Cecil duCille
October 2, 2000, Mahomet, IL
(Published in Keeping in Touch October 29, 2000)
(For printable version click here.)
Father, we thank You for Your presence with us this morning. We thank You, Lord God, for the broken bread. We thank You, oh God, for those who You have blessed and anointed this morning to be here. We thank You for this day and we commit ourselves into your hand. We ask that You anoint our ears, for some hearing, they do not hear, and seeing, they do not see. But this morning, we are asking that hearing, we might hear and that seeing, we might see, and that Your Spirit will bring total deliverance to Your people, hallelujah, for it is the anointing that breaks the yoke. Thank you, Father, in the name of Jesus, Amen.
Hallelujah. First of all we want to thank God, for I heard Sister Sharon speaking this morning and her voice is entirely different from the last time I heard her, and we want to thank God for having done something there. The scripture says, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but God brings them out of it.” (Psalms 34:19) Hallelujah, amen. So, we thank God for afflictions for somehow, God knows what kind of afflictions we can take and God knows what we need. It’s very terrible, sometimes, when we consider what happens to us, you know? I was going down the street three or four weeks ago, and suddenly the vehicle just began to go like it was on ice. I wondered to myself, “What is going on here?” I’ve been driving for over fifty years and this never happened before. So, I did all the maneuvering I could to get the vehicle back straight. It was going sideways sometimes, it was going backwards sometimes, it was spinning around in the road at other times. Finally I tried to lock the steering wheel to keep it in the road because it was going off to the side and then the wheel locked and it just slid right into the wall. If you look at the angle at which it hit the wall, and you look at everything else, you would say “Well, God must have been really there.” Because, the bags burst and the bag came and burnt my hand here, and that was all the problem we had. The wall stopped us, the wall became a blessing, and praise be to God. I said to God, “Why? Why would you allow a thing like this to happen?” and He said, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but God takes them out of it all.” We came out scott-free, and we had to thank God, because everybody said a crash like that at 60 miles an hour, it is not a way to crash. I had to tell Tyson that. I said, “Well, we crashed into your wall, Tyson.” Praise God!
We thank God for this morning. The Lord has been speaking a word to me for weeks now, and I don’t know if we even have time enough for this word. It’s something we have heard before, but when I read the Word of God and when I hear the Word of God, it’s like I never heard it before. It’s always something new. God is speaking to us about prophecy and prophets. I want you to let us just put our hearts to understanding what the Lord is saying about prophecy and prophets. Hallelujah.
God has set up the church in such a way that He has ordained five ministries and it’s not five ministers, it’s five ministries, and this ministry has a top and a bottom. It goes from those who are brought up to a certain point in the prophetic realm, back to those in the whole congregation. The scripture said, I would that all God’s people would be prophets. In other words, He was speaking of a time that would come when the prophetic ministry would be within the group, within the people themselves. Hallelujah. That, for instance, no one should be able to come to you and preach a wrong preaching without your discernment as to whether it is wrong or right. God said we shouldn’t judge one another, but He said we should judge the prophecies. We should judge the work, we shouldn’t judge the people. In other words, if somebody prophesied a wrong word, we don’t judge the person and say, “Hey, that one is of the devil.” You’re wrong. You see, there are two words for judge. You have krino and diakrino. You’re supposed to judge the work, what is being done, don’t judge the person. The reason is because a good person can speak a bad word, because we have that latitude now. In the ancient days of prophecy they couldn’t do that. When a prophet is zapped by God, he would just be a machine. He just had to say what God said. He couldn’t put in anything, because that was the ancient prophetic realm before man was saved, before man had the Holy Ghost, before man had the baptism of the Holy Ghost, before you had the blood of Jesus Christ, before Jesus was crucified, God had to do something to bring the church to where we are. So, God would zap men with his power. A man would prophesy today mightily. David was a man after God’s own heart, yet he ran into adultery. You see? You don’t say now, “How?” I’ve heard men say, because David was a man after God’s own heart and he went into adultery, I can do it, too. I can do it, too. No, no, no. The whole thing is changed. God sent Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ came and brought something new into our realm and into our world. So, prophecy has a different meaning, a different understanding, a different spirit entirely. God explained it to us. He said there was a man, Ahab. He was a wicked king. A wicked king. He had a woman, a wife, who was a priest of Baal. That means she was a witch. His wife did all the wickedness and he went right along with her. He was a weak person. So, he caught one prophet and threw him in prison because this man would always prophesy things against him. Nobody likes anybody prophesying things against you. Suppose everyday somebody comes in here and prophesied something against you. How would you feel? Well, if you are of the Lord, you’d repent. If you are not of the Lord, you’d kill him. Amen! That’s why so many prophets got killed, because they got people prophesy to them and they were not of God and if you tell a thief that he’s a thief, you make him a murderer, and you become the victim. So, you never tell a thief he’s a thief. If you believe he’s a real thief, don’t tell him! If you tell him, you are a goner because he is going to find out some way of getting rid of you. So, you must never tell a thief he’s a thief.
