I greet you again this morning in the lovely name of our Lord, and I trust that this may be true, that as
we expose our hearts to Him and open to Him, He will find the access that He wants to find. God is
seeking us. Sometimes we think we’re seeking God, but God is seeking us. He has been seeking us from
the day He sought Adam and He has never been yet satisfied. The eternal attitude of God toward
humanity is that of a seeking God. At times it seems as though He were making an invasion, pushing in
from every angle to find us, to discover us. He has to do that because we don’t know who we are very
well.
As I’ve said before, if any of you think that I should think I know who I am, you are quite deceived. We
are acquainted with this surface, immediate, manifestation of life and light through us. We become
acquainted with each other in physical form, but as far as knowing the real hidden ego of this person,
we know very little about him. Even the individual knows very little about him. As you advance in
God, as you move on in Him, isn’t it wonderful how the Holy Spirit can keep projecting before us
unexplored territory in life that we have yet to move into over which He seeks dominion. We say He
reigns and rules in our heart; that is very true, but has He found the absolute and perfect control and
possession of all the territories - I call them territories yet to be possessed in Him. He wants to possess
us. He wants to take hold of us. He wants to shape us and mold us and do miracles with us and in us so
that sometime, He may see good to lift this strange mystical body of believers. A body that has
projected itself down through 2000 years and we are coming in toward the end, but we are also little
cells in that body. And someday He wants to take that out of the world, and out of time, and out of the
sense relations, and present it to the Ancient of Days, the great desire of His heart. But He desires that
He shall have something to present.
Now, I want to say it again. Don’t let your heart be deceived into thinking that any experience, I don’t
care how profound it may be, how very moving it may be, how very revolutionizing that experience
may be, there is no experience into which God leads you that will ever mature you. Now, that’s right.
But people are deceived, you see, because they think, “Well, now I’ve received, now I’ve come into,
now I have...” That’s all very fine children, but don’t let it deceive you, because if you do there has to
be a day of great revelation, and I’d like to have all of our revelations of such business taken care of
here and now. Don’t allow yourself to come under the power of an experience, and then live in that and
build your life around it. That won’t send you to hell; you will still go to heaven. It is not a questions of
heaven and hell, it is a question of how you allow God to do in you, and through you, while we are
caught in this strange condition of time and sense, has He been able to accomplish, as far as your set up
will allow Him, the thing that He wants. Someday when we are released and taken, you can’t come back
and make choices and decisions. No. What there is of spiritual value in you and in me, all that we will
carry with us into the next age, is what we acquire now.
Don’t be disturbed if God is not using you to make a manifestation out here of your life, say as a
preacher, teacher, a great evangelist, or some missionary. Don’t be disturbed if you can’t bring forth
that manifestation, He doesn’t want that from you. He’s not expecting it from you. He had one Paul
and He had one Wesley. He has one of you and you are the only specific edition of who you are. So am
I, so is every one of us. Now, since that is true, He is desirous of possessing every last individual that
He can find, to accomplish in that individual the thing for which He has brought you into time and
sense for. Now don’t get your works all mixed up. That is your technique. Don’t get into all this
manifestation of doing things and all this business. That is very good, but it is only the technique, the
method. That is the method which He will use to do the miracle in you and me. That is why it doesn’t
matter to Him. If He has called you to be a great preacher, then preach. If He has called you to be a
good farmer, then be a good farmer. The whole thing swings from this angle that “whosoever will do
the will of God that is all He’s asking.” If it is to plant potatoes, then plant the potatoes to the Glory of
God and sing all the while you are planting them. Why do you sing? Because you say, “Thank you
Father, that is what you’ve asked me to do and I’m going to do it with all the strength I have for your
glory.” Then God will say thank you. At the end He will never say, “How many souls did you win?” He’
ll say, “How many potatoes did you plant.” Well, He will.
You see, you don’t get the right philosophy of the thing. We become entangled in the mechanism and
forget the objective. Don’t lose your objective. Keep it always before you - the Glory of God, the life
surrendered. The whole being moved back again to the heart of God. Being disciplined, educated,
trained, and conformed. How? By the thousand and one things that God throws into your little
pattern. They will never divorce as people do. “This is sacred and this is secular.” I dislike that very
much. To a real saint of God everything should be holy and sacred; there is no secular to it. That is
common talk among people who don’t know the things of God; therefore, they have categories in which
they place certain experiences of life. We shouldn’t do that. If I am called to be a good plumber, how
many know that is a sacred calling on you? What makes it sacred? Plumbing? No! What makes it
holy? It is the will of God. Not the plumbing, but the will of God. And if you can do that, then we move
on.
