The Holy Spirit Baptism of Power

[Music] rise up in jesus name open eyes and heal the land rise up [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's time to rise [Music] up amen god's word is true and when you stand on it it stands with you amen amen amen all right well this morning and i don't know uh actually some time ago i taught a lesson called the promise the power and the proof talking about the holy spirit well this morning we're going to pick that up now i know that was actually some time back but this is going to be kind of a part two to that so if you haven't heard that one i believe it's in the bookstore so you can pick one of those up on your way out and put these two together and listen to them because i get questions all the time about well it's funny because uh marty y'all know marty from canada martin bridget there are canadian jg lim representatives and it's funny because marty's he's been with me all over the world he's been with me and pretty much as i've taught each different seminar and different topics and he said you know it's cr it's funny craig um if you were teaching a course in algebra you'd get questions on healing and that's just the way it is so no matter what we we teach we get questions on healing well another of the main questions that we get actually there's several different categories but another main question is the difference i did a lot of them have to do the baptism the holy spirit and some of the main questions have to do with what is the difference between the real baptism of the holy spirit and speaking in tongues well i don't know where that kind of came from because there's not really a difference in there right however there is information there but then we get into other things like practices and say practices or individual things that take place sometimes through [Music] wrong teaching sometimes through experience which can sometimes be according to wrong teaching but many times a person will do something a minister or just a christian let's just say a christian and hopefully the minister is a christian hopefully it works out that way but they would do something a certain way and it worked and sometimes after they've done other things it didn't work then they did this and it worked and all of a sudden they make that into a doctrine uh one of those things is what we saw when we went out to north carolina now this takes other places or happens other places do but when we were in south carolina north carolina whenever i went to cast a devil out of a person invariably they would start coughing and you could tell it wasn't just happening they were making it happen in other words they were kind i mean you can tell when a person's coughing to want to cough you know what i'm saying there's it's there's a cough that happens that you can't really help and then there's a cough that you do and that was the cough they were doing every time i would start to cast out a devil they would and say and i'm like what is everybody's doing that why is everybody doing that well come to find out they had come from a particular ministry that said that when you cast out a devil that's how it leads is that it'll you'll cough or there'll be something like that and that's what they did so and that but the sad part is that became a doctrine now the first time they did it and even other times it probably worked i mean it probably that's what happened and they noticed it but then they made it a doctrine and then people started doing it well the bad part about that is then you can't tell if the thing's really been coming out or if they're doing that well you can tell because they're fake coughing so um you know i have a basic philosophy if it's god it works and if it's god it's real and if it's not real you don't want it amen isn't that true i mean it's just you know i don't i don't like the idea of playing church and playing church means you just follow the rules you go along and you find a group that kind of matches what you believe and you just kind of fit in with them and then everybody you know to me it's the the old story remember the the uh or what they call the fable i guess of the emperor's new clothes that's kind of the way a lot of church is and i don't like that to me if it's bible if it's god's word it will work and so let's get back to doing that and if we do that then god can work now one of the problems is if you do something that then it works and then like i said you can make a doctrine out of it or you can have an experience then you can do the same thing now i want to preface this and so you kind of have to follow along here there is an aspect of you setting your faith for a certain thing just like the woman with the issue of blood she said within herself if i just touch the hem of his garment i'll be healed she set her faith and then she did that thing and when she did she got healed so there is an aspect of you setting your faith and i know people come here a lot of times and i'll say well if i can if i've been to the doctor it'd been this this person prayed for me but if i can get there and brother craig lays hands on me i'll get healed and many times you get healed on your own faith just because of that now i'm applying my faith but many times people get healed of their own faith because they set their faith that whenever i touch them they're going to get healed so even if i didn't set my faith to do it they'd still get healed why because they set their faith right now now let's take at kind of the other end of the spectrum there is this thing that we know to be true to a degree called the placebo effect which placebo effect is not a good thing to rely on all right and the problem is when you know about it it tends to stop working for you so you just kind of do we tell them we're not telling wait a minute so now but so what i want to talk about this morning is a little bit i'm going to bring all these things in what i'm against is priming the pump you know what i mean by priming the pump that that's that's people say okay you want to receive the baptism of the holy spirit uh here's what we're going to do i'm going to lay hands or whatever and they said and they and then they say okay now just just begin uh making sounds and and the people that they don't know what to do and then usually that person starts praying in tongues the the person ministering and then they just imitate and it's not even real baptism holy spirit it's just them imitating sounds and they they say well we're priming the pump so that you remember in the old days maybe just don't remember i don't remember it either i'm not that old i don't remember that i've seen them in antique stores okay i didn't grow up with them i didn't grow up on the farm or anything but you know you had these pumps and the first few times you would pump it nothing would happen because it had to prime the pump and many times they had actually take some water they would keep a little bucket of water and they would pour that in there first and that's called priming the pump and then they would pump and then water would come out so that's what a lot of people do with the baptism holy spirit they want to prime the pump so they just say and you know you know the old joke uh repeat after me and they would start saying no time my bow tie time i'll remember if you if you're in the 70s the charismatic area you remember that time okay people did that stuff and so i've never agreed with it i've never liked it and so that's why many times when we minister to people i went back to the bible and it said that when people now obviously in acts chapter 1 chapter 2 people received the baptism of the holy spirit the infilling of the holy spirit and we're going to talk about that but then later on in acts it actually says that the apostles when they found people that were believers but had not received the baptism of the spirit then they would say that the apostles would lay hands upon them and say receive the holy ghost and they would be filled so that's what we tend to do and so what i do is whenever people say i want to receive the baptist holy spirit then usually i lay hands on them and i say receive the holy spirit and then from there on i have nothing to do with it then it's between them and god does