So, these prophets used to go and tell bad people they are bad, and that was bad, bad for them! You remember one prophet, the last one that got killed? He was John the Baptist. What did he do? He went and told Herod that he was an adulterer. Now, for a sinner to be an adulterer is no big deal, because a sinner must sin. But he told him he was an adulterer and he must stop it and so and so forth. And, of course, Herod chopped his head off.
The truth is, I was reading again the scriptures (Jeremiah 36) that said that Jeremiah went to the son of Josiah, (Jehoiakim) the son that was ruling…what was his name? Not Hezekiah, not Josiah…anyhow, he went to him. He threw him in prison. First of all, he didn’t like Jeremiah, so he threw Jeremiah in prison. Alright. God came to Jeremiah in prison and said, “Say to this king, ‘Thus saith the Lord, God is going to do so and so and so and so with you. He’s going to kill you and destroy you because you are wicked and so on. You must repent.’” Jeremiah wrote it and called Baruch, one of his young prophets and said, “You take this writing and go to the king with it and read it for him.” When Baruch went, he saw the princes and the princes said to him, “Let us hear.” So he read it to them, and they said, “Well, you know what? You better not take this to the king. Let us tell the king.” So, they went to the king and told the king. The king said, “I want to hear it read myself. I don’t want it secondhand, I want to hear.” So, they brought the roll to him and he read it before the king. The king says, “Give me that roll,” and he threw it in the fire and burned it. He said, “Now you get that Jeremiah and that Baruch and bring them to me.” But when the princes took the paper from Baruch, they said, “We’re going to let Jeremiah out of prison and you and Jeremiah hide.” So, they went to hide. The Bible said God hid them. The king couldn’t find them. I said, “But, this is God. God could blow away that king. God could, you know, reach out His….” But that’s not God’s way. God wants that man to have his cup filled. Therefore, He’d rather hide Jeremiah from him than to stop him from killing Jeremiah.
Praise be to God. I want to draw you here to the New Testament…I’m trying to run through this thing. I’m not going into details, but this is a very important message which God wants you to have today. This old picture that you are so used to. This is the Holy Place and this is the Holy of Holies. These are the boards, and the boards represent you. The boards. But what I wanted to show you is what holds the boards. Here we have one bar, and it’s called prophetic. We have one bar going right through there, and this is the apostle, and another bar here, and another bar. This is the evangelist, and this one, the teacher…this is just giving you an idea of what I’m talking about. It is in Ephesians 4:11, And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers. And we call the pastors shepherds. As you know the word “pastor” is not in the scripture, so we call it shepherd, because shepherds keep sheep and pastors can keep both sheep, and goats and cows and things like that. So, we call it shepherd to give it the real scriptural connotation.
Now, what we are talking about then is what is the difference between Old Testament prophets and this prophet? The Old Testament prophets were holy men. What do we mean by holy? Even the word ‘holy’ is changed. The word holy in the New Testament has a different meaning from the word holy in the Old Testament. Holy in the Old Testament means people upon whom the Holy Ghost fell, and people who functioned with the Holy Ghost when the Holy Ghost was upon them. Holy, in our dimension, means “those who obey God.” It’s very simple. Anything you do, exactly what God does, anything you say exactly what God says, it’s no more your word , no more your doing, but God’s word and God’s doing. So it’s holy. Holy means God. When you talk about holy this, and holy that, for instance, they speak of “His Holiness.” The Pope, they call him “His Holiness” and so and so. That’s a misnomer. It’s like a nickname. It doesn’t have any real, good meaning.
Now, we speak then of the prophets of old as against the prophets of our time. Now, let’s take the case of Micaiah, this man that he had put in prison because he was always prophesying against Ahab. It’s strange that, even today anybody who prophesies against something that somebody is doing, you hate the person. It’s funny, but it’s true. And if the prophecy is true, then the person is in trouble. If the prophecy is true, it means God loves you. If you can’t change, God would not prophesy to you. If there’s a hopeless condition, if you are gone, gone, gone, God won’t prophesy to you. If God prophesies to you, it means that there’s hope. If God sends you a message, there’s hope. You can be changed, the thing can be changed. In other words, a dream or a message of God in any man means that God is able to change the thing.