Don’t forget some of these little ideas that I drop with you. They are only things which I’ve
discovered. I’ve lived a little longer than some of the rest and I feel I have the right to give advice and
counsel. It is only what God would give through me. None of us have arrived. We’re in the process of
becoming, and we’ll be in that process till the Lord takes us home. We will still be in a process, a
releasing, reshaping, recasting, casting down, pushing aside. “Why I had all that taken care of when I
got saved.” No dear, you are still in a deception. God dealt with your sin. He can do that in very short
order, but it takes a life time to deal with you and with me.
Didn’t I tell you how in the Body when He placed all these gifts of prophets, pastors, preachers,
teachers, and all, just one evangelist to catch a fish. One evangelist to bring in a soul, and God says
after you get that soul saved, filled with the spirit, and in the body, it takes about five instruments to
work on him. Do you see that or don’t you? That is after you are saved and filled with the spirit and
had 6 visions and almost translated. . .after that is all settled, He says, “I’d like to deal with you a little.”
Why? Well, He says, “I haven’t gotten hold of you. I’ve been dealing with your sins dear. I’ve been
dealing with all that externality. Now I want to come in here and get a hold of you.” That is what
makes it difficult. That is why people don’t like my teaching. I know of assemblies that would not have
me any more than the anti-Christ, and don’t I know it. That doesn’t bother me. Why? Because they
are disturbed. Truth will always disturb you. But it has a two-fold way of disturbing and moving. If
you allow it, truth will actually slay you. But it will be the truth that will resurrect you. Do you get
your two opposing forces? How we vibrate between them, don’t we. What a strange effect it has upon
life. He talks about death, but He talks about life. He talks about the slaying, the crucifying, but He
talks about the resurrection and the life. Keep them together, don’t divorce them.
I told you the other day, never divorce Mary and Martha. They both had their vocations; they are
sisters in the same family. Let them remain. Whenever Martha gets up in you and hurries around, you
know you are agitated. You know you don’t get anything in God in all that racket. He waits sometimes
years for people to get stopped. He really does. He says, “You poor dear agitated spirit. I can’t get
anywhere near you. But go on until you’re exhausted and your tongue hangs out, and maybe I can
reach you, possibly.” He does that. I have met people who have had to go through it. That’s all right.
Martha has a place in you, Mary has a place too, they are sisters. Mary represents the aspiration of the
spirit, the ascent, the moving toward God, sense of vision and light. But listen, all that has to have a
field of demonstration. Otherwise you become unbalanced. Never be caught into the most
magnificent spiritual revelation of life and truth and deeper probing into that field. Never do that
unless you remember what? A descent into plain reality where you live. And as far as God is able, by
the spirit, make a demonstration, a tangible result of the thing caught. So we accept in life all those
strange phases.
Now this morning I thought for a little while I would like to share something else that I have found. I
don’t read these things in books. I’ve had training. It is good; I don’t depreciate education at all. I
think it is a very wholesome thing, if you can keep it in balance. I’ve had training; I’m a college man, a
seminary man. I’ve had all of that before God ever baptized me, but He has helped me, by the grace of
God, to keep it in balance where it belongs. I can never use that as a substitute for what the Holy Spirit
wants to do. They are just as far as night is to day, they are two levels. So, what I bring you morning by
morning, are truths which I have discovered in this field of spiritual reality. I like that term better. It
is a realm.
I said the other day, so much of our teaching is so faulty and we don’t get fed and our body is weak.
Our dear precious Pentecostal people are starved to death, whether you know it or not. Starved for
food; not milk, but some meat and some strong meat. They need it. God can’t take a body that is just a
whimpering baby and say, “Sit on the throne with me and share.” He can’t do that. I imagine heaven
will have a tremendously large nursery. I really think it will. You laugh, but I feel more like weeping. I
am burdened and I do cry out to the Lord. I am conscious of that very thing. Babes in Christ, 50, 60,
70 years old. Baptized in the spirit 20, 30 and 40 years, and the sweetest loveliest babes you ever
looked at. Absolutely. Well that shouldn’t be.
