Omega Message – July 2000
Cecil J. duCille
(This message was given at the July 1991 Illinois Convention in Urbana Illinois.)
Praise God. Father, we commit our minds and hearts into Your precious hands this moment. We ask for Your revelation, Lord God. We ask for Your enlightenment, we ask for Your deliverance. Oh, Father God, we thank You for being here with us. We thank You Lord God that the heavenly host is here with us. We thank You Lord God that You will help our deliberations. Help our minds and help our hearts, not only to hear but also to imbibe. Help us, Lord God, to be changed by what we hear. And help us that we be not just hearers, but doers of the Word. We ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen. Praise be to God.
Many times, I ask God, why did He make us spirit, soul, and body. If we were just a spirit, then we would be all right, we would just be perfect. If we were just a soul, then we would be like animals, we would have no use but to eat, drink, be merry, and die. If we were all body, it would be just the same. God, however, said that He made us after His image, and He is making us in His likeness. That means, we were made and we are being made. We are not yet completed.
The one marvelous and wonderful thing about God that we can rejoice in is that God sees the beginning and the end together. He actually creates the end before He creates the beginning. That is, the result that He wants here, He creates a beginning to match the end. So, looking at your whole life, God has the beginning and the end right before Him, and He is looking at it! God knows where all of us are going to end up, and yet, because He is God, He still ministers to us; and He gives us the opportunity to change our course and change our lives, change our ending, although He knows what we are going to do. That is crazy (but wonderful) isn’t it?
Therefore, we are dealing with a God Who knows us in a way that we do not know ourselves, and He said that one day we will know as we are known (1 Corinthians 13:12). That is, we will know ourselves as He knows us.
He says that we are coming to a place spoken of in the book of Revelation as the “sea of glass.” Have you ever wondered what the sea of glass is in the tabernacle, or the temple? We are coming to the sea of glass wherein there will be nothing hid. Where, if you are at the bottom, you can look right through to the top! We will be able to see all through each other!
And I think of Jesus, and as I think of Him, my heart goes out to Him as a man. He must have really suffered! Do you know that? He is talking to a person and He sees what is in the person’s mind. He can see that the man is talking to Him with his mouth one thing, and his mind is saying another thing! Jesus had to bear it. Praise God. You talk about bearing our infirmities!
We go to pray, “Oh God! Help us please, Lord God…” and we go to sleep, or other things begin to come across our mind. He sees all kinds of trash coming across the mind. He is preaching the Word to people, and while He is preaching the Word, they are saying, “Yes, yes! Amen!” Yet their minds are saying, “I forgot the pot at home on the fire.”
God showed me that the men He has called are prone to distractions and they are prone to being turned off track because of the various cross influences that are like waves of the sea washing over us night and day. Can you see the fragility? Can you see how fragile we are in the presence of a God who knows all things? Then I went and said, “Thank you, God! Thank you that You did not tell me what tomorrow will be. Thank you that I am foolish and do not know what next year is going to bring, because I would start suffering from this year for the suffering of next year! I would start suffering today for the suffering of tomorrow! But, today I am glad because I am ignorant.”
God is glad, not because of tomorrow, but because of the end. When God made Adam, He said, “It is good!” (Genesis 1:31). He looked at him and His heart rejoiced, “This Adam is good!” He made him good. He knew that the man was going to fall the next day, but He did not tell Adam. He was just being good with him, and Adam was just rejoicing and being good. Do you know why God rejoiced at the goodness of Adam? He rejoiced because He saw the Adam at the beginning and He saw the Adam at the end, and there was an improvement. So He said, “It is good!” He did not care too much about what happened in between, for the Adam that God made is good.
In the book of Revelation, John saw all of us sitting here. John said he looked at the company of the overcomers, and they were all worshipping the Lord. He saw you! Before you were born, he saw you, and you were worshipping the Lord; and God said, “It is good. Let them be birthed.”
So, we are born in various, different circumstances. Some of us were born in darkness: “Lord, when I think of the night… my soul… in the past! It was so dark; it was so terrible; it was so hopeless!” Yet, God said, “It is good!” For God saw the end of it.
And although I cannot see the end of it, I am rejoicing in the end of it, for I know that God is seeing it. He said that all them that He called, He perfected (Ref. Romans 8:29-30). He said He called you because He already perfected you! He knows what you are going to go through!