Now, Micaiah was in prison. Now, Ahab wanted to go to war, so he called Jehoshaphat and he says to him, “Come, fight with me against my enemies, because you owe me a favor. I helped you.” And so, Jehoshaphat said “Okay.” But Jehoshaphat was a good man, meaning to say, Jehoshaphat was a man that feared God. In those days, good men were those who feared God, not necessarily nice people, but they feared God. So, Jehoshaphat came, and Ahab thought that he had God in his pocket. You ever found anybody with God in his pocket? In other words, you catch God, because if God said “Do so,” you do it. If God said, “Walk there,” you walk it, so that you do not incur His wrath…if you even incur God’s wrath…you understand? You go and “pray about it” and you go and “pray about it.” So, Ahab was like that. He surrounded himself with four hundred men of God. Real prophets of God. He fed them and he kept them warm, gave them good things…they were the elite. They had it all. Next thing happen, everything that was going to happen to him, the prophets would come and tell him. If somebody was plotting against him, the prophets would see it and come and tell him. So he had God up against a wall.
Let me break the story here to tell you exactly what I mean. I was ministering in a town and there was a certain minister in another church, a denominational church, that was doing wrong. And he did wrong to one of the girls in my congregation, and the girl came and reported it to me. Now, he immediately heard that the girl reported to me. He, next morning, six o’clock in the morning, before I got up, bam-bam-bam, and he was at my door. He said, “I have to see you. You have to pray for me. You HAVE TO pray for me.” OK. I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “I have done wrong.” He said, “I have committed this great sin against God and I have come to you as a man of God to pray for me.” He laid out the whole thing before me as the girl had said. I said, “Okay, let’s pray,” and I prayed for him. He said, “Thank you,” and he smiled and went away. You know what he did? He bound me. As a minister there was nothing I could do about it anymore. I had prayed with him, asked God to forgive him, and so and so. When I saw it, I knew he was throwing a rope around me, I knew he was binding me, but there was nothing I could do. I had to go by the rules. But there was a rule that I had that he didn’t know about. I went to God and I said, “God, this man has bound me up. If he really repents, I know you’ll forgive him and deliver him, which all of us will be happy for. If he doesn’t repent, then Lord God, I know you will let it break out on him some other way.” The next thing that happened, when it broke out, his church caught hold of him and they tried him and they fired him and it was a big disgrace. You see, God will do that. He will give you such a chance, He will cover your sin, but if you try to get around Him and use the Word of God to beat Him, He will get you.
So Ahab did this to God. He called the prophets and they said, “Go out and prosper, thus saith the Lord God, go forth and prosper.” Now, why did those prophets of God all speak the same lie? He called Micaiah. Jehoshaphat said, “If you have one more prophet, just let me hear.” He said, “That man doesn’t like me at all, I don’t want…” He said, “That’s the man I want to hear. Good.” So, he brought Micaiah, and eventually Micaiah went into a vision and he said, “I saw God standing before His throne and there were the good angels on one side and there were the evil angels on the other side. And he said to the evil angels, ‘Which one of you will go down and be a lying spirit in the mouth of the prophets of Ahab?’” You know the rest of the story, that the spirit went down, gave them a lying message, and they all deceived Ahab. Ahab threw Micaiah into prison and said, “I’ll kill you when I get back!” and Micaiah said, “If you get back, kill me.” Amen! Hallelujah! In other words, that’s a man who was sure of the Word of God.
What kind of lesson do we learn from that? The lesson we learn is that the prophet is susceptible to many different voices. God allowed that one but you know what happened to the New Testament prophet? God handed you the power. He handed you the Word and He let loose the devil. You can listen to as many devils as you want but you are going to hear God also and YOU have to decide which is which. Hallelujah!