Last year was my 50th anniversary, my Jubilee year. The Lord brought me in 51 years ago. In these
years, I have been moving in what I call the realm of the Spirit. He said that we were born, birthed, and
we come into a consciousness of our birth. Many have not yet come into an inner consciousness of the
birth. They don’t realize it. It is a potential matter with them. Purely a potential matter. But if you
have come into an inner consciousness of that birth, that you have been released into a new - you call it
a kingdom, but you should call it realm. That is a better word. We are birthed into a vast realm. When
you say kingdom, then right away you are thinking of horses and chariots and thrones, etc. Well, He’s
not talking about a kingdom like that at all. He’s talking about a realm. You have the vegetable
kingdom, animal kingdom, mineral kingdom - how many of you know what I mean? It is a field, a great
realm in which certain things are found.
When Jesus spoke about us coming into His kingdom, He was not talking about heaven. He didn’t call
it heaven. He talks about paradise, now that is something else. Don’t get that all mixed up with the
kingdom and kingdom living. You get confused with it. He called it a vast realm. Now by the power of
the Spirit, He will probably bring you gradually into an inner consciousness of that. Maybe not the
first day or the first year. I have had to deal with souls who have been filled with the Spirit 10 or 20
years who have not yet come into the consciousness of that. Now, what is this realm? All spiritual
reality. The same as we have all natural phenomenon in what we call the real of our natural. We have
natural laws which govern - the law of gravitation, the law of light, heat, vibration. All of these are
natural laws which God has established and placed here for our well being so that we could live a
comfortable life. It would be a great aid to us if we would discover them and come under the power of
the laws which God has placed here. He doesn’t want us so spiritual that we don’t know beans from
buttons. He wants us perfectly practical to discern and yet at the same time say, “This is not my realm.
Here is my realm; I live with Him in Spirit.”
In the realm of the spirit (I’ve been pushing around in there for a longtime), I have been making
discoveries of truths, principles, laws, methods and facts which are just as real in that realm, but they
are abstract and spiritual. Therefore, most people never mess around with them at all. Now in that
field I made little discoveries. I find how God works; I watch Him work here, then I watch Him work
there. God gives me a little scent and sometimes I am six months to a year and sometimes two years
chasing that thing down. I’m reading in the Old Testament and it pops up in one of the Psalms, and I
say, “Oh, I know you. I caught you in Matthew and one of these days I’m going to catch you and put
you together.” And then you do. So you make discoveries. That is all I hope to share with people.
Maybe I’ll talk a little bit to you about prayer some morning. I want to show you how prayer is
governed by a law, it is a spiritual law. Now don’t think we’re in psychology or some crazy stuff; we’re
not. We’re in the Word of God. There has never been a psychologist or a psychiatrist as clever and as
wonderful as our Lord. He is the greatest one that ever walked the earth. But you see, He keeps it
veiled for fear that people will stumble and fall down. But to those that He can trust, He will unveil it to
you, if you are able to be trusted with it. Often times He will say, “Do you see how this works, do you
get the drift of that, do you see the psychology back in here?” That’s wonderful, it has always in there.
I told you the other day, there are a few Christian psychiatrists and they do a very wonderful work. I
have a friend who is a real Christian and he is a psychiatrist. He just loves to come to listen to these
things that I talk about. The last time he contacted me, he’s a doctor of course, a great man, he put his
arm around me and he said, “Follette, I have driven 150 miles today to get in on one talk.” You know,
some places you can’t get them a block away. I said, “I appreciate that because you know, it isn’t I. I
am a very simple creature. But, God has opened truth and I am able to see and discern, and if you are
helped by it, Amen.” He said, “I’m helped. I come 150 miles to get in this one service. I thought then;
think of all the people sitting. What are they getting? Well, dear, you get according to your capacity.
In this field, I’ve made a few little discoveries and I find how things go. I watch the Word of God and
then I watch it in life. I like to be a Guinea pig too that He experiments on. Have you ever let yourself
be exposed enough for that? To watch how He does things in you. How did He make the last
approach? What was the last real contact He had with you in Spirit, not in religion? Oh, I wish I could
dump about 500 tons of religion out of our work. I really do. They are so religious, I can’t help them.
Do you know I can’t? They are too cluttered. Would you dare to expose yourself like that to Him?
Don’t do it unless you are willing, because God may do some very drastic things. But, the Holy Spirit
has possession of it and He will hold us and He won’t let any harm come to us. He loves us too dearly.