that make sense because i don't want to get into the priming the thing and doing the step why because i would rather you leave here without any experience and continue telling god i want to receive i want it i've got it i believe and so i want to experience all you've got rather than you leaving with a false sense of having attained something that you don't have and many people have done that and they've they and they've even they say well i've spoken in tongues maybe maybe not maybe what you did wasn't speaking in tongues maybe it was making sounds which again i believe and i was with dr sumrall and he used to talk about this and there are people that that had not received the baptism of the spirit but they would actually make sounds and he said god can use that as prayer because he can take the sound your faith and he can take that sound and he said he can say today these sounds mean this and he can apply it towards something now you know i've never heard that before and okay you know i can agree with that god can take if he can make the everything out of nothing he can take something and make something else out of it that's just the way i feel about it so but then the when you many people have been seeking the holy spirit or the infilling of the holy spirit for a long time now back in the early days of pentecost and early 1900s people they used to do what they called tarrying meetings and they would tarry for the holy spirit based on luke 24 acts 1 kind of putting those two in a time gap there that he said wait tarry ye in jerusalem until you receive the promise of the father and so many times people would tarry they would wait and they would have tarrying meetings where they all came together on a specific night on purpose sometimes after church sometimes other nights and they would just gather around the altar and they were all seeking the baptism or infilling of the holy spirit and during that time many of them would receive but others wouldn't and sometimes well like john lake john lake heard about the baptism of the spirit uh from the pentecostal outpouring early in 1907 and then by october roughly october of 1907 he finally received and he said it took him nine months to receive the baptism of the spirit so that was a common thing now again experiences sometimes become doctrines and people would start tarrying and then they would come down the front every altar every service they'd come down to the altar and they would start begging god god fill me the holy spirit god give me your holy spirit and then you would have some well-meaning but wrong christian tended to be a busybody okay that was the person that used to do that and they would wander among the people that were seeking and they would look for something and many times when they come forward the women would come forward they would have jewelry on or something and this well-meaning but wrong person would say well if you if you take that jewelry off god will baptize you in his holy ghost because the bible says don't have any ornamentation except you know holiness and they would start saying these things right now that's when the placebo effect would kick in because they would take it off thinking okay now he's going to feel me boom and their faith would rise and they would get filled and so that would become that experience became a doctrine so hopefully you can see how all this is working now nowadays we have new doctrines new sacred cows dealing with the baptism of the holy spirit probably the number one question i get now has to do with this and i actually wrote it down is that people ask about what some churches slash ministries whatever you know you want to call them uh do concerning the baps of the spirit and because most of people many people believe they have received the baptism of the spirit but then they they recognize they're still lacking something and so then they start seeking a second baptism and they call that the baptism of fire and then they have their fire tunnels where they gather on each side and people go through and they get blessed and whatever else and they you know a bunch of things start happening many of which have no scriptural basis but at the same time they they come out the other end and they come out blessed or whatever whatever it is now many times when we say blessing it's not a real blessing it's just soulishly they feel they had a good time they had a good experience okay that's not a blessing right a blessing is when god actively imparts something into your life and you leave differently than you came that do you see that right now but we have these people now that are practicing and uh friends i'll give you another um experience that becomes doctrine uh this idea of going into the courts of heaven say robert henderson if you know who that is he actually he's actually written several books now and well anyway his finances are not our not our business so but he's written several books on this topic of the of going into the courts of heaven and presenting your case and all that kind of stuff and what happened was his son had a very uh very big problem and i'm not going to say what i think it was i don't really remember exactly but i'm pretty sure but regardless he had a big problem and he was praying and his dad robert was praying and praying and praying and nothing was happening and then finally somehow he somehow heard something or read something about the courts of heaven in the bible talks about entering god's course with praise and doing these things and so he decided to do that and when he decided to do that he decided here's what i'm going to do and so he mentally decided to enter the courts of heaven okay and then make a decree from there that would affect earth so anyway um and then after that his son got free so all of a sudden now this is now a doctrine let's do this my experience has now become a doctrine and now it goes all over teaching everybody to do this thing which is wasted motion so you don't need to do that there's nothing about you you're already seated in heavenly places you don't need to go you're seated there amen now so we reign and roll from there so i don't have any problem with that but it's the idea of going there now see billy brim another great woman of god did kind of the same thing in her teaching on authority and in that she talks about taking the seat you taking your seat of authority and she has a chair on her porch of her house where every morning she goes out with her bible and her cup of coffee and she sits down and she says when i sit down i am seated in my seat of authority right and so that's a physical action we would even call it maybe even a prophetic action that she does and when she gets there she gets into a mindset that says okay here's i'm going to reign and rule from my seat of authority well i can tell you the chair on her back porch is not her seat of authority her seat of authority is sitting at the right hand of the father in christ amen i get it i understand but i don't know what it is i i don't know why it irks me okay but anything that adds unnecessary motion or unnecessary actions because to me and and i'm sure this would not be her all right but to me if you have that then when you're not in that you're not in your seat of authority and there has to be that mental thing in your mind of i'm not seated in my seat of authority and when you go there you get in that seat now the reason i know this is is true is because uh when i was in the military when i would get up in the morning we had our our beds we had our lockers and i had to go over and i would put on the uniform and something happened when i put that uniform on something happened to me i you know i might it was early and i might have been stumbling over there you know just half awake but when i put that uniform on i stood straight i became clear-minded i knew my job i knew what i was supposed to be doing because i then represented the united states air force right so there is a mindset that can come with certain actions that you do now these can also be uh acts of faith you know all kinds of different things that you can do and there's all kinds of things you can do now but the the key is this faith happens in the spirit it you can show faith by your actions and