<TITLE>09. Par 80-86</TITLE>L-80   John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, when He came out of the wilderness. We're taught that He went in the wilderness, at the age of nine, and he stayed there because his job was important. His father was a priest. And in that certain line of priesthood, or denomination, oh, his father said, "Now, John, you know you're to introduce the Messiah. You know, that Brother So-and-here just makes perfectly the Messiah!" So John had to get away from that, he would get in the wilderness to himself, because it must be God's choosing, and not man's choosing, at all, who would be the Messiah. So, he went in there at the age of about nine years old.

L-81 And, you notice, when he come out, at the age of thirty, his sermons wasn't as a theologian. He didn't use great swelling words, but it was all on nature. He said to them church men of that day, he said, "You generation of snakes." That's what he seen in the wilderness, snakes. He hated snakes. They were poison. In their fangs they had deathly poison, and he pronounced this upon the church of that day, "You bunch of poisoned snakes, who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Don't begin to say, 'We belong to this,' and, 'We're the--we're the Jesuites,' or 'We're the so-and-so,' or, 'We belong to the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian,' or whatever it is. Don't begin to say you have that, 'cause, I tell you, God is able of these stones to rise children to Abraham." See?

L-82   And also, "The ax," that's what he used in the wilderness, "it'll lay at the root of the tree. And every tree that don't bring forth good fruit--fruit, is hewn down and cast into the fire." See, he wouldn't cut a tree that was bringing fruit, 'cause he lived by the fruit of the tree. But, the tree that didn't bring fruit! Oh, you could just take all the Scripture, is so inspired, till everything in there fits around Jesus Christ. You see, "Every tree that bringeth forth not good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire," and so forth. You see, he--he used his message in the realm of nature.

L-83   And we want to face that now, being that we've found that He said, "I'm the Bread. And man shall live by every Word, and I am the Word." See? So we want to go back in nature. I notice a lot of times I have to do that.

L-84 And nature runs on the same scale. You take the time you watch all the birds congregate, leave and go out in the field and go to eating. Watch all the cattle when they're out, scattered out in the field, eating. Drop your line in, fish will bite. But when them cattle... Them birds huddle up in the trees, and them cattle get in the corner, you might as well take your line up. They won't bite, because nature runs on the same scale all the time.

L-85   And so does the Word of God run in continuity. God always does everything He does on the same scale. He decided at the beginning, when man lost his fellowship with Him, He would save him by the shed blood of an innocent one. And He has never changed His method. We've tried to educate them into it, denominate them into it, and--and beg them into it, beat them into it, or shout them into it. It still remains the same, the shed Blood only is where God meets a believer.

L-86 Not, we cannot make one World Council of churches and everybody meet. It'll never work; it never did, it never will. That's the way I'm against that system. God has got a system. You heard it said today, "All the churches come together, it's going to be a World Council of churches. And Jesus prayed for that, that we 'all might be one.'" Well, now, you see, that's carnal minded, without knowing the Spirit.


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