<TITLE>03. Par 11-14</TITLE>L-11 We find out that in the days of our Lord, when He visited us in the form of flesh, that He found worshipers looking to the church for salvation. I do not believe that it has changed very much. People are still looking to the church for salvation. And they're sometimes getting the same thing they got in that day, some sort of a man-made affair, some creed instead of Christ.
Creeds are all right. Churches are all right. They are God's institutions. And I have the highest respects for any church, regardless of its denomination, that's established in the Name of the Lord Jesus to turn people from sin to righteousness.
But then, as it goes on, we begin to find that we have this little let-down, and that little let-down, and we adopt something for something else. And so it goes.

L-12 And Jesus found those people, the Jews, perverting the Word of God, making the commandments of God of non-effect. He said, "You, with your traditions, take the Word of God and pervert It into making It saying something that It does not say.
And when someone says that the Word of God does not teach Divine healing, they are saying something that the Word does not say. And when they say the Word does not teach the baptism of the Holy Ghost for believers in all ages, they are saying something that the Word does not say. They are substituting something to take Its place.
When we try to say that shaking hands, or membership, or some of those things--which are all right--but it'll never take the place of the Holy Spirit in the church. That's God's foundation, and there can be no other foundation laid. We can hear the Author of this Book so solemnly warn, "Except a man be borned of the Spirit, he will in no wise enter into the Kingdom."

L-13 So we find today, that man still say, "It doesn't mean just what It says, It means something else. Oh, we know they will say the Scripture says that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Scripture does speak of the healing; but that was only for the apostles, and for the men of those days, to... in the days of heathenism to prove that He was God."
I do not want to be critical. I would not want you to think that I was entering it like that. But I say that it needs that proof more today than it did then, for today... That day, they were completely on the other side, knowed nothing of God, and cared nothing of God. But today, after two thousand years of Gospel teachings, and churches, and so forth, they know better, or they should know better.
And then they try to pervert It to make It fit a certain creed. But God's Word remains stable, always the same. Then in a day like this, men and women who will come to Christ will then call out to the pastor, "Where is the God that used to do certain things?"

L-14 May I say this, that a historical God does not do any good, unless He is that same God now that He was then. What good does a God of Moses do, if He is not the same God this afternoon? What good would it do to tell a man that was freezing to death, "I have a fire painted here, that someone painted years ago when a great fire was warming the certain places." A freezing man could get nothing out of a painted fire, no more than a congregation can get out of a historical God, that's not the same God today.
He is the same God. It's against even thinking, when we try to place Him off as something that was, if He isn't today. He could not be God, infinite, unless He remains the same today.


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