<TITLE>09. Par 40-44</TITLE>L-40 Now, we know that any birth is a mess. I don't care if it's in a pigpen or if it's in a pink decorated hospital room. Any birth is a mess, and the new birth is nothing less. It's a mess. That's right. It'll make you boo-hoo, and cry, and carry on, like you was in the awfullest mess you was ever in. But it'll do you good.
Jesus said, "Except a corn of wheat falls in the ground and dies, it abides alone." And the people don't want to die. You want to be alive in the world. And still you want to be religious. So you accept an intellectual conception of it. And then, when you do that, you're still dead in sin and trespasses. And that's what makes people act and do the way they do, because the spirit that's in them dominates their life.

L-41 Say, "Well, other people do this." Well, you're not like the other people. You are dead, and your life is hid in God through Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit. See, you didn't try the toxin. It's just because the people don't want to try it.
Now, you've got to die. You've got to rot. That's the trouble of people, instead going up to the altar and get some kind of sensation, jump up, and shake hands with the preacher, go out and get some kind of a dogma or creed and recite it, and say, "I belong to So-and-so. I belong to So-and-so."
"Are you a Christian?"
"I'm So-and-so."
A Christian is to be Christ-like. Christ-like is to believe the Word. If you don't believe the Word, then he can't be Christ-like. How can you say you're a Christian and deny half of the Word? If the Holy Spirit wrote the Word, the Holy Spirit confirms the Word. And the Holy Spirit is the Word. And the Word abiding in you brings God's promises to every believer. Amen, the word means "so be it." I believe it with all my heart. It's the Word of the living God. Amen.

L-42 Notice. Yes, the new birth... They don't want to die. Now, they've substituted something for new birth. If the devil... If you won't take God's Word, then the devil will give you his word. And that's where the first human race--where the human race first fell, was to disbelieve God's word.

L-43 The best way that God could ever fortify His army was to fortify them with the best. If our nation... We've got spies in England; England's got spies here, yet we're friendly. We've got spies all over the world, and the world's got spies in here. They're watching, see what kind of new missile, what kind of a new thing... Then they go back to their nation, find something to counteract that while they dress their men, get things ready for that kind of a war. It's always going on. There's a warfare between the devil and God: always has been.
And every year they're finding something new. The old airplanes they used back there, the old P-38's, and whatever they was, they scrapped them. They got jets now. The old Springfield's no good at all. They got a missile rifle now. The old block-buster is so far behind. Why, even the old trains, the old steam engines used to pull the stuff up and down the tracks: obsolete. Sure. They got something new. They're always searching: something new, something new. Now, they're trying to dig down in the ground, find some way to escape the atomic bomb: something new, something new.

L-44 God gave the very best at the beginning for His great mighty army, and He's never had to change it; because as I said last night His first decision is the best and only. He gave His people His Word.
And Satan reasoned with them, reasonings against the Word of God. That's what the devil does today. He tries to reason it. Say, "Now, this is only reasons that you don't have to do this. It's only reasons we got good doctors; we don't need Divine healing. It's only reason we got plenty of members; we don't need--we don't need the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost. They reason it out, trying to say the people are mentally upset, they're emotional, because themselves they are dead in sin and trespasses and knows nothing about the power of God.


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