Today we are up against the Church’s greatest battle up to this point, and I believe there will be no greater when we overcome. The reason is that we are just a few years from the end of this age, and according to my understanding, after the end of this age, Christ must come forth and walk and talk in human flesh and blood. And walk on the streets of the city and bring forth the glory of God; and mankind must see God walking through men! This is the promise. He said (in Jeremiah 31:33), “But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
This promise was made to Israel, and as God engrafted us into this Israel, we became a part of the promise. So God must, I say, God must bring forth this thing on earth before He finishes the job! He cannot finish this age until He has brought this thing to pass! God must be God, and we must be a kingdom of priests, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, and a peculiar people unto God (Ref. 1 Peter 2:9). You are not satisfied with what you are right now and I am not satisfied with what I am; and God is not satisfied! If you are not satisfied, God is not satisfied either.
So, brethren, we are at a place where God has shown us a problem. I will give you this vision that I had recently:
We were traveling on a road that ended, and there was no charted road to where we were going. So then, we started going across fields and across woodlands, and we were totally blocked by floodwaters. Flood waters! The Scriptures in Revelation 12 said that Satan would cast out floods of waters out of his mouth to drown the woman church. We came to a point where we could go no farther, and God showed us that there is only one alternative. We had no choice! We had to go on higher ground! That was our only hope, because all the plain was covered with flood waters and we could not walk through the flood. We had to go on higher ground.
As we started going up the side of this steep mountain, there was a contour (you know, how they make roads on mountains—the contour on the mountainside), and we could see that it might be a track that people would walk on before, but this was covered over with grass and weeds. (Nobody walked there for a long, long, time). Do you hear me, brethren? Nobody walked there! We are going into uncharted country. We are being led into a place where there is no compass to guide us. There is no road to guide us. The Holy Ghost in us is going to guide us, and that is going to be our only way to go!
Turn with me to Hebrews 11, and let us look at the last two verses there, and see if this has some indication of what is happening. Verse 39: “And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise.” Do you know what promise he is talking about? “And I will walk in them and I will talk in them…and ye shall be My people and I shall be your God.” They received not the promise. Verse 40, “God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.” In other words, these men overcame lions, they overcame all manner of evil that attacked them on earth, they were sawn asunder; some were killed in various ways, but none attained unto the stature of the overcomers that God must have in the end time!
What must these overcomers do? Let us turn to Revelation12, and Verse 7, “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”
This is a mystery, but let me explain this simple mystery for you. You know that the Bible, the Word of God, was written in seven mysteries, and these seven seals were broken to us one by one. This mystery that God is talking about here is the serpent in heaven occupying this human body—this heaven that God must live in forever, that God must walk in and God must talk in, and God must reign in!
I heard you singing, and when you sang songs about Jesus Christ being King and King Jesus reigning upon His throne, did you notice that there was life? Why do you think there was life? This is the word that God is saying to us: that He wants Jesus Christ alone to reign in this kingdom and that we must get the devil out! The devil must be cast out! God said He would send Michael, the archangel, the mightiest force in heaven, and it is not that Michael “will” come, but Michael “is” here helping us in our infirmities. Helping us to overcome the mighty devils that have been let loose, which were bound before but are now loosed and are giving us the hardest battle that mankind ever faced!
These devils have studied humanity. For six thousand years they have been studying man’s psychology. Learning what man is all about and how he functions. They have studied our biological function and believe me, brethren, the devils work to upset us biologically. They work on our hormones. You had better believe it! If they know you can be caught in this way, they concentrate on it, and for years and years this has been what we call the “trump card” of the devil. Now, you know, when you are playing cards and you play your trump card, you lose it! When you have played your trump card, you either become a winner or a loser at that point. Now, the devil is playing his highest card. He is playing his trump card, and he is about to lose it. He is going to lose it with some of us, but unfortunately with others he is going to win.
Whenever you have a vision of the spirit that is disturbing the Church at this time, you will see this spirit like a snake, a serpent. I do not know if any of you have ever seen that vision of a serpent, but this serpent generally wraps around the person from his waist downward, with its head up in his face. There is a meaning behind this picture. If I were talking to a crowd in Africa, immediately when you mention the serpent, they know what you are talking about. They know that you are going to talk about sexuality. You are going to talk about those human passions that have not been controlled. They know it! They understand it.
I notice here, they have a film that they show the children, and they call it “The Little Mermaid.” And some of you Christians let your children see this thing. It is, however, no little mermaid at all, but rather it is the symbol of the satanic spirit that rules over a great part of the world and which sometimes appears as a serpent.
