit, for in that sense, and I don't rule this out, in that sense the only person who can penetrate the spirit of a human being is the Holy Spirit. Is that right? And in that sense he is the only soul winner.

I am aware of the fact that there is a sense in which you can be a winner of souls, but the deeper aspect is that after all it is the Holy Spirit who gets the sinner to Christ, to God through Christ, he may be pleased to use you. But here is the work of the Father in making people the object of his eternal love. Here is the work of God the Son in his redeeming work on the cross, and here is the work of God the Spirit in going out and rounding up these people.

If you are a missionary now, especially now in some of what we call the foreign fields, about three months after you land on the mission field, if your theology isn't right, it will get right. You will find out when you run up against the darkness of demonology that is all over this country. We just haven't got enough spiritual discernment to know it.

If you go to New York City and tackle the fact that one out of every ten people in New York City is a homosexual, did you know that? One out of every ten persons in New York City is a homosexual. There are 70,000 male prostitutes in New York City, every one of them with disease. You go down in this switchblade area of New York City with your little nice Sunday morning message that we use in our churches and dine by, and you find out that there is just one spirit that can get inside the human spirit, and that is the Holy Spirit.

Here is the work of the Holy Spirit on the foreign fields. Old people over there have got religion and they are sunk in demonology, in the powers of the demonic forces of this age. Ladies and gentlemen, representatives of the Church in Lynchburg, you and I have been privileged to live in a time when if we do not get in contact with the Holy Spirit, we are gone.

We are gone as far as we can go. But our message assures you a foot and a half out. A little boy, the teacher of a junior high school heard the other day, he heard him reporting to one of his fellow students as they were enrolling, he said, You will never guess what I did last night.

I went to church and got myself saved. That is a pretty good answer to the methods that we use. Verse 1, God makes people the object of his forever mercy, thank God.

Verse 2, the Lord, the Son, redeems. Verse 3, the Holy Spirit gathers or goes out after them. Now beginning with verse 4, down through verse 42, you have a fourfold description of how a sovereign spirit is subject to none of our binding, and he works, and this is beautiful, there are four different approaches outlined here in this psalm, how the Holy Spirit brings men and women to the condition described first of all in verse 6. And I want us to notice verse 6, and then I'm going to ask you to read verses 4 and 5. Remember here, the people are the Lord's people, the ones he is going to save.

They are the ones who were savingly redeemed by Christ, and they are the objects of the work of the Holy Spirit in gathering them from the East and the West and the North and the South. And the Holy Spirit uses methods, and he brings all whom he is able to bring to Christ to the condition of verse 6. After reading verse 4 and 5, we'll read in a minute and we'll understand it a little better. But in verse 6, and I read this now because it occurs four different times in this psalm, the Holy Spirit got some people in such a shape that they cried unto the Lord in their trouble.

And when they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, what did he do? He delivered them out of their distresses. They cried unto the Lord, but they didn't do it until they got in trouble. And when they got in trouble enough that no wiggle left and nothing else they could do about it, and they couldn't help God, and they couldn't do one-fourth and God do three-fourths and didn't listen to this, God done his part and that's up to you, but they were in plumb trouble! They couldn't get out! And they were so deep in trouble that they couldn't do a thing themselves, the only thing they had to do was to look to somebody else and to cry unto the Lord, and then when he delivers people, when you come to the bottom, hip bottom, that's God's way, well, then he reaches down and then we can call him our Savior.

We didn't save ourselves, he saved us, we couldn't get out! We were damned up! Four times in this psalm, verse 13, they cried unto the Lord in their trouble and he saved them. Then verse 19, they cried unto the Lord in their trouble and he saved them. Then verse 28, they cried unto the Lord in their trouble and the same thing.

The reason this psalm goes at this from four different directions is to make this point, that the Holy Spirit, in bringing a man to God, always brings him to a certain place, but he is not confined to a certain method of getting him there. I want to labor that a little bit. I used to teach a little bit here in the school, the Piedmont School, many years ago.

The young preachers, most of them came down out of the North with their slick fundamentalism, they had a gospel you could take, never knew you took it, never knew you'd lose it, it was the sweetest little belief, and not knowing that the devil believed, and they trembled and we don't even tremble. I'd stick them with their personal work, they had a lot of little tracts, they went all over this city and they sewed this down with tracts. I'm not against tracts, except they're a substitute for something so much better.

