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Love,
God's Divine Instrument
Jesus said,
“What fellowship can light have with darkness?” I’ll
tell you what kind---a human fellowship. You can’t have
a divine fellowship putting light and darkness up
together. I’m here to say, from a heart of love, but my
little heart is stirred about these things. Whenever
Protestantism turns to Roman Catholicism and strikes up an
alliance, she turns to darkness, and whenever the Church
turns to Protestantism and strikes up an alliance, she
likewise, is turned to darkness. God called a people in
1880 to leave the courts of Babylon, and God expects us to
get farther from her every day. We ought to be a hundred
miles farther down the road than D. S. Warner was, but
what’s the trouble? To many, are hanging around the
gates of Babylon. They have hardly got out of the city.
They’re still quibbling over some of the old basic
truths that God gave D. S. Warner in the first message he
ever preached against Babylon. People are looking in the
field of science and say, wise men ought to see this. Why,
I just read an article in the paper, that science has
almost got the Red Sea crossing figured out. Isn’t that
something! They are so far behind, they’ll never catch
up. We have gone through Canaan. Jesus has come. We are
saved, sanctified (consecrated), in the evening light.
They are still hung over the Red Sea.
Somebody said, Brother, I
don’t think that will separate people. Listen. What do
you think Jesus is going to use in the last final time,
the final judgment, to separate the sheep from the goats?
He’s going to use this Word right here, and if we will
preach it today, it will separate people today. God stands
ready to separate the chaff from the wheat, as much as He
ever did, but what does He use? The Scripture says the fan
in His hand. What is in His hand? His ministry. He says in
the 51st chapter of Jeremiah, “Send fanners down to
Babylon and they will fan her clean and get all my
wheat.” Brother, I want to tell you, God stands ready to
burn up the chaff as much as He ever did, and He stands
ready to gather together the wheat into His barn, but he
needs a faithful ministry, that will fan the two apart.
God will get the job done. Why didn’t He do it over
here? My friend, He works through human instrumentality.
If God “had His way,” every person that names the name
of God would be together in the sweetest fellowship that
the world has ever seen. He would melt our hearts
together---there would be no differences of any kind, but
we would have love and care one for another. We would see
the thing eye to eye. It would make no difference who
preached. Everybody would preach the same
thing according to the Word of God. That’s what God
wants. He needs a willing people; He needs a people that
will work with Him, that will walk in the light as He lays
it on our pathway---that will not only believe the Word,
but will be doers of the Word. That’s what He’s
looking for.
We see in the Word, for
example here---Oh, I’ve been preaching to our people for
maybe two months, on the love of God. Not a
“jelly-fish” love, but the kind of love Paul was
talking about in 1 Corinthians, the 13th chapter. It’s
needed. Why? The first thing the devil did was, to get
some of God’s people to lose the Spirit of God, turn
worldly, but kept the name and a profession. Then what
does he do? He gets hold of the good people that still
love God and want it God’s way, and he gets them to
“hold them” that are not doing it. Well, nothing but a
fresh baptism of the Holy Ghost will give us enough love
of God, that we can hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans and
still love them. That’s what we’ve got to have today,
if we ever win this battle. The thing that won the battle
clear down through here, was that which the devil cannot
demonstrate. He can’t “put it on”---LOVE. That is
one tool, the devil hasn’t got, and the love of God is
the strongest thing that was ever put on this earth. It
will make a way when there is not way. Our brother can
differ with us on ideas and methods, and he can feel that
the interpretation of the Scripture might be a little
different, but with maybe some difference of ideas and
conceptions, when we meet the brother, the love of God
will break through the barrier and flow from heart to
heart and create in us love to one another as brethren. It
will do it; it can break through.
Somebody said, “How in
the world could He tear down the middle wall of partition?
I’ll tell you: He put the love of God---shed the love of
God abroad within the Jews hearts and the Gentiles hearts
and it broke right through the wall, and let them love one
another. This love of God is the most powerful thing that
ever was. Old Rome tried to crush it. Protestantism tried
to dissect it, but it came back together in spite of
everything. It’ll do it.
In the 4th chapter of
Matthew, Jesus gives us a little lesson about dividing.
You know, He would gather a great multitude, then, after
He got a great multitude gathered, He would take the good
Word of God and weigh them. Yes, He would weigh them. He
didn’t get to “weigh in” very long and He would turn
around and there’d be no one left but His disciples.