your your faith has to have expression but when you make the expression the point at which your faith works then you have made that thing more important than the faith does that make sense yes so there has to be you should be able to enter faith and exercise faith at any point without any extraneous things that that's my point now uh when i was coming up in the 70s and 80s predominantly everybody had their little deal of oil you know a little thing and it's funny quite these little little like little pills but they were big silver gold colored i'm sure some had actual gold i don't know but and you had this thing and you screw off the top of it and there was oil in it and you you that was your annoying had a little keychain thing you put on your keychain and you know if you if you were in the know you had you could tell who was spiritual because they had their yeah you know you could you could go to church and people made it where you could see it here's oh here's my oil okay and so everybody had that well guess what i was young and dumb right and i did the same thing i had my little bottle of oil and i'd carry it around with me and this is before i was really praying for people out in public much i'd do it at church different things and then started getting a hold of the dht or at least the ideas of it and started realizing then one day i remember i went to walmart i was going to pray for a person and i'm like oh i left my oil i'll catch them next time do you see the problem and so anything that causes you to not do what the bible says to do is wrong amen and so what we have to do is we have to strip away and constantly be aware of anything that we gather because as humans we tend to gather experiences and we gather these mindsets that it's going to take this or it's going to take that um you know if we can get a thousand christians in a city together to pray in then we can change the city no it's not about a thousand it could be one it could be two if any two agree is that right so only two so if if that's now if it's multiplication by numbers and if you have a thousand well you ought to be able to change the world i mean i mean yeah get them together and pray but we've seen things we've seen the call we've seen the cry we've seen you know the bag well i don't think we've had a bag yet but well the cry and the call they're pretty much the bag anyway but anyway um you have all this stuff where people think and the bad part is that's a new age mentality because what that does is it's getting through okay amen and i mean come on is this true or can we just be honest because what do we have we have these groups that get together and they think that they're going to create this vortex over that area that's going to open heaven and let god pour down and that's not what happens the bible says the heavens open and receive christ never says they closed never says it closed why because jesus went back and now we have direct contact now if you're right with god the heavens never close to you right now if you're not right with god then maybe the person next to you is right with god and the heavens are open just a little bit next to you i don't know but i know i don't know but whatever it is if you want the heavens to open just be right with god and see a lot of people they will they they when it comes to prayer they want me to pray for them they want me to pray for their loved ones or somebody so they will be healed and they'll say uh we even had one person and now i'm here i'm not making fun of anybody or anything else i'm i'm just stating some of the things but one of them said is it better can you send a prayer cloth will that work or is it better to get them on the phone you know which prayer works better no prayer works better than another prayer what works is faith and the thing is it's not even my praying see many times people say would you pray for this and that's their way saying they need help and so they expect me to utter words that would pray and be prayer and i do i pray that people ask me to pray we will pray but the key is not the prayer it's not in the words it's in the believing because see if i pray without believing nothing's going to happen but if but if i get this but if i believe even without praying it's still going to happen do you see that so the key is believing just like uh i think i was talking about earlier last sunday or i think the last sunday or a while back whenever i talked about uh the difference between becoming and being well see prayer is kind of becoming believing is being do you get that because all that all the only reason prayer works is because at some point while i'm speaking i decide to believe this is done if i don't believe that i can pray all day long and nothing's going to happen and many times now you can pray or say or how you want to say it and you can pray and pray for an hour and nothing happened or you can pray and believe the first second you open your mouth and it's already done and then if you want to keep praying for an hour glory to god right sometimes you pray for an hour and you don't believe until the last minute of the hour and that's when it's done sometimes you can pray yourself into believing what are you doing you're saying what god has said and you getting your faith to rise up and then it hits right other times you can pray yourself into unbelief now and that's when you start praying wrong oh god if it's your will oh god if it's not your will oh god touch so and so god okay god's not going to touch anybody do you get that he's not going to touch anybody he has already healed so it's not about what he's going to do see that's the problem oh god's going to heal me oh that's a person of great faith no it's not that's that's a person of doubt and unbelief why because god's not gonna he already has great faith is god has done this thing by his stripes i'm healed now if you're coming for instance if you're coming to me to minister to you your faith or unbelief does not matter to me the fact that you come is all that counts to me and i'm going to believe when i lay hands on you amen so i'm not i'm not trying to get your faith up to where you can get it for yourself because if that were true and and i don't mind if you do that you don't need to come down here down front and get prayed for because it was done the minute you believed does this make sense and see okay is there any wonder why i don't get invited to a lot of conferences with other ministers why because i expose all their fluff all the stuff right um and because it aggravates me when i see people misled willingly or you know on purpose or not on purpose by a person especially if it's to keep them coming that that's yeah i had the same thing back when i was teaching martial arts they would add fluff and add a bunch of filler and all this kind of stuff into it and it's like no just teach what what the people need to give give them what they need what they can use and strip away everything else that is not necessary because i'm telling you if it's in the bible it's necessary if it's not in the bible it's not necessary whatever you need god has provided in his word amen and so we don't need to add stuff there's nothing in the bible about fire tunnels there's nothing in there about these fire tunnels and doing these kind of now and the amazing thing is the things that god did he really did apart from man okay on the day of pentecost a rushing mighty wind came in do you think that the 120 were sitting there praying for a rushing mighty wind no they had no idea what to expect all they said was we're supposed to sit here and wait right now apparently they've been praying whatever else is going on but they didn't set it up they didn't do any all they did was show up why because jesus said do this he said you wait and then on the day of pentecost it was fully come then the holy spirit showed up filled them all in that right and they all began to speak of their time they didn't know anything about tongues they didn't even nobody they never heard anybody speak in tongues they didn't know to there was no prime in the pump with them amen can you imagine what it must have been like to be there in that room and then this thing happened you know the place is shaking the winds blowing