I would stick them with this, that here we are, we've got a little pill box, and every time we need a sinner, we give him a pill. It don't make any difference what his sickness is, we give him the same pill, and they always swallow it and call themselves saved. But the Holy Spirit don't give everybody the same pill.

The Holy Spirit diagnoses the situation and deals with the condition. He meets the sinner at this place for that one, and that place for that one, and that place for another, and deals with him as he sees fit. But he deals with him in such a way, whatever his method, as to bring that sinner to a place of such trouble, that he'll be shut up to where he'll do what he never will do otherwise, cry unto the Lord.

And when he does that, why, then there will be deliverance at the hands of a powerful God. I'm so hungry, ladies and gentlemen, I'm not seeing one-tenth as much of this as I did 10 years ago. Something's died.

My heart breaks at the absence of the Holy Spirit, apparently, from the services that I hold. I plead guilty to the fact that I think I'd shout all over God's heaven if next week in Lynchburg I'd hear, One sinner in trouble! I mean in trouble, plumb trouble. A fellow down in Tennessee the other day said, I've been a member of this church 46 years, and I've never in 46 years heard one person in this town crying out to God for mercy.

Oh, I'd love to hear it, wouldn't you? Well, the Holy Spirit, his job is to get people in trouble. Get them in trouble. Bring them down to where they hit bottom.

Because we're born the other way, and we'll never lean on somebody else if we can help it. Now, look at how he does that. He makes restless wanderers out of some people, verses 4 and 5. These folks that are eternally loved to the Father and redeemed by the Son, the Holy Spirit goes out after them, and he makes restless wanderers out of some of them, verses 4 and 5. He says, they wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way, and they couldn't find any place to lie.

They found no city to dwell in. Oh, sinner, he is wandering around, he tries that, and that don't work, and he tries that, and that don't work, and he tries that, and that don't work, and he just can't find a place to lie. He makes restless wanderers out of men and women.

He makes them so restless they get hungry and thirsty, and they get so hungry and thirsty that their souls absolutely faint in them, they give up all hope. And when a man comes to that place, then he cries to the Lord in his deep trouble, in his restlessness and the fact that he can't find a place to lie, where he finds inner peace and joy. When he gets there, then he cries unto the Lord, and the Lord comes and delivers him out of their distresses.

And then verse 17, I want you to look at this beautiful picture of what it means to be delivered. He reached down and delivered them out of their distresses. They were in trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses, and he just said, Well, now, bless God, that's all.

No, no! He reached down and delivered them, and then he led them forth in the right way. He did it, and he did that that they might go to a city of habitation and never turn loose their hands. He just led them along.

And then there is an interpolation here, saying, We ought to have a praise service right now. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness! It's like the word, don't you think? I got in such trouble that I couldn't get out, and I cried unto the Lord out of the deep. And, gee, he delivered me! And he didn't quit, he took them by the hand and led them in the right way.

The wilderness journeyed toward the eternal city. I tell you right now, oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men. Isn't this a beautiful picture of salvation? For he satisfies the longing soul.

He does. Not your experience, but him. He satisfies the longing soul.

He filleth the hungry soul with goodness. That's reality, my brothers and sisters. Here's a man talking about something that's taking place! And somebody who is functioning now, he does it, present tense.

He satisfies the longing soul, oh, for the realities of time and eternity. He fills the hungry soul with goodness. Then in verse 10, he comes in another direction.

He puts chains around some people, he makes them captive, he puts them in chains. They are all locked up, look at them. He's going to bring them to himself.

They are sitting in darkness, verse 10, and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron. They are in that shape because they rebelled against the words of God and contemned the counsel of the Most High. Therefore this Holy Spirit brought down their heart with labor.

They fell down, and there was none to help, as it were. Then when he brought them down and they fell and they couldn't get up, then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses. Then there is another description of salvation.

He brought them out of the darkness, the glorious light, walking with the Lord, in the shadow of death, and he broke their bands asunder. See those chains snapping? Then he utters that cry again for a testimony, meaning, oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men. For he hath broken the gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron asunder.

Then sometimes the Holy Spirit, going after these eternally loved of the Lord, of the Father and redeemed of the Son, he goes after them, makes some restless wanderers and others captives in chains, and some he brings physical affliction upon them. Look at verse 17. We're studying Psalms 107, for those of you who came in.

