<TITLE>24. Par 208-214</TITLE>L-208 [Blank.spot.on.tape--Ed.] Years later as he... [Blank.spot.on.tape--Ed.] Or a bunch of men that want to make an organization and take the--the sacredness and the Holy Spirit away from the church, and put it on bishops and popes and priests, to... They'll be holy, and the congregation live any way they--way they want to. And they'll pay the priests, and he'll pray them out of hell, and everything like that. And it's a Nicolaitane. God said, "I hate that." Now, listen.
"Let me see, and you say, 'God said He hated it'?"
Now, let's see if He did.
But this thou has, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes which I also hate.
God hates an organization. That right? Now, you see exactly what they were going to do; you see what they did do. Now, watch down through the church if they don't do that. He hates an organization.
He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches;...

L-212 Now, Paul's wolves had become Nicolaitanes. They were trying to form a priesthood like the Levitical priesthood, which was foreign to the New Testament doctrine. Amen. The word "Nico," the Greek word "Nico" means "to conquer, overcome." Overcome what? The laity, the Holy Spirit: take out of the church the resurrected Lord Jesus with signs and wonders among the believers, and put men voted in to be a pope, or a carnal--cardinal, or an overseer, trying to take the Holy Ghost away from the laity and give it to a order called the holy order of men, placing them over the laity; not to call them pastors which means "shepherds," but "father"; which Jesus said, "Don't you call no man father on this earth." See that evil thing? And what did we do?

L-213 Oh, if we could stop. Wish we didn't have all these nights bundled up like this; I'd like to take tomorrow night on the 12th chapter of Revelation and show you that old prostitute woman setting up there, the whore. And she... The reason she was, because she committed fornications with God, and called herself a widow, and also she was a mother of harlots. Is that right? Now, we know that was Rome, because she's setting on seven hills, and everything just exactly, a man in her, and is the number of the beast, and so forth. We all know that from previous teachings who it was. But the sad thing of it, she was the mother of harlots. This is the beginning of her right here, begin in Rome as a bunch of Christians, so-called Christians.

L-214 Listen. God help me to make it real. A bunch of Christians in a church like this, they got formal, and indifferent, and pulled off, and set themself up an organization, and then united that in the dark age with the state. And state and church became one what? Christian church, "Holy Catholic church" it was called, (The word "catholic" is the word means "universal."), the great universal Christian church, and called the people that spoke in tongues, and shouted, and healed the sick, and so forth, heretics. And finally made it so constrainuous until anybody was caught worshipping that way was throwed into the lion's den if they wouldn't embrace Catholicism. That went for all these hundreds of years back there of that persecution. But that church never died. You can't kill it. God said it would live to the end and then He'd give it a crown of Life. Come down through those ages of persecution...


<A HREF="P25">Next Page</A>