I’ll give you another story. You know, it’s story-telling time now. I was in the church in Jamaica and this new thing was happening. We had girls who were prophesying. Strange enough, none of the men, all young girls. And boy, I tell you, when they began to prophesy true, you just had to bow before God because they were going to be telling every single thing that happened. Amen. We couldn’t help but realize that they are the prophets that God had put in our midst. But they were young. None of us had experience. I didn’t have any experience, they didn’t have any experience but the devil waited for his time, waited for his time. One girl fell in love. Listen, brethren. Falling in love is opening up one’s heart to another individual, and once your heart is opened up to another individual, it is not as open to God as it used to be UNLESS you’re well trained and understand that Jesus Christ is first and that individual is second. But she didn’t have all that knowledge. None of us had all the knowledge and she was in love. And so, jealousy began to come in, you know, and all the human problems…the devil found a way in. He began to talk to her, and when she came up she was prophesying exactly with the same power as she used to prophesy but she was prophesying off things, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Well, she prophesied to her boyfriend, “Thus saith the Lord God, thou art Timothy.” Amen? “Thus saith the Lord God, thou art Timothy, and whatnot, God is doing for you. He is to take over the church.” Then she came back and she prophesied again that “the Lord told me to tell you that you must buy that house over there for me.” You understand? He came to me and said, “Elder, the holy prophet of God says I must buy her a house over there, and I’m about ready to do it.” I said, “The holy prophets of God have died and gone!” I said, “There’s no holy prophet of God in our midst.” I said, “That little young lady that you are going to marry is going to be your wife and you are going to be her head. She must not prophesy to you to buy her a house! If you see that it is necessary and both of you get together, you buy her the house. Don’t let her prophesy to you to buy her a house! That’s not right.” He got up and he went off and he told her that I was against her. He told her that I was against her, that I had, somehow or the other, that I am her enemy. Remember now, she’s my little girl, one of them that got saved, all these young people got saved under my ministry, they look up to me as elder. I wasn’t much older than them anyhow, but they looked up to me as elder and I was very impartial. All of a sudden, the devil sowed a seed of discord right in her heart against me. Now, what the Bible says about that, the Bible says, in Matthew 18, I want to read it for you. Matthew chapter 18. The Word of God tells you exactly what to do. If somebody comes and tells you something about somebody else, there is a method of you keeping clean, because if you are not clean, God says He’s not going to hear your prayers. Some of you don’t understand that God’s not hearing your prayers and maybe you are wondering, “Why is it I pray to God for so and so and it’s not done?” But God says that He will hear the prayers of the righteous, and if you are wrong with God, maybe for years God isn’t hearing you.
Look here. Matthew chapter 18, God is telling exactly what you are to do. From verse 15. Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: Hey. That sounds very plain! The Scriptures are not speaking in parables now! If somebody trespasses against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. Now, you said, “Well, trespass against me? What is it?” Ah. “I heard, Brother So-and-So, that you say that I am a thief.” It’s so simple! “Who told you that?” “John Brown told me that you told him that I am a thief.” If you are going to hide Brown, if you are going to say, “Well, a certain person…” You know what you do? “A certain person told me…” Come on. Brother Wayne, I come to you and say, “A certain person tells me that you’ve been talking against me.” What happened to you right away? “I wonder if it was Charley beside me. I wonder if it’s David. I wonder if it’s Karen. I wonder if it’s…” Right away you sin. He causes you to sin because your whole heart and mind start wondering. If he tells you point blank, you know what you have to do? You immediately call the person. God said you must not even sleep. Call the person right away. Straighten it out before you even go to your bed. Amen? Let’s read it. …Go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: Sometimes what we do is we go and tell our friend, and we tell somebody else, and we tell somebody else. Let me tell you something. If I whisper something in the ears of Brother Bruce here, and he turns around and whispers it to Sharon, and you whisper it, and you whisper it, whisper it…by the time it reaches the back bench, it has a different color. Oh, yes! It’s got to have a different color because it affects each person’s mind differently. It is the way that the message affects a person’s mind that he’s going to impart it to the other person. Therefore the coloring of all the different minds ends up in the back row.
Now, he said talk to the person ALONE. Remember, we’re talking about prophecy, you know. Do you know that it affects your prophecy? Anybody who prophesies should not listen to talk. If you prophesy and you listen to talk, you kill your whole prophecy. Your prophecy is of no use. This girl began to prophesy against me. Now this is what is going to tell me now that something has gone wrong with her. I alone know. If you get up and prophesy, “Thus saith the Lord God, Brother Cec is a thief.” Now, I know I am not a thief, but you don’t know I am not a thief! It casts a doubt in every mind except mine. Ah. So that’s the message of God to me, now I know you’re gone. I know something about you now, that YOU ARE GONE. Your prophecy is not on line. So, she started to prophesy against me. But before she did that, she went and whispered to all the brethren and told them her dreams.
