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Scripture reading: Revelation 5:8-10

The beasts and the elders in Revelation 5 had “harps, and golden vials.” When we look in the Hebrew language, we find that JUDAH means PRAISE. The harp is made for praising God. Harps mean God-harps that are praising Him. Many ask if God really needs us to praise Him saying that He is a wonderful God or that He is great and marvelous. No. That is not praise. You could say “God is marvelous” all day and all night and you would not spend one hour praising God.

Praise comes from the heart and heals the heart. It is an instrument of God to create the glory of God within the individual. When the angels in heaven praise God, it is like their dinner time. When they open their hearts to praise God and to glorify God for the things He has done and for who He is, then the glory of God flows in. Praise is a KEY that opens the hearts of angels and of men. When we apply the key to the heart, God flows into it. It is not possible for the devil to come in when we are praising God in Spirit and in truth. There is a contact and a flow of energy which comes from God to man when man opens up his heart to God and the enemy, Satan, cannot interfere. He has to keep far away. This is why God says we are to pray and praise. “Praise is comely,” the Bible says. It is not everybody who can praise. Your whole being must be attuned to God and to praise. There is a praise, and there is a Praise, and there is a PRAISE! There is high Praise and glorious PRAISE.

I remember years ago, some brethren brought in a thing they called “high praise.” It grieved me because it was the lowest form of praise I had ever heard. The kind that takes you down emotionally rather than up. It was the kind of thing you could see for years and years in some of the churches. People would stomp their feet, bam, bam, bam, and everyone began to go bam, bam, bam. Drums began to beat together and the people began to jump together and there were no words. Brethren, man cannot praise God without words. We must have words to praise God. If we begin to sing a song and we are only going by the beat or by the music, we are shutting out God. The only way to have God join you in your praise is for your heart to respond to God and to His Word. You start singing a song “I thank you Lord, I thank you Jesus” – a simple song without many words to it. “I thank you Jesus, for you have brought me out a mighty long way, a mighty long way, thank you Lord.” When I begin to sing, I begin to remember the depths of hell I was in and how God reached down and pulled me out.

This thought brings me back to a vision I had in the days just before salvation, when I found myself down in this GREAT PIT. It was hopeless. I could hardly see the sky for the distance; I was down in the pit. The sides were sheer and straight and I would fight and claw my way up only to reach a point and then I would fall back down. It was hopeless, but I was still fighting. Then suddenly there was a sound like a wind and it came down into the pit, swooped me up like a whirlwind and threw me way up on the side of the pit. As I clung on, still only half way up, another surge came and took me up and carried me right out. I landed in woodland where great big globs of honeycomb were up in the trees, and the honey was just dropping from the trees.

I remember these things as I sing a song thanking Jesus. It means something to me. It lifts my soul and the energy of God begins to flow into me, because I am praising God.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 1, pg. 90-91)

Thought for today: Let us use the key of praise to open our hearts up to God.

I Must Watch Myself!

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Scripture reading: Ephesians 4:26-27

Ephesians 4:26a says, “Be ye angry, and sin not.” I know what it is to get hit hard with words. You should quickly submit yourself to God. We must be under the control of God! The anger must never come to fruition, never show itself or manifest. We must be able to conquer right in the midst of the tribulation. This is what God is saying to us.

Every time I read about the coming of Jesus, I see the warning, “Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.” Watch! Watch! Watch! What is the meaning of watching? It means I MUST WATCH MYSELF. I must watch my mind, what I think, what I believe, and what I submit to. I must watch the thoughts coming from the outside. I must watch the bombardment. Bless be to God, I must be delivered from my besetting sin or my familiar spirits, the spirits my mother had, or my father had, which made them do things contrary to God. These I must overcome by the power of God, by the Spirit of God.

Your first move, brother, sister, is to believe this word! Once you believe it, you can receive it. If you do not believe it, you will never receive it no matter how much you read your Bible.