Verse 17, and the fools, because of their transgression and because of their iniquities, are afflicted. They are fools! And the fools, because of their transgression and their iniquities, and the Holy Spirit afflicts them, and he gets them such a place that their soul abhorreth all manner of meat, and they draw near unto the gates of death. They are in desperate trouble.

And when they get in that desperate trouble again, verse 19, then they cry unto the Lord in that trouble, and he saveth them out of their distresses. He sent his word, he has a description of salvation again. He sent his word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions.

And then the cry for praise, let them sacrifice, verse 22, the sacrifices of thanksgiving and declare his works with rejoicing. And then he starts again his last sovereign way. He gets inside, and these folks could be described as storm-tossed souls.

Look at verse 23. They go down to the sea in ships that do business in great waters. These see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.

For he commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind. Here it comes. My, look at that wind, going to blow everything out from under me.

They mount up to these waves and this storm, and they mount up to the heaven and they go down into the depths until a man's soul is melted because of trouble. Then it is again that he cries unto the Lord, and when that comes, the Lord brings them out of their distresses. Then I want to read you verse 28 and 29, these most beautiful words about what salvation is.

He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad, because they be quiet. So he bringeth them into their desired haven.

The Lord got anything better than that. In glory he let get up early for breakfast. My, hear the storm! He brought them to melt the man to where he call on the Lord.

Then when he calls, he delivers them and he makes the storm to quit its tossing. They are quiet. So he bringeth them to their desired haven.

Oh, verse 31, that men would praise the Lord. For his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men. Let them exalt him also in the congregation of the people, and praise him in the assembly of the elders.

Now, I'm a crank about this business of salvation. I scream all over the country, and they call me an enemy of evangelism. It breaks my heart.

I cry to God to let me come at it another way, but I can't. Oh, my soul, the closed lips of this generation of church people. Where did we lose the praise of him in the assembly of the saints? God help us.

I've been screaming, and I scream again, that we've come to the end of the way. We can sweep under the rug no longer. Let's start all over again.

We've got all of the need we'll have for tears and prayer. We've got to love souls enough to be used of God to shut them up till they've got no other place to look. And when they look to him, they'll experience the deliverance of him, and then they'll praise him.

I think the reason praise has died is because America is full of people, earnest and sincere, who've saved themselves, who've never experienced the delivering power of one who reaches to them in the pit and brings them out of their distresses. Verse 33, I'll skip it down through verse 42, illustrates the fact that you just can't hinder God. He works and nobody can hinder.

And then verse 43 introduces this fact. Verse 43, The wisdom of the ages, if you'd be wise, is to come to know by experience the ways of God, who so is wise, and will observe these things. I've been talking about here in this chapter.

Even they shall understand the loving kindness of the Lord. Did you get that? Who is wise, who so is wise, will observe these things. Here's the method of the Holy Ghost.

He brings a person to the end of himself so that he may experience salvation. Salvation is Christ, and Christ delivers. And who so is wise will pay attention to this, and they shall understand the loving kindness of the Lord.

That's smart, he's smart, he understands the loving kindness of the Lord. I read the other day, and you did, of something I just can't believe. You'll recall it right away.

A woman up near Dayton, Ohio, driving along the highway and lost control of her car, and it plunged into the river, I believe. She managed to crawl out and get up on top and wave her arms and scream and tell the people she couldn't swim. At least a dozen people stood there and watched her die.

You read it. I can't believe that hardly, can you? One boy said he couldn't swim. Nothing was done.

We've read about in New York City lately two or three instances where people have watched out the windows and the doorways while one or two women were attacked and killed and stabbed. Nobody moved a hand. You can't believe in such foolishness as that, and yet it's going on.

Nobody wants to get involved in anything else. But I want to be, and you want to be involved in the business of, first, not keeping truth from this generation, and second, giving people all the truth we can about salvation. One thing I know is salvation is the deliverance that man experiences when he comes into contact with the Savior Christ.

And I want to be an instrument of the Holy Spirit in taking the truth, crying to God that he'll bring people to trouble, such deep trouble, that they'll actually cry unto the Lord. Because when that happens, they'll experience his delivering power. I don't know what it would do to our hearts if somebody would actually get plumb-chained some of these days.

I dare you, something would happen to them. And that's the cry of our hearts. Well, God bless you.

I hope it's been profitable. I shouldn't have mentioned that in passing. I didn't know I was going to get on this, but I'll do my best to talk along that line, Brother Calvin, if you're interested.

