<TITLE>08. Par 28-31</TITLE>L-28 And why didn't this king Ahaziah go on down and ask Elijah? Elijah come up, and met him up there in the road, and he said, "Go back. And tell him, 'Why does he go over to the idol? Why does he go over to Ekron? Is it because that there is not a prophet in Israel? Is it because there's no God in Israel, that he has to go over to a heathen god and inquire at his hand?'" Said, "Go back, and tell him he's not coming off of that bed."
Now there was a prophet, there was a God, there was a Power to reveal his secrets, and to tell him what was going to be the outcome. It wasn't because they didn't have a God. It wasn't because they didn't have a prophet. It was because the king's own selfishness. He didn't want to associate himself, because his mother had been against all the prophets of God, been against that same prophet. And so it made him against it also. So it wasn't because they didn't have a prophet. It wasn't because they didn't have any balm in Gilead. It was because he was too stubborn to use it.

L-29 And that's what's the matter today. What makes people drink, and lie, and steal, and commit adultery, and do and act the way they do? It's not because we haven't got something to satisfy that. It's because that they take a substitute for the real thing. They try to hush that... quench that holy thing inside of their heart.
When God made a man, he gave him... He let... The devil took his head. God chose his heart. The devil through his imagination makes him imagine anything--gives him intellectual conceptions of the Scripture. But God gets in his heart and leads him by the Spirit; makes him believe things that his intellectual don't know nothing about. Amen! That makes me feel a little religious when I think of that, see.
When God gets a hold of a man, he comes into his heart. That's God's control tower. And the reason people drink, smoke, gamble, lie, steal, and carry on the way they do, they're trying to satisfy that longing in their heart. God made them that way, so He could come in there and satisfy every longing that you have. But, how dare anybody to try to hush that precious thing with the things of the world?

L-30 Now, that's the same thing the king did. There was plenty of God, there was plenty of fine prophets. But he was just too selfish to go to this prophet.
And we find out that he died, as the prophet said. When the man come back, he said, "We met a man, and he told us to come back and tell you, THUS SAITH THE LORD you--you wasn't going to come off the bed."
He said, "What kind of a looking man was he?"
Said, "He was hairy all over, and he had a piece of leather about his loins." And he knew that was Elijah. His sins had found him out. It'll do it, brother, every time. Yes, sir.

L-31 It's just today as it was then. The people, the American people, are trying to find something. What they do... stay home on Wednesday night to hear some kind of a radio broadcast--We Love Sucy, or Lucy, or ever what it is, or some of them kind of things; [Brother Branham clears his throat--Ed.] hear Elvis Presley with his rock-and-roll, or something like that; some kind of a entertainment--and miss prayer meeting. It's not because that the Holy Ghost isn't just the same as It was when It was on Azusa Street. It's just the same as It was when It was in Jerusalem, A.D. 33.


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