The overcoming that we must do at this time is in this body. Let me draw here a picture. Here are these circles; the first one is God the Father. The second, God the Son. The third, the Holy Ghost; and the fourth, my spirit; the fifth, my soul; and the sixth, my body. In other words, I am drawing the chain of command that makes the human being godly. We have God the Father coming through Jesus Christ the Son, through the Holy Ghost, through man’s spirit, to his soul, and to his body. What I am trying to show here is that God the Father sent Jesus Christ, the Son; and the Son came in the Holy Spirit, into my spirit. Now, the problem is here between the soul and the spirit. The problem is to have God breaking through the veil that is between my spirit and my soul. There is a problem right there, between the spirit and the soul, that God is trying to break through. Now, He must minister to my mind, but the world is ministering to my mind, the carnal realm is ministering to my mind. My mind is being bombarded by all these things.
Now, it is not because your body is biologically in order that it functions, but your body functions because your mind tells your body what to do! Let me tell you of an experience I had. One day, I was welding a pipe, and my mind was far away. I put down the hot welding iron, and put my finger on it. My mind was so far away that it was only when I smelled flesh burning that I all of a sudden realized that my finger was burnt, horribly burnt until it was crisp. Immediately, out of my mouth came, “I shall not feel this! In the name of Jesus, I shall not feel this!” And I did not feel it!
So, I was running into the room to my wife to show her how my finger was so badly burned. Yet I was not feeling any pain, and it was because of the Spirit of God. When I let her see my finger to show her how burnt it was, I was ashamed—the finger was totally healed! There was no burn at all, and that was a symbol to me of what the power of Christ working through your mind could do.
The mind is on top of the body, therefore the sins of the body are not coming from this body here, but it is coming from the way you think! Satan discovered the function of the human body and the human being, and he decided that what he was going to do was to get us to think a certain way. If he could get you to think a certain way then he would get you to do what he wants you to do. So, in the world we began to think a certain way. The thinking of the man of sin is that he becomes a sexual creature. His wife becomes a thing to be used. I am not saying that some women are not like that also, but I am saying that if the men take the lead in anything they are going to make a difference, for the women cannot overcome this situation alone.
People who get married have certain ideas planted in their minds. “I am marrying so that I can have a picnic; so that I can have a ball. That I can live morning, noon, and night to satisfy my carnal desires.” Do you know what happens? You find that sometimes you are talking to a person, and something is in their mind apart from what you are saying. He wants to get home. Why does he want to get home quickly? Because he has something in his mind that he wants to go and have a good time with his wife at home.
I am talking about Christians! You see, what shocked me is when God revealed to me that Christians are involved in sexual promiscuity, just as the world is; and that Christians are committing sin in their lives, as Christians, believing that they have a license to do that which should have been the world’s business! Do you understand me?
A situation I have discovered among the brethren is that the men are “dull.” They are not leaders in the things of God. They are not coming forth as God leads men into righteousness and into glory and into power. We are not marching upon the hilltop. It is because there is an image in their mind. Let us read about it. Turn with me to Ezekiel 8:1.
“And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in mine house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, that the hand of the Lord GOD fell there upon me.”
What is he saying here in this verse? Listen to what he is talking about. You read this chapter and how it says that this happened in the sixth month of the sixth year, and on the fifth day of the month—you must know that it has a meaning. God is not going to waste words. He is talking about man (six), man (six), and ministry (five)! Yes! He is saying it is the sixth month of the sixth year, and the fifth day of the month. Now, six speaks of “man,” and five of “ministry,” so Ahh!—The ministry! He is going to deal here in this chapter with the ministry. He said, “…the elders of Judah sat before me,” and “the hand of the Lord fell there upon me.” It is like what I was telling you about Jesus. He is talking to His disciples and He sees house business rising up in their minds while talking to them. What a terrible thing it is! What a terrible thing it is to have the flesh in the forefront of one’s mind. The Lord told the Jews to bind the “Word” upon their foreheads. They did it literally; we should do it spiritually.
This is why God has not given us that “clear” vision that we could see through one another. Some of us would not have the strength. We would despise one another for what we are. You see, some of us only love one another because we do not know one another. Some of us are only buddy-buddy, nicey-nicey, because we do not know the thoughts that go through one another’s mind. Thank God, that we do not know it, but one day we will know as we are known. When things are purer, we will be able to take it more.
So, it says here Verse 2, “Then I beheld, and lo a likeness as the appearance of fire: from the appearance of his loins even downward, fire; and from his loins even upward, as the appearance of brightness, as the colour of amber.”
