Sonlight Devotional

[Printable version]

Omega Message – November 2005

Burt Asbill

(Message given July 2nd, 2005 at the Sonlight Gospel Conference at Mahomet Illinois)

Father, we are so very thankful that we have this opportunity to come before You, to come to Your dining table.  Father, there is so much that needs to be done within us as a people and so little time, it seems, to do it. But, Father, we know that by the Spirit and as we submit ourselves to the process of deliverance, Father, as we open our hearts and our minds unto You, if we are willing to release our soul into Your care, Father, if we are able to have the faith to believe the reality of the eternal that is around us and in us, then there is the possibility, Father, of accomplishing and doing all those things that need to be done in this hour, for this people. Father, there is a plan, there is a purpose that Thou have concerning the culmination of the ages. And, Father, in our finite minds it is impossible for us to comprehend the magnitude of it or even the timeframe of it. But, Father, we know by the Spirit and the urgency of the Word that is upon our heart and the pressure that we feel, Father, with regard to our need for You, oh Father, there is a door that You will open for us, or open for anyone who desires to enter therein. 

So it is, Father, that we present ourselves to You this evening.  We want to bring every thought into subjection. You see my trepidations.  You see my positions of inadequacy, totally and absolutely incapable of communicating, Father, the thoughts and the things that are upon my heart unless You give me the words and the flow and the unction of the Spirit.  So it is that we ask of You, Father, to pour out Your oil upon us.  Pour it out upon this vessel, Father, that the mind might work above and beyond its capability.  Father, anoint the ears of the hearer.  So often the words spoken are not the intent or the reality of the administration in the Spirit, but if the ears are anointed, oh God, there is the ability for comprehension and understanding. And so it is, Father, that we commit ourselves to You this evening.  I commit myself. I commit these that are here present.

Father, we want not just another message, not just another word.  We don’t want to tickle the ears or the senses of intellectualism, but we want the reality of the living God. 

We want to come against every spirit that is in opposition to this Word, Father, because I know that if we can comprehend the totality of what is being spoken, we will bring the devil down to a place of destruction, not just individually here and there, but, Father, collectively, as a people that would rise up without breaking their ranks, but steadfast and sure, having their hearts set like a flint, having their soul fixed upon You and the reality of having You in that place of preeminence ever before them and around them.  Just help us this evening, I pray, in Jesus’ name, amen.

Mt 3:1 “In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea,”

2 “And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

3 “For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

There is a word that the Lord has given me that I have been preaching for the last six to eight months. I have said it before and I will say it again. I don’t know that He will give me another word before He comes. I really believe that we are standing in the time frame of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. I believe that the imminent return gos­pel is a gospel that is quite scriptural. You see it in all of the gospels. You see it in all of the writings of the different writers of the gospel, Paul’s in particular.  Then when you go into the books of John, one, two and three, John is again referring to that imminent coming of Jesus Christ. But unlike John, who seemingly was in the beginning of the end, I be­lieve that we are living in the end of the end. I don’t really know whether John thought or knew that he was in the beginning of the end or if he thought he was in the end of the end. But nevertheless, the Word that he was preaching, and the Word that he was teaching brought a soberness, I believe, upon those that were hearing it. There must have been some­thing of a reality that was being ministered to their souls with regard to the message that he was bringing, in spite of the fact that Jesus Christ has tarried yet for several thousand more years. I believe that it is writ­ten in Hebrews when it talks about those who would not receive deliver­ance because of the hope of a better resurrection, that they were listen­ing to the gospel of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. And in that listening to the gospel of the imminent return, though we now know that Jesus Christ was not to come for several thousand more years, they were given the strength to endure and to press on and to assure for themselves a position, a place in the resurrection when it came.

Would to God that this church could have such tenacity.  Would to God that this church could have such determination. Would to God that this church had the vision and the ability to see beyond this realm of the natural arena in which they live. Would to God that this church had the revelation of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. I think that if we had the revelation rooted and grounded within us, then we would have a healthy fear of the fact of Him coming and us being found in a place of lack concerning our attitudes, our positions, our disposition, our place of service and the things that we count so important that oftentimes hinder us from moving into the realm of God because of the comfort or the security that they bring to us in this realm.

I think one of the things that gave the church so much power in the times of the apostles was their reality of the message. The reality of that message wasn’t, I believe, something that was just in the preacher’s heart. I think there was an administration of that reality in the midst of the congregation that caused them to rise up with the preacher and begin to work and labor toward the position, toward the place of that eternal­ness of God. Hallelujah. I think that God is once again raising up the voice of John. I think God is once again resurrecting the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make straight His paths” (Mt 3:3)

Let us not be as children. Let us not be as children. Let us not be as men or women or children that love the environment in which we find ourselves placed, but let us be hungry for those things that seem as though they were impossible to attain. The attitude of the church today should be nothing less than the attitude of God’s servant Abraham, who went out looking for a city whose builder was the great Jehovah (He 11:10).

There are two destinies that you and I have before us. We live in an element called time, but time is surrounded by an entity that is called eternity.  Moreover, time has one purpose and one purpose only.  Time has the responsibility of bringing to us the reality of eternity because every­thing in time is temporal, and without the revela­tion of Jesus Christ, who is the eternal, then

we are men and women, or a church, most miserable. Many of us have used Jesus Christ as an escape mechanism by which we might have some assurance, some position of confidence that, at the end of our time, we might have the benefits of what is called “the eternal.”

The purpose of God was not just to save you out of an element that is temporal so that you might enjoy the eternal. The idea of God was to use time that is temporal to create within you the ability to be eternal, but it is sad to say that there are many of us who settle for the temporal. For one reason or another we settle for the temporal. We do not seem to understand the reality of it.

I have been chewing on this Word for many weeks, and I want to share a little of what Elohim is speaking to me about it. Let me say that it is really with much trepidation, not necessarily so much for yourselves as it is for me, that I share with you today, because I know that with the Word comes a responsibility. There is a responsibility to be­gin to utilize it. One of the problems with the church is that they don’t take what God has given it and use it a s it was intended to be used.

THE WHOLE INTENT OF THE WORD

IS TO CHANGE YOU AND ME IRREVOCABLY.

We put it in our filing cabinet of spiri­tuality and sometimes pull it out in the appropriate places. The whole intent of the Word is to change you and me irrevocably.  Do you know the whole reason for being saved is to be changed? Did you know that? It says that when you are saved, you are translated (Colossians 1:13). That means that you are removed from one position and brought into the realm of another existence, another realm, another position, something that is foreign to you in the environment in which you have been born, without and within.

The whole purpose of God from the very beginning was to make us something other than what we are. It was to bring us the reality of the supernatural, as we call it. To God, it is just God.  God had a desire to create Himself within us, to expand our position, our potential, our abil­ity to comprehend and to understand. It is really a shame that we labor so hard for things that have no lasting value.

Do you know I was in London in the church of England and a man got up and began to minister on a word out of the gospels? A word which was talking about laboring for the meat that perisheth (Jn 6:27). But his idea was to fleece the sheep. He didn’t have the concept or the reality of what God was talking about, but it caused me to begin to ask God for the reality of the thing that the scriptures proclaim.