in a room which i'm pretty sure the doors and windows were closed because they were probably not feeling too safe you know by the local authorities and so and then all of a sudden this thing starts happening and then all of a sudden these flames you know tongues of fire as they say sat upon each one of them can imagine what they're like yep still there you know it's just well you got it too and can you imagine what they were thinking what was happening and then all of a sudden they started speaking all these other languages and they didn't know what each one of them was speaking and didn't know what was going on and then and somehow they ended up outside and then all these other people were there for the feast of pentecost started hearing what's going on and they hear them speaking in their own language and many times those people local people like that were not all that educated and many of them didn't speak different languages and here they're speaking languages from people that obviously weren't from that same place and they didn't even know what they were telling those people but those other people understood what they were saying which means they were speaking human languages and they're right and so there's all this stuff that is kind of mixed in with the teaching on the baptist holy spirit and there's you know i'll be honest with you there's i have questions now i'm settled on certain things and i'm satisfied with what i'm settled on there's questions i have and and surprisingly i've never been asked some of these questions i have okay but looking at these things the bottom line is this there is one purpose one real purpose one stated purpose for the baptism of the holy spirit and that's what jesus said he said but you shall receive power after that the holy ghost will come upon you now that tells us two things at that point the holy ghost wouldn't come upon them and they're right so at that point there was something there was still an experience they had to receive and he said but when you receive this experience when this thing happens you shall receive dunamis miraculous ability now notice we get hung up on the tongues a lot of people do you know well it's this what is that and then people ask me well you've said stuff about false tongues and different things and how do i know if i got real tongues or false tongues and i i want to talk about some of that we're not going to spend too much time on it but i will talk about it in a future time most of this stuff is in the book that i did on concerning tongues and it goes into a lot of these details now but what we have to realize is this we are dealing with god first and foremost and so god knows he has the answers we are dealing with a being who has power that is outside of the natural realm and so we have to understand that he's going to do things sometimes in ways that doesn't match our experiences and it's going to be outside of our experience now when he said when jesus said well i want to read a couple of things to you because i'm going to give you some scripture and i want to show you [Music] what goes on with this because the primary aspect like i said of the baptism of the holy spirit is for power power for you now listen carefully power for you to be a witness not power for you to witness do you get that now if you are a witness and the power of the holy spirit is in your life then you will also have the power to witness but he did not call us to witness he called us to be witnesses in our life do you get do you understand that and so the baptism of the holy spirit was to empower us to be witnesses now that word witness there unfortunately is the greek word for martyr and he said so the holy spirit is going to give you the power to become a martyr that's literally what it means now that's a far cry from the oh i want the blessing right and so now we have to understand now of course there's two aspects of dying there's dying to the flesh and then there's spiritual death amen right and so you have the the dying to self and now i would even say there's physical death of course and so we have the dying to self which the holy spirit also helps us to do but then there's also becoming a martyr you can be a martyr by dying to self that's one aspect but the bible says that we have died and been raised with them is that right so there is an aspect of death that we have already experienced but then he also says and we know from scripture well what we do know is this there is no recorded instance of any of the original apostles dying a peaceful death with possibly the exception of the apostle john he's the only one and and we get all this from church tradition which there's really no history of it but they talk about where they went in different places how they died almost every one of them died violent deaths as martyrs because they witnessed and were witnesses in an area now the apostle john they say he they tried to boil him in oil and couldn't kill him and so they exiled him to the isle of patmos and i guess probably possibly because he still had to write the book of the revelation of jesus christ and but he was there and so there but there's no record of how he actually died now there is church history that said even as he was dying that or in in very old age that they would when he would speak to the local congregation there which was in a house he they would help him up he was very old and they said he would come to the front and he would give a word he wouldn't really preach but he would get up and say little children love one another that's all he would say and then they would lead him back and he would sit down and you know he would listen to somebody else sharing because back then church wasn't one person talking back then it was well life teams you come together you discuss you you pray you speak you do different things everybody has a psalm has a hymn has a teaching different things and so all of this is going on but the one of the key things about the baptist holy spirit number one is power power to witness okay to be a witness we should say and then number two with that often tongues are accompanying that now i'd say that is the divine order of things is for when a person receives this baptism spirit that they speak in other tongues now we have more record of that in the book of acts than we do of them not doing that okay so that could be a pattern there now but we should not use tongues and this is one of the key things because even in most statements of faith they will say that they especially charismatic churches pentecostal churches that they believe that tongues speaking in other tongues is the initial evidence of the baptism of the holy spirit now there's nothing in the bible that says that it is the initial evidence that term is not in bible okay it is in theology it is in denominational terminology but it is not bible in the sense that the bible doesn't it never uses that tongue says initial evidence now i don't have any problem with the idea of it some people as a matter of fact that very clause or point is what caused f bosworth to break away from the assemblies of god and because they in 1914 they formed in 1916 they said okay tongues the initial evidence 1918 they were coming back and saying yeah we're going to enforce that and we're going to start really abiding by that and he said i can't do that he said i believe that any manifestation of the spirit should be evidence of the baptism of the spirit and he talked about different gifts and different things and so he left the assemblies of god and went and joined the christian missionary alliance cma and so he joined and stayed with him pretty much for the rest of his life uh retired and then came out of retirement and traveled with william branham for a while so anyway then uh but his big deal was i i cannot say that the initial evidence of speaking of the tongues uh that's the initial evidence of the baptism of the spirit he said i agree with it i bel i believe that you should speak in other tongues i believe that you generally will but making it a rule now the problem with that is this being raised up in certain circles e.w kenyon was one of the big influences of his material i read all this material and t.l osborne said that ew kenyon was his