Even this says something to me. The appearance from the “loins” down: “fire”; and the appearance from the “loins” up: “brightness.” That means that God is showing you a picture of the problems that beset humanity from the very beginning until now. You believe me, sexuality is a human problem, and this is one of the chief areas in which God is bringing a people to overcome! And if this people do not overcome it, we are not going to make it! There is no way that the image of jealousy can stand in the temple of God at the north gate, saith the Lord, and provoke God to jealousy, and then Jesus Christ descend in the same temple! No Sir! The “image of jealousy” is standing in the exact spot where Jesus Christ should be!
Well, let us go on—maybe I am jumping the gun a little. Verse 3, “And he put forth the form of an hand, and took me by a lock of mine head; and the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate that looketh toward the north; where was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy.” There is a provocation in us that is provoking God to jealousy. Let us read about it:
Verses 4 and 5, “And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, according to the vision that I saw in the plain. Then said he unto me, Son of man, lift up thine eyes now the way toward the north. So I lifted up mine eyes the way toward the north, and behold northward at the gate of the altar this image of jealousy in the entry.”
He saw this image of jealousy, sitting in the entry gate of the temple, so that God cannot get in. Our bodies are the temple of God. Do we understand that? I am saying, brethren, that there is a block in us as a people. Those who are not married want to be married, because they want to have a good time and they think of it in this way. Those who are married, are married and have this as number-one in their minds. Very few of us have Jesus Christ as number-one. Believe you me, most of us have this number-one thing that would crop upon us night and day! Night and day! It is like worship! We worship “Tammuz”!
But, wait, I am running ahead. Verse 6, “He said furthermore unto me, Son of man, seest thou what they do? even the great abominations that the house of Israel committeth here, that I should go far off from my sanctuary? but turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations.”
You see, this image that stands in the doorway is preventing the Christ from coming into His temple. When we were young, we married young, and God began to deal with us when we were young, and we got rid of that devil when we were young. Somebody says, “Oh, that is an old man talking to us!” You have never been an old man, and you do not know how old men feel, but let me tell you how old men feel. Old men are worse than young men are, because they cannot control it! What you do not overcome in your youth, you will not overcome in your old age. If you never learned how to let the Spirit of God stand over your spirit, your spirit over your soul, and your soul over your body—you are a loser! Because man was made to control himself!
I used to do animal husbandry, and one thing you notice about animals is that they have a “time.” They have a time when they come on heat, and you know that that is the time in the cycle that God has provided for them for the procreation of their species. Man has no time. His time comes in his mind. He controls his body, his life, and his movement by his mind. If you let your mind loose and do not control it, you will be a person out of control! You will be taken by every wind of doctrine! Every devil that comes along will blow you his way!
You ask me, “But, how do I control?” You control by suffering. Did you know that? You control by suffering. You see the food, and you say, “I am not going to eat! I am dying of hunger, but I will not eat because my mind says, ‘I must not eat.’” When I was a young man, this is the way I was trained by God—to not eat sometimes. Any young man that does not fast and train his body to obey his spirit and his mind, is a person who is heading for trouble! You must be trained! There is no way around it! You must have food and refuse to eat.
It is not every time that you feel for something that you must have it. You must tell this body, “You must obey me!” For God has put you in a position to control your body. If you are a glutton, the Bible (Proverbs 23:1-2) says, “When you get to the King’s table, take the knife and put it to your throat.” Let us have a funeral. Oh, yes! Do not eat when you get to the king’s table! behave
yourself! Let that mind control that body, for this body is a servant and this servant must obey its master.
We go on. Beginning at Verse 7, “And he brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold a hole in the wall. Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door. And he said unto me, Go in, and behold the wicked abominations that they do here. So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, pourtrayed upon the wall round about.”
What is that? You say, “But, I have no idols!” May God Almighty help us! May God Almighty help us! What is it that is keeping you away from absolute surrender to Christ Jesus in all things? What is it? Where is your idol?
I mean, I can see idols here. Just lift up your eyes in the Spirit and you will see the idols. Oh, praise be to God! I go out on the street and it is very simple to see the idols out there. The people put on clothes to dress like their idols. Oh yes, and you can easily pick them out; but the church people have a time to cover up, especially when they come into service, and you do not see their idols very easily. However, if you look in the Spirit, you can see the idols. What is it that is keeping you from walking perfectly in the Spirit of God, so that you have a satisfaction in your spirit that, “I have done the will of my Father!” What is it? That is your idol! Do you hear me?