We spend so much of our time, so much energy, so much of everything that we are, just to stay alive. Do you know that that precept is contrary to the Word of God?  Do you know that dying is the concept, is the precept? Do you know that death to self is not a metaphorical phrase? It is not something that is uttered for the sake of that which is symbolic. God intends for you to die. Yet we spend so much time trying to preserve what we think is life. Some of us go through life year after year after year sitting under the auspices of this Word and yet, never grasp the reality of the life that is in it.

You talk about authority.  Do you want to know what authority is? Do you want to know of the authority that Brother duCille was talk­ing about last night? It is an understanding of the concept and the pre­cept that God wrote in ink or in blood on pages and put it in a book that He called “Bible.” That’s authority.  But that authority is only obtained if you are willing to die. It is death to self in actuality, working in our flesh that can give to us an understanding.

Eph 1:18 “The eyes of your understanding being enlightened…”

Whose understanding? My understanding. Your understand­ing. Our understanding. Paul wrote “that you might comprehend” (Ephesians 3:18). Well, we want to comprehend so we can preach.  We want to comprehend so we can display our knowledge. We want to comprehend so that we have something that gives us some sense of se­curity, that brings some sort of hope that we might be able to hang on until the end. How many of you are just hanging on? Just hanging on. Some of you by the shreds of your fingernails. Just hanging on. Some of you are not even hanging on. You are just gaily walking through it, not aware of the authority that you have in the concept of the Word that has been delivered to the Church.

The Word has the power to change you.  The Word has the power to change your environment. The Bible says:

Mt 17:20 “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”

Faith is not just a metaphorical word to describe a super-duper, fuzzy-wuzzy feeling.  It is a word that describes a realm and a reality of the things of the Spirit and the fact that there is an intent and a thought that God has and the world spins on the basis of that thought and that intent.

You know, they can’t explain it.  Do you know that? Science can’t explain why the earth just hangs out there. They can’t explain it. They can’t explain it!  They have some of the greatest minds and they have such intelligence that I would seem like a poor, pathetic moron in their presence. They would use words and things that I could not hope to ever understand and yet they can’t explain why the world just sits there and spins and goes around and around and around! Why does it do that? I don’t know. They give you the XYZ stuff but it just sits there and spins. They can’t explain it.  God says it does it by faith. The world you are standing on is there because of faith! I am glad it is not my faith. We would all have earthquakes. We would have all kinds of natural disas­ters. I am glad it is not your faith. I am glad it is His faith!

There is something of a comprehension that God has hidden from us, there is a veil that shrouds the mysteries of Yahweh, it seems. Do you know that? There is a veil over our minds that only you and I have a power to break. It says of Jesus in Hebrews that the veil had to be rent before He could go into the Holy of Holies. Hallelujah. God has given into our hands that ability to comprehend, if we are willing to move into the realm of experiences that are uncomfortable, that are out of sync with how we think, and how we feel and what we want. If we are willing to die. With that death, I believe, we receive understanding.  My mother used to say to me, “Burt, you are your own worst enemy.”  And I have begun to look at “me” as my number one enemy.  Number one enemy.  Do you hear me? Any confrontation, any clash, any position of resistance, any kind of discomfort, any time that I want to move con­trary, I begin to look at me.  You see, I don’t want “me” to be preemi­nent. I don’t want “me” to be prevailing in any set of circumstances to bring forth “me”! What I want is a demonstration of the awareness of God and the intent of God! You see, God had an intent.  Do you hear me? God had an intent. It just so happens, in the process of time, I was born within the family of Asbill, but I want to tell you something.  Asbill was a temporary residing place. The realm in which I was born, the economy in which I was born, the philosophical doctrines of that economy were nothing but a temporal thing that needed to be shed. Like a snake sheds its skins, I needed to shed “me.” Do you hear me? That I walk out of that position of my carnality and subjugation into a place of authority.

It is not difficult.  It is not difficult.  The difficulty comes be­cause there are some things that we want. Some of us want security. Some of us just want to be accepted. Some of us want to have our little idiosyncrasies. Some of us want to have our “this” or “that.” “I am willing to give up this. Just save my little place in the sun, my little path of walking. I just want to be able to go fishing when I want to go fishing, or go shopping when I want to go shopping, or do this when I want to do this, or go on holiday.  I want the beach. I want the sun.” Somebody said, “I just want a holiday.”  I said, “Well, you can go on a holiday.  I am not against holidays. But you know what? The devil is going to be there, too. In fact, he will probably meet you when you get off the plane.”

Because you see, brethren, you and I have a problem. We have a problem. You have heard a particular Word and that Word has pricked something in your heart. You may have trouble with personalities.  You may have trouble with some of the doctrines that are coming forth. You may have trouble in this and trouble in that, but in the midst of all of it, something has pricked your heart and you cannot get away from it. Many of you have tried to go to other places to drink or to eat but you have come away feeling so dissatisfied, if not defiled, because it has not given to you the substance of what the Bible calls life! It has not quickened your spirit! It hasn’t done something in you in the realm of eternity that is your soul! You come away feeling tired.  You come away feeling blah. You come away feeling like something inside of you that needed to be resurrected is still dead!

You and I have a problem because, you see, this Word is a Word of no quarter.  Do you know what I mean by “no quarter”? Do you want to know what “no quarter” is? When an invading army comes in and they raise up the no quarter sign, the flag that says no quarter, that means you slay everyone. Everyone. There is no mercy shown. There is no position, no place of acquiescence to life whatsoever.  Man, woman, child, beast – everything gets slain. Everything is decimated. This Word says to you and I that no flesh can stand in the midst of God! That means no personality.  No position of personality has the right or the liberty to say, “I want to be in this place as me!”

Therein lies our trouble because, you see, we want some of “me.” It is not a problem knowing what sin is. It is not a prob­lem of repenting from your “ISN’T IT ENOUGH THAT I sin. The problem lies within the nature that you were born with. You like it!  You love it! You want to cherish it! There is something special about it! And we pamper it and we pet it and when people step on it, we get offended.  We take so much care protecting it, cleaning it up, polishing it, putting it on the wall. “Oh, my.  Isn’t that so lovely?”  And all the time God says it has to die. The Word you have inside of you says you have to die.  And you are saying, “I don’t want to die.  I don’t want to die!” Because you don’t have the hope of resurrection.  You don’t have the hope of the reality of God inside of you. You want your little space.  You want to do just this and this and you don’t want to do any more. Why? Because there is something of you that is saying, “I want to be me. I have a right as an individual. I have a right as a person. I have some dignity.  Isn’t it enough that I do this? Isn’t it enough that I give my money?  Isn’t it enough that I give my time? Isn’t it enough that I give this or I give that?” If it is not everything, it is not enough.

