<TITLE>02. Par 5-7</TITLE>L-5 Our Lord had been rebuking many of the people who had been following Him and had seen His great miracles, and still they had not repented. And He was upbraiding the cities that He had been in, in the previous part of this chapter. Because in these cities, He had performed a sign, that all believers should know that was the sign of the Messiah. We spoke on it last evening. And how that those who, seemingly, that God had ordained to Eternal Life, by His foreknowledge, had believed on it, and how that He had drawed His disciples to Him by this thing. That He had performed this sign, and they who was looking for the God-prophet to come, they knew that that was He. But many of them had disbelieved.
And in the previous part of this chapter, He was saying to them, after He had performed these works, and they had said that He was an evil spirit--on Him was a spirit of Beelzebub, which was an evil spirit...
And to make it in words so we would understand, that they believed that the Spirit that He had, that could tell Peter who he was, and what his father's name was, not seeing him before, and could tell Philip where he was before he came to the meeting, and discerned the thoughts of their hearts, they classed it as an evil spirit--a fortuneteller, or a--some evil devil. And Jesus had told them, "If you speak that against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven you. But when the Holy Ghost is come, to speak against That, it would never be forgiven."

L-6 And we find out that it was just as He said. And He was speaking there, and He said, "Thou, Capernaum, which are exalted into heavens, shall be brought down to hell, for if the mighty works had been done in Sodom and Gomorrah that has been done in you, it would've remain until this day." A degraded, polluted city as Sodom was, and yet, Jesus said if them signs would've been done in Sodom, it would've remained.
And we find last night, that the sign that He was doing, was done by an Angel that was later called God, just outside of Sodom, to Abraham, and to Sarah, and their host. But He never did that down in Sodom. And He also referred to Jonah, the prophet.
And in all ages God has had men that He could put His hand on to do His work. Now, God chooses men, not machines. He chooses men to work through. He chose the--the prophets of the Old Testament. He chose His own Son of the New Testament and the apostles. And on down through the age, He's always had people who would believe Him. God has never been without a witness. Sometimes it's gotten down till just a few. But always, there is a remnant.

L-7 And He was referring back to Jonah. And many times we like to say about Jonah, of him being backslidden. Now, I'm not holding up so much for what he did, but I believe that all things work together for good to them that love God.
Sometimes we do things that we do not understand our own doings, if we are led by the Spirit of God. Every child of God in my hearing, or hearing of my voice, rather, knows that sometimes that you do things that you think yourself is ridiculous, when you become so--so closed in with God, when the Holy Spirit gets you in such a condition till you're fully surrendered to Him.
I've seen men so filled with the devil, until it would take several men to hold them. And then if Satan can put that kind of a power on a man fully surrendered to Him, how much more power can the Holy Spirit put on a man that's surrendered to Him, to make a person in a wheelchair rise and walk, to make the shadow of a man dying with cancer on a cot to jump to his feet, screaming under the power of God? For how much stronger is God than the devil?


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