The Ministry of the Shepherd

Cecil duCille

Sterling, IL, January 10, 1994
(Published in Keeping in Touch March 23, 2003)

(For printable version click here.)

We thank God for this evening. We even thank God for the snow and the cold. Hallelujah. Amen. We want to turn our Bibles to a word that has come to me. It’s in John chapter 10. I am the good shepherd, verse 11. We want to speak about the ministry of the shepherd. I think we have a lacking in our midst, because we do not understand what it is. In verse 11 it says, 11I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. 12But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. 13The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. 14I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. 15As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. Praise God.

I want you to turn again to Psalm 23, and as we read, I want you to notice the attributes of the shepherd, what the shepherd is. Maybe we could all read this one together. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. 3He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. 4Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. 5Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. 6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. Why? Because, the Lord is my Shepherd. Amen!

I want you to turn with me around to Ephesians chapter 4 and here again we see now the word “shepherd” applied not only to Jesus, but to those who Jesus endows with that ministry. Remember now, we have read two chapters wherein the word “shepherd” referred to Jesus Christ. Now we go to chapter 4 of Ephesians and we see it here in verse 11 again. Strangely it is the same verse 11, you can remember your scriptures that way. Eleven is the shepherd’s verse. And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers. He gave out five gifts of ministry and it must be five because God made man and most animals with five toes and five fingers, five, five, five. Of course, we heard that some of the sons of Anakim had six toes. They were entirely out of order. Amen. To have six toes you are out of order, because you are supposed to have five. That is what God made man with. Five is the number of ministry. Now, you remember that David went meet Goliath and he took five smooth stones. I wonder if you realize how many years it takes for one of those stones to be smooth. Maybe a thousand years. The sea washes it like this. Take a rough old stone, and wash it for a thousand years and it becomes smooth. We call them sea stones and we like to handle them, but they have been there a long, long time. So, he went down to the river and he took five stones. And those five stones represent the apostle, the prophet, the evangelist. Look at it, which is the tallest finger? Theevangelist finger. If you look at yours it is the same. The evangelist finger is the tallest one. And you see, the evangelist, and then the shepherd. The shepherd is almost as tall, and then the teacher.

Now, God is saying something to us in all this that, every temple that God makes, He makes the message of the kingdom in the temple. Did you know that? This is why Herod’s temple wasn’t counted. If you notice, when God is talking about the third temple, He never counted Herod’s temple, because Herod’s temple was not made according to the ordination of God, but according to man. See? So, when Solomon made the temple, God’s fire came down from heaven and burned on the altar. That means God approves it. God lit the fire there. At Pentecost, who lit the fire? God lit the fire, and there was the semblance of flames of fire on their heads. Have you ever asked why? Because it was the third temple and it was the last temple that God was making for His dwelling place in the earth. Hallelujah! He was going to inhabit the brethren for the first time in the history of humanity, God was going to inhabit and He was going to light the fire in that temple! Hallelujah! So, the holy fire that you feel in you is lighted of God. It is the temple of God. You are the temple of the living God.

Now, we go on. We are talking about the shepherd, the ministry of the shepherd. Here we see, of course, you know why the devil put “pastor” there. You know why the devil put the word “pastor” there? Because they want to deceive you. They want to throw you off. You see? The word “pastor” is Latin. “Pastor” is Latin. They take the Latin word and put it in there so that you might never know that God is talking about the shepherd. For when you ask yourself,”What are the duties of a pastor? Who is a pastor?”, you have to go to the seminary to find out. They will tell you there what a pastor should be and what the pastor should not be. That he should have so many degrees in Psychology. That he should do this, that. Do you see what I mean? If you were a shepherd, you don’t need Psychology. What you need is Godology, and you need a lot of it! Because the moment you sit down before someone and you join with the person in their problem, the problem becomes part of you, and God begins to give you answers as you cry out for the person. That is shepherding! That is how counseling should be. You cannot go with preconceived ideas of how to deal with a person in counseling. In counseling, you have to go and your heart has to meet the person’s heart.