He wouldn’t wreck us. But, the self-creature in there would wreck you, and the devil too. But don’t say
everything is the devil. Don’t you know there are three working continually? Here is God working
from that side. Here is the enemy working from his side. How many know there is something in here
that works too? Don’t you know that? Why sure. Some come to me with problems like that and I say,
“The devil isn’t within 500 miles of you. The disturbing element is a little closer than that.” Well that’s
right, but they aren’t honest enough to see that thing.
This little line of teaching came to me, God showed it to me. I was a student and I like to read. After a
while you know how to read, but some people can’t. It is like eating fish. You know, they choke on
every bone that there is in the fish and they can’t seem to get the fish because they are choking on a
bone. By and by you have to read and skip a lot of things and yet you’ll get some real meat too. So
much of our reading today has real meat in it. But sometimes there are so many bones, that people say,
“Is that orthodox?” I said, “I’m not talking about orthodox. I’m talking about this.” How many get it
or don’t you. Learn how to read.
I was reading the word of God and this is what I discovered. It seemed a little strange to me at first, but
after I took it to the Lord and said, “Now Lord, you please tell me how this thing goes. I see this, but tell
me why it is this way. What’s back of this thing?” I was reading in the word and I found Him asking a
question in His conversation dealing with some people, and He asked a question. I knew all the time
that He knew the answer and yet He persisted in asking the question. He knows it very well, then why
should He ask the person the question that He knows? Well I want to tell you about that. There has to
be a reason why He does that. He asks the question and He knows all the time the answer and it is a
better answer than even they could give. He asks them, they answer, and you will see all the results
that come following along. This is a little principle that He works on in the word and in your life. I
have selected here four and this is my message this morning. I could take 3 days on it, but I’m going to
take one morning. I have found four occasions in this word where God asks a question with which he is
very familiar in order to provoke an answer. Then from the answer, He works His way out.
Now, this first one is the question He asked Adam after he had sinned and failed the Lord. Do you
remember God had said to Adam, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” The story
is of the testings on the part of God, but the temptation is on the part of the enemy. I’ll deal with that
question a little later. Never confuse it. The occasion may be one, the incident may be one, but it is
your approach. The tree was a single item, without any special moral value at all. How many know the
tree is an impersonal thing? But it is the medium that He is going to use and the whole thing will depend
upon the approach to the tree and how you interpret it. God planted the tree, not the devil. God
planted it, for a specific reason – for His testing and His proving. The enemy takes advantage of
exactly the same setup, for what? The occasion to defeat and kill and destroy. When God plants it, it is
for an objective point of development, growth and releasing, bringing His personality into being. The
enemy says, “I can use that same thing too and I will use it to destroy and kill.” So we find in the New
Testament, this program; the enemy has come to kill, to destroy and to rob. Of course, that is all he
can do. “But I have come to give you life, and that more abundantly.” Your negatives and your
positives continually clashing over some media here in the center here.
So He says, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” He doesn’t say, “You will fall
from grace.” It is much easier to teach religion where they have something left in the poor old wreck -
that he has sort of tumbled over under some terrible condition. But if we breathe on him and shake
him, we might sustain him, resuscitate him. You can’t. He’s dead! He said, “That in the day thou eatest
thou shalt surely die.” He didn’t say you shall fall from grace. That is why in theology today they don’t
like the word “sin” and “die.” Very unpopular. But they are scriptural words, they are words God uses.
“Thou shalt die.” Did he fall over dead when he partook of the fruit? No, he lived hundreds of years
later. Then what died? Didn’t judgment fall upon him? Yes. He died spiritually. That is, all spiritual
contact with God had been severed through his disobedience and he was left a sub-normal being.
We are made spirit, soul and body. A trinity. In the upper spiritual department of our being is where
the Holy Spirit would like to come to rest, and there is where He dwells. “And in the day that thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” - for this life principle, the spirit of life, the spirit of God, will be
canceled and you will remain a sub-normal person. It is a horrible thing to think that when we are
dealing with intelligent people, beautiful lovely intelligent specimens of humanity, if they have not the
Spirit of Christ in them to restore again unto God your trinity, they are under the normal set-up.
Why? Because their spiritual life has been canceled. They have mental life, a psychic life, and they can
move out into the realm of our religion, you see.
Man is by nature a religious creature. We don’t go to the foreign fields to try to make people religious.
How many know they are cursed with it. We don’t go there to create in them something that will take a
hold of religion. They have it and they are taking hold of everything on God’s earth from snakes on
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