<TITLE>07. Par 42-50</TITLE>L-42 There might have been another group up there, could remember one night when Delilah had bewitched him into the--the city of--of Gaza. And they had closed their big gates, probably weighing a ton or more, a piece, great big brass gates to the city, that had iron bars that went back into the rocks and fastened, with such hinges till we wouldn't have such like it today. And they said, "The Philistines be upon thee, Samson." And many of the soldiers standing around the gate, and was speechless, when he could break the cords and walk down. And they scattered like a bunch of roaches at nighttime, when the light is turned on. The Spirit of the Lord upon him, reached over and jerked one gate out, and jerked the other one out, and put it on his shoulder and walked up the hill, and sat down. They could remember that. "What a warrior," many of them could remember that, of seeing him in great victory, "but look at him now!"

L-43   That's the picture of the church. I can read in the Bible, of the church when it was first filled with the Holy Ghost, great signs and wonders accompanied their meetings. We can remember a few years ago, forty or fifty years ago, when the church was filled with that same Power. But look at it today, she stands stripped. Something has stripped her, the same thing that stripped Samson, all caused by listening to a woman that took him in. And what stripped the church, is listening to that organized woman situation, that old Jezebel. The very thing that Samson had been raised up to defeat, had defeated him. And the Pentecostal church, tonight, stands in those same tracks. The very thing she was raised up to defeat, denominationalism, she has grouped herself back into it again, and her power is gone. Right. The Power of the Lord left her.

L-44 We ought to knowed that every time, through history, that a church ever organized, God left it right then. It fell and never did rise again. And Pentecost was something that come out of the denomination, but, what it was, we adopted man-made leadership instead of the Holy Ghost.

L-45   And that's exactly what Samson done. Think of it, what must have went through that man's mind while he stood there. He must have thought of all the great victories God had give him, the great things that God had done with him and for him; and how that, while he was with God, the power of His Spirit, and the joy and the peace that he had while he was with God, and of God and His people. How Samson had failed Him! Now, the very nation that Samson was raised up to destroy, had him bound.

L-46 And the very thing that God raised Pentecost to do, has them bound, stripped of fellowship, stripped of power; fussing, stewing, lukewarm members. Fine things, great, everything, but they'd be better off if they--if they had the old Salvation Army drum, or the little old guitar, down on the corner somewhere again. I'd rather have it like that, than to have our cathedrals that we're getting, costing millions of dollars.

L-47   But there he stood. He had failed. Now he was a prisoner of the very nation that God raised him up to destroy.

L-48 They had him doing tricks, to entertain them. And that's all it is today, some kind of a little gimmick to try to entertain them.

L-49 Let a woman lure him from the promised Word of God! That's the same thing the church did, has let a woman, Jezebel, "the mother of harlots," represented in Revelation 17, lure them right back into the vomit that they come out of. As the Bible says, "As a hog go, returns to its wallow, and a dog to its vomit."

L-50 And as long as that hog remains a hog, he'll, his nature is a hog, he'll go right back to the wallow. And, you, the only way you'll keep him out of the mud hole is to change his nature.


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