Do you know what the laying on of hands is? When you lay hands on a person, do you know what you are doing? You are taking the person’s problems, burdens. You are taking the person’s burden unto yourself. You are saying, “We are now one,” and if the power of God in you is not enough to push that way, and push out the burden, that thing pushes this way, and you get the problem that the person has. That’s why we don’t allow everybody to go around laying hands on everybody, and it is not everybody that you should lay hands on. Some people have such a problem you can’t manage. You better call the elders of the church, and let four, five, six of them zap him! Amen! You see, you will get hurt. We had a brother…we were going to pray for a woman. And this brother wanted to have the glory that he healed her! Now, that sort of thing God looks very dimly at it, because none of us are going to heal anybody around here. This boy ran through a short cut, got to the house before us, and laid hands on the woman. You know what happened? When we got there he was crippled. His hand was crippled, he could not move. That brother never got better. He got epilepsy, and began to fall and foam at the mouth. For years we prayed for him, and he could not be better until he died. I mean, this is experience talking to you, brethren. I am telling you of things that I actually participated in.

God has a ministry called the ministry of the shepherd. It is that which they call the pastor. Now, when they call it the ministry of the pastor, it destroys the whole ministry of the shepherd. You know why? Because the pastor is a one man power. He is in charge around here! The ministry of the shepherd doesn’t make anybody in charge. It spreads out into the congregation! It reaches out into the congregation and it is closely allied with the ministry of the mother, the woman. Yes! You know? It is closely allied with the ministry of the woman. The woman, without that woman shepherding in a church, we have no Body. The women are the living stones of God that move through and through the Body. If somebody is sick, it is the women that first find out. So-and-so didn’t come to service. She’s sick, you visit her. You call for the elders. Say, “Come over here, this one needs so-and-so, you come over here, this one needs so-and-so!” That is the ministry of the woman. Hallelujah! The ministry of mothers is a part of the shepherd ministry.

The Lord used a word in the scriptures, racham. In the Old Testament He used racham. The brethren who were there last night. Their name is Rachami. I said, “Rachami.” They are from Iran. I said, “Rachami, brother, that means compassion; bowels of mercy.” He said, “Yes, that is what my name means.” Compassion, bowels of mercy. The scripture speaks of the El Shadi, the big breasted mother that takes care of her children. That is the shepherd ministry. Amen. With bowels of mercy, with weeping and crying over people! You know, it hurts me to see sometimes people will be ready to weep and cry over their children and yet so many of God’s children are suffering in the same condition and they never think to weep over God’s children! But, they weep over their own flesh and blood. That is carnal! You understand me?

We have got to step up one notch higher and begin to reach out. Somebody believes that the minister, because of our wrong teaching, we believe that the person who stands at the pulpit is supposed to be the one who shepherds the… No, No. He cannot! They cannot! You can do so much and no more. You know? I go to my bed at night and sometimes God comes to me and brings somebody to me here and there. Somebody way across the sea. One day, I remember, God brought a man to me. I saw the man weeping. He was a minister. He was weeping. God gave me his name. He asked me, “Do you want his telephone number?” I said, “No, Lord, this is enough.” I got his name. I am sorry that I didn’t take the number. I began to pray for this man because God told me his problem. He was in trouble, and he was in financial distress. I began to pray for this man and the man became a part of me. I don’t know him, but he is my brother in the Lord. One day I sat at a table in Minneapolis talking to a brother, and he mentioned this brother’s name. I said, “What, do you know this brother?” He said, “Yes, he was working with me, and so, and so.” He began to tell me, and I tried to find out more about him, but he cut me off. He wouldn’t tell me anything more about this man. But, I had already prayed for him, and I know that God had reached out to him. A couple of weeks ago I was getting up out of my sleep and the Lord spoke in my ears certain things concerning a certain person that I knew as a little boy this way now. Now, he is a grown man, and we have been cut off from him. Do you think that was going to stop me from ministering to him? Oh, no! I immediately got on the computer and wrote him a letter and told him exactly what God said, and exactly what he should do. Amen. He was asking God about somebody to marry. I mean, this is what I got in the vision. I don’t know what the situation is, but I know I am right. Amen. Because God is never wrong. He asked Him whether he should marry this person or the other and God said, “Yes, it is I, go right ahead.” I sent him the letter, I don’t care whether he loves me or not, that is not the point. That is none of my business. My business is to shepherd my Father’s children! My Father’s children, hallelujah, are in trouble everywhere. The Father says, I am the good shepherd, and I am the companion brother, the friend of the good shepherd. I am also a good shepherd, not a bad shepherd. I am a good shepherd because I have been made a good shepherd by the Good Shepherd.

