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Scripture reading: Revelation 2:1-7

We have totally lost sight of Jesus Christ and what He stands for, where He has put us from the very beginning, from the foundation of the world, and the gospel. We need to get back to our first love. Our first love might not necessarily be anything pertaining to the church. When we accepted Jesus as our Saviour, there was a freshness in our first love. If you never had this experience, if never a change came over you, if never the sky looked bluer, if never the earth looked more glorious, if never the peace of God came over you, if never the glory of God came over you – YOU HAVE NOT YET RECEIVED THAT WHICH JESUS CHRIST DIED FOR. Jesus died in order that we might be SAVED. The word saved means reconditioned, reborn, delivered from the thing we were when we were first born of our mothers. We must have a renewing of the mind, a renewing of the spirit, a deliverance from what we were before.

This salvation needs to grow. Many have said that they have received Jesus as their Saviour, are all right, are going to heaven, and can freely do anything they please. This is not salvation. Salvation is a continuous experience, having a beginning and an end. If you turn to Ephesians 1:11-14, you will see that the Word speaks about the end of your salvation. Notice the progression:

11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: 12 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. 13 In whom ye also trusted, AFTER that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also AFTER that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, 14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

Many people do not believe in this progression in God. God is a God of progress and growth. If you are born again, you must grow. You MUST begin to move from that born again position into things higher and into things deeper. Nobody has to preach to you and say that you must do this, and you must talk in tongues, and you must prophesy. Those things do not have to be preached to the true child of God who is following Jesus Christ. The Scripture tells you certain things happen to you as you grow in Christ, but if you do not grow, then you will not have the signs of growth. Some people say that when you receive Jesus as your Saviour, you receive everything. Without going into too much detail, I will say that when you receive Jesus, you receive HIS LIFE to counteract the death that was in you.

God could not do business with a dead man. Therefore, He had to save you, resurrect you, and bring you to the same place where He made Adam. Adam was made a living soul, and you were a dead soul. Dead means you could not respond to God. You could slap or pinch a dead man, you could shout in his ear, but he is dead. That is how God felt towards you for God shouted at you many times. God would touch your body, shake you, wake you up many times but you could not respond to God because you were dead. Now God took some of His life and put it into you through the Blood of Jesus Christ and you became a LIVING SOUL. The Blood of Jesus hovers over the whole world. You can call upon His name and receive His Blood and the Blood quickens you. That is how you know you are saved. No one needs to tell you to say a few words and if you say them right you are saved. This is not a password business that if you say the right password, then you get saved. Nothing of the kind! Sometimes you can get saved by not speaking a word, but just submitting your soul before God and the Spirit of God will come and give you what you ask for. Salvation, therefore, is a quickening of the spirit and a bringing to life of the individual.

When that individual comes alive, he wants living food. Adam was alive but he died because he did not have the Christ. He had neither the Holy Ghost nor the Blood. The Blood first, then the Holy Ghost and then the Christ. This is the right order. After you have been saved, you get the Blood in your soul. When you receive the Holy Ghost, you do not receive the Holy Ghost in your soul. You receive the Holy Ghost in your spirit. The scripture says in Romans 8:16, The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.

Those people who have the Spirit of God have within themselves a witness of God that they are the sons of God – little sons of God. Not little gods, but sons of God. Praise be to God.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 1, pg. 29-31)

Thought for today: Are you growing higher and deeper in God? Remember, God is a God of progress and growth and those that are His must grow in Him.

He That Overcometh

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Scripture reading: Revelation 2:8-11

We find the church being split in two. Part of them will overcome and the other part will not overcome. There are overcomers and there are losers. Sometimes words do not convey the strength of meaning to us when we hear them. For instance, you hear the word overcomers and you wonder to yourself what is to be overcome. Overcomers first of all overcome their own natures. They overcome the mind of the world, the mind of the flesh, the mind they inherited from their families, and they overcome strong emotions. If you do not overcome your emotions and have them under control, then they will overcome you and destroy you. Overcomers overcome their own will and their own desires.

This is a battle royal when a person overcomes himself through the Blood of Jesus Christ and the power which God has given. For indeed, the Spirit of God has given us power to overcome familiar spirits, old family ties, things that pull us down and make us losers. We are not to go out and overcome other people. We need to overcome the flesh, the devil, and the world. This is what we mean by “he that overcometh.

I John 2:15-17, Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

What is the love of the world? One day I went to the supermarket and observed the people. They all looked alike. I knew somehow that some Christians had come in, but there was no difference between the way the Christians looked and the way the sinners looked. They all seemed to be part of the sexual revolution. They were showing as much of their bodies as they could, both men and women, young and old. The mind of the flesh had been ministered from Hollywood, Paris, London, and from other fashion places to the minds of these people. The people have become one with this mind of demonic spirits that control the world.

We must realize that the ways of the world, the thoughts of the world, the emotions of the world, and the desires of the world ARE NOT OF GOD. The people of God ARE EXPECTED to resist these things and to be different. It is difficult, but the Holy Spirit in us will help us to be different. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

We have many songs that say, “I love you, Lord Jesus” and the songs are so beautiful. When you hear the people of God singing, you hope and wish their love was true but there is very little truth in it, because those who love the world do not love God. The quicker we realize we do not love God, the quicker we will come to repentance and say, “Oh God, I have discovered that I love the world and I do not love you. Give me Your love.” God will pour out His Spirit upon you. “He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.” This is the promise to the overcomer.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 1, pg. 36-37)

Thought for today: Remember it is your own nature that you must overcome in order to be the overcomer.