He is telling you here to dig in the hole in “your” wall (because you are the “son of man” here, you know; this passage of Scripture is speaking of you and so it is YOUR wall). Dig a little deeper and you will see your idols; and you will know that some of these idols are so secretly placed that we never know them. Sometimes it takes somebody to come and smite you before you will find out the terrible thoughts that can come in your mind. Yes! Suicide! Murder—all that! You would not believe that you have those in you, would you? But let somebody kill your child, let somebody do something to your child, let somebody walk over you in the way that destroys your life, and you will find all these wicked demons coming up in your soul. You did not know that they were there before.
God is speaking to these idols. He said he saw, but he had to dig in the wall and find a secret door. Amen! He had to dig in the wall and find that secret door, and God will always open a hole for you to start your digging. God is opening a hole for us to start our digging.
“We cannot go where we must go if we do not do this thing today, saith the Lord!”
Yes! Verses 11 and 12, “And there stood before them seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every man his censer in his hand;” (Ha? …Very “holy” men) “and a thick cloud of incense went up. Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? for they say, The LORD seeth us not; the LORD hath forsaken the earth.”
Because your mind is your own, because I do not see what you are thinking, because I do not see what you are feeling, you feel that you are safe. We feel that we are safe because nobody else knows that we lusted over here, or we desired over there. It is all in your mind!
I remember as a young man, one of the great testings that I received. I had told God to take my life unless I was going to live holy. If He saw that I was not going to live holy, He must “Kill me now!” I said, “God, I am going to give you a chance to kill me! I will neither eat nor drink water for forty days. Kill me!” I am talking about people who mean business with God, whose life does not mean anything to them compared to gaining that thing which God has ordained for them.
Well, God did not kill me, as you might notice. He brought me alive again after this terrible ordeal, but it gave a deathblow. After this happened, I went to bed one night and got up struggling in my sleep because something was choking me. I was struggling in my sleep, and when I woke up I was still being choked, and I was still struggling. I found out that there was a girl on top of me. She had crept into the room. She had come in naked, got on top of me and held me, and she felt that she could overcome me in that way.
The first thing that happened, as I came to consciousness, was anger. Why should she believe that I would cast away God for her! She did not respect the power of my salvation. I overcame that night, but I still lost the church and my name. Do you know why? Because a woman refused is a savage creature. She went out and told everybody how she slept with me; and my dignity would not allow me to defend myself against the tongues of my accusers.
I want you to understand that if you are in a condition where a naked woman could come in and take you, you are in a bad shape. I know many of us are in that shape. You have to get to the point where it would not phase you, it would not affect you. You have to get to that point, and you can only get to that point if you allow Christ Jesus to come into your mind and to control your body, so that your body will not obey any other master but your mind; and your mind, your spirit; and your spirit, the Holy Spirit!
It is peculiar! We feel very spiritual here, don’t we? Don’t we feel very spiritual? We are in the place of worship and we are praising God, and we are sons of God, and so and so. However, if God allows him, Satan could send a man in here, and just open his hand and give some of us one good wallop, and it would be enough to put you clean out of the Spirit! Yes! you will be cussing in no time. You would be ready to kill him in no time.
Satan comes in here, and a man comes in and takes up one of your children and just kicks him and beats him, and Lord—you lose it! We are too vulnerable! We must be above that! We must be in the place where we can stand temptation, and we can rebuke the devil, and walk out unscathed!
If there is anything in your life that the devil can use to upset you, you are in trouble, because he is going to use it. One day, when he is ready for you—when his psychology tells him that you are vulnerable—he is going to use it. Do you understand me?
In my youth, I used to be a fighter. I loved to box; I loved to fight. I used to fight on the streets. Even after coming to Jesus Christ, the demon of fight still was there. I did not get rid of it so easily. I discovered that I had this devil still, because I felt my ears “getting hot” when certain people disturbed me. (You must notice these things about yourselves.) I said to God, “I cannot live like this! I am not living with this ancestral demon! I am not going to live with this demon that my father had; that my father’s father had! I am not going to live with this. I do not want it!”
I started fasting. No sooner had I finished the fast, and a young man came up to my desk. I am at my desk working, he is at his desk working, and I am telling him that he is not doing well at all. All of a sudden, I see a fist coming towards my chin. He began to beat on me! (Now remember, I do not remember ever losing a fight in my life, because I was wild. I never tried to get into fights; I always tried to get away from it; but once I got into a fight, it was for keeps.) Now, his guy comes and he is just throwing at me—and then the worst part about it was he was not good. You know, I could know when a man is a good fighter, but he was not good at all! I decided that he was not going to hit me in my face, because I was not too sure of me. (Do you hear me? I was not sure of me!) And when he made a blow at my head, I would move away and move around, and I did not let him hit me. But he was driving into my body, and I was praying, “Oh, God, don’t let me hit him. Oh God, help me!” I won! Hallelujah!