bible school that he that that's where he got a lot of his training and then of course he went and was trained personally under ff bosworth so those two areas intersected ew kenyan said that we should never need a physical evidence for a spiritual truth okay that's a that's a big deal because if then if you go with tongues being the initial evidence now you're saying you have that that god gave man a physical proof of a spiritual truth okay which again i can see god doing some things like that and i don't have any problem with it but the big deal is that uh you don't have to rely on it however many people look at tongues in other words until they have spoken in tongues they don't believe they've received the baptism in the spirit the baptism spirit is primarily for power to be a witness so as far as i'm concerned now the bible is clear what happened acts chapter 1 acts chapter 2 acts chapter 3. as we said before the promise the power and the proof in acts chapter 1 there's a promise and he said that the promise is the promise of the father and he said wait until you receive it then in acts chapter 2 they receive the power then in acts chapter 3 we see the proof of the power when the apostle peter raised up the lame man right and so we have those three now most of the proofs in the book of acts that we have concerning power of the holy spirit mostly was operating through apostles that's what gave rise to the idea that only the apostles had power but that's not true because we see others we see philip we see different people that were not apostles uh but and stephen people like that that did miracles basically and yet they were not apostles so we know that the power of the holy spirit was not just a power amongst the 12 or the 11 however you want to say so the reason i'm saying is because i want you to understand that the baptism of the holy spirit while it is a theological doctrine it is also a spiritual reality and it is a biblical truth amen and so the problem is many times we get hung up on the as well as we used to say all the time we get hung up on the gift and not the giver or we get hung up on the blessing and not the blesser and so i want to emphasize that if you are seeking the baptism of the holy spirit first off you are seeking the baptism of the holy spirit right now god makes you holy inside when you get born again and you are recreated in his image holy now but that holiness inside should start to be seen on the outside at some point now they say and i would tend to agree with this that the first thing that changes when you get born again is your mouth okay and you can see that uh part of it you can see it from the 1904 welsh revival in wales they had this great revival among the coal miners and you may have heard me talk about this before but these coal miners were pretty foul mouths and then when this revival happened they got saved and they quit cussing just instantly just quit cussing and none of the mules would obey them because the mules were used to being cussed at and so they didn't understand the commands anymore so they had to retrain the mules to operate without cussing i don't know how many times mules are going to come up today [Laughter] but listen we may need to be like those mules and be retrained okay because the bible says that with our tongues we can turn our entire body isn't that right and so there is an aspect now i'm not saying you know if you we were talking the other day and somebody made a statement and they said you know i love jesus but i cuss a little okay i've seen i've seen the sign before and that's that's cute okay but um most cussing has to do with some type of degeneration something all right it's it's downward talk and it's amazing as we get around if you go to the bookstores right now probably the number one book we were in a bookstore just the other day my wife and i i've been sherman and right there on the end on an end cap is a whole section of books that are business books and self-help books and all this kind of stuff all in this section and they all start with the f-word and and had it had it on the on the book this and i mean it's it's it's there right and i you know and and i i don't know i'm getting older i guess and i recognized when i was younger and how much things have changed and i'm thinking okay if this is number one if that's on the front used to that wasn't on the front cover of any book you used to that wouldn't even in books right and now it's on the front cover and they're using it because why they're thumbing them their themselves at god and now degeneration has happened to where some preachers either cuss or come so close to cussing in the pulpit because they're trying to be relevant well just because you're relevant to people you sometimes making yourself quote unquote relevant to people can make you irrelevant to god and so if we are going to receive the holy spirit first and foremost our lives should be holy now that does not mean that you have to take off your jewelry or you know not wear makeup or wear your dresses to here into there i'm not talking about that anything if i will start with that and it's automatically dresses and not men anyway so i'm not talking about that necessarily but i'm saying your life there should be a holiness in your life there should be a goodness there should be a cleanness see there's a reason the bible talks about an unclean spirit always in a negative connotation you never get an unclean spirit from god why because he cleans you up see with god it's cleansing right it is not the degeneration and with god your mouth will clean up right with god your life will clean up why because you have the holy spirit not an unholy spirit but a holy spirit not the spirit of the world so you fit in with the world but you have the holy spirit that makes you separate makes you that light that draws people amen so all of this has to do with the holy spirit now the problem is we get just like we're done with these fire tunnels and all these different kind of things you don't see most most of these things are just for services to make a good service to get people excited to to get them whipped into a frenzy of something and see real christianity is as john likes to say it's not a puffing up but a settling down it's a digging down into the thing see there's things that and my daughter and i've talked to my daughter about this before and she brought up a really good point in it and she said you know you we always heard growing up in churches we'd go to especially with youth group oh if you give this up for god he'll give you something better and she said you know sometimes you need to give up things without thinking of getting anything back some things you don't need replaced some things you just need to get out of your life amen but see we we had this idea now and i was talking with george the other day i talked with him almost every day every other day anyway and we were talking about this thing now here here's the problem what we're seeing in the world uh is that okay the bible says that in the end times how many of you know we're in the end times okay in the end times and he even said in the latter days now when paul said that he knew he was in the end times because he knew that peter said this is that and the last days so that was all after that so paul knew he was in the end times but even he said in the latter days in the latter times am i right he said this is what's going to happen there's going to be a falling away and a matter of fact healthy todd mentioned it today and about how people because of the increase of iniquity people's love will start to wax cold isn't it right well their love for who for god and for man and so here's the thing what we've noticed and you know god is he is a master chess player you know but satan also plays chess he's he's not as good he's pretty good you know not as good as god at it obviously but he is better at it than most humans because he plans way ahead and he tries to set things up ahead of time now what he has done in the church over the last 10 15 years predominantly it's a little bit before that and it went around a long time before that was he brought in this the false grace message which says nothing matters anymore sin doesn't matter god is