Listen, brethren, the Bible says when you have a dream, talk it as a dream. Some people talk dreams as if it is reality. Remember, now, God planted dreaming inside of the church as part of the prophetic ministry. Dreams and visions are part of the prophetic ministry. These are very delicate things. Why? Because there are three dimensions to it. You dream what you think about in your business for the day. You dream what the devils around you are thinking, and you will dream what God is saying to you. You have to have a spiritual balance to be able to differentiate. That’s why I said, “Brethren, never interpret your own dreams.” If you have a dream, carry it to the elders. Amen. I had a dream and I didn’t know what the dream meant. I was in water and two sisters were plunged down into the water. They went down into the deep and a shark came along and he hovered around and then he went away and they came up out of the water. I don’t know what that means. Do you know? Anybody here know what that means? But then the Lord God said to me, “It is so and so. That’s what it’s talking about.” And immediately I know now because God said so. When you come and tell me a dream, a lot of brethren believe that I have the ability to translate their dreams. But you see, it is my secret, that they don’t know that I don’t. What happens is that the moment you start telling me a dream, I’m starting to see something else and I know that’s what the dream is saying because I’ve been dreaming for fifty years. It’s because God will speak to me, and sometimes somebody will give me a dream and I get blank, nothing. Nothing.
I was in a meeting in Ft. Lauderdale, Derek Prince and all the others were sitting down there before me there. A brother got up and said, “I had a dream. I had a vision a while ago.” “What’s your vision?” “I saw a dry stump upon the platform, and I saw dry bones growing out of the stump.” A brother got up. He wanted to embarrass me and he said, “Brother Cec is the man to tell us the meaning of the dream.” Remember, there were thousands of people sitting down there, and I am there, and he wants me to just off the bat… “Come up, brother, come up.” So I went to the platform and I said, “Brethren, I don’t understand one thing about this dream…” and the moment I opened my mouth, the Lord said, “Hey, that’s what it means. It means somebody on the platform is a dry stump and bringing forth nothing but dry bones.” You know what happened? The brother, when I said it, oh man, those guys rose up against me! One Episcopal priest, he got up there with his white collar and he said, “I am no dry bones!!” But you know what happened? The guy who called me up and wanted to embarrass me, he was a homosexual. A couple weeks after that, there was a big scandal. He attacked somebody in the group and there was a big scandal that broke up the group.
You see? God is true and prophecy is true, but we have to not only judge the prophecy ourselves, but those who hear it have to judge it. Suppose you came and prophesied to me, “Thus saith the Lord God, you will die tomorrow,” amen, and I say, “I don’t believe it.” Amen? You know what? There are two parts to it. If it is true, I am the one who gets hurt. If it is not true, amen, the person who prophesied has to check his spirit. Where did he get that? You follow what I mean? We should never be afraid to come forth with things that we believe are the Lord. If I believe it is the Lord, I am coming forth with it and it doesn’t matter whether, right or wrong, because I believe it is the Lord. But, if it’s not the Lord, I am ready to repent. But guess what, we have some prophets that can’t repent. We have some prophets who can’t repent. They are ex cathedra. The pope! Infallible! That is, if the Lord speaks through me, then everybody must bow to it, and everybody must believe that it’s God, even when I see that I am wrong, that it was not God, I can’t say, “Well, I am sorry, I missed it. I must have been eating some pizza or something before I prophesied.”
Don’t you understand, brethren, that the prophets of the New Testament are not infallible? The reason is that they are given the Spirit of God and the judgment is upon them. They have to judge whether it’s God or not God. I told you a story where I got up in the morning, three o’clock, to pray, and how the spirit came and told me various things about different people in the congregation, and I got up now, ready to go prophesy to them. “You are so and so and you do so and so, and you…!!” And God shouted in my ear and said, “Satan, you’re a liar!” and when God said, “Satan, you’re a liar from the beginning,” I said, “My God! Why did you allow this to happen to me?” God pointed the finger at me and said, “Why did you sit down for half an hour and listen to the devil?” OH! “There must be something wrong with you if you can sit in the presence of the devil for half an hour. Why did you sit down and listen to the devil for half an hour without discerning that it was the devil?” Then I realized my fault. I had a problem. I wanted to be great in the congregation. I wanted to be able to say, “I know about you and I can see into your heart and…” You understand. I wanted my statue to be boosted and God cured me right then and there. Gave me a blow, amen, that knocked the devil out of me, amen, and put a little sense into me.