Problems in the Emotions

This message, entitled “Problems in the Emotions,” was given by Brother Cecil duCille at the 1989 Convention in Turlock, California, United States.

For more audio messages, please visit Audio Messages – Closing the Back Doors to the Soul.

The Fire of the Holy Ghost

Scripture reading: Acts 2:1-3

The Tabernacle of Moses was the first temple that God created, and everything in it was set in order (Refs. Exodus 25:40, Hebrews 8:5). If you want to see what God wants you to be, look in the Tabernacle of Moses. You will see that every spoon, and even the stoker that stoked the fire, had to be done exactly as God wanted it done. He then placed a man to watch over it.

When Moses dedicated the Tabernacle before God, God sent down fire from heaven and this fire of God lighted it (Ref. Leviticus 9:23-24). This signifies that you must not have any other fire in the church but God’s fire only. Do you understand that? God’s fire was lighted, and it burned for 490 years. Then came Solomon, and when he built the temple and called upon God, God sent the fire again. When Jesus came, He said to the brethren in Acts 1:4-5, “Tarry in Jerusalem until you be endued with power from on high.” The church is the third and the last temple that is being built, and for the third time the fire came down again:

“And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost…” (Acts 2:1-3)

So then, the fire that we have had now for 2,000 years must be the fire of the Holy Ghost. It must be God’s fire (Refs. Leviticus 6:13, 10:1-2). Therefore, anyone who gets up in God’s house and talks without having that fire from God is making a breach upon God and upon His business. All we say must be God!

To my great distress, I know that there are other spirits ministering to us. Many of us go and say that God is saying this and God is saying that. But it is a fearful thing to say when God did not say it. You have to remember that your speaking the Word of God depends upon your sanctification and your dedication before God.

I am speaking to you not from study, not from plan, and not from a script. I am speaking rather from the ministration of God to my soul that has come to me over the years and over the impression that God has upon me at this time that, “This is what I want you to talk about.” I do not know what I am going to say, but I know that I am an instrument of God and that God flows through me. I know that God will give me what to say, so I come up like a person offering himself as a sacrifice and allow God to move in me.

If I have a block in me that is blocking God, then this system fails. When it fails, either man or the devil comes and feeds in something else and ministers it to you—and the church goes off line. I do not know if you hear me. The church will go off line if the ministry is not spiritual.

Let us therefore pray for one another so that the ministration of God will be in our lives and our midst.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, December 2002)

Thought for today: Your speaking the Word of God depends upon your sanctification and your dedication before God.

God’s Point of View

Scripture reading: Numbers 12

The Lord has been speaking to me about the preparation of His temple. I want you to look at it with me today. The first temple mentioned in the Old Testament is the Tabernacle of Moses in the wilderness. Moses had to prepare this Tabernacle very precisely and then God began to appoint the ministry for it.

God said that if one of the ministers had a death in his family, he could not minister in the congregation until he was cleansed. I want you to hear me, brethren, because I believe God is speaking something very definite to us. If you had a death in the family in the Old Testament, if your wife or your child died, and you had to handle the dead, according to the Law that God gave Moses you could not just bury your dead and go minister again in the congregation.

This Old Testament principle has a spiritual meaning: If you have had a divorce or are going through a divorce, if you are going through warfare with your wife, or if your house has been out of order—do not minister! Put it aside. That does not mean that you cannot praise God. That does not mean that you cannot sing, but DO NOT minister. Do you know why? Because if you do, you will minister death to the congregation. God said that if you are unclean, you must go through a certain process until you are cleansed.

Miriam, Aaron and Moses’s sister, played the timbrel. When Egypt was destroyed, when the power of Egypt was drowned in the Red Sea, God anointed Miriam. She and the women began to dance and sing, “Praise God for the victory!” (Ref. Exodus 15:20). So then, Miriam was a mother in the church before God. However, Moses had married an Ethiopian woman. She was not an Israelite and it says in Numbers 12 that Miriam began to talk against her brother, Moses, because of his wife. It also says that, because of this, God smote her with leprosy.

We know that leprosy is a sickness. Somebody may say that God cannot put a sickness on you. But this is a case where God smote Miriam with leprosy. Moses went to God and said, “Oh God, save her!” God answered Moses, “If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days? Let her be shut out from the camp seven days, and after that let her be received in again.” (Numbers 12:14) So they put her out of the camp for seven days until she was cleansed.

I want you to look at God and see how He works. He is not dealing with things from our human viewpoint, our angle. He is dealing with things from His point of view. The Tabernacle was made exactly as God would have it be made—stitch by stitch. The women had to do a certain amount of stitches to make the cloth for it because even the cloth was “holy.” Brethren, do you understand what we mean by “holy?” “Holy” means “of God.” We can just make it an easy description, “holy” is “GOD.” If God says so, then it is holy. If God does not say so, then it is not holy. So everything must either be holy or unholy! There is no in-between.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, December 2002)

Thought for today: Let us therefore walk very carefully with God so that He can consider us to be holy and we can minister in His Tabernacle.