He finished beating and went to his seat. I did not even report him, because if I reported him I could fire him right away from the job. I did not do him anything. I laughed! It was the first day of my victory! Praise God!
Remember now, after this message you are going to get hit. After this message, if you decide to stand, you are going to get hit! Because, the devil came to God and said, “Now, the only reason why Job is so good is because you have not really allowed me to let loose on him. You let me get a hold of his children and see what he will do. He will curse you to your face.” But God saw Job’s beginning, God saw Job’s continuation, and God saw Job’s end. So, He said, “Go ahead.” Hallelujah!
And the mighty Satan—he could not beat Job! Satan was an archangel. In Ezekiel 28, it says that he was among the “stones of fire.” Satan could not beat a common, natural, ordinary man! He could not whip him! He tried everything. He put him down on his back in ashes and sores suffering for three long years, and he could not beat Job! He could not get Job to curse God, and that was the thing he wanted Job to do. Now, you have come, and God says, “You can overcome.” Every one of us here can overcome!
Now, let us read a little more in Ezekiel, and then I will give you some more here. So, it is in the “chambers of our imagery,” it is in our mind that the problem lies. Verse 13, “He said also unto me, Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations that they do. Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the LORD’S house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz.” Women weeping for Aphrodite; women weeping for Tammuz.
You know, Tammuz, this god of sex, is the god that they weep for at Easter. I do not know if some of you understand all these things, but at Easter they would fast for forty days—we call it Lent now. The heathen would spend forty days fasting and afflicting their souls because of the death of Nimrod, who they called Tammuz. They would weep for forty days, and on what we would call Easter (resurrection) morning they would come out with dances and flowers, and they would give their bodies unto fornication as a tribute to Tammuz.
You say, “Oh, we in this modern time, we do not do those kinds of things,” but how many young girls are weeping in their secret places over this Tammuz? They want to be married, they want to have their own husbands; and when they say they want to, they are not thinking of serving God, they are not thinking of having someone to serve God with, but they are thinking of having pleasures. How many married people live for nothing but having this pleasure? Men and women, going to excess—morning, noon, and night! Living upon nothing but this sexual urge that is driving them.
For some people, they think of sex more than they do. It is almost a twenty-four hour operation! Your minds are being blocked by a spirit!
I am not just talking about sex, you know. I am talking about a spirit that works many different things. ANGER! I have known a Christian brother that threatened his wife with divorce, because the poor woman was worn out. He threatened her with divorce because she was worn out and she could not go with him. Do you understand me? Eventually, they had to be divorced. Yes!
Do you not understand what the Bible shows, that God gave Eve to Adam, that they should live in unity. That they should become one. That, if my hand is paining, I do not demand that my hand lift a hundred pounds! I sympathize with my hand, and although I want to lift the weight, I say, “No, let me suffer! Let me suffer!” The Bible says in Ephesians that the marriage between man and woman is as Christ and the Church, who gave Himself for the Church! Isn’t that what the Word of God says? You must give yourselves! Men, you must give yourselves for your wives. Wives, you must give yourselves for your husbands; and when the husbands are busy with the things of the Lord, encourage them!
You must have principle in your lives. (Now, I am talking here to both the men and the women.) You cannot go on a mission with the gospel and be involved in marital relationships at the same time. I am saying this because God shows that the way He made man is that man can only concentrate fully upon one thing at a time! The Bible says [in 1 Corinthians 7:5] that you must fast and give yourselves to the things of the Lord, and then come back together, by agreement, so that the devil does not tempt you!
Don’t you understand what is happening? Satan has studied the human race. When he looks down and he sees a spot of darkness there, he is going to use it. He is using this as his greatest weapon to destroy homes! We have never seen so many homes destroyed as now. Brethren, I know I am not telling you anything that most of you do not know for yourselves. Christian men and women who want to serve God with all your heart—you are having struggles to keep your house together, because Satan is bombarding your marriage and your lives!
Many of us will not talk. We hide it. But you do not hide it from me. I look at your face, and I look at your wife’s face, and I see either that she has given up and she has resigned herself to living the rest of her life on a low plain, or I see terror! The woman is sick, but she must perform. That is the way some of our Christian men are doing. You know what that means? Let me tell you what it means. It means that if that woman dies or is sick, or something is wrong with her, that you are going to fall. You have to go somewhere else. Because you have trained yourself in a wrong, awful habit.
