<TITLE>09. Par 40-46</TITLE>L-40 Now, what if my little Joseph, seven years old, would want to go a-hunting with me, and would cry and scream to take my automatic shotgun loaded up with shells, "I can kill a rabbit, daddy"? Well, I--I could not let him do that, yet he--he thinks he needs it, but I know more about it than he does.
And what if your little baby of a year and a half old would see you shaving with a straight razor, and scream and cry for that razor? Yet he seen you shaving, he wants to do the same thing. Why, you know what's best for him. Yet you--you wouldn't let him have it, because if you're a sensible thinking father you wouldn't do such a thing as that; but you would keep it from him. And then many times that we want something that's contrary to God's knowing of what we have need of, so He wouldn't give it to us.

L-41 And they were praying for a Messiah. They wanted a Messiah. But here's where it's at. They wanted Him in the way that--that they wanted. And God sent Him in the way that He wanted Him, and they refused Him. And they'd do it again today, do the same thing today. They'd refuse It again.
They do the same thing now as they did then. Why? For the same reason, the same reason. He came then, and we know He come. He came, and--to them, but He didn't come in the fashion and in the way that they desired Him to come. And if God would send us something today, we calling out for it, and the church, and when God sends it, we don't want it. It don't come to suit our denominational test. It don't come to suit our--our theological conception of it sometimes. But it's the--the very thing that we prayed for. The very request that we asked before God, God sent it to us, and we refuse it.
We want a Christmas gift from God, but we want it the way we want it. God sends it the way we need it. He knows what the nation; He knows what the church needs. But we think we know, but He knows really what it is.

L-44 Now, as I said a few minutes ago, we come to this Christmas again, the world falling apart. Let's just name a few things that I jotted down here.
Look at the immorality of the world: never was in a lower state, hardly. I--I got an article here that I would just like to read a couple verses of it. It's found in a--a paper, a "Standard Bearer of Africa," says, "The death of modesty. Feminine modesty that beautiful quality that God has placed in the human family to safeguard its moral standard is dying today, as innocent mere women and girls have bowed their knees to the goddess of fashion and do not hesitate to confirm to the most extreme of shamefulness of modest modern styles." I got about a page of it here, how I never heard such a thing. "And sex appeal is regarded as legitimate both among Christians and non-Christians."

L-46 As this our precious Brother Arganbright and I came down the road early this morning, was talking about the subject. It's hard to find a girl with enough modesty to blush. They've heard so many dirty jokes and filth, and, why, you couldn't say nothing to make them blush. When a few years ago, no more than when I was a boy, a little thing wrong, their face would color up, a little thing pass by, and another little girl's little underneath skirt was showing in school, and I was standing, talk, and when she looked over and seen this little girl's underneath skirt showing, her little face turned red, and she walked away from me, a sixteen year old girl. Why, what a... That's the God-given quality to safeguard our morals.
Then can you wonder why I cry out against such nonsense as we're getting today, calling ourselves Christians, and women dressing and acting, and men smoking cigarettes, and everything else, and carrying on like this. And ministers in the pulpit, compromising, and won't even let you come to their pulpit to preach against such stuff. Wonder if we're not doing a whole lot today like they did back two thousand years ago.


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