So. We have prophets. I remember before the election, before the last election, there was a prophet that came forth, and this man was supposed to be great. I myself was wondering, “Man, this must be God.” But God gave me a sign because he came against me. As I am telling that the only way you can know a prophet, or one of the ways, is when he comes against you and you alone know that he’s wrong. When that girl came against me, and said what she said about me, I knew it was wrong because I didn’t do it. Amen. So I knew her. This brother came on a national level and he published something about who would win the election. He was right. But when he started to talk about the man, he said, “This man will be the servant of the Living God. He is of a tender heart and he will bring deliverance to the United States of America.” He almost destroyed the whole nation! And this prophet won’t repent! I saw him on TBN and he’s still prophesying! Amen. Yes! Eleven men walked in through his door, came in and took their seats, and he got up and said, “There are eleven men from Iceland here.” They were shocked. Exactly eleven were standing. He said, “You are here because you want to know whether you should stay with the group with Gadwa and us there, or whether you should go back to your own church, which is the Assembly of God.” I mean, they didn’t tell him anything. They were shocked. He said, “Well, thus saith the Lord God, go back to your old church. The people you are with are not of God.” I knew then that he was not of God, that what he was saying was not of God. Of course, he could, he’s just making a mistake. But you know what? God gave prophecy to the Body of Christ. Do you know that? You can’t prophesy to yourself. You can’t take your prophecy out to the churches of the denominations. It has no use out there. They’ll kill you! I mean, if you want to get killed, then that’s the place to go. But if you are working with God, you have to take it to the Body of Christ, whether it is one man out there or another one out there, or another one over there, that’s the way you have to take your prophecy, because God has ordained prophecy in the Body as part of the Body. We cannot function without it. He said he established the apostles first, and the prophets next, and then helps and governments afterwards (Ephesians 4:11.) You understand that? That if you have no apostolic message…what is an apostolic message? I’ll explain it. If you have no apostolic message that you are following, you are going to be tossed to and fro. You must have an apostolic message! That is, God must tell somebody to say where the church is going, and this is the bar in the middle. This bar holds the church straight together in a straight line. Every other bar will not keep you straight. This bar (shepherd) will keep some straight, this bar (prophets) will keep some straight, this bar (teacher) will keep some, and this bar (evangelist) will keep some, but the bar that goes through the middle of the tabernacle, the whole tabernacle of God (apostle), it keeps the whole in line. Every man in line. You know what I mean. There’s no some bending forward and some bending backward. There’s no some bending this way or some…it is all in a dead straight line. Everybody in line, and that’s what the apostolic message means.
Now, what then, do I mean by an apostolic message? The word apostolos means that God sends someone directly to someone else with a word. That’s a messenger. Apostolos means messenger that’s sent. God sent somebody to somebody else with a word, then that person must know that is THAT apostolic message that he must follow. Where are we going? Amen. Now, if somebody in our midst believes that he is going to be raptured, how? He is not following this apostolic message. He is following another apostolic message, and I don’t care…I love you still, we love one another, we will die for one anther, but just means that you aren’t part of this apostolic message. For the apostolic message for this hour that God has sent is the message that the church is going THROUGH the tribulation and that you must look toward God to keep you in tribulation rather than to fly you away. Amen? And I’m saying this, that, if you as a youth rebel against God, don’t obey God, don’t walk according to truth, how could you expect to walk according to the truth when you’re in old age? No! What I’ve seen happening to us is that all the weaknesses that are in the Body are being manifested. They’re coming forth, showing themselves. Do you understand me, brethren? GET YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER NOW, for you won’t be able to do that in the time to come.
I have a tape that I’m going to send that I want you to look at. I want everybody here to see it. It is something that we must see. A man who was a Roman Catholic, he didn’t know God, all he knew was the ten stations of the cross, and Jesus came to him and showed him what is to happen in our time. He said God told him that if America does not repent, and when he said America, I’m thinking about the church, if the church does not repent by the end of 2003, they won’t repent again. It’s judgment, and it is exactly what I told you the last time I was here that God showed me that by 2004, somewhere around that area of time, because we can’t be definite with any time, but somewhere around that area of time, God is going to bring forth the Manchild company. Amen. Things will get so bad. Amen.
I don’t know if you are noticing what is happening, but they have everything prepared to control with mind control. If you don’t work on yourself now, when are you going to do it? Can you tell me? When do you plan, when do you plan to be in Christ, under the power of the Holy Ghost, walking according to the Spirit, when do you plan to do it? Don’t you understand? You’ll never do it! If you don’t do it now, if you don’t have the intention of doing it now…Matthew chapter 18. I’m taking too long about it. Help me if I’m taking over time. It says here that if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. If he will hear you then you have gained him, 16But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. You call some witnesses, talk to him with witnesses. Talk to him with witnesses. Is this what you are doing?