If you understand that I'm not too dogmatic, because I'm into something that is something I've been chewing at for a number of years. Of course, I'm not by myself. But I believe that this is where I want you to be charitable to me.

I believe the scriptures definitely teach the restoration of the purity and power of the Church. People who are well-trained in what we call the premillennial approach to the coming of Christ find this a little difficult to deal with. I am what's called premillennial in some aspects, but I do not believe that Christ will come in the body until he comes for judgment.

In that sense, I'm what's called a postmillenarian. That is, I don't think Christ will come in the last, what we call the millennium, in person. But I do believe he'll come in great power.

And I believe that he's going to make himself manifest in great power here on this earth. And in that he's going to, as Thessalonians, he's going to destroy Antichrist for the brightness of his presence, his parousia, which does not in itself mean his bodily return. But I won't argue about that.

I believe that Christ's promise in Matthew 16 was fulfilled for a little while, and then I believe the Church fell out of divine order. And we've lived all our days under the grace of God, in spite of everything, he saved some and there have been some victories. But there's never been anything complete.

For instance, under Luther and Calvin we had a reformation, but sin died out. Now we've got the doctrine, but no power and no spirit. The Lord promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against his ecclesia.

But what we've had for 2,000 years, the devil sure has prevailed against it. And instead of the Church being on the aggression, it's been on the offensive. And the Church is more a hospital now than it is a marching army, isn't that right? And we're all a bunch of sick folks, and we haven't got much power, none of us, the whole shooting batch.

He said the gates of hell would not prevail. They couldn't stand against that Church. And if you read the book of Acts, for a while the devil couldn't do anything.

They just knocked a home run. Now we're up against a proposition. There are so many scriptures now that you can quote until you're blue in the face, but they just don't work.

We're out of water. I have great sympathy for the Pentecostal movement, because they are shooting at a return to the supernatural, and the supernatural is what we've got to have. Now, doctrinally, I think I can pick them to pieces, but it may be that a sovereign God will have to use some people into sound doctrinally, because those of us who know so much, even God can't tell us anything.

I don't know about that. But I do know that they are trying to emphasize the great need for the manifestation of the supernatural. Brother, we don't have that.

Nobody pays attention to the word now, do they? They can do what the Bible says now, much, except that God's own dear people, nobody else convinced about it. It lies in the stream. He told that Church that he'd give it the keys of the kingdom, and Peter used them for a while, you know.

Started on the day of Pentecost, and the second chapter of Acts, you've got your divine order, and we've been out of it all these years. In other words, we are not in order. Things are not taking place in our congregations like they would if we were in order.

I illustrate that by this. When I was with you last, I was in my third year of great pain, and I spoke to you many times under the influence of terrible dope. I had to have dope.

You gave me some, and it had doped me up some, and I didn't know it was hurting so bad. For nearly three years, I spent all I could borrowing, raking, scraping steel. Went to different clinics and doctors, and one fellow put his thing and said, this is what's causing the pain.

Pain's a good sign that there's something wrong, you know. But they couldn't find out what was causing the pain. Something was out of order, and I hurt.

See what I mean? I hurt. Now, we are hurting, dear ones, as congregations, as people, because we are out of order. Things are not taking place.

The Lord Jesus isn't manifesting himself in power in our churches. No, he just isn't, to much extent. You say, well, we had a blessed time one time.

Yes, through the grace of God once in a while, in spite of everything. I see how people are saved in spite of everything, in spite of everything. I believe people are saved in Billy Graham's meeting, in spite, not because of, but in spite, and in mine, and in your church.

I don't know what they're getting saved from or to. It looks like I hope they're going to get to heaven when they die, but there's no much manifestation of a great supernatural change, even to people who we think are getting converted these days, we're out of order. Now, the book of Ephesians talks about the promise of the Holy Spirit through Paul that he's going to have a mature body.

You're familiar with it, the 4th chapter of Ephesians. And that's going to take place here on this earth. And then the book of Titus talks about how he's going to purify himself and present a pure church without spot or blemish or wrinkle.

He's going to present it unto himself. I believe that's in the future. Now, it may be the reason I believe so strong.

I'll give you this, and then I'll answer your question as far as I'm able to do. I think that we've gone as far as we can. I think we're losing ground awfully fast all over the world.

And I do not believe we can go on five more years with the kind of churches we've got now. I believe God's going to do the whole thing out of his mouth or he's going to do some restoring. I honestly believe it.