Do you understand? We are working with Him. He is doing the spiritual part and we do the natural part. Amen. This is what we call the candlestick. The candlestick operation, where God and man work together in union. When He says, “You should do so-and-so,” if you don’t do it, you throw the whole of God’s machinery out of kilter. It is only that He is God, and He can grab somebody else to do it! But, we need to know that God is depending on us! And, you know, it was shocking. The scripture said Jesus came and gave them talents, and so, and so. And afterwards, it says, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world (Matthew 25:15-34). For He said, “I was an hungered and ye gave me meat; I was in prison” (Matthew 25: 35-36). Man alive, I tell you, it hit me right here! I became ashamed. How many prisons have I visited? Just three or four in my lifetime. “I was in prison and ye visited me.” Then he said, “Whence, Lord, were you in prison? I never did anything like that.” He said, “As much as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it unto me” (Matthew 25: 39-40). Do you know how many hopeless human beings there are in prison? I went to the prison to preach and it was the greatest audience that I ever had. Amen! They were hopeless men. It is like a beam of light came into them. The Word of God, with the anointing, giving them something to hold onto. Men were baptized in the Holy Ghost, right there. Men received the Lord right there. Murderers were there for life sentences, having no hope of coming out and God Almighty reached down there and delivered them!

Have you ever thought of it, that the nursing homes, the prisons, the hospitals, the place where God has you in the city? You are the Christ people in this city. Wherever you are, God wants you to minister to the people. If we were ministering to the people, we would have been receiving greater blessings. Shepherd the Body, the people, you, one another. You have not shepherded God’s flock. You have not thought of them. You have not shepherded them. The people of the Body are number one. If one is sick, you should find it out. You should call the Body to pray. You should be interested. You should care. You know, most of us, we don’t care. Or, if we care, we don’t show it. There are some in our midst who are saying, “They don’t care.” When you are in trouble, you say, “They don’t care.” You don’t know where to turn to. You see, I know what it is like to be in trouble, and have no place to turn to, have no Body that you could turn to. Hallelujah! And I feel that we, as a people, should begin to realize that we are part of the five-fold ministry. The five-fold ministry cannot be just ministers. The five-fold ministry is too big to be ministers. The ministers who are called after the different positions are called in order to excite the ministry within you. Don’t you understand? They are called to encourage the ministry of Christ in you so that you might minister! You doubt it? Let me show you something here. Maybe you have never seen it before, but look back at that chapter from that verse 11. Let’s go back to verse 11 because it has to join up with 12. Ephesians 4:11, And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; 12For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. Is that what your Bible says? So, who is it that has the work of the ministry? Read it again, and see if you can decipher. The perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry. It is the saints that must minister! It is a living Body! Every figment of the Body must minister! Don’t you see? How would you like to have a dead toe, that can’t move? Would you be very happy with it? This is the point. Every single part of the Body is a minister. The dead fingernail that I have to cut off and throw away sometimes, they minister. Yes, because it needs the hard tip on my fingers in order that the fingers can work. Amen. So, God is saying, you are the ministers of the new covenant! You are the ministers of Christ! Amen! God wants a Body that ministers. A Body that walks like Christ. A Body that talks like Christ. A Body that behaves like Christ. A Body that feeds the poor, that gives bread to the hungry. A Body that will not hold on and put your money in the bank and hold on it for your security, but will go out. Your security is in Christ! That will go out and give it out to those who need and strengthen the Body with your substance, you shall never fail! Glory to God. God said, for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall (2 Peter 1:10). Amen! Amen! Let me tell you something. The people with the security are going to fail. The people who have enough insurance to cover them in time of need, the people who have enough in the bank to cover them for their pension, it is going to fail. I am talking about this generation. I am talking about this nation. I am talking about this time in which we live. They are all going to fail! Those who did not cast their bread upon the water will not find it, for God is going to do to you as you have done to His people. Amen! Hallelujah!