The four beasts mentioned in Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4 are natures that are planted in the human realm, within us. They are in our flesh and in our souls trying to destroy the soul. But praise God, “what is good for the goose is good for the gander.” The Spirit of God comes and bombards the soul with radiation, with lights of glory. He bombards the soul night and day, while you are asleep and while you are awake. You only have to leave your God door open. He sets a watch over you. There are guardian angels that watch over you. You should rise up in the morning and say to God that you are vulnerable and ask Him to see to it that you do not sin this day, to see to it that you think no evil or do no wrong this day! Then every time the incidence of evil approaches you, or you think to commit an evil act, or have an evil thought, SOMETHING WILL PRICK YOU, and you will remember that prayer. Sometimes we sin unconsciously. We are so accustomed to sinning that we do not have to think to sin. We just go right ahead and sin. We are not even conscious of it, but the God of heaven has set a watchman within you to make you conscious.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 1, pg. 83)

Thought for today: Watch, Watch, Watch! Pray that you might not enter into temptation.

Overcoming the Will

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Scripture reading: Luke 22:39-43

Notice the beasts in Ezekiel versus the beasts in Revelation. The beast that was called an OX in Ezekiel 1 was changed to a CALF in Revelation 4. The implication is, instead of a big, old stubborn ox pulling a plow, we have a calf, humble and willing to suck milk. God is saying, the area of YOUR WILL is to become a calf. Jesus Christ told the disciples that all power was given unto Him in heaven and on earth.

Matthew 28:18-20, And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Jesus had that power and He gave that authority. He was in full charge of His will. A short time before, while in the garden of Gethsemane, He said to the Father, “Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me.” In other words, “Couldn’t we do it another way? Couldn’t we finish the devil right here and now?” Then He said, “Nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.”

The only hope for us and our will is that it be subject to the will of the Father.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 1, pg. 80)

Thought for today: Let our prayer be as our Lord’s, “O Father, Not My Will, but Thine Be Done.”

What Is Life? – Part 2

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Scripture reading: John 1:4-5

The devil must be really mad to know that there is such a thing named LIFE! It is written in John 1:4-5, “IN HIM WAS LIFE AND THE LIFE WAS THE LIGHT OF MEN. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” 

In this passage, the word translated “comprehended” could be better rendered “overcame.” The devil cannot overcome life for the life is the light. We are actually taking in more and more of the light and the life, which is more and more of Christ which is our resurrection. BY OUR DAILY SPIRITUAL GROWTH, WE ARE ACTUALLY TAKING IN CHRIST. WE ARE TAKING IN OUR RESURRECTION. THE MORE YOU OPEN UP TO GOD, THE MORE THE CHRIST COMES IN. CHRIST IS OUR LIFE! (See Colossians 3:4.)

Imagine a picture of the Great Almighty God, Author and Possessor of this great reservoir called LIFE. The name of God’s LIFE is Christ (Messiah). He dipped into His bosom and took out “Messiah,” and let Him loose in the earth. The life came down as an entity in the person of Jesus Christ. God can divide Himself in as many parts as He wants to since He has power over all things and all things are subject to His will.

In Luke 1, the Holy Ghost overshadowed Mary with her consent. The conversation that the angel had with her was designed to get her consent. When Mary accepted what the angel said, he departed. He was only the messenger. The Holy Ghost then came and overshadowed her, meaning to say that the Holy Ghost planted the seed of Life in her, and she became pregnant, because that was the will of God. Some ignorant people felt this was a sexual thing. God is the Creator. He created Adam and Eve. He created the first man, and He was in the process of creating the second man. The first man, “Adam,” was a full-grown man; the second man was born in a manger, sired of God, born of a woman. The first man, “Adam,” was a natural man, and the second man, “the Lord from heaven.” (See I Corinthians 15:47).

May God bless our understanding. God put Jesus into Mary and Christ into Jesus. Therefore, when Mary birthed Jesus as a babe, she brought forth Christ in the earth. Since Christ is the Messiah, the second person of the Godhead from before the foundation of the world, then the birth of Jesus Christ was the entrance of God as a member of the human race.

When we receive Christ in us through the action of the Holy Spirit, then we are on par with Jesus when He was born of Mary in Bethlehem of Judea. Jesus, therefore, did not need to be born again, since He was never born of corruptible seed. Because we were born of corruptible seed, we need to be born again.

You were first born in Adam, then you were born in Christ. A charge of LIFE came into the earth in Jesus Christ, and then the charge came into you as an individual. This life is eternal; it cannot die.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, June 1996, pg. 4-5)

Thought for today: Let us grow daily in God in order to take in Christ, to take in our resurrection. The more you open up to God, the more the Christ comes in. Christ is our life!

Redeeming the Time

This message, entitled “Redeeming the Time,“ was given by Brother Cecil duCille in July 1983.

For more audio messages, please visit Audio Messages – Foundational Teachings.