And, do you know what? On top of it, you get a devil, to help you. Many of the marriages have devils in them! There is a devil driving the man …driving the woman! It is not one or two women that complain to me, that they are in terror. Oh, yes! A woman very close to me came to me and told me of the terror, of the terror of her husband. She loves him, she wants him to be with her, but there is a terror in living with him because he is taken by a devil; and the devil is driving him, just like a cigarette smoker; like a drug user; like a drinker. It is no better.
You see, I would be ashamed and I would not be preaching this to Christian men and women had I not known too much. Unless we stop walking by the law (the law says, “You are my wife! You must obey me, and so and so…”) and unless we start walking on a higher plain, we are lost! One of these days soon, I believe and I expect Jesus Christ to descend suddenly in His temple, in order that the world might be delivered! And some of us will be out of it, because the image of jealousy is standing at the north gate blocking the way for the King to come in. Yes sir! The King cannot come in because the door is blocked by the image of jealousy!
I hope we can repent. If we cannot repent, it means that we have passed repentance. We have gone too far.
Verse 16, “And he brought me into the inner court of the LORD’S house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the LORD, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east.”
Now, this depicts the Easter worship and how, you know, on Easter morning you go and worship. It says that the men of God had turned their backs upon the altar of God, and started worshipping the sun. We are talking about people who are worshipping their church, their religion, their holiness, their goodness before God. (“We are ministers of the Lord…!”)
You should not doubt me (what I am saying here) when you see what is happening around you—that ministers are falling like falling stars. The reason why they are falling is because their perspective has not been right from the very beginning; and God has been calling to them, talking to them, and trying His best to move them, and could not move them. The fall that you see is not when the fall came. The fall came long ago, but God is only now allowing it to be shown us. I have been in the church for forty [Note: It is now fifty] plus years, and I remember, way down there we had ministers all along who were falling, falling, falling, falling, falling—but the church covered it up. The church says, “You must not talk it out.” The church says, “Don’t let the world know,” and they put them away quietly. The world is now knowing about some of it, but it is only because it has grieved God to His heart. And there is going to be a shower. There is going to be a shower! Many falling! Because, you see, God is displeased with His people.
Now, it needs repentance; but let me show you from history what has happened. Let us turn back to David. You know what happened to David. Remember, the Bible says that God testified that David was “a man after His own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22). He said David was a man after His own heart, meaning to say that David’s heart was right with God. So, what was wrong? David went up on his roof, and he looked down into another man’s house and saw his wife taking a bath; and His lust was so strong that he had to send and capture her—another man’s wife!
Now, can you explain to me, what was wrong with David? Let me tell you, the same thing that was wrong with David is the same thing that is wrong with a lot of us. Our minds are not consecrated. When the mind is consecrated, it means that it is taken off all the things out there and it is put onto Christ. He said, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee” (Isaiah 26:30). You go and you buy a steak and you put it in your refrigerator, and you go to work. All day, doing your work, you do not think about the steak that you are coming home to eat, do you? You just do not think about the steak that you are coming home to, but this is the problem: that men continuously think about the woman; women continuously think about the man. And this is a sin before God which is destroying us, because the problem is in the way we think! Amen?
Now, we think of Solomon; and I want you to read a little bit about Solomon. Let us turn to 1 Kings, Chapter 11, and I am soon going to be through; but I want a response from you. Maybe the response is that we should just pray and call out, “God have mercy upon us.” But, I want a response.
1 Kings 11:1-3, “But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites; Of the nations concerning which the LORD said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart.”
Somebody says, “Oh, no! I wouldn’t have seven hundred,” but have you ever considered how many hundred you have looked at? Have you ever considered how many hundreds of times that your mind strayed after them? When Solomon looked at one, he would say, “Bring her!” His men would go out and bring her, and that is how it went. However, listen to this: Verse 4, “For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, (Didn’t I tell you something about the ‘old’ man?) that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father.”
Listen to Verse 5, “For Solomon went after Ashtoreth” (Lord help us! You need to go home, take your dictionary, and look up “Ashtoreth” and all the sexual gods) “…the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.” Do you know that to serve these gods you had to enter into their temple and perform what they call sacramental fornication? This is what Solomon did. He went into their houses and the house of Isis, the place where men and women had orgies.
It is a terrible thing to think of, because these things flash to my mind. I see the brethren having orgies. Now, that is bad! You could not think of that! You would say, “Oh, no, no, no!” Well, you believe me, brethren, that I am seeing farther than you can see, right at this time. That the people of God—many of us are out of control, and this is what is killing our spiritual life!