What I'm trying to say is I believe we are absolutely being shut up by a sovereign God to see our condition and our needs. I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. And the day is going to come when we are going to start to look into the Lord.

We won't look to him as long as we can use message and this, that and the other and keep going. And I think we're going to have to have a church and every community that's got power can bind Satan. You can't get a man saved as long as he's bound, can you? And he said, I give unto you keys, and whatsoever you bind in heaven shall on earth be bound in heaven.

So for whatsoever sins you remit, they shall be remitted unto you. We know very little about that. Now, Pentecostal people come along and they say they can cast out devils.

Now they can do what they say they can, if the church was in order. You see what I mean? But it may be that through the grace of God, for instance, in the great healing campaign, I expect somebody is healed once in a while, in spite of the fact that we're out of order. You see what I mean? And somebody, I expect, is saved in our evangelistic campaigns in spite of the fact that we're out of order.

That's the grace of God. But out yonder, whatever your views of the return of the Lord, out yonder is the day of power. Out yonder is the day of the manifestation of the rule of the kingdom, isn't that right? Everybody believes that.

The great day is out yonder, isn't it? And I think that great day is going to be when the Lord restores his church, because I believe that the devil is going to be bound for a thousand years. I don't know whether that's a literal thousand years or not, but he's going to be bound by the power of Christ once more, like he was on the day of Pentecost, manifesting himself in a local congregation. I believe that's going to take place.

And I'm going to answer your question now, unless you want to ask something else. I haven't answered your question, it's been laying the foundation for my conviction. I believe that, and I don't know how it's going to come about, Calvin, I'm not prophet enough to know that.

I don't know whether the Lord is going to have a new Baptist church in Lynchburg. I don't know whether he's going to work it in that congregation as it now is, or whether he's going to drive all of his people out of it. I don't know.

But his people are going to be brought together. There's some way or another that the Methodists, Baptists, Baptists, Pentecostal people of Lynchburg are going to be brought together, the ones that belong to the Lord. They're not together now.

I don't know. I do know this, that only the Lord can do what I'm talking about. You can't do it.

For instance, you say, let's go out here and start us a pure church. You can't do it. It just won't work that way.

But the Lord can do it if it's his will. So whichever path he takes, I don't know. Now to answer your question, whether this is heresy or not.

I believe that the Lord is going to restore his church. It's amazing to me that in the book of Corinthians, with all that was wrong with it, and yet in the 12th chapter, in the midst of all of that disorder and they were out of order, weren't they? Everything was wrong. Paul, as the Holy Spirit, we believe, guided him, says in the 12th chapter, ye are the body of Christ.

The mess there's in, and yet the Lord says, ye are my body. You're my body. And I believe that the Lord is going to restore his church by restoring his authority in the church.

By that I mean the local expression. I'm not talking about the so-called invisible church. I'm talking about the one that meets and has ordinances and is supposed to meet under the authority of Christ.

He's going to restore his authority. I'm going to try to preach on that tonight, and he's going to do it. He's going to do it by bringing back discernment to his people.

In the book of Corinthians, we are told that if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. There are two different words. One is the Christ's judgment work of the Lord, and the other is the discernment.

In other words, we're going to have to learn to sit in judgment on ourselves and everything that comes to pass when we meet together. Bring it under the discernment of the Holy Spirit of God to see whether it's of the Lord or not. And in that sense, the Lord is going to restore his authority.

Now, we Baptists can quote that we believe that Christ is the head of the church, but we do not recognize him, and that's just because we don't know a thing on God's earth about what we're talking about. We don't know a thing about being under the authority of the present Christ as head through the Holy Ghost of this church, ordering all things. And we're going to have to come under subjection to Christ where he is.

And with a sense of the world, he's sitting at the right hand of God. But we've got to face this, that he has turned over his authority in this earth to his church. And once again, we're going to have to start building by submission ourselves to where the Lord will speak with authority to this generation through the church.

Biggest need is to learn to be subject to the Lord by being subject one to another. Being subject one to another. We're all outlaws.

You do as you please, and you do as you please, and you do as you please, and you do as you please, and you do as you please. We're all outlaws. We ain't going to follow nobody, but we're going to have to learn that we cannot be subject to Christ unless we're subject to him where he speaks, and he speaks through the church.

And I think the way the Lord is going to bring that authority back, this is my own conviction, I actually believe he's going to stand guard and begin to work. I think some Sunday morning down Park Avenue, one of you good people is going to get up and start singing, I'll go where he wants me to go, and God's going to get you. Like he did Ananias and Sapphira.

