<TITLE>04. Par 13-15</TITLE>L-13 Little did Israel believe, if someone would've told them, that they were forty years from the promised land when they were singing, shouting, and dancing in the Spirit on the other side of the Red Sea. They would've never believed it. If someone would've said, "You have come up out of the tribulation now and the persecution. God has delivered you and crossed over." And they wasn't but just a few day's journey away. But yet their unbelief kept them in the wilderness for forty long years. And our fathers come to that same place about forty years ago, or a little more, the same condition was existing.
Israel had had a great revival. And they was on their road to a--a--a land of promise where God had sworn that He would take them through the father Abraham. And they were going over into this promised land with God's promises, blessings upon them, and the hour of deliverance was at hand, and God had done all that He had promised to do, and was on their road to that land. It wasn't but just a few miles away. Measure it on the map. I really believe I could walk it in less than five days myself: just take off and walk it in five days time from the Red Sea to where they crossed Jordan to enter Palestine. Just a small journey, and yet, because of their unbelief, it kept them forty years in the wilderness.

L-14 Now, that's a solemn thing; we should think on it for a little while. Little did they believe that there was the waters of Marah laid before them, or the wilderness of Sin, or the Mount Sinai, or the Kadesh-Barnea, where they totally failed God... When from Kadesh there was only eleven days to the crossing. They couldn't believe it, because they had already seen so many great things done. They were sure that they were in the will of God. Just as our fathers was a few years ago. And they were, but there's where they made their great fatal mistake. They... The greatest mistake that Israel ever made was when it renounced grace and accepted law. It made its greatest mistake in Exodus 19, was one of the fatal mistakes that Israel made. The covenant that God made with Abraham was completely grace. But grace had provided for them a deliverer, a prophet, a sacrificial lamb. It had provided the greatest revival they'd ever had. And yet, they wasn't satisfied with it. They wanted something that they could argue about. They wanted a place where they could have something to do into it.

L-15 That's the way it is today. That's the way it was forty years ago with our fathers, our Pentecostal fathers. Grace had given them a revival, and had brought them out of the world, and out of the chaos that they were in, in their formal denominations and organizations, and so forth, and had brought them to a greatest revival that they'd ever had, poured out the Holy Ghost upon them, filled them with the Spirit. They were singing, dancing in the Spirit, having a wonderful time. And little did they know that they were all these years away from the full promise.
But as it was with Israel natural, so is it with Israel spiritual. We are Israelites because we are the seed of Abraham. That Israelite is not that which is of the flesh, but that which is of the Spirit. "We being dead in Christ take on Abraham's seed and are heirs with Abraham according to the promise." So we are... And Abraham was not a Jew. Abraham was a Gentile out of the land of--of the Chaldeans and the city of Ur. He was absolutely a Gentile.


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