 Brethren, we are not preaching, we are not teaching, we are not pursuing a part-time gospel. Do you know, for some of us it would have been very, very, very much better if we had never heard this gospel be­cause some of us that are hearing are doing nothing with what we have heard. If you think that, because you are of an age that doesn’t seem to have much comprehension, that you don’t have a responsibility to do something with what you have heard, you are wrong, because the Word that we are ministering is not a Word of intellect, it is not a Word of reasons. It is a spiritual position, an impartation that comes via the spirit. That makes you and me and everyone who hears this Word accountable! To the degree which we have heard, there is something of an onus put upon us that in the midst of our degradation, in the midst of our doubt, in the midst of our confusion, we have to rise up and begin to proclaim the nature, the entity of Christ that is within us.

Paul says, “I can do nothing of myself.” That is what Paul says. “I can do nothing of myself.” In John 8:28 Jesus said it of Himself. Listen to me, brethren. I want to tell you that this realm that we live in is called hell. This realm is called hell and many of us are working to assure our position, our place in the realm that we call hell.  We want some position of preeminence or, at the least, some sense of accomplishment.

We don’t understand the intent of God from the beginning of time. Jesus, my goodness. They came together.  Hallelujah. I don’t know how they did it, but they did. They came together.  In the begin­ning God said, “Let us…” (Genesis 1:26). There was a council in the heavenlies. There was a council going on in the divine mind of God that said, “Let us make man. I want to make man in a particular way.  I want to make him in a particular fashion and I am going to put him in the darkest, deepest hole that I can ever possibly find. I am going to stick him in that hole and command him to rise up.”

Do you know that the parable of Lazarus is the story of the whole intent and the desire of God (Lu 16:19-29)? Do you know that? It had been four thousand years that humanity had laid in the clutches of hell, but when the Son of man, who was the original intent, who was the Word that was in the beginning, who was the Word that was there in the council of the triune when God said, “Let us make man,” when He broke forth into the realm of hell, there was a command issued out of the heavenlies! “Let my people go!” It was THE Word!  I want to tell you why.

Do you know that when God said, “Let there be light,” He put His condemnation on the darkness that was in existence in the beginning of time?

Jn 3:19 “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

As much as He said it in the beginning when He spoke light into being, He looked down on the condition of chaos and hell and He created a prophetic word that would not be visualized for yet another 3000 years. Do you know when that event happened? When humanity witnessed the revelation of Christ when He broke forth in the earth. We call it the moment of transfiguration. It was a coronation. It was a proclamation. God could have just as well have said, “Let there be light.” Instead He said it a different way.  He said, “This is my only beloved Son, the reality of the living Word, Hear ye Him” (Mt 17:5). “This is the walking, talking, omnipotent Word.  This is part of the shekinah realm of glory that abided in the beginning.” Hallelujah! In our minds, we think a son is as a human son. I am talking about the incarnation of God in the midst of humanity! This is the Word!  Loose! Hallelujah! This is the Word!  What did He say? “Hear Him. Hear Him.”

Luke 9:35 “This is my beloved Son: hear him.” 

Oh, boy.  And those disciples that were present during the transfiguration, their humanity rose up. They wanted to make a church. They wanted to build a denomination. They wanted to “pastorize.” They wanted to “pastorize” the reality of eter­nity.  They wanted to put it in a box and put a name on it! They wanted to call it the church of Elias. Or maybe, better yet, the church of Jesus Christ. They did not hear, and yet they were in the presence of the Word and should have heard. How many times have we sat in the presence of the Word and have contended in our soul because that Word was work­ing contrary to our position of personal preference? We contended.  Oh, we may not have risen up and walked out. We put our head in our lap and we groaned. “Oh, my.  Oh, me. Here he goes again. Working it off. Working this.  Working all that emotionalism.”  We are contending, con­tending, contending, contending, contending, and we are missing, miss­ing, missing, missing, missing, missing, missing, missing. Always miss­ing and never coming to the truth. Going out the door and walking into tribulation with no strength, no power, no authority because you have denied the purpose of the Word.  You have denied it.  You have rejected it. Why? Because you didn’t “feel” anything.  Oh, you felt something all right. You felt resentment.  You felt a little bit of anger. You want to call it righteous indignation.

The Word has power.  Do you hear me? God said:

De 11:26 “This day I set before you a blessing and a curse…”

Come on. If we don’t live in this realm of hell as though it is the realm of Eternity Heaven heaven, do you think that there is not a consequence? The realm of the “I AM.”  The eter-I AM–nal, that is yesterday, today, to­morrow, forever outside of the realm of time.  Do you think that if we don’t live in this realm of hell as though it is the realm of “I AM,” there is not a consequence? We suffer sickness.  We suffer all kinds of mala­dies which are physical, mental, emotional. We have frustrations and depressions. We allow ourselves to be subjugated to the realm of time, to the realm of hell. We become more in tune with the frame of mind, that depicts the children of perdition and we become more like sons of perdition than we become children of heaven.

You know what God prophesied of you, Brother Tom?  He said, “I am going to kindle a fire in the midst of hell.” That not only means in the midst of the world in which you were born, in the element of time in which you abide, but in the midst of Sigwarth and all that it entails and all that it has and the power that it has over your mind, your emotions. God is building a fire in the midst of that hell that is being kindled! It is going to rise up and it is going to destroy the power and the hold of the devil!

We fed our children and we are feeding our children to mam­mon. We have not instilled in them the concept of eternity.  We have given them stuff that is temporal and not eternity minded.  We wanted them to have a good education. We wanted them to succeed.  We wanted them to be flowing in the midst of humanity.  We want them to do their part. We want to make them well adjusted.  We send them to the best university. We give them every opportunity, only to feed them to the doctrines of hell and degradation and death. And we wonder, “Oh God, why are they out there wandering around in the world?” If the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t put it on, but if it fits, then put it on and repent.

Brethren, there is an intent and a desire that God has.

Gal 4:1 “Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all.”

In Romans chapter eight, he begins to talk about your translated status. Do you know something? Do you have a husband that is difficult?  Do you have a wife that is difficult?  Do you have a child that is difficult?  Go to God. Put them on the altar.  Come on. Put them on the altar.  Ask God for fire. Do you hear me? Ask God for fire! Because if you do not think tribulation and trouble is releasing and bringing them into that place of safety, you are wrong.

You see, God doesn’t care about your flesh.  Flesh is temporal. It says, all flesh is as grass (I Pe 1:24). “What is your life? It is even as a vapour before the Lord” (Jas 4:14). But you see, we don’t believe in the realm of eternity because if something bad were to happen to them, oh that would be terrible. They would hurt. They would cry. We would hurt.  We would cry.  Yes, we would.  Absolutely.  But if their soul is to be preserved, you must reach into the realm of eternity and command the hand of God to reach forth out of eternity into hell and to wrest them out of its jaws.

Is 49:25 “But thus saith the LORD, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children.”

Is that right? Shall the lawful prey be taken? Are you willing to put your faith on the line? Are you willing? Are you willing to suffer the thing that comes because of their position and their place of their rebellion? Are you willing to grieve in the Spirit? Loose! Loose! Loose! Are you willing to grieve in the Spirit?

