<TITLE>15. Par 141-148</TITLE>L-141 A few days ago in reading of the Nicene Council... That was a long time after the death of the last apostle, Saint John. When those men come up there to that Nicaea Council, some of those old brothers embarrassed the rest of them. They come there, dressed in sheepskins; upon those robed emperors, like Constantine and the bishops of Rome. Old sheepskins wrapped around them, and lived in the wilderness on herbs, but they were prophets of the Lord. The little church, the Greek side went on; the Roman side went back. But it goes to show, when you compromise, you can't be a servant of Christ.

L-142 John... In that day the church was very orthodoxy; they had the priests, the well-trained men. But God chose the man that had no education at all, and took him out of the wilderness, with a piece of sheepskin wrapped around him, and his whiskers all burred out, his hair hanging over his neck: no pulpit to preach from, no church to invite him. But he probably stood in mud, half to his knees, and preached, "The Kingdom of God is at hand." God chose that man.

L-143 When Jesus said, "Who did you go out to see, a man that can speak at all the schools, a man that's finely robed, and so forth?" He said, "They're in kings' palaces." Said, "What'd you go to see, a prophet?" He said, "More than a prophet. This is who the prophet spoke of would come, 'I send My messenger before My face.'" He was the--the angel of the covenant. He was the--the great forerunner.

L-144 But it was a paradox, how God... Why didn't he come down to that big school up there at Jerusalem? Why didn't He come to Caiaphas, the high priest? Why did He not come to some of those great, trained men, who had been trained from childhood, and their fathers had been trained before them, and their fathers before them, for generation after generation after generation, trained and schooled, fine, high-cultured, educated? And then pick an old man out in the wilderness that never had a day's schooling in his life, and set him out there on the Jordan, and said, "The--this is him." A paradox, exactly. Incredible, but yet it was true. God did it.

L-145 The virgin birth of our Lord, incredible, for a woman to bring a child without knowing a man. God did it. God did it. See, it's a paradox. Took a little old woman down there, a little old girl, engaged to some man about forty-five years old, she herself was about sixteen or eighteen, and engaged to this man who was a widower of four children. And then took this woman and overshadowed her by the Holy Spirit, and conceived in her womb the body that tabernacled Almighty God: a paradox.

L-146 How that heaven can't hold Him. Earth is His footstool, heavens is His throne, and yet could bring the Fullness of the Godhead bodily, and embody It into a Man. Oh. When you can measure for hundreds of billions of miles into aeons of time, and never measure God; and yet a little baby, laying in a manger, contained the Fullness of His Godhead bodily. Jehovah, a paradox. That great God, Who sets back yonder, to control a hundred million suns shining on planets, Who never begin and never ended, and would embody Himself in a manured stable...
And then we get out and dance and drink, and carry on in a celebration. It's not a celebration; it's a worship. We celebrate Christmas. How that God did that in order He could die to take the place of a sinner.

L-148 It was a paradox when a little, curly-headed boy, little stoop-shouldered fellow; he probably wasn't five-foot tall; and he had seven locks hanging down around his head, a little sissy. And he was on his road down one day to see his girlfriend, and a lion roared against him.
Did anybody ever hear a real lion roar? You probably have in these cages and things around here. But I want to tell you, they're just meowing then. You ought to hear a wild one really roar. The rocks will fall off the hill a half a mile away; pebbles will roll down the hill; it just vibrates the ground so. Where that roar comes from, I don't know.


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