Verses 7-8, “Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon. And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods.”
This is what is happening in our hearts. We are being separated from God because we allow this one great powerful demon to exercise his authority over us. We must be delivered from this god, from this worship, in order to serve God in Spirit and in truth. And believe you me, I am in a position to talk to you about this.
When Jesus Christ spoke to the disciples in the 19th chapter of Matthew He was speaking about divorce. Let us look at that. In Verse 7, the Pharisees said unto Him, “Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.” The abundance of sin is what caused divorce. The abundance of sin causes divorce! A man has his wife, and the wife goes out and mixes herself with someone else! Immediately, she breaks the marriage bond between them.
And that man is in trouble! He is in trouble. If he wants to serve God, he cannot mix himself with harlotry; and if he wants to serve God, he will have to try to regain her to Christ!
When you girls think about marriage, think about these things. A man comes and he makes a commitment before God and before the people—that man must have a firm spiritual nature imbedded in him, so that you will know that he is not going to break that commitment.
When you marry a woman, you must make sure that you marry someone who has a firm commitment; one who is rooted and grounded in the character of God, so that she is not going to break that commitment!
It is because we are being tried now! All of our foundations are being shaken! All of our foundations are being shaken and God is saying to us, “Stand! Stand now, if you can stand!” If you cannot stand now, then you will be among those who end up on the sidelines. We want to be the overcomers that God speaks about. Every one of us here has the capacity to be an overcomer, and God is saying to us, “Overcome this body first!”
Don’t try to go overcome anybody out there!” You know, some of us want to overcome spirits—”We are overcomers! We command you in the name of Jesus to depart!” You know, that sort of thing! I tell you, the overcomer is going to overcome his body! Because the body is a wild beast that will get loose and try to control you! And it might not be in this way, but it might be in another way. We need to overcome our emotions.
You know, there were two men in the Bible that God speaks about as not being able to control their children. They let their children loose in the things of God to destroy God’s work. One of these men was Samuel. Apart from Jesus, of course, he was one of the most perfect men in the whole Bible. The most perfect man in the whole Bible, and he appointed his children as judges over Israel, when they were not judge quality at all! Do you know that that is one of the reasons that you do not see my children here? That is one of the reasons that you do not see my children here, because I would not appoint them to positions in the church. I could have kicked them upstairs. They know more than probably anybody else does here in the gospel. I could kick them upstairs and get them functioning in the things of the Lord. No, Sir! They must come to the standard of holiness and where it is God Who gives them that position.
The other man in the Bible was Eli. God sent a message to Eli, and said, “If you don’t set your sons in order, I am going to kill you and destroy your whole household in one day.” And can you imagine, Eli said, “Well, you are God…do what you want.”
What a presumption! “Do as you please, God… You are God.” Would you say that? He should have gone down in sackcloth and ashes, calling the elders of Israel concerning his sons, “Arrest them!” That is what he should have done! But, his emotions (talk about the old man again), the old man had not controlled those emotions when he was a young man, and he could not control them as an old man.
Yes! Let us go back to Matthew 19 and Verse 9. Jesus is speaking to His disciples and He says, “And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.” I believe that adultery is not the unpardonable sin. I believe you can get forgiveness for adultery, but I also believe that you need to seek forgiveness.
Verse 10, “His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.”
Hear the answer Jesus gave in Verses 11-12: “But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.”
Praise be to God! The answer was “eunuchs.” In other words, everybody who is normal, God expects you to be married and to have a wife, and to walk in holiness at the same time.
God sent Jehu to take vengeance upon the house of Ahab because of the wickedness of Ahab, and in 2 Kings 9:30 here comes Jehu riding in. He looked up there, and it was the day of judgment for Jezebel. He looked up there and he saw Jezebel, who looked through the window and saw him. He called to the men up there, and he said, “Throw her down!” They could not. Jezebel had gone in and painted her face; she put on her war paint and was looking like a doll, and came out and smiled at the men, and they could not throw her down. But, Jehu saw a eunuch up there (Now, Jezebel could not charm the eunuch for the eunuch has no use for Jezebel), and he said, “Throw her down!” The eunuch tossed her down like a log!
Don’t you understand what that story means? God wants you to be eunuchs for the kingdom of God’s sake—men and women who cannot be charmed. Men and women who cannot be tempted. Men and women who have gone above temptation, because THEIR mind is set on Christ!
God help us, God, help us, in Jesus’ Name. Oh, God, help us….
Sonlight Devotional 