<TITLE>05. Par 18-22</TITLE>L-18 May He add His blessings to the reading of His Word. In all ages, God has never been without a witness somewhere, in all times. Sometimes it's gotten down till it would be, maybe, one witness, like in the days of Elijah or in the days of Noah, but He's always had a witness somewhere, someone out of all the millions of people that He could say, "This is My servant." And He could use that such a person.
And during the time of this reading of the Scripture, the Jewish orthodox church, Israel, was in captivity in Rome, because they had failed to believe their prophets, that had warned them that their sins would finally bring them to destruction. And they ignored their prophets. They wanted their own way. They just wanted to live as they pleased to live and believe just what they wanted to believe, and the prophets warned them on such a condition, that they must receive punishment.

L-19 Now, God does not change. God cannot grow in wisdom. The first words that He says, must be the last words also. You and I, and in our human race, each generation gets just a little wiser than the previous generation, because it's taught in the Word of God that we should be weaker and wiser. Men do not live as long as they once lived in their span of life.
First, it was a hundred and twenty years. Then three score and ten, seventy, was allotted time. We in the--our generation has come down quite a bit to that. The average life is somewhere--thirty-five or forty years old, according to the insurance. I think that that's about right.

L-20 And in this lifetime, if we have a chance to chose right and wrong, it's back to the same thing like it was in Eden: a man and a woman given a choice to do right or do wrong. They had two trees before them. We are taught in the Scripture, one of them was the Tree of Life. The other was a tree of knowledge. Man chose to eat off the tree of knowledge. And the first time he ate from that tree, he severed his friendship with God, and he was made a mortal being.
Since then, man has desired to live from that tree of knowledge. And he's done great things, but knowledge only can reach so far. Knowledge is all right, but when you've reached the end of your knowledge, then believe from there on.

L-21 And when they left the tree of faith they lost God. Man does not know God by knowledge. Man knows God by faith, is the only way that man can meet God is on the grounds of faith. "If thou believest," said our Lord Jesus. Not if you say a decree or you're baptized such-and-such a way, but "If thou dost believe..."
There's only one sin, and that's the sin of unbelief. Each person in here tonight is possessed, either with faith or unbelief. Your life proves what you are, by the life you live and the things you do.

L-22 You could not expect a dove to eat lunch with a scavenger. A scavenger is the one who eats the old carrion of the earth. They are satisfied with anything. But the dove has no gall; it cannot digest those things in which the scavenger, the vulture would eat. Therefore, you can watch a man or a woman's life, and see what they do, and the way they act, and the desires they have, and tell what the nature of the person is. A Christian cannot in--tolerate the things of the world. Jesus said, "If a man loves the world or the things that's in the world, the love of God is not even in him." And that's solemnly said by our Lord. And we must believe it.
So if God had to bring punishment upon Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins, had to take his chosen people, Israel, and punish them for years in captivity under cruel task masters, because they would not believe the Word of the Lord, coming by inspiration, through their writers and prophets, and continued to live on like the rest of the world... If God made them pay for their sin, we will not escape it. We must pay for our sins, our unbelief.
Unbelief is a miserable thing. It's terrible. It's death, shadows of death, is unbelief.


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