Most of us love our children, but we love ourselves just as much, if not more. The Bible says that we are to love thy neighbour as thyself. And some of our love for ourselves is inordinate. Hello? Not very many amens on that one.

I will go a step further.  All of the inordinate manifestations of love, that they call love, I say is eros. You know, there are only two words used in the Bible to describe love. They are phileo and agape. But there are three words for love in the Greek. The third word is eros and it is never mentioned in a positive way, that I know about, if it is mentioned at all. Why? God chose to ignore it because it wasn’t worth His effort in its relationship to the reality of the Word that He has brought to us. The erotic nature of sin has been woven within the fabric of our families, and out of that erotic nature comes all kinds of deviations and diabolical manifestations. We, as parents, have the power to break it if we are willing to pay the price of that breaking. If I am willing… Do you hear? If I am willing, I can reach into the realm of eternity and command the hand of God to move! But I have to be satisfied that, however God moves, whether I understand it or whether I really wanted Him to do what He does, it was God and I can rejoice in it. You know, I can only have confidence in God that that loved one has found that posi­tion in God that I desired them to have. Loose! Hallelujah.

It is like children playing in the market place. You know, quite frankly, I don’t think God is satisfied with us.  I really don’t.  I don’t think He is satisfied. Well, He is probably satisfied with you.  He is just as happy as can be every time you come on the scene. “Oh, here he comes. Happy go lucky.”  But you know what? I don’t think He is happy with us at all. I think we are self-centered. Oh, YOU KNOW, QUITE don’t mind being Christians to the extent that we want to be. We don’t want people calling us up at 2 o’clock at night. We don’t want people misbehaving over and over and over and over and over again. We want to wash our hands of a situation or a circumstance and be able to walk away from it, but we don’t ever come to the place where we are willing to reach into the realm of eternity, because we don’t believe in the eternity now.  “Oh, yes. I know, Lord, at the end of the day, at the end of time when Ye shall come again, we shall all be resurrected.” “Mary, you are a fool.  You are a fool. You don’t understand.  You don’t comprehend.  You don’t realize the magnitude of the Word that is here now, in your presence, dear slow, dull, and grieving Mary.  I AM eternity” (Jn 11:21-27).

Do you hear me? I don’t know.  Do you think we would have been different, dear, than Mary or Martha or the twelve?  John? While he was walking and talking among them, they didn’t even recognize Him. They never saw Him in the reality of eternity.  Do you know that? The whole time He was with them. He said to Philip, “Have I been so long time with you, walking with you, talking with you, sleeping with you?” (Jn 14:9). He was just Jesus, a man with a theology that was different, that quickened something in their intellectual perception and gave them some sort of religious high, but that high didn’t have the abil­ity to do for them what it needed to do for them when He was taken out of their midst. They had a knowledge of God, but no power.

Oh, we would be different, right?  We would be different.

WHEN FRUSTRATION COMES INTO YOUR LIFE, WHAT IS YOUR FIRST THOUGHT? “OH, NO, HERE WE GO AGAIN. OH, NO. THIS AGAIN? NOT THAT. LORD, I JUST DON’T NEED ANY MORE TROUBLE. LORD, DON’T YOU THINK I’VE GOT ENOUGH?”

me tell you something. When frustration comes into your life, what is your first thought? “Oh, no, here we go again. Oh, no. This again? Not that. Lord, I just don’t need any more trouble.  Lord, don’t you think I’ve got enough?” Or just “down in the dumps” depression. “I thought You said, God.  I thought You did, God.  I thought You would, God,” and all the time God is standing there, His presence so real, so manifested. He is walking and talking with us, moving in our circumstances, super­naturally delivering us again and again and again and again, again and again, and we turn right around and we are all out there, “Joe Carnal,” with a religious philosophy of the end time and with a sense of false security because there we have no reality of the Word.

Do you think we would have been different, brother? Do you think we would have appreciated the reality of the Word?  Do you know that some of us have been hearing this Word for over 35 or 40 years?  We have been walking in fellowship with the Word and, you know, we are not one bit closer to the reality of the essence of the living God. What­ever happens, we are unshakable. Unshakable. Undeterred. Undeter­mined. Undepressed. Unoppressed. Or just lazy.  We are spiritually lazy people. Spiritually lazy people. We pray for half-an-hour. We may pray for an hour.  Oh, maybe you can really work it up and pray for an hour-and-a-half!  What about praying without ceasing? What about stay­ing in that position of travail? What about the reality when you are translated mentally and emotionally?

Let’s talk about emotions.  Do you know that God is a God of emotions? Did you know that? He has anger.  He has joy. The joy of God was so great and was so poured out in the realm of David’s experi­ence that he took off his outer garments and began to dance before the Lord, and I want to tell you that it was an extreme thing that he did (2Sam 6:14). It was out of character for the king to expose himself. How many times have we acted like Michal, and have come against the anointing and the unction and the manifestation of God in the midst of a congregation? We have risen up in our soul and, worse yet, we have taken our poison, we have taken our dissatisfaction because of some personality, or something of a prick of the Word, stuck where we didn’t want to be stuck and we have infected and contaminated others. Halle­lujah.

There is what I call the XP quotient. I am not talking about the operating system on your computer.  The XP is for “expendability.”  Ex­pendability.  Some of us may be at zero for the amount we are willing to be expended. The servant that was given the one tal­ent, that was his expendability quotient (Mt 25:24).  Zero.  Hello!  He took his talent and he buried it in his humanity.  He allowed his humanity to have preeminence over his spiritual understanding, and his spiritual position of responsibility.

Come on. Hallelujah. Some of us are at an XP quotient of 30. Some of us have an XP quotient of 60.  And some of us desire to be 100 for our expend­ability.  You know, it is not wrong to be 30.  It is not wrong to be 60, if your desire is ascension, is going higher.  You want to know something? The higher the percentage, the more that is required. The labor.  It says that the fields are white with harvest (Jn 4:35), but the laborers, where are the laborers? Oh, we want to establish a missionary team and begin to evangelize the world. How about evangelizing your particular, pecu­liar environment and putting your hand to the responsibility that God put into your position of operational procedures? Oh, we want to give our 10%. We want to give our 10%.  Well, what is your expendability quotient? Some of us think that because we make money, the money we make is ours. Well, it is yours IF you didn’t hear this Word.  Some of you think that your time is your own. You do, you think it is your own except for your 10%, except for the fact of going to church occasionally, except for the fact of being with the brethren on your terms! You know, we don’t have the privilege of deciding what the terms of fellowship are.

There is a clarion call that is going forth in the heavenlies, and the call comes, not via the venue of man that says that church is at a particular time, but on the basis of God calling His sons together.  Some of you here, God is giving you a last chance. Did you know that? Some of you, not all of you, some of you here, God is giving a last chance, because God is in the business of bringing forth His church and God is going to bring forth His church whether I am in the church or not. Or whether I am able to fulfill the destiny that God has for me. You know, it is not a destiny that I chose. You see, if I had chosen it, then it would be my responsibility to work out all the mechanics.

