<TITLE>18. Par 79-83</TITLE>L-79 Now, let me just background this just a moment, 'cause I'm just going to... A few more remarks, then I'm going to close. But I want to make this. You see, it was... It's going to be a paradox.
The pagan, the idolater... Now, the Indians out here, here in the southwest, they used to worship idols. They had what they called the rain god. It was a mud turtle. They knowed he lived down in the rain, and down in the earth, and they believed that that god of the rain come into that mud turtle.
Now, in the old pagan Rome they used to have Jupiter, and many of the gods. And they say that those gods live. And they had wars. You've studied mythology, and so forth. So these gods was supposed to...?...

L-80 How they did it, they had a great big altar, and this statue stood upon it. And the worshipper come in, and he paid the priest for a candle. And they took... And he went down to the temple. Sometimes there was several gods. And he set it on the altar so, (I guess), the god could find his way to his right image. And they set it down there and lit this candle.
Then the worshipper went and got... The priest got some fruit ready, and made a sacrifice, and brought wine. And he actually had communion with the idol. Then he prostrated himself before the idol. And he laid there in such a stupor until the imaginary god (that looked like the image that he had built) come and got into that idol and talked back to him through that idol. That's idolatry.
The imaginary god, what they thought, through an idol, that he was able to hypnotize this god with his offering and his burning candle, into this god. And then, when his soul got so entangled with that... You see where it's the devil? See? And he--and he would think that god spoke back to his conscience through there, and it was actually a god to him.

L-81 Now, God was going to show them what a real God was. And on the day of Pentecost... They prostrated themselves for ten days. And not an imaginary, but there came a sound from heaven like a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were setting. And God never took an idol. He took a living man, and placed Hisself by the baptism of the Holy Ghost into this man: not imaginary god, not imaginary thing, but a reality of a real God in a real man. And then this man rose up, and worked the works of God.
Strange that He did that. Strange that He didn't take some smart men that knowed something about that. They'd try to figure it out. But He took a bunch of ignorant fishermen and put them up there. And they prostrated themselves on a promise of God for ten days and nights. Then the God of heaven came and dwelt in those men.

L-82 Jesus said, "A little while and the world won't see Me no more; yet ye shall see Me for I will be with you, even in you." John 14:12, He said the... "He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also. More than this shall he do 'cause I go to My Father." That's the reason He said in Mark 16, "These signs shall follow them that believe." It was a living God in a man that could lay hisself out before God, according to the Word of God; and the Word of God would be made manifest in Him. Amen. It's--it's a paradox.

L-83 Every time you see a man receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost, it's a paradox, how the God of heaven makes Hisself known in this man, talking through him, working through him, living through him. It's a paradox. And we are in the image of God, and God took His own images and brought Himself into the image of His own image that He made. A paradox.


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