<TITLE>10. Par -</TITLE>L-480-54 So the devil is in smoking cigarettes. That's his little mild form. Now, if he sees you're pretty smart and going to catch that, he'll never let it go any farther than cigarettes. See? As long as he can just hold you there long enough, he can take--get your life snapped out, 'cause he knows that you can't go until God has said so. But you'll hear sermon after sermon, message after message, and punch after punch on it, and warning after warning on it. And if he can just keep you ward off and keep your mind on something else, as being a popular person, or you've got to have it, or something like that, then if he can just holds you there until he gets you out. Or if he can just let you join church and say, "I'm going to be a good fellow. I'm going to turn a new page. I'm going to get... I--I'm going up the church and join church." If he can just keep you under that, that's all he has to do. He's got you yet, because you... Jesus said, "Verily, verily (that's absolutely, absolutely), I say unto you, except a man be borned of the water and of the Spirit, he will in no wise enter the Kingdom."

L-481-55 Let me just show you something. I was talking to a brother this afternoon, Brother Wood, when we were on a journey, just out, try to relax my mind, keep from talking to get enough voice to talk tonight. Now, notice. We're going down here and get a nice big grain of corn. It's the most perfect grain of corn there is in the country. And I'm going to call it corn or ear, whatever you want to call it. I'll--I'll take it over here to the Clark County Fair, and I'll win a blue ribbon on it. It's the best grain of corn, the most perfect corn there is, ever seen. I'll get a blue ribbon on it. I'll take it down to the Floyd County; I'll take it on to the Harrison County. I'll take it to the state, and I'll take it to the nation. And it wins every blue ribbon. It's the most perfect grain of corn. And the scientists with their great glasses, they look through it and they examine it. See? The... It's a perfect amount of potash and a perfect amount of calcium, and--and a perfect moisture. Everything that goes in that grain of corn is just exactly perfect. Now, you say, "I'm going to plant that and get me another perfect grain out of it." And you plant that in the ground. Unless that corn, that perfect grain, has the germ of life in it, it'll lay there and rot and that's the end of it. It'll never rise again no matter how perfect it is. It--it'll never rise until it's germitized with a new life in it.

L-481-56 And you can take a man... Now, I don't mean this to hurt feelings, I just... This is church. This is my tabernacle, and I'm as free as a bird. See? Now, I want you to remember that in this, that a man can be good; he can pay his tithes; he can be honest; he can help the widow; he can help the orphan; he can be a church member. You can't find one flaw about that man. Every time something's to come up, right down in his pocket, get the last penny he had and give to the poor. He'll--he'll stand by you through thick and thin. He'll be your buddy when even a lot of the so-called others will turn you down and everything like that; and that man is still outside the Kingdom of God unless he's been filled with the Holy Ghost, Eternal Life. That's right. That's how important it is.
That's the reason I'm trying to get my church to see it. And I--I pray that you don't think that I'm just trying to act smart about it. I--I'm trying to tell you that the devil is so deceiving, that he's so deceiving till he'll--he'll make you act like a Christian. He'll do something and impersonate Christ right down to the very elect, the Bible said they'd be so close together. You'll be a good man. You'll have...


<A HREF="P11">Next Page</A>