I am not Alpha and I certainly am not Omega and therefore, I don’t know what is inbetween.  He does know, and if He has taken me from this point and designated me for that point, then He knows what it is going to take and what it is going to need and how it has to be done. It becomes His responsibility because it is of His election, and He is going to do everything that He possibly can do to bring it to pass. All I have to do is die. That is all I have to do. I just have to die. I have to die to ambition. I have to die to position of self-worth. Come on, brethren, we need to get with the program!

Paul came to a revelation. Do you think that we are better than Paul? Do you think that we are in a better place than Paul was? He says, “There is nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing in me that is worth one hoot (Ro 7:18).” Some of you probably don’t understand what a hoot is. That means that it’s worth nothing.  Nothing. It is nothing, Brother Charles. Nothing. All royalty.  All the blood. All the firstborn. All the possessions. All the things that man can give you in the natural, is noth­ing. Nothing! It has nothing to do with my position of eternity.  I am not created for a temporal place of time. I have not been given an eternal position of existence to squander, for I have a destiny that is eternal.

Do you remember the parable of the prodigal son? “Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.” (Lu 15:12). What do you think he did? He went out and squandered it. Some of us are squander­ing our portion. We are setting up our position of personality prefer­ences. We are setting up our position of opinionated, self-orientated desires, as sons. Guess what? You have the right and the liberty to do it. You do.  You have the right to do it, but when it comes down to the end of the day, you don’t have anything.  You might have a place in the Father’s house as a servant, but you are not a son in the sense of the firstborn. All that the father had went to the son that remained at his post.

But I believe, brethren, that there is a position that I can lose if I don’t behave.  You don’t have to believe this way.  It won’t bother me a bit. It won’t change my position, my thought or my belief.  God tells me, “Work, Burt: “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” (Phil 2:12)

That means that there is a line that is drawn and I Expendability Quotient have to concentrate on that line. I have to put my foot on that line and I have to put one foot in front of the other when I get out there (in the fields), and sometimes I get righteous going back and forth, like Peter out there on the water.  It is my responsibility to maintain my focus. I can’t let my humanity dictate to me and allow my humanness to rise up. “Well, you can’t do that to me.  I’ve got a position of authority.  I rebuke you in Jesus’ name.”  Oh, my.

We don’t understand.  We are like children playing in the market place. We are doing our little thing.  We are coming to church doing our religious thing. The scripture says:

Gal 4:1 “That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all;”

My bulletin staff has been working, working, working. We have been putting this little cookbook together to bless the Body of Christ and, of course, to help the work of God. We have had nothing but tribu­lation. We have had nothing but tribulation, and I am saying, “A cook­book? You can’t be serious, God.  The devil is so interested in a cook­book? I want to know, God, what is cooking?”  But there is a position we have taken. We have made a determination.  We made a decision. You can ask them.  They are going to be writing their little testimonies down about their places of frustration and wrestling and coming through in a glorious manner, because I want to tell you that it is going to be printed. It is going to be put together and you all are going to be able to buy it! Tribulation and trouble is that which has been allocated to the church from its inception. I challenge you, take this Word as real and begin to apply it. Then you had better batten down the hatches. You better batten down your hatches. Brother Gordon, poor Brother Gor­don. He didn’t even know what was going to happen when he said he would print our cookbook and put it together for us. It was almost like we plotted and planned to get him into tribulation. But Brother Gordon, we didn’t plan it.  We didn’t plot it, but we can walk together through it! Hallelujah!

Trouble, trouble, trouble.  Trouble on the left.  Trouble on the right. Trouble behind you.  Trouble in front of you.  Fire all around. Hallelujah! That is the place you want to be if you want to be a son.

What is your XP quotient? Some brethren came to work with us. I told one young man, “I don’t care what time I knock on your door, it is time to get up.” I said, “Don’t even look at your clock.  Time has stopped for you. You can just consider yourself in eternity.”  I have to give him credit. I have to give him credit, because credit has to go where credit is due. I painted such a black picture of working on the farm with us. I told him, “We work from daylight to dark and no pay.  No money!” I said, “You have to do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it.  You cannot argue with me.  You have to work, work, work and work some more, and when you are tired of working, it is work some more.” When we would be out there pulling the weeds out of the beans and my grand­children would say, “How much longer, Grandpa?”  I used to tell them, “Another hour.”  And then, in a little while longer they would say, “How much longer, Grandpa?”  “Another hour.”  And then down the road an hour they would say, “Can we go, Grandpa?” I would say, “Well, almost, but it is another hour.”  That’s the mentality.  I have been talking to the bulletin staff.  I said, “I want you to go and read the story of the unprof­itable servant” (Lu 17:7-10). Work hard out in the fields.  They are learning to work hard in the fields. It is one thing to sit at a desk behind a computer working out all those numbers, reading through all that lit­erature, doing this and that and you come away with a headache. But when they come in out of the fields, their head hurts, their hands hurt, their feet hurt, their knees hurt, their back hurts. Everything hurts, and everything is dog tired. Have you ever been dog tired? Dog tired! I don’t have to say to them, “Go to bed.”  I have a son who used to play so hard that when he sat down at the table, before he could finish his meal, you would hear “whump.” And you would look over there and you would have to move his sleeping head out of the mashed potatoes be­cause you were afraid he would suffocate.

Tribulation.  Trouble.  Expendability quotient. What is your ex­pendability quotient? What is it? Oh, I am sure we all have our lines of demarcation. Oh, yes. “I am coming. I am coming. I am going to do it, Lord. OK. I have done enough. I have done enough. Let somebody else carry the load.” What if Paul would have said that when God said, “Send him into Macedonia” (Ac 16)? What if Paul had said that when he was up there in Corinth and God wanted to send him somewhere else and somewhere else? What if he did that at the end of the day when he was down there in prison in Rome? “I have had enough, Lord. I want to retire. I want a villa on the beaches in Spain. I want to enjoy the grapes and the fruit of the land. I want to tour the country.  I want to do this. I want to do that.” Oh, yes. We are very extravagant with our energy, time, and finances. We are always extravagant with something we want to do and like to do. How stingy do we get when it comes to something we don’t want to do, or it involves something maybe we don’t like?  I don’t think we are much different than the rest of the church. I really don’t.  Quite frankly, I do not know that we have even climbed to the level of maturity that they had at that time.