only good and in the sense that he'll only bless you he doesn't hold you responsible for anything nothing to be remembered now that's he see that's what they have started saying and they and that that is the common idea of grace in the church today and pete and because of that people have no idea of any remorse they have and if you don't have remorse you don't have a sense of repentance and so now you have salvation without repentance so-called i'm not saying it's true salvation i'm saying people think they can get it that way and so you have all this going on now the problem is this you're going to have in the near future we've already seen it the thing is uh well i hate to to get you to understand this i might have to say something that i really wouldn't plan on bringing in but hopefully you'll get it i'm going to do it anyway so hopefully bear with me all right for just a minute or two when you look at certain countries predominantly uh uk great britain england canada and australia now obviously they're all linked and related and then you have america and america even though the british and the english peoples you might say uh are related to us we made a very big difference whenever we broke away from their rule right uh i mean we did everything i mean whatever we used to do we did the opposite you know instead of driving on the left-hand side and then we drive on the right-hand side i mean we just probably just to be contrary more than likely you know it's just this is how they did it that's not how we're gonna do it we're gonna do it this way well you know whatever but now if you but if you will notice for some reason america has had has had this i don't know this thing about europe that they want to be like europe okay i've been to europe you don't want to be like europe okay god bless europeans europe needs help okay it's messed up we've been there it's and i've been places and honestly i've just shocked at some of the stuff that is ridiculous so but for some reason we keep getting europe kind of shoved down our throats be like europe be like europe do this do this do what they did and then all this other stuff happened and now 2020 the world's different place and you know nobody wants to be like anybody anymore uh for the most part well here's the problem america is the only country now especially that is still armed the the civilians are armed pretty much now i'm talking about legally armed right uh most it's funny because all countries the citizens many of the citizens are still illegally armed but america is the only place where they were really legally armed for the most part and you know people could say well if you're in canada you can do this and okay but the restrictions are such that most people just don't even try because it's too hard to live within the restrictions but both people of the uk of canada and australia have given up uh any right of defense personal defense self-defense that kind of stuff they've given it up and they have been disarmed and historically you're a civilian or a citizen as long as you're armed as soon as you're not armed you're no longer a civilian or a citizen now you're a subject and things are dictated now i talk to people in canada i talk to people in australia some even in uk and the thing is now it is even illegal to defend yourself in any way therefore you must rely on government officials to do that hopefully they're not corrupt hopefully they care enough to defend you right but now this goes back to the very base of this started when we started giving up our uh how can i say we we gave up our responsibility to raise our own children and we give the education of our children to a person we don't even really know into a system that is geared in a certain way that does not work in our benefit or our children's benefit and so we give up that right and now if you don't take them there now you can actually be charged and and all of a sudden now it's wrong right even though now the homeschooling thing has come to a you know a good place uh in this sense and it's funny because when all this stuff happened all of a sudden homeschooling's okay isn't that something anyway um till then you know you'd go to jail if you didn't send your kids to school enough days of the year so so we gave up our right to do that and then you give up different rights okay for the most part most humans most well different people but they even give up the right of and the responsibility of their own health to a doctor but whatever he says why well because you know he's god god in a white coat you know no he's not he's a man and he's practicing medicine on you and and yet but and it's funny you tell him what you're going through whatever it is and what it was he goes and goes he googles it well you can google it for a lot cheaper than getting him to google it right i'm not against doctors right they found a great way to make money easy off of people i don't know anyway so no i'm just kidding well kind of kidding anyway so but i just want and so now we also uh have got to a place in many countries where we have given up the responsibility to defend ourselves and our homes and our families and loved ones and the innocent and the weak we've given it over to another person where that we have to call them to come to us and hope they get to us in time because the laws where we have disarmed ourselves for the most part uh didn't stop home invasions you can look at australia you can look at different places it hasn't stopped the crime and so now and if you go back and it's kind of funny because some of these things go back to looking at some of the details and the uh rates of these things now you say what has this got to do with the baptism holy spirit this is the point in christianity we have given over our responsibility in many cases to whoever's behind the pulpit rather than thinking for ourselves rather than reading for the bible because the other aspect remember what i said there are several aspects uh benefits of having the holy spirit baptism one of those is that we receive power but the other is that we receive a teacher who will lead and guide us into all truth now see my job is to allow him to work through me so that i help you move into all truth but he's your teacher and he's the one responsible for taking you into all truth amen and so you you when you come in here you don't lay your responsibility down out there and go well whatever brother curry says i'm gonna i'm just gonna believe it because he said it i'm not gonna check it out i'm not gonna read it for myself and i know i i do everything in my power to make sure you don't do that why because i'm supposed to be raising up individual believers that if the whatever the enemy is that you may see coming if he puts his foot down to try to stomp out this flame instead he just scatters us instead of putting us out amen and so that's the key now here's the thing that in the because of the the wrong grace message people have gotten to the place in church and i i got letters this week which is i normally get a letter once a month i've got not well i get letters every day but i'm saying this kind of letter i usually get once a month but here lately i've been getting them two and maybe even three a week which says that there's a shift there's something going on in the church world that because i notice patterns and i can see this pattern growing and the pattern is this i'm getting more and more letters from people for one for i don't know why they contact me as i've said before but they write me and tell me how mad they are at god right i mean i guess they think i'm you know i'm just so close to him that you know if they tell me it'll get to his ear you really upset this person i'm just telling you they're really upset at you you know i don't know but but they write me and they and they and they're not they don't write a paragraph for a sentence i mean it's it's a letter about why they're mad at god and why you know they might as well just kill themselves and and why they made it why because god's word isn't true because he said he healed everybody and they're not healed and the people they prayed for maybe didn't get healed i mean i'm i'm combining a bunch of different letters and information in them but i've