<TITLE>09. Par 30-33</TITLE>L-30 Well, this whale had filled up on this prophet, and went down to the bottom of the sea. And he was laying there with his hands tied, his feet tied, and in the vomit of the whale, in its belly, probably twenty fathoms deep, and--the bottom of the sea, and a stormy sea on top.
And laying there, everywhere he looked it was a whale's belly. He looked forward, is was whale's belly; backward was whale's belly, everywhere around. Talk about symptoms, he had them, a bad case.
But you know what I like about Jonah? He refused to see any of it. He said, "Once again will I look towards Thy holy temple. These things are lying vanities. I look towards Thy holy temple because when Solomon dedicated the temple he prayed and said, 'If Thy people be in trouble any time, and look towards this holy place, then hear from heaven.'"
And you know, down in that whale's belly Jonah still remembered that that prayer was sufficient. And he said, "Once more will I look towards Thy holy temple." And God made that whale take him just exactly where God wanted him to go.
And if Jonah under those circumstances (There's nobody here that bad off. Surely not.), under those circumstances could look towards a temple that was built by the hands of man, and the prayer of a man that was a mortal (later backslid) and could believe that God heard his prayer--and God answered it in such a way to deliver him under such circumstance--how much more ought we, tonight, to look away from our symptoms to the throne of God, where Jesus sits with His Own Bloody clothes, the Son of the great Majesty on high to make intercession?

L-31 Refuse to look at your sickness. Refuse to see anything contrary to the Word. Be like Abraham of old. When he was seventy-five years old, Sarah was sixty-five; and God told him he was going to have a baby by Sarah; he believed it. Twenty-five years never changed him a bit. He staggered not at the promise of God by unbelief.
I can hear him say after the first thirty days... He'd lived with her since she was a child, or young woman--his half sister--and she was sterile. So was he. And he said... And she was past the age of bearing, past the age of menopause. She was sixty-five years old; he was seventy-five. And I imagine after about so many days he said, "How you feeling, Honey?"
"No different."
"Praise God! We're going to have it anyhow. Go on downtown. Buy you a bunch of little pink booties, and some birdeye, and some pins. Get ready. We're going to have it anyhow." Why they thought he was crazy.
And they'll think you're crazy, as long as you take God at His Word and deny anything contrary to it.

L-32 He knowed God was able to keep that which He had performed. And we're supposed to be children of Abraham. We're children of Abraham if we have the faith of Abraham. Everything else but God's Word is a lie.
Look what God said. We look at the unseen. You look what your mortal eyes don't see. You don't see with your eyes anyhow. You only look with your eyes; you see with your heart. You look right at it, say, "I don't see it"; you mean you don't understand it. Your seeing is your understanding, so you understand with your heart.

L-33 Now, Jonah, in all that condition, God honored his prayer. There's one thing about it: A true child of God, you can't hide him from prayer. They tried to scald it out of John. And they put him on the Isle of Patmos after they'd boiled him in grease for twenty-four hours. You couldn't boil it out of him. They tried to scare it out with some lions, out of Daniel. They just couldn't do it. Tried to burn it out with fire with the Hebrew children. Just couldn't do it. Well, you can't burn the Holy Ghost out. It's fire itself. Fire fights fire. And when a man is really filled with God's Spirit, the Holy Ghost, you can't burn it out, scare it out, run it out. It's there to stay.


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