I came out here a couple of days ago. We have been praying for rain. We needed rain.  We needed rain really badly.  We needed rain.  We needed some water.  I drive by my corn and they go “huhuhuhuh.” I could drive out at night and I could hear the plants calling, “Waatteerr.  Give me some water.”  I was out in my beans and I was walking through the field and I hear, “We need a drink.”  We began to pray for rain. Oh, boy.  We should have been a little more specific. We got rain.  We got 2.1 inches of rain in two hours.  Then the wind that came through just leveled everything. I got up in the morning and I said, “Oh, my, praise the Lord.  We got rain.  We are wet.  My corn will be happy.  It will be up there praising the Lord.” You know, I came out here and it was all face down before God in adoration. I mean it was flat. You talk about flat.  I was driving up the driveway and I was just creep­ing up the road. Looking. Looking. Looking. It was so close to being mature! I said, “I will never taste it now.  I never will have it now.”  I said, “All right. I am going to push my rock.” I said, “God, I am going to give it four days.” That sounds like faith, doesn’t it?  It sounds like faith and power, right?  Sounds like the man of God. But when I am down, it is a different story.  When I was talking to my wife, I said, “We are finished. I will give it four days, but in four days I am going to plow it under.”  She called me up on the phone. I hadn’t even come out here to the farm. I said, “I am not going out there. I have other things to do.” She called me on the phone and she said, “All your corn is resurrected.” I said, “What?! You have to be kidding me!  It is resurrected?” I am telling you, it was flat on its face before God. Down there. I had walked out there and I had picked up a stalk of corn and put it up. But it fell down, just like that. It said, “I want to worship,” and fell straight back down on its face. I picked up another one, I stamped the dirt around it to hold it up and I said, “Stand!”  He said, “I am tired.” Pouf – and it fell back on its face in the dirt. I want to tell you. See it out there? See it over here? It is standing up straight and tall. I am telling you brethren, it was flat, flat, flat, flat. You couldn’t have gotten it any flatter without it being buried.

There is a position, there is a place that we have in the spirit if we understand the reality of the things that we are talking about. What is money? “What is money? Is he crazy? Money is everything!” But you know what? Whenever Jesus needed money He told Peter to go catch a fish. That’s all He did.  He said to go down to the seashore and cast in a hook (Mt 17:27). Jansen, have you ever cast in a hook and just caught a fish? I don’t think Peter even baited it. He just threw it out there. “We have labored all night, Lord, casting nets and pulling it in. This pond is dry.  Every fish has gone somewhere else. We have been doing it all night. Nevertheless, nevertheless, nevertheless, nevertheless we will do as You say” (Jn 21).  That sounds like a real statement of faith, doesn’t it?  Men of faith and power.  “Nevertheless we will do…” Those fish were jumping into the boat. I think, as they began to pull the nets in, that the fish were just jumping into the net, “Wait for me!  Wait for me! Wait for me!”  Why? Was it just some abracadabra, hokus pokus, dominocus fish jump? Or was it the Word, the authority of He who created the fish, that said to the fish, “Jump,” and the fish jumped? Do you know something? I think fish have more intelligence sometimes than men and women and children with regards to the things of God. A stupid fish that has the brains about the size of a pin head can hear and recognize the Master’s voice.  You and I that have the complexity of a mind that we can’t even begin to understand.  You know, medical sci­ence doesn’t even know about it.  They are just now beginning to recog­nize certain things about the human mind, but they don’t know what it is that they are looking at.

We begin to contend with the thought of the actuality and the reality of the Word.  How long are we going to be children? How long are we going to contend with our position of self-preservation? Do you want to stay alive? They all wanted to be part of humanity in Noah’s day.  Do you believe that the end of the world is coming? Do you be­lieve that there is an ark that God is building? Do you believe that the ark is being built with people? Do you believe that destruction is com­ing? No. Oh, maybe you believe it will come some time, somewhere down the road. You believe that one day, somewhere down the road, if God does not tarry and preserve you, that you will go through life as you have gone before. Right? And you had no idea, did you, of the reality of the physical situation that was confronting you.

You can expend your fortune for whatever it is that you want. You can preserve your life.  You can exonerate it.  You can exalt it.  You can put it up on a pedestal and bow down to it. Oh, come on. Come on. Come on. Bow down to it. How do I bow down to it? By observing this and that in these seasons and times and all of these things that go with that realm of humanity.

You know, I am not supposed to know any man after the flesh. Did you know that? That means that I am not to recognize my position, my place and my beginnings in the fleshly arena. Flesh is not to hold preeminence over me. It is not to hold me in a place of bondage. The fact that I am an Asbill and this one is an Asbill and that one is an Asbill has nothing to do with the scheme of God or the plan of God, except for the fact that they were brought forth for an eternal purpose. I was not born to bring forth the progeny of Asbill.  That was not the calling and the election that was on my life. What I was brought forth for and what came forth from me was for the purpose of establishing God’s will and God’s destiny in the realm of the heavenly for the lives that came out of me!

 Do you know that, as a sinner, I had the cognizant reality that God had a plan for my life? I am telling you, as a sinner, I had a percep­tion of God’s plan.  It scared me to death. I had a cognizant reality that God had a plan for my life and I was also aware that I was rebelling against that plan. I was aware that I was working contrary to the will of God in that plan and I thank God that He put me in circumstances be­yond my ability to control where I had to submit myself to His purpose, to His plan. I thank God that in the submitting of my position, my place and my life, that God has begun to change me from a temporal realm, from a time element, to a realm of eternity.  You know, Paul said it a different way.  He said:

1Co 10:23 “All things are lawful for me…”

That means that you can do anything that you want to do and justify the doing of it, but he said:

1Co 10:23 “…all things are not expedient.”

Now, that expe­dience is not determined by your position of opinion or perspective. I don’t care how smart you are, how successful you are, how talented you are. It has nothing to do with what your perception is regarding your position and your station in life. It has everything to do with what God thought in the very beginning. He told somebody, somewhere in the Bible, that He knew them before they were formed in their mother’s womb. (Ps 139:14)

Let me read you a verse. John the first chapter:

Jn 1:11 “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.”

Now, you re­member, the Word is three-dimensional.  You remember that, right? Three-dimensional. First the natural, then the spiritual and then the full­ness. One, two, three. Three step punch. It says, He came unto his own. “His own” would have been natural Israel in the beginning, the spiritual Israel, the church, the called out. It says, He came unto his own. With what?  How did He come? He came as the Word, with a Word.  And the Word is defined for us.  He doesn’t leave it to our expec­tation or our interpretation. It says,

Jn 1:11 “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.”

12 “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.”

What this means is that, in order to receive the Word, they had to accept a Word.  Or, if you wish, a manifestation of the fullness of the intent of what God wanted in the beginning. Jesus said, “I am not my own,” (Jn 5:30).

Jn 1:12 “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:”

“Name” is not indicative of a label. “Name” is not indicative of a label to identify a certain per­sonality.  It has nothing to do with personality.  It has everything to do with nature. It has everything to do with His nature and the nature that God desires me to have is called believing.  Believing is a nature that will always be in conflict with the nature that I was born with. This old man nature is in a place of conflict with the nature of eternity that God wants to put in my soul. It says:

Jn 1:12 “…to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:”

13 “Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

That means God overshadowed you and in the midst of that overshadowing, something was birthed in you that was not of this realm called flesh and world. Its composite makeup is not of the cosmos.

God invaded hell, God invaded time and deposited, as it were, eternity in the midst of hell. That is what He says, you know.  In the Old Testament, in Ezekiel He says, “I will kindle a fire…” Where? In the midst of hell.