In Christ's church, for the power was gone, you couldn't tell a lie. We can now. While the Lord ain't around there, he don't think enough what's going on down Park Avenue church to kill the liars on Sunday morning.

Does he? I can't kill them, it's against the law. But in the fifth chapter of Acts, he did kill Ananias and Sapphira. And the book of Isaiah promises a time when the abominable and the abominable shall not be allowed to come into our courts.

The book of Peter speaks about judgment must begin in the house of the Lord, and I think it's going to begin. The fear of God. This brings up one proposition that I'm not big enough to solve, and it's too big.

I'm a member of a church, and this is just between here, that doesn't have any discipline, except when they get mad at somebody, want to turn somebody out. There's no discipline. You can be a member of that church and come to prayer meeting or not.

It's up to you. You can be a member of that church and attend its services or not. You are law unto yourself.

Now it's not different from all the rest of them. I take it that I'm invited back a third time, and I appreciate going back. I've been down Park Avenue twice, and I expect that there'll be people with the names on the road down there that feel no, nothing amiss whether they come to the services or not.

And we're going to have to learn that if you will not bow to the authority of Christ where he is, that means you won't bow to him. Now only the Lord can bring what I'm talking about to pass. In the church I'm a member of now, how could that church be brought to the place where there was any self-imposed, self-undertaken discipline? If we judge ourselves, then the Lord wouldn't judge us.

See what I'm talking about? We don't judge ourselves. We don't bring any discernment. What I'm trying to drive at is this, that the Lord, Martin Luther saw it.

He knew the Lord in two places. He says up there and he's here. He thought he was actually in the wafer, you know.

Some of you students have studied that. He said, this is my body, or Luther said that's what he meant. His body is right there in that wafer.

We wouldn't agree with that. But we would agree with this, that the Lord is in two places. In the body, he's exalted at the right hand of the Father.

But he's also in the church, isn't he? He's the head of the church, isn't he? You and I can't get to that throne, but brother, we can sure pay attention to him where he is, right there in the church. Now, this is a matter that, as far as I can see, is the way the Lord is going to start his judgment and his reforming or forming, if he does it, within our local congregations. I don't know what will happen.

I don't know about that. I know I can't do this. I can do this.

I can teach and exhort that you can't be subject to the head unless you're subject to the body. I can't be loyal to Christ and disloyal to the body, can I? They cannot be separated. Or there will be some volcanoes go off and some changes made.

The Lord will have to do this. But that would be a New Testament church. They're meeting in the name of the Lord, under the authority of the Lord.

Therefore, he'll be there. They're minding him. They're in subjection to him.

They're glad about it. They're glad about it. Glad subjection to the Lord right in the church.

And that brings me back to what I preached for thirty-some-odd years. I believe that the Lord is going to restore the divine pattern. And in the book of Acts, chapter 2, I think we have the key to how he's going to start.

We're going to have to go paying a little attention to the meaning of baptism. Baptism actually means to be brought into subjection to the body of Christ. Therefore, we're going to have to quit baptizing people until they understand that there's no separation.

I get this. There's no such thing as water baptism and spirit baptism. In the New Testament, there's one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.

In the divine order, Peter told those people, in answer to what must we do, they were stabbed, against the divine order. It's going to be that way again. He said, Repent, that looks toward the Lord on the throne, and be baptized, that looks to the local assembly.

Come under the authority of the body of Christ. You are not alone under yourself, but you are in subjection to Christ as you are in subjection one to another. And he said, When that happens, ye shall receive the gift of the Spirit.

You'll be filled with the Spirit right there. That's the divine order. Today we have among the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, came across so much attention being given to the revival of speaking in tongues.

I do not know how to handle that. Maybe you do. But I am greatly interested in the attention being paid to the filling of baptism with the Holy Spirit.

And I'm not saying that some are not experiencing that. I know they are. I don't know what it is after they've experienced it myself, because I've never experienced it myself.

But I am not critical, because we are not in order. But if we were in order, there'd be no such thing as seeking the baptism of the Holy Ghost. And it happened just like it did to Paul and everybody else when they got what we call saved, when they were baptized in water.

You repent and be baptized, and ye shall receive the gift of the Spirit. And they did, didn't they? They sure did. They had power.

They had power. That's not happening in our churches now, but that's what I long to see happen, men receiving the gift of the Spirit of God to come up out of the waters of baptism. Amen.