When have you seen me hungry and fed me not? When I went to India, I could no longer eat a meal and leave and throw away some of it. I would wish that I could take all of you. I wish I could take all of you. It transforms you, when you go there and see how people live. It transforms you, because you realize what a waste we have in this country. We have three square meals every day. And when you see what some people eat, you say, “Oh, God forgive me for even eating what I do eat.” Amen. The point is, do you think of yourself as part of the Christ-man? Are you part of Christ? Are you the Body of Christ? You know? I remember the day, the time when God brought me to a place where I started walking down the street and I felt like Christ was walking down the street. That He was in me and I was in Him and I was walking down the street. I began to look at the people and compassion went out to them. Even the sinners, even the wicked ones. The compassion goes out to them, because you now understand how God feels. Amen. You now understand why God sent His only begotten Son to die for humanity! You understand now, why it is necessary for one man to die for the others. You understand now, why you would give your life just to take life to this one or that one. And your life counts nothing now, no more, hallelujah! God, I praise you.

I thank God for the day when God gave me a wife. I mean, God gave me a wife, a woman that I had never seen anything like. It is only what I could dream about. The woman has three children, three children and we have a little house. God gave us the house and somebody came and sued me for the house. Sued me for the house. I went to her and said, “Well, God said in His Word, if your brother would sue you and take you to the law, you must give him your cloak and your coat also.” She said, “Amen.” We gave the man the house. You know, we had a little car, little like your car there, Brother. The five of us, the three children and all our earthly possessions on the top of the car strapped down, and we are going down the road knowing not whither we go, because we have lost the house. So, we are going. Guess what the brother sued me for? All the tithes he had given me in about seven years. All the tithes he had given. He was in a very good job. He gave us his tithes. He kept us on the road. We rode a motorcycle in our ministry. We were over the hills and valleys, building churches and he was being blessed because he was giving us his tithes. When he got mad with us, he sued us for the house and the tithes. When we went to the lawyer, “What do we owe this man for?” A long list of all the money he gave me as tithes and offerings. I said, “No.” The lawyer said, “You are not going to fight it?” And I said, “No, if he wants the house, give it to him.” Amen. And the woman said, “Yes.” Hallelujah! I had never seen anything like that. I mean, most wives, you couldn’t do that to them. You would have to fight it, amen. But, the Word of God was so strong in our lives. God put us through the paces. God put us through the paces. And as she went down the road, she cried. But, she didn’t show me; she didn’t let me see her crying. She went into a corner and cried. And God said to her, “I will give you ten times of what you lost this day.” I want to tell you, we still have it down in Jamaica there waiting for you to come down one day, and we have a big church down there. Because the eight acres of land is still there. The house is still there, though the people ravished it, my sons started to build it again. One day we are going to still have that house there. Five thousand square feet of house, entirely different from what we had before. But, God is faithful. God is faithful.