Let me tell you something. This congregation is being destroyed by talk. Too much talk. If anybody calls you and they want to know anything about anybody else, tell them, “Just call the person.” Tell them you’re not interested because it’s hurting you spiritually. It says here, 16But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. 17And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: Three steps. Talk to him first, talk to him with witnesses, then you take it to the elders and leave it with them. You clean yourself. That’s the way to keep clean. Amen. But you know what happens? Somebody, “Listen, I’m going to tell you a secret, but don’t tell anybody.” You understand. “Sister So-and-so did so and so and so and so, and so and so and so and so and so…” Now you hear and you’re in trouble. Once you hear, you’re in trouble. If you didn’t hear, “Ohhh, no, don’t tell me!” you are alright, but if you hear, you are in trouble. Once you hear, then you have to go to the person. Say, “You know I was told you’re a thief by So-and-so and Such-a-Person.” But you know what happened to me one time? When I did that and we went before the person, the person said, “I haven’t talked to you in months. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never told you any such thing. You’re just making it up.” Now, that is what you call a real …you know? I just handed him over to God. Yes! Wicked heart. Yes. …but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. If he will not hear the church, and he will not do what the church tells him to do, then leave him alone. You will minister salvation unto him like you’d speak to a sinner, but he is not. Of course, this is kind of generic, right?, but when you’re talking about the actual thing it’s not so easy. It’s not going to be so easy. It’s not going to be so easy, and I won’t explain that.
Now, look at the eighteenth verse. It says, 18Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Would you like to gain that power? Don’t you understand why the devils hurt some of us so much? Because we don’t have the power to bind them and to loose. Why don’t we have it? Because we don’t obey the first part. Amen? You must be clean! You MUST be clean! If you want to be clean you have to do this first part here every time. And when you come in service, thank God, I have nothing against anybody. Paul said, I am free from the blood of all men. Hallelujah! I have nothing against anybody and nobody has anything against me. Did you hear this? Somebody come and whisper to you, “You know, that person over there doesn’t like you.” You can’t pray, you know. Did you hear that, brethren? If somebody comes and tells you that somebody else doesn’t like you, you can’t pray. The Bible said leave there your gift before the altar and go find the person, don’t pray! You know, some of us say, “Oh, we’ll pray about it.” No praying about that! You go find the person and tell the person that you understand that he does not like you and that you love him and that if you did anything to hurt him, you ask him to forgive you,because you didn’t intend to hurt him. “Oh, no, no, no, everything is all right, everything is all right,” it is his business. If he tells you everything is all right, “Thank you, God.” He set you free.
There are too many people bound up in here! That’s why the Spirit of God doesn’t move in us as He ought to. We are bound up! We have things against one another! We are not supposed to come into the congregation with something against somebody that we have not got settled, even against a sinner. We need to get it settled. It says you have power to bind on earth, hallelujah, and to loose on earth, to bind in heaven and to loose in heaven. God said, “Whatever you do, heaven will agree with you in binding or loosing.” 19Again I say unto you, That if two of you… You notice? Two of you who are clean, who have nothing against anybody, if two of you shall come together and agree about anything concerning, as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. (Mathhew 18:19) God help us! We have the power to move heaven and we are not using it because we are all tied up. From this moment, from this day, I am going to ask everybody in here, to go to anybody who you think might have something against you, and say, “Well, do you have anything against me?” And if the person, the person might not have something against you, but the person might hear something about you, let him talk to you right away. “I did hear that so and so and so and so…is it true?” Amen. If you say it’s not true, then thank you. You’ve set me free! All I need to be is to be free. All I need to be is to be clean in the Lord so that I might be able to have a freely open line with heaven.
20For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Hallelujah. We close by turning, of course we don’t go into the message yet, but we close by turning to James. I want you to look at James with me. Amen. Chapter 3. We call that the tongue chapter. In verse two, 2For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body. 3Behold, we put bits in the horses’ mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body. 4Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth. 5Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! 6And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. Do you believe that your tongue is set on fire of hell? When that tongue moves out and begins to talk, do you believe that it is hell that is talking? That’s what God says. He says the tongue is like a fire. You know, you throw a little gasoline around here, touch this one over here, touch that there, touch that there, and you light this one and POOF! POOF! The whole place is on fire in seconds. This tongue is destroying the body of Christ and the work of the Lord and it must stop. You know why? If it doesn’t stop, I’m going to call down the judgment of God on the tongue. Yes. I have power in heaven and on earth to bind and to loose and if I go to God and say, “God, bring judgment down upon the tongues that are destroying the work in Mahomet, and over the whole nation and over the whole world!” My God, it’s going to work!
