<TITLE>04. Par 15-18</TITLE>L-15 And I looked at that poor fellow there, and he was bleeding all over his head. And the feathers was all beat off his head and off the ends of his wings. And I watched the big fellow walk across there. Then here he'd come, trying to take off, like the eagle does. And he'd hit his head against those bars, and knock him backwards, and fall on the floor, lay there and roll those big eyes around, and look up like that, and get back again, and here he'd come and hit against them bars again. And blood and feathers knocked out of him, and he'd lay on his back and roll those big eyes and look up.
Why? He was a heavenly bird, looking up to where he ought to be. But some cunning deviceties of man had put him in a cage. And I thought that was the most horrible pitiful sight. I'd have bought that eagle if I'd--if I'd had to take up my first offering to--to have bought that eagle to turned him loose. I thought, "That poor fellow."

L-16 I thought, "My, if that ain't awful. That... Born to be a heaven soaring bird, and here he is by the deviceties of men, all caged up. And he's just beating his brains out. But he's caged." I thought, "That's the most horrible sight I ever seen."
Then I turned around to walk away, and I thought, "Yes, that's a horrible sight, but I've seen something more horrible than that: to see men and women who were born to be sons and daughters of God caged in some kind of a cage, when then they look up and know there's a God of heaven, know that He's a great Healer, and a great Master, and a great Saviour, and then put in some kind of an ecclesiastical cage, where they just beat their brains out with all kinds of societies, and everything else, and never be able to get out of the cage." That's a pitiful condition. Tell them all about a great God that was and build them up under expectations, then knock the whole thing out from under them. "He died and put in the tomb and that's all of it. He's not like He used to be." That's a pitiful sight. To see people, men and women who were born to be children of God and be caged in to such things as that.

L-17 John, his eagle eye truly had filmed over. And John was--become weary. He and Elijah was a great deal alike, because the same spirit was upon this--a different man. See, God never takes His Spirit; He just takes His man. God took Elijah, took Elijah's spirit and put it on Elisha. Then He took it off of Elisha, and put it on John. And promised to put it on again just at the end time, another one coming at the end time, another Elisha. Which we all as Bible readers know that that's promised to us.
Now, we find out then that the devil takes his man but never his spirit. And he just keeps it coming right on down just the same way. And we find out that those two are together.
And we find that--that Elijah and John was a great deal alike. They were real nervous men. Both of them almost had a nervous breakdown: both of them.
And men who live close to God are mostly considered neurotics or something wrong with them. That's right. They're always considered that.

L-18 Paul, this morning, when I was speaking to the ministerial group... Agrippa said to him, or Festus said, "Too much learning makes you mad, or crazy."
He said, "I'm not mad. I'm not crazy. I'm sober." See? "And I--I'm all right." And to... They claim like, William Cowper I believe it was, when I stood at his grave there at London. And he wrote that famous song.
There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel's veins,
Where sinners plunged beneath the flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.


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