Ez 20:47 “I will kindle a fire in the midst of thee (hell), and it shall devour…thee…”

Fire fights fire.

Mt 3:11 “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.”

Fire. Do you know that you have power over the fire?  Did you know that? You and I don’t like tribulation, and you and I have power over that tribulation. It is demonstrated in the midst of the place that the children of Israel found themselves in. The three Hebrew chil­dren, when they were caught into the fire, it was the fire that brought the revelation. It was the fire that brought the manifestation. It was the fire that brought the victory. With no fire, there is no manifesta­tion. With no tribulation, with no fire, there is no freedom.  With no fire, there is no victory.  If the fire is not seven times hotter, there cannot be any destruction of the enemy.  If there is no fire that is seven times hotter (and you are in the middle of it), there will be no recognition and verbal confession to the humanity that is around you. There’s four in there, “…and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.” (Da 3:25)

We don’t understand what it means to be born again. We think be­ing born again means that we have an access into heaven at the end of the day.  That’s what we think. But Jesus says, “Heaven is within you” (Lu 17:21). Paul wrote:

Gal 4:19 “…I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,”

They were still carnal. They were still in a position of observing all the things that pertain to humanity, all those things that were relevant to their position, their place of comfort, their traditions. It is the same church to whom Paul says in another chapter,

Gal 3:3 “Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?”

Do you know something? This realm here is governed by what the scripture calls law and the manifestation of the son of perdition is a spirit of lawlessness. Now, Paul said that we are not under the law but we are under what? We are under grace, if so be that you abide in that position, that place of grace (Ro 6:14-15). The law is for the realm of time. Law is for the position of the temporalness of our caterpillar existence. Every time that you and I walk out of eternity and begin to play around in the finiteness of time, we are under the disposition of law because God never intended for us to be in a position of being overshad­owed by this aspect of law.  He intended for the realm of law to be created in an entity that He called the Son. The Son and the law are synonymous. Without the Son, you have no law because the Son is the law.  The nature of God is the thing that commands and demands totally and absolutely a position of absolute acquiescence to the place of righ­teousness.

He created time for one purpose and one purpose only: to deal with the aspect and the position of wickedness that uses times against you and me. Do you know what they say about the devil? Do you know? He knows his time (Re 12:12). You know, it is his time and it is short. Listen to me. If you don’t think that “Time” is not governed by the reality of wickedness, you are mistaken. Biblically speaking, he is called “…the prince of the power of the air…” (Eph 2:2) and yet, you and I find ourselves under that jurisdiction. We find ^Eternity Heaven ourselves submitting to the qual­ity of time that is upon us. You ^{Prince of the Power of the Air} know, we are not supposed to be I AM timed. We are supposed to be timeless. I am created for eternity.  I am not created to live and die and be buried, though my dust, my dirt, my flesh go back to the elements. I was not created for that. Why would God, an eternal God, a God that is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, why would He create such a thing? Why? It is outside of Him. It is outside of His nature. It is outside of His being. It is outside of His thinking. He created it for one reason and one reason only and that is to demonstrate the reality of God to overcome every obstacle, even death and hell.

He took the poorest, the weakest, the dumbest… Now, I am not talking about you. I am talking about me, the most timid, shake-in-your-­boots fellow you could ever find. Afraid of the dark. Afraid of this. Afraid of that. In the midst of anything, always looking for the easy way out. Always looking for the door of escape. “Women and children first,” forget it.  I know what this fellow was made of, you understand? I know the propensity of evil that was in this fellow’s heart.  I know what this fellow was capable of doing. I know what this fellow has done. I know that this fellow needs the Blood of Jesus Christ. He needs to stay, not at the foot of the cross. No, no, no. I don’t want to be at the foot of the cross. I want to be on the cross. I want to have that place of preemi­nence. I want to have that place of fellowship with Him, because it says that if I die with Him, if I am crucified with Him, then I will be resur­rected with Him! (Gal 2:20; 2Co 13:4; Col 2:12) If I am buried with Him, if I go into the grave, my personal preference, my likes, my dislikes, all the things that are considered being Asbill and everything about Asbill, if they go down into the grave, then I know that Word of God, that Word that is God will resurrect!

You know, Jesus said:

Jn 10:18 “No man taketh it (his life) from me…I have power to take it again…”

Do you know that God gave you a Word that is eternal?  It has resurrection power.  The spirit of death could come upon you right now, smite you, and if you are in that place, the Word of God that is in you will speak to those dead bones, will speak to that dead flesh, will speak to that tired, old, plugged-up heart. Hallelujah, glory to God! He will speak to it! The Word of God will begin to minister.  It isn’t doctors. It isn’t respiratory machines that they put you on and plug you into and all of those things they do. It is the Word of God that is in you that wrestles, wrestles, wrestles, wrestles, wrestles with that spirit of death even as Jacob wrestled with the angels. The Word, in the place of preeminence, the Word that is in your flesh speaks and it says, “Live, live, live, live. Live!”

Jn 1:13 “Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

Born of the will of God. You weren’t born of the will of flesh.  You weren’t called to a destiny of man. You were called, you were dedicated by the Word of God for an eternal purpose, for an eternal reason. The Word that lies within you that has the power of resurrection, has the power to loose the bonds and have the flesh come into a place of subjection, has the ability to bring forth life, has the power to make you something you are not, to give you the strength when you have no strength, to give you the confidence when you have no confidence. When this one deserts you and this one turns against you, and that one fails you and your expectation doesn’t live up to your standards, He says that He is a friend who will never forsake you (He 13:5; Pr 18:24;). It is a place of reality of the working God into you, wrestling with your humanity.  Submit yourself, submit your place, your mind, your emotions; submit your hopes, your desires. Reach out into the realm of eternity and grab hold of God. Pull Him down. Pull Him down into the realm of hell.

One day I said to God, “God, I would very much like to see somebody raised from the dead.” He said, “You see it all the time.”  We don’t believe it.  I got in my truck. I drove out the end of the driveway at the farm and I did not see the truck. I just did not see it and I pulled right out in front of it. “I am a dead man.” You know that road?  There is no place to go out there. “I am dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. I am dead.” I said, “Oh, God, help me!” I am still here. Then I had to pull over, put my head down on the steering wheel and say, “Oh God, I am so stupid. Forgive me of my stupidity.  Let me be ever so conscious of the devil’s plan for my life. I am not just a physical entity in a physical world that the physicalness of my world has a power and an authority over me. God, thank You for Your mercy that I am not dead, that I did not die out of due season.” I wasn’t created for a fatality.  I was created for a posi­tion of eternity.

Paul said, “I press. I press. I press” (Ph 3:14). My goodness, the man pressed. Do you know he pressed? He pressed in jail. He pressed in the desert. He pressed in the middle of the sea float­ing around on a piece of wood. He pressed when the snake bit him. He pressed when the whip was laid to his back. He pressed. He pressed. He pressed and then he said:

2Tim 1:15 “…all they which are in Asia be turned away from me…”

His entirety, all his labor, all his suffering in the natural perspective, as far as I am concerned was gone, was finished. But he said, “A crown is laid up for me” (2Tim 4:8).  “I will keep pushing. I will keep pushing.” And you know, there in that cell in Rome waiting for the finality, he said, “I know what is waiting for me.  God has shown it to me” (2Tim4:8).  Do you think it stopped him from writing to the churches? Some of his letters were written in that dun­geon by candle, knowing that soon… What did he say?