Oh, brother! Oh, sister! I wish I could just tell you how I feel about this shepherd ministry. It is “racham.” It’s bowels of mercy! Hallelujah! That you want to help them. You want to bend down and wash their feet. You don’t want to fleece them. You don’t care about their pockets. You want to wash their feet. You want to see to it that God’s people live. Amen! You want them to live. Hallelujah! Nothing they do can hurt you. Nothing they do can hurt you. You hear me? And they can do you. I am telling you, they can really do you in. I discovered that if the devil can use one Christian to hurt you, he would prefer to get the one Christian to hurt you more than get ten sinners to hurt you. You see? Because if the Christian lays himself careless, the devil will use him. You see? That is why Peter was talking about the women going from house to house and carrying tales. Going from house to house carrying tales. Now, it means that the women’s duty is to go from house to house, but carry Jesus. You see? Carry Christ, don’t carry tales. It is such a sad thing. I have seen people go out as missionaries and they carry more destruction than deliverance! Oh, yes. This one said that one said that. And you tell the stories of everything that is happening in the United States and all the brethren. And when you finish, the women in the congregation all have all the stories backwards! Oh, yes! Bowels of mercy. The scripture uses it You know? Yes. Listen to this scripture. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him (Psalm 103:13). Do you know that they wrote a new Bible, and they changed the word from “as a father pitieth his children” to “as a mother pitieth her children”? What is the difference between the father pity and the mother pity? The story is, that God in His strength, pitieth His children. And the word “racham” was used, because a man doesn’t have a womb, and racham means womb. God used the word “racham” to compare the pity of His children. The shepherd God. Let me explain to you how God did it. The children of Israel, three million people approximately came out of Egypt. And God healed them all. Nobody had a cold. Not one of them had a cough. No headache! God healed them all! What a God. Have you ever seen a woman pushing the little pram down the street and she pulls over the top to prevent the sun from getting upon the child? God put a cloud over them. How dreadful that is for the nations to look and see a people with a big cloud walking over their head. Do you know that they could not last half an hour in their desert? Any of you here ever been out in a desert? One man was out there in California in the Mojave Desert thumbing a ride. He didn’t get a ride, and they found him dead. That thing would take every drop of moisture out of your body. A 120 degree heat just coming up off the earth. That’s no joke. A desert is not a place for a person to be. These people walked out with their little children. With their animals. Cows and goats could not stand the heat, yet God had them forty years in the desert. In the day time, the Bible said, there was a cloud over their heads, and in the night time florescent light (Exodus 13:21). Did the Bible say that? So, what do you think? Hallelujah! It was light. It was not fire. It was not fire, it was light. It was a bright light that covered the whole…came out of the cloud…the thing stood up there and the whole desert floor lighted. To give them light by night and by day. Hallelujah! Oh, what a God, what a God!

This same God is the same God that says to you, “I am your shepherd.” Amen. It is the same God that points to you and says, “Because I am your Shepherd, you should be a shepherd to my people.” “Because I do it unto you, you should do it unto them. Because I have racham for you, you should have racham for them!” Amen! Yes, the God of love, the God of mercy. Mercy, oh, Jesus. Mercy. You know, I’ve heard Christians say, “They should kill him.” Yes, do you want to give him mercy? God said, mercy rejoiceth against judgment(James 2:13). When you get before the judge, is it justice you want or is it mercy? Amen. “Judge, please don’t give me justice, for if you give me justice, I am dead!” Amen. “I need mercy!” Amen. The tender mercies of God, the same word “racham” used again. The tender mercies of God. See? And it all is referring to the woman and the womb…the child she bare. The scripture said, Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? (Isaiah 49:15). And the word of God says yes. “She may be forgetful, but I, God, will not forget you.” That means that the Father’s love goes beyond even the love of a mother. Hallelujah! Glory to God! Glory to God, hallelujah!

The ministry is lacking in our midst. We don’t think of each other as we ought too. We don’t have the bowels of mercies like we ought too. Do you know that is why God hasn’t told us about some of the things that we should know about? You go to bed with that mercy in your heart. Say, “Lord God, forgive me of lacking in mercy and love, for You have been merciful to me. You have been a loving Father to me. You have not given me the justice that I should have had, but instead of justice sometimes, You gave me mercy. When I was wrong, when I should have been dead, You gave me life. My God, give me now that same mercy, that same love toward your people!” Amen.