noticed this that there's a different type of christianity now for the most part and the type of christianity we have today is i'm not even going to call it bold it's not bold it's rude it's brash it it's foolish because people say things about god in a letter to me that if i had thought it you know 30 years ago i would have quickly did something to you god i wasn't thinking that i wasn't thinking that that's not what's on my mind why because i i reverenced him right because the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom so when you have no fear of god when you have no i when you just rail against god then you're not anywhere near the beginning of wisdom you're at the other end of the spectrum at the tail end of idiocy because it is stupid to be mad at god amen because somewhere because god ain't wrong he ain't never been wrong he's never going to be wrong and so if if he said something you're not experiencing it the failure is in you now the failure could be you were taught that by somebody i'm not saying it the failure is your fault necessarily i'm saying that for whatever reason the failure ends in you and you're going to have to find out what that failure is you i guarantee you this you're not going to find out nothing railing at god because he ain't even talking to you other than going shut your mouth and start listening that's pretty much what he's going to end up saying to you if he says that right because if if you have had any contact with god you have to remember god is god right okay that's number one number two you're not right you're not god that's the second thing to remember right and so we are here at his goodness amen and so people don't have a respect for god especially now so what's happening is this now we have we have a motivational christianity we have maybe it's inspirational but it's definitely not theologically correct or biblically correct but we have this we have promoted the idea that god is you know most most preachers are simply television where they had those infomercials kind of like that you ever seen the info cooking commercials where they have the pans that they're using and they're trying to sell you this thing and they're doing all this stuff and they're talking about and they're over the top excited and it's great and you know and then they say hey try this and the person tries it before they can get in their mouth oh that's great they didn't hadn't even hadn't even had time to hit their palette yet but they're already smiling and oh this is wonderful and and it becomes just a sales thing and we presented god as though he somehow needs us and he needs you for him to be god and and that's not okay god will exist even if we didn't do you get that and so many times though we have taken because it's a good sales tactic it's a good sales tactic to promise people all the added what is it the value-added benefits of sales of of god come to god help he'll bless you he'll heal you he'll make you wealthy he'll make you healthy he'll make and you sound like the snake oil salesman that you used to see in all the and all the tv shows the guy that rides in on the wagon and you know sells the potion of dr so-and-so and all that kind of stuff and it's kind of become that way again to where we're just selling stuff to people and the idea of what you're selling you're selling god and you're saying if you come to god he'll do this if you come to this he'll do that and we may now is there truth to the blessings of god absolutely does he want you blessed more than he wants you cursed absolutely that's why he tells you blessing and cursing life and death choose life that's why he said it but when we get to the point where we don't love him but we love his stuff then we're nothing but prostitutes does that make sense when we get to the point where you know we i i don't want to hang out with god i don't want to talk with god but i want his blessing and i want his stuff and when he gives me his stuff now it's my stuff and i don't even have to be thankful to him for what he gave me am i making sense that we've gotten to a point now the bad part is is this because of the grace message the the wrong grace method the untrue right hyper grace is i think what somebody calls it grace beyond which what god meant for it to be because of that when people are promised these blessings and they don't see them then there is an automatic tendency to fall away turn your back on god and what you didn't give me what you promised so there i don't want nothing to do with you because of that i firmly believe that that is what what is going to usher in the many departing from the faith and we're starting to see it see the great the false grace see that works for a while because people keep hoping it'll work out and at some point they realize it's not and then they go oh well i might as well go back to doing whatever i was doing because that that's not true and the thing is you can't tell the bad point is the devil has played chess by setting this thing up banking on the fact of promising you everything and knowing you wouldn't get it and knowing when you didn't get it you would blame it on god when it wasn't god that promised it it was the devil promising it through false teaching does that make sense yes now we've been talking some about this for years and years and you know i i like good you know motivational stuff i want something that motivates me more than i want something that doesn't motivate me right i'd rather be motivated than demotivated okay i've gone to some churches where i was demotivated right and and then i've been to some churches where i come out feeling good but i could have went to you know a tony robbins seminar which i've never been to a tony robbins seminar but i've watched some of his stuff on internet and that kind of stuff and it's amazing because of how he operates he operates there's there's a deception there and and it's it's very sneaky right and i'm not saying he's trying to be sneaky he may actually believe what he's saying but basically what they did that whole group oprah and tony robbins and boy almost said a preacher's name anyway what they've done is they have talked about all the goodness of god without bringing god in and it's a new age religion and it's moving that direction and the amazing thing is is because isn't it funny that a couple of years ago the big um remember the big thing uh oh these and there was a politician that said oh these are i should have wrote the words down these are uh bitter religious people hanging on to their god and their guns remember remember that kind of that i know i just butchered the phrase but it's basically what i said but it's amazing how all of this goes back to christians and a lot of the things that you're going to be seeing is going to have it's already started in these cases and the first thing like we said in uh canada and australia a place like that was a disarm because then they can impose whatever they want and now we're starting to see even things about uh you know the code vaccination that kind of stuff how they're gonna be mandatory and different things and they've already passed some things in canada making it mandatory and the way they do it is they say well we're not we're not saying you have to do this but if you're going to ride on this plane and they're going to talk about a certificate that you have a card a vaccination card to prove you have received the vaccination and so they're not making you do it they're just telling you you can't do these things if you don't do it and so people will give in now the question is this you have to know what's in that stuff and if you don't know what's in the vaccination um it's gonna it can damage right and not just that one but many others but the bottom line is this it is amazing to me about the the fear level from a disease so-called that has a 99.7 survival rate and that many of the people that catch it are asymptomatic and don't have any proof of it and yet it is so dangerous that we have to have a mandated vaccination that we have to have a mandated this or that type of thing and i'm telling you what is happening is that first off the mass thing because that's already been proven it doesn't work it's already been proven and but there is