Now, there are many things that draw people. God healing
bodies. Fire in the camp of the saints. There’s nothing
that will advertise any better than the church getting on
fire. Brother, you let a few shouts go out over this old
hill, and you got “everybody and their brother” coming
out to see what in the world is going on. Then something
gets hold of them, while they’re here. What are you
talking about? It reaches out---Christ reached out. We
read here in the 4th chapter of Matthew and it gives us a
picture of dividing the good from the bad; Jesus’ way,
not my way or some other man’s way---Jesus’ way of
doing. Verse 23: “And Jesus went about all Galilee,
teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of
the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all
manner of disease among the people. And His fame went
through-out all Syria, and they brought unto Him all sick
people that were taken with divers diseases and torments,
and those which were possessed with devils, and those
which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and He
healed them all.” He’s the same today. “And seeing
the multitudes---now, He’d put the net out, and He had a
big multitude gathered in. But He did not believe in the
good and the bad sporting together. Listen to it!
“Seeing the multitudes He went up into the mountain, and
when He was set, His disciples came unto Him, and He
opened His mouth and taught them, saying;” and here are
the beatitudes that weighs us in or out. We’re drawing
them to the shore now, and we’re going to sit down and
separate the good and the bad. What scale are you going to
use? The same one Jesus used. He just took the beatitudes
and “weighed them out.” Listen to Him.
“Blessed are the poor
in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Now a
lot of people would jump the Scripture and say, it is a
blessed thing to be a poor man or woman. It’s got
nothing to do with literal poverty there. “Blessed are
the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
If that were so, then nobody but a poor man could get
saved. The kingdom just belongs to the poor people. The
Word of God says, the rich and the poor, and go into all
the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. What
would be the use of that, cause nobody but the poor could
get saved. Well, it has nothing to do with that. Blessed
is an individual---the first blessed thing that happened
to an individual, when he realizes that his spiritual
condition is poor and he needs help. We’ll get over to
the letter pretty soon, the Laodiceans can’t get any
help unless they change. Why? They say their spiritual
condition is rich, when Christ says it is poor. It is a
blessed thing to realize our condition before God. It is a
blessed thing to realize our spiritual condition is poor
and we need help. Why? Because those that are rich in
spiritual things, or at least think they are, don’t need
any help. He said they that are whole don’t need a
physician, so it’s a blessed thing to realize that our
spiritual condition’s not good. That is the first
blessedness that Christ has for us, because if we go on
feeling that it is good when it’s not, the Word says in
the 3rd chapter of the Revelation, in the letter to the
Laodiceans---it will put us in a wretched and miserable
condition. It will leave us blind.
Now, how is a man going
to find out his spiritual condition is not good? Somebody,
is going to have to preach the Word to them. People are
deceived. They have actually backslid and don’t know it.
I used to preach that a man could not backslide and not
know it, until I got up to the light of this day. I began
to understand, that the “seventh seal light” and the
Word of God said, thou sayest thou art rich and knoweth
not that thou art poor. There, we are deceived. This thing
has been a terrible deception, that has worked on the very
people of God. Somebody said, “That’s Babylon.” No,
that’s addressed to the Church of the Laodiceans. It was
one of the seven golden candlesticks, even though it was
corrupt. It was still one of the seven golden
candlesticks. Teaching us what? That a people might call
themselves the Church---it’s not enough just to find a
church---we have got to have and understand the Scripture,
to know if it’s a corrupt church or not. How are they
going to find out their spiritual condition is poor, when
they think they are rich and know not they’re poor?
Somebody, is going to have to preach the true riches to
them. Paul went around, you can see him in the Philippian
letter, counting those false riches…ah, he was an
Isrealite indeed. He was born one, circumcised the 8th
day, and he ran his family tree way back. Brother, he
snapped his finger---a Pharisee of the Pharisees; all
these things---he thought he was really rich, but all it
took was little old Stephen, that had true
riches---standing right before him. Brother, that little
boy, when they were stoning the life out of him, he was so
sweet about it, and he looked into heaven, and said, I see
the Son of God standing on the right hand of the Father.
Paul said, that’s richer than anything I have---old
wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this
pitiful condition?
If we ever wake up the
“people of God” and let them see their wretched
condition---there’s one thing that will wake them
up---get the old time glory in our midst, brother, that
makes you laugh-and cry-and shout-and praise God; that
gives you old time satisfaction, that you can raise your
hand and sing, “I’d rather have Jesus than anything,
this world affords today.”
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