You know, we have a way of passing some very cruel judgment. There is a thing called corporate sin that we get involved in. You look at the television, or you look at the news, or you hear so-and-so did so-and-so. And you say, “They should catch him and they should do so and so to them!” In your heart you said it, you lacked mercy. Can you imagine tonight the people who have participated in some homosexual activity, and caught in the trap of their sin? Can you imagine how hopeless it is to have AIDS? It is a death sentence unto your body. There is no way to get rid of it. The hopelessness of it! God have mercy upon them. Human beings that are in such a hopeless, desperate condition. My God Almighty, help us to even consider to pray for them sometimes. Amen. It is not because we are so good that we are not there! Huh? You think so? Many of us have done enough to have made us like them, and the mercy of God prevented it. Hallelujah! Yes, sir! If He had given me justice, I wouldn’t be here tonight. If He had given me justice. Lord God, merciful Father, help us to have mercy, so that the mercy might extend to Your children. Hallelujah!

You know what impressed me here tonight as we read John chapter 10? He said, verse 16, other sheep I have, which are not of this fold. Have you ever thought of it, that somebody right now, down there, some homosexual, you might think him…some lesbian, somebody in the bar, or somebody wicked in the prison, some murderer, tonight murdering somebody, is one of those sheep that He is talking about? They are not of this fold. Should kneel down and say, “Lord God, bring them, bring them home, my God; deliver them, Lord Jesus, from our enemy; the enemy of our souls, that has them down there; deliver them, oh, Lord God, and bring them!” Then, you know what is going to happen? God starts trusting you. When your heart begins to turn to God in mercy and loving kindness, hallelujah, God begins to trust you now. And says, “All right, little one over there dying, starving, in hell, going to hell, come, I want you to meet this one.” Amen! God will start bringing people to you for you to do to them like Jesus Christ did to you. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! How often have we lacked mercy, have we lacked the love of God? How often have we put it aside to express our own human feelings? How often in selfishness we never thought to share our bread or to pray for others? We think of people of another church as if they are of another nation. Amen. I am going to open your eyes. I am going to open your eyes to something. If you had a brother that lost an arm or a leg, or his eyes, or his ears, would he still be your brother? The churches and the people who have the salvation but they are in some shade of darkness here, or shadow there, they are still our brethren, but they are crippled. Some of them are crippled by doctrines. Some of them are crippled by design. That is the best that they could be, amen. That is the best they could be, what they are. That is the best they could be because they were so far away and they found mercy. Some of them are halt and maimed, paraplegics. Hallelujah! We must remember to pray for them sometimes, and have mercy upon them, for God is calling a people to save the people. God is calling a people who will deliver the earth! You hear me? He is not calling another church set of people who say, “We are better than you are, we’ve got it made and we are the children of the kingdom and you are not!” NO! God is calling a people to save the people. There is a people who will save the whole church! Do you hear me? He said, “But for the elect, no flesh would be saved” (Matthew 24:22). Do you hear me, brethren? But for you. I am taking the liberty of calling you elect, because you ought to be. Amen! “But for the elect,” God says, “no flesh would be saved.” That means there is such a destruction coming on earth that unless a people rise up and hold on to the power of God, there will be no deliverance in the earth! Do you hear me? Thank you, Jesus! Amen! The earth has committed enough crimes before God that God could turn His back upon the earth. The scripture says that in the last days Elijah should come, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse (Malachi 4:5-6). Do you hear me? It is an Elijah people! It is no longer an Elijah man! It is an Elijah people that God is saying should come! And if those people do not come, then the earth will be struck with a curse! We have seen the curse! The curse of violence! Man has created monsters to destroy and to kill humanity! Look into Revelation 9 and you see the war implements. He said, some like a scorpion, flying scorpion and it had brimstone coming out of its mouth, and brimstone coming out of its tail. What do you think that that is? Is it some animal that is going to come here? It is the tanks and the equipment of war that they have that they are destroying humanity with. And God says that a people will have the power of God and the word of God that they will stop those things. They will stop those tanks. They will stop the satanic equipment. Oh, yes! Praise be to God. Amen.