a conditioning process that goes to you listening to this and listening to that and doing these things and at some point your decision may actually impact your life in what you do with it now me i have both what i would consider common sense decisions but i also have spiritual decisions which also make common sense but there is a point at which basically i say okay uh this is it not going any further and i'm done and in those situations um it's it's kind of like look um many years ago many years ago i gave my life to christ he is my lord he saved me his father is my father and the bible tells me how i should live when i went into the military i took an oath and in that oath i said that i would defend the u.s constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic and there was never a point where i was released from that oath lastly well even before i went in that when i went into martial arts there was a school pledge that we said like a motto and it was to get it into it and part of that is that everything i learned i would never use aggressively uh maliciously but that i would defend the weak the innocent and those unable to defend themselves and i have never disavowed that oath either and so there is a lot of balancing that i'm looking at right now and saying where do we stand where do i stand and i'm wanting to make sure that what that my that i'm not putting my stand on you and telling you you have to take the same stand that i do many times the stand comes out in how we're saying things that's why i wanted to teach on the baptism of the holy spirit today because without the holy spirit leading and guiding then it'll be very easy to become mentally oriented and when you become mentally oriented sometimes what seems to be logical can lead you in a circle to what is unethical and so you know going back to the remember back in the 60s and all that 70s 80s remember my body remember the women remember the big thing is my body i can do with my body what i want to and they were talking about abortion and and now you got one side of american citizenry that want to endorse that 100 your body you do whatever you want with your body and if you want to get an abortion you can do it you can do anything with your body you want to do and we cannot stop you well it may be time that we jump on that bandwagon my body nothing comes into this body that i don't want there and so i will make that same stand as somebody you know i remember back in the 80s and the women they were burning their bras i don't know why stan we're i don't know how we're going to demonstrate our stand okay burn the math there perfect there we go maybe we need to have some mass burnings amen so that's good i like that y'all stay tuned this week for our post it won't be in here but it might be outside but but all i'm saying is that it we're at a point where every person is going to have to make that decision for their life and one of the main things is that if we are separated it's easy for the enemy to pick us off but united we stand amen and with god behind us based on i firmly believe that america was birthed from a god-given plan and because of that it is in our very formation documents that we have certain inalienable rights granted to us by god not by government and because of that then we can look to god and he will lead us and guide us protect us and we can see the miraculous happen amen but now if you desire and and i should emphasize being baptized in the holy spirit if you want to be baptized okay i've heard people say one baptism many fillings okay kinda but if you wanna if you want the baptism then you gotta stay baptized right and you can be filled and in ephesians tells us be filled with the spirit speaking to yourselves in psalms spiritual songs the original greek says be being filled it's a constant state of being filled with the spirit and that constant state should be the point where he is constantly leading guiding teaching he can tell you where to go we're not where not to go who to do business with who not to do business i mean he he he wants to have input in every aspect of your life and now more than ever if we're going to walk in the spirit then we're going to have to be conscious of him and give him leeway and actually bower our need to him and say what do you want me to do what where where am i at what do you want me to do and then follow that leading because he is speaking amen now i know this isn't some raw raw pep rally type thing but regardless hopefully i've given you something to think about today because the baptism the baptism with the holy spirit as we've said before salvation is the greatest gift god has ever given the world the baptism in the holy spirit is the greatest gift god ever gave the church and it is something we need to recognize and depend upon because we're not in this on our own he is with us amen as long as we walk righteously now i know i got to stop i'm going on um people other questions people have asked me have to do with like self-defense and that kind of stuff and because they say you know you just turn the other cheek and not retaliate and not render evil for evil and i agree 100 and i will turn my cheek because it's my choice but i do it not out of fear because i know i can i don't have to you understand i can i don't have to at the same time i also know that i would defend a person whose cheek is being turned because i can also help that person and so the difference is this defense is not retaliation see defense is me stopping you from doing something to me or someone else my loved one or even somebody i don't know that's defense because you're attacking i defend retaliation would be after i have defended then i hunt your family down and i do something to them that's retaliation defense is not retaliation defense is the ability to protect the motto of police departments is to protect and to serve it should be the motto of every christian now how far you go with that is up to you but you have to realize that who could be most trusted to do the right thing more than a christian because a christian should be able to do something to stop a situation knowing that they will stop as soon as they can and not go overboard does that make sense so in this we have to realize that as christians we have the responsibility to live in grace and treat people with grace at the same time the bible says that we have entered grace we have access to grace through faith so if you do not have faith in christ jesus you are not in grace you are still under law because there's law and there's grace does that make sense so there's law and there's grace and we have access to grace through faith but people who do not have faith do not have access to grace now i have the ability to give grace even if they're not in grace but if they're under law and acting under law meaning i'm talking about doing wrong then under law it's eye for an eye tooth for a tooth that's the law of god do you get that so in that we have to decide where we walk and the beauty is because if you don't believe that then you don't believe that a christian should ever be a policeman or be in the military because part of their job is enforcing law not enforcing grace but even police give grace when they pull you over and don't give you a ticket that's called grace amen do you see that god okay god is a spirit we live in a natural world he is not foolish he knows that his connection with man is on a physical level for natural man and he has set up governments to do what is righteous so the people live in peace and if the people are not living in peace it's because the government is not righteous and our constitution gives us the right to change that amen maybe giving you something to think about all right god bless you

Channel: John G. Lake Ministries

Views: 18,416

Rating: 4.9161425 out of 5

Keywords: John G. Lake Ministries, JGLM, Curry Blake, Divine Healing Technician, DHT, New Man Seminar, Life Teams, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, Dominion Bible Institute, Diversities of Tongues, God's Son Man's Servant, Renewed Mind, Healing in the Atonement, Killing Sacred Cows, iChurch, JGLM Media

Id: sTPCZADQRE4

Length: 76min 16sec (4576 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 06 2021