<TITLE>08. Par 54-63</TITLE>L-54   That was coming in his mind, what we would call his "heyday," back when he was in the Spirit of the Lord, when the Lord answered his prayer. Even before he prayed, as long as he lived for God, God was right on the time. He didn't have time to think about "Well, now, I got to pray through now and see if these thousand Philistines..." He knowed that God was with him, there was no condemnation, so he just grabbed the first thing he had in his hand, went to beating. That's right. He didn't wait till he got a Bachelor of Art, or learn how to duel, he just took what was in his hand and started slugging with it.

L-55   But today we've learned how to duel all the creeds, and everything like that, and fuss and fight, we don't get nowhere. We're a bluff, like it was in the days of Goliath. Maybe God will send us a David who don't know the creeds, but only knows the power of God that's been tested and tried. There the whole church was standing, defeated, because some big fellow was crying out, "The days of miracles is past." But it didn't work when a man of God come up there, little bitty, stoop-shouldered, ruddy-looking fellow. But God was with him, he had an experience.

L-56 And they said, "Take this here creed of our church, go out there and meet him."

L-57 He said, "I've never proved that thing, I don't know nothing about it." Come to find out, that, Saul's ecclesiastical vest didn't fit a man of God, so he throwed the thing off and took what he knowed was right.

L-58 And, today, we don't need a Bachelor of Art, or--or some doctor's degree, to get into some church or something. The only thing we need is the power and the resurrection of Christ in our lives, to take God's Word, with the love of God in our hearts, that we're sure that God will answer what we ask for.
"He'll withhold no good thing from them that walk up before Him rightly."

L-59   Now, he thought of his great days, when there was great days. The church tonight is thinking back about fifteen years ago, to a revival of Divine healing, of the victory. Now, and he's also... of God, and His people who had failed. That ought to be serious enough, that Samson would stop and think that he had failed God. He, it wasn't God's fault he was defeated, it was his own fault. And the people, God's people who was raised up to preach the Gospel to, in his strength, and by flirting with this flappered woman, immoral woman, he had lost all the strength that God had give him.

L-60 So has it been with the church! God raised the church up to be a lighthouse, to let out His powers, to heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out devils, live holy, preach the full Gospel, manifest It, but we begin to creep in and let down the bars.

L-61   We took the wrong example. The women acted like the pastor's wife. He let her go haywire, cut off her hair, wear any kind of sexy clothes, never rebuked. And the other one say, "If Sister So-and-so can do it, I could too." Don't make that your example. See? God told you what to do, stay with That.

L-62 Now, then when you do that, you fail God and you also fail His people, failing His people. When you fail them, you fail God. God set you there to be a watchman, and when you see sin creeping in, instead of cutting the thing off, they entice it. "When all the presbyters gets together, we're going to have a--a certain thing, we're going to vote this certain doctrine out of the church, of Divine healing. We--we don't like it." Then you go to voting against It. Oh, it's, that's the way it happened.

L-63   The Methodist, you Methodist used to have Divine healing in the churches. Presbyterian, Lutheran, you had it long ago, you used to have shouting and joy. What happened to it? You got a bunch of little eighteen-hundred-and-something rickys that took the thing to glamour, and away it went.


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