<TITLE>05. Par 18-22</TITLE>L-18 I want to ask my audience tonight, "How many would really like to see Jesus?" Just see, or... If you're a sinner even, I'd just like to see your hand. Well, the... Thank you. Then why can't we see Him? Now, if this Word, which is the Word of God, is the infallible Truth of God, and It expresses that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, if... That's either the truth or it is not the truth. If it is not the truth, I would close the Book and go home. What would be the use of me standing, a preaching something, and giving my life, twenty-seven years of my life, now in the ministry, trying to say something that there's no truth in. If it's not right, then it's not right. And if it is right, then it's all right.
And we hear that it's said that He is the same. Then if He is the same, He's got to be the same in principle, power, attitude, in every way that He was the same; nothing in His Word to contradict anything of it; but His corporal body, which He raised up, or God raised up from the dead, and sets at the right hand of His Majesty tonight to make intercessions upon our confession.

L-19 When He was here on earth, He said, "I am the Vine; ye are the branches." And the vine does not bear fruit. The branch bears fruit. The vine only makes energy for the branch. And if you went out into the field down here in your river bottoms and found a pumpkin vine, you'd expect that pumpkin to be bearing pumpkins. If you found a watermelon, it should be bearing watermelons. If it's a grapevine, it bears grapes. Because the life in the vine is pressing forth grape juice, or grape life, or watermelon life into the branch, and the branch is producing what the vine is energizing for.

L-20 Now, if we call ourselves Christians, and we are the Christian church, then we should be bearing the same type of fruit that the Vine bore when He was here. For He said, "I am the Vine; ye are the branches. If ye abide in Me, and My Word in you; ask what you will, it'll be done for you." And the branch cannot live unless it abides in the vine. Now, if it's a good healthy branch... The branch if it's not healthy, something is wrapped around it, cuts off the energy, soon the pruner comes by and cuts that branch off, and then it's destroyed. And then today, after nineteen hundred years, and we're taught that Jesus is not dead but He is alive... Do you believe that? That Christ is alive.

L-21 Now, I'm not degrading any of our churches or the theology that we teach and hold dear to our hearts. But there's something wrong somewhere. And men mentally right know that. Now, are we just worshipping some sort of a dead creed, some sort of a book like the Koran, or the book on Buddha, or the Sikhs, or Jains, or any of the great religions of the world?
I've stood with the Bible in one hand, the Koran in the other, before tens of thousands of Mohammedans and their priests. Mohammad is the greatest in number religion in the world. It's twice or three times the size of Christianity. That's including Catholic and all. But said, if... "One of these books has got to be right. They both can't be right, because they're contrary one to another." Don't be afraid to put Christ to a showdown, for if He is Christ, He's the same yesterday, today and forever. We don't have to be afraid.

L-22 If a servant of Christ should be afraid, there's something wrong with that servant. When Moses looked this a way and that way, when he slew the Egyptian, it showed he was out of the Divine Presence of God. For a servant of Christ don't have to look and see if a man said, "Am I doing all right? Is that fine?" Or, "Oh, I'm afraid you'll say something about me." A man that's commissioned of God, looks upward and onward. You don't have to care what the world says about it anyhow. He's not listening to the world. He's got a Divine commission from God and enjoying that presence. So He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Oh, to just see Him.


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