I want you to know that there is a ministry of the shepherd that God is calling us to. The shepherd ministry is not for one man. It is for everybody. The women play a very important part in this ministry. Without you, there is no church. You hear me? The scripture says that without the woman, there is no church. I Corinthians 11. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not without the woman. It must be women who are brave, women who are strong in their resolve, women who will go into dark places and save people. Places where men couldn’t go; they wouldn’t listen to men. The woman has a responsibility, because the scripture says the woman is a type of the church. Just as the church is to Christ, so is the woman to the church. You understand?

Let us close, and let us consider one thing here. The Lord brought this to me. I look around into Job. And in Job chapter 2 and verse 4, And Satan answered the LORD, and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. Satan is expecting us to be selfish. He is expecting us to be afraid when our lives are being threatened. Do you hear me? But, when you turn around to Revelation, the Lord says that the people that will come will not count their lives. Amen! Then another scripture tells us from the gospels, from the epistles, that man through the fear of death remain in bondage all his life (Hebrews 2:15). Amen. If you are not afraid to die, the devil has a problem. He has no power over you. If you are not afraid to die the devil has no power over you. He wants to get you afraid, so that you will do certain things. Come on! He holds you with a gun, “If you don’t do so-and-so, I will kill you!” Say, “If you kill me, then I still don’t do it.” That is the truth. It is God who holds your life. It is not the man with the gun. Not the man with the gun. I tell you a gun story. There are a lot of gun problems in Jamaica. My son was very friendly with a minister and his wife. One day, gunmen kicked down the door and came in. They said, “We have come to shoot you!” And they had sawed off shotguns. The woman in the kitchen heard this commotion outside and she ran out into the living room and saw these men holding her husband with a gun. She said, “Get out of here, all of you!” The man turned the shotgun on her and blasted her with both barrels. Right in her chest. It threw her to the ground and she got up and said, “Get out!” They lost their minds immediately. They dropped the gun and ran. Ran out screaming. When they looked at her, her whole body was with little spots. The husband was so frightened. He thought she was dead. He grabbed her, threw her in the car and rushed to the hospital. When they got to the hospital, the doctor said, “What did you come here for?” He told what happened. The doctor said, “Well, she doesn’t even have a scratch.” Just the little marks of the pellets all over her body. Miracle of God. Miracle of God. You hear me? We should not be afraid of guns. We should not be afraid of man. God holds your life. No man takes your life from you until God says, “Yes.” You hear me? That gun will never go off, or something else would happen. But the Almighty God is telling us something. Satan believes that we are afraid, and we are timid to lose our lives. And, so, through the fear of death he has you, pulling you around the town.

Shepherds of God, you are going to have to face the devil, but God has given us enough power to overcome him. He said, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth and he said, go and preach the gospel (Matthew 28:18-19). Preach the gospel! Don’t be afraid to preach the gospel. We have been holding back too long! Let us preach the gospel to every creature. Hallelujah! I remember preaching a word like that in the group in Jamaica. Preach the gospel to every creature and this fellow was going along with his donkey, and the donkey just fell down. His eyes turned over and he was ready to die. And the brother ran down there. Remember, in those days he didn’t believe that he could pray with his hat on, so he took off his hat, laid his hands upon the donkey, “In the name of Jesus.” The donkey got up and he continued his journey. Preach the gospel. He told me he preached the gospel to his donkeys and his animals, because, he said, the animals behaved differently to him. Formerly he would curse them and the donkeys know that he is not cursing anymore, and they behaved differently. Preach the gospel to every creature. The creatures of God know the voice of God. God bless you in the name of Jesus.