You know that everything that happens here, it’s in Germany, it’s everywhere! Huh? It’s all over the place within seconds. This is an age of fun. You know? Communication. Amen. I am saying to you, brethren, we’re going to have to rise up! There is destruction ahead of us. We were talking the other day. Why is it God allows certain things to happen? Do you know why? Because we have the power to stop them from happening. God gave the power into your hands and said, “You do it,” and we don’t do it. He said, “This man had his sword and his shield.” Abner; and David wept bitterly and said, “Abner died like a fool.” How does a fool die? A fool dies when he shouldn’t have died! He dies for nothing! He had his sword! The man should have pulled his sword, and not allow another man to come and kiss him and then run his sword into his heart. We will not die like fools. Brethren, believe you me, you will feel the power of God because we are going to ask God to put a judgement on the tongue. People must begin to behave according to the scripture. You know, one day I was trying to ask God to kill the devil, and the Lord said, “No, no, no, no, don’t you do that.” If God killed the devil, all of you would be dead. We’d all be dead, amen. So, then, when we ask God to put His judgment on the tongue, there are a lot of people who are going to be hit, and some of us, too, who did the asking. Amen! God wants us to be a Bible believing people. “I don’t believe duCille! I don’t believe everything he says. I believe part of what he’s saying and I don’t believe part of what he’s saying.” You have the privilege, that’s right! God said we must have the same Spirit, we must encourage the unity of the Spirit until we are come into the unity of the faith! You see what I mean. If you don’t believe some of what I’m saying, at least believe God. Believe God, and God is going to bring us into a oneness of belief because we have love one for another. Amen. But when you go and you begin to destroy other people, to tell other people this and that and the other, you are working as an agent of the devil! The Bible said that the tongue is set on fire of hell. Is that what the Bible said, or did I make a mistake? No. So then, it is a fire. 7For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: 8But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. 9Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. 10Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. 11Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? 12Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh. 13Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. 14But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. 15This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. 16For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. 17But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. Amen.
That’s the end of the message. Let me tell you the summary. God sent me here. God sent me to you. Whether you’re going to believe it or not, you are in trouble. You are in trouble. God called me, Jesus spoke to me, whether you want to believe it or not. It’s your business. Jesus sent me here. When I came to the United States, I asked, “WHO did you send me to? How will I recognize them?” God said, “Anyone who listens to the Word, believes the Word, that’s the person who I have sent you to.” You must decide who you are. If you are one of those chosen ones, you must decide now, because if you hear my voice, and if you believe what God has said to me to you, YOU have been tabbed as one who God has sent me to. God sent me to you. Now, if God sent me to you, and afterward you feel like rebelling, God’s going to handle you. Am I threatening you? I’m not threatening, am I? It doesn’t sound that way. I’m just telling you the truth. God is going to handle you. I’ve been going on for fifty years, I’ve seen God handle people that we have to beg and weep, “God, have mercy, don’t do that.” One person, God said, “Don’t you pray for that person anymore.” Amen. I’ve seen the hand of God work on them over the years, and I’ve seen what happens in the end. I am not threatening you. I am just saying that God has sent me to a people and God has called YOU to be that people, and God WANTS you to rise up and walk. Amen. Stop bickering, stop murmuring, stop chatting. It doesn’t matter who calls you and tells you about this and that and the other and wants to corrupt you and subvert you. You should be able to turn around and say, “But isn’t that contrary to what the Bible says?” Oh, yes.
I was at home one day and the phone rang and I answered the phone. “I am from the FBI, and my name is So-and-So-and-So. You have a neighbor by Such-and-Such a name. Can you tell me so-and-so-and-so-and-so about the neighbor? Could you talk to him?” I said, “Wait.” I said, “Yes, I know him quite well.” I said, “What I’ll do for you is that I’ll just tell him that you called me and asked me to talk to him.” He said, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no! That would defeat the whole thing!” I said, “Well, you see, that is exactly what I would do.” He said, “Alright, thank you.” Can’t use you. The devil can’t use you because you’re following Matthew chapter 18. I’m going to beg you, brethren, to follow that chapter, and to walk in truth and righteousness, for you’re a holy nation, a royal priesthood, and a peculiar people. Amen. God bless you in Jesus’ name.
Sonlight Devotional 