<TITLE>06. Par 19-22</TITLE>L-19 Now, when He was there, He was borned (and as I said) in the world, come in here with a black mark on His Name. How that God so marvelously brought Him here. Just before His coming, the age had got just about like it has come to recently: into a backslidden condition. Israel had been brought into captivity by the Romans, and there they had been taken away. And the priests had got to a place, and got away from the supernatural part of God, been teaching just upon a doctrine of their own theories of what they taught. As Jesus said, "You teach for commandments, the word of men, making the Word of God of non effect." And that's about the kind of a time that He was born. But God has always had a witness here on earth for Him.
Now, notice, then during this time, just before His--His birth...

L-20 Before God does anything here on earth... I want you to catch this close. Before God does anything on earth, He always sends a witness from heaven to declare it.
Now, before Jesus was born, why, God sent a witness of this. Signs and wonders begin to appear of His coming, just as it's appearing today by witnesses of His second coming again. See? Signs and wonders... This is a day that... There's never been an age through all the church ages that's ever produced what this age is producing right now, for it's the coming of the Lord's drawing near. Don't you believe it? Drawing nigh, rather... And we're nearing the time of the close of this world's history when Jesus shall come.

L-21 Notice, signs begin to appear. There was a man by the name of Zacharias and his wife Elisabeth: righteous, holy people, keeping the commandments of God and walking in all the statutes and ordinances of God, blameless.
That's the kind of a home we need today. Don't you believe it? In the stead of that in the church today, we have everything else but holiness and righteousness.
But they were righteous people, godly people, walking in the commandments of the Lord, keeping all the ordinances, blameless. Zacharias was a priest at the temple. And his office was to burn incense while prayer was being made.
And one day, while he was in the temple burning incense, Gabriel, an Angel from God, came down and stood by the altar of incense, and said, "Zacharias, fear not. Your prayers is heard." Oh, I love that.
They... His wife was barren. She hadn't had any children. She was past the age of bearing. But he lived right before God and believed on God. And all of his great, dark, long hours of worry finally the Angel come and said, "God has heard your prayer."
Now, if you want God to hear your prayer, send an Angel to your home, live right, do right, treat everybody right, be right before God, and God will grant that to you.

L-22 Now, he said... Now, notice, sometimes in that day, like it is now when our prayers are a little bit lingered, we become dull, sense-bound. So Zacharias doubted that that could be so. He didn't believe it. And notice, after he had plenty of examples...
Now, Sarah and Abraham, how old they were when Isaac was born... Hannah came to the temple past the age of bearing, went to the temple that day to serve God. Probably the women all went up to Shiloh, maybe to see what kind of hats one another wore, but not Hannah. She went up with something in her heart. She wanted to talk to God. And she prayed in such deep sincerity, till the priest misunderstood her.
Like today, sometimes we're called fanatics because we pray and cry out to God. We're just... We're not fanatics: misunderstood; that's all.


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