2Tim 4:6 “…the time of my departure is at hand.”

He was writing to the church. He was encouraging them with the things of God. He didn’t say, “Woe is me, God. How could You put me here?  Why would You do this to me after all I have done for You?  And this is my reward?” Why? Because he had an eternal vision. He said he was one that was lifted up, as it were, to the third realm of heaven (2Co 12:2). Do you know that you and I can be lifted up into that position where things that were unlawful to utter were spoken to him? Unlawful to utter by the mouth of flesh, of things that he penned and hid by the Spirit in all the things that he said to the churches as he laid out the gospel and the intent and the desire of God for humanity.  Oh, my God! What a challenge is being offered to us.

You know, I watch these chickens out here.  They have a big old feeder out there that holds one hundred fifty pounds of feed and there is more than one feeder, but they are all vying for the same spot. They are all wanting the same place. You know?  They trample each other to death. They suffocate one another for the purpose of trying to get some­thing in the same spot as all the rest of them. It is chicken mentality, it is the place of chickens. Chickens. Chickens are birds that don’t fly. They just scrabble around on the ground pecking, pecking, pecking, pecking, eating anything and everything, and some of us are behaving like chick­ens. We look like a bird.  Maybe we sound a little bit like a bird. We’ve got wings. We’ve got feathers.  We’ve got feet like a bird. We’ve got a beak like a bird. Everything looks like a bird, but we don’t fly. We are earthbound. Earthbound. And we are all looking and crowding in for the same slot at the trough in this realm of the cosmos. Ah, my good­ness.

Gal 4:2 “But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father.

3 “Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:”

You know, in another chap­ter in this book Paul said:

Gal 3:1 “O foolish Galatians…”

He could just as well have said, “Oh, foolish Mahometans. Oh, foolish Iowans. Oh, foolish Nebraskans. Oh, foolish New Yorkers.  Who hath bewitched you to think that what you have begun in the Spirit, you can finish in the flesh?” You can’t have this world, cosmos, and this world of eternity.  Come on.

Matthew was very plain. In it, Jesus said, No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.

Mt 6:24 “…Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

There is no middle of the road action. You can’t straddle the realm of time and eternity and expect to have anything of God. He said, But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a Heaven woman, made under the law (Gal 4:4). Under the law. Under the time element of law I AM Grace and order, there is fullness. There is a natural son as well as a spiritual son, and there is a son relationship individually as well as a son relationship in its corporate expression. Least you think I am taking it out of context, I need to read a scripture to you. It is in Corinthians. II Corinthians the fifth chapter.  I believe Brother Jantzi touched on it this morning but I want to go over toward the end of the chapter in verse 15.

2Co 5:16 “Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: (no woman, no boy, no child) yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.”

We are not to know Him that way anymore. Now, I am not doing away with Christ in the flesh.  I am not doing away with the fact that Christ is literally coming back in that glorified body.  I am not saying that, but God is saying that we are not to know Him in this dispensation of time, but we are to know Him in this dispensation of time, to come to this dispensation of timelessness. Hal­lelujah. This is your destiny.  This is your eternity.  This is the position of the Godness that God wants to give to you and me individually and corporately so that all of this position of excellence can be submitted again back to Him that is called the “I AM.” Because it says in the end that the Son is going to submit and subject all that has been given to Him back to the Father (1Co 15:24-28). So that He might have what? Preeminence and a place of excellence with regard to all things.

You know, we did a lot of investigation when we got into the farming thing. We had never farmed like this.  We didn’t know a lot about it so we were going to different places to find out information. We went to this one conference and there was this one man who had been doing this for a number of years. Evidently, as a child, he was working on a farm for his father, and when his father got to a position of age where he could no longer do what was required, he allowed the son to take the position of preeminence. But instead of having the attitude of God in Christ, he made his father subservient to his desires, his position, his place of self-worth, and then he called it family-oriented farming.

It says,

2Co 5:16 “…though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.”

There is a manifestation individu­ally as well as collectively.

2Co 5:17 “Therefore if any man (woman or child) be in Christ…”

You know, I am sitting here.  Right? That is Christ in me. Yet I have Christ in me. I can be happy.  I can be sad. I can be frustrated. I can be victorious. I can be hot. I can be cold. Nevertheless, Christ is in me and being subjected to whatever the envi­ronment is that I want to create. It is like a house with an air conditioner. You can be comfortable or you can be uncomfortable depending upon how you set the air conditioner.

It says, “…if any man be in Christ.” Right? “Christ.” “Therefore if any man be in Christ.” This is me. What does it mean? It means that I am a part of Christ. I cannot do what I want to do. I am encapsulated by Christ. Christ is all around me. To some extent, brethren, it is almost like being put in a cage. But it is not a cage with bars, per se, because I have to willingly submit myself to that position. Now, sometimes  God puts me in positions that I go to involuntarily.

2Co 5:17 “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature...”

I am not to see the “you” that is you. I am to see the “you” that is Christ, because there is a destiny that Christ has for you and I am not to look at the “you” that is you because you are in Christ. Now, you may not be acting like Christ. And you may not be behaving in the manner that Christ would have you to behave, but that doesn’t negate the fact that Christ has an objective for you and I have a responsibility to ascertain what that objec­tive is. I also have a responsibility to recognize that position and I have a responsibility to begin to work to help you to achieve that responsibil­ity! That is my responsibility.  I am held accountable, do you hear me? I am held responsible for what conclusion that I come to with regard to your position, and it will be judged from the position of God’s perspec­tive. I may not like you. You may agitate the socks off of me.  You may just vex me to the bone. But you know something? That doesn’t negate, that doesn’t disintegrate, that doesn’t take away the fact of what Christ has for you in His thought, in His mind as an objective that has been destined with regard to you. I have every responsibility to work toward bringing you to that objective. The only time that I am released from that position is when Christ says, “Enough.” That is the only time. That is the only option I have with regard to that. That is why we have to be careful with our attitudes toward people. He says, “…old things are passed away…” He says he,

Ro 4:17 “…calleth those things which be not as though they were.”

What better opportunity do you have toward a personality that’s demonstrating every aspect and every attribute that is contrary to the nature of Christ and to the nature of God, to look at that nature and command the revelation of Christ to come forth? That is what this Bible is saying we have the responsibility of doing.

2Co 5:17 “…he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

18 “And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;”

That means that I now have the responsibility of walking and talking and acting as Christ acted in the midst of His natural environment with the natural people, and I must emulate Him. I must emulate Him. Have you ever seen a child imitate their father or their mother? Emulate them? It is not really them. It’s the mother or the father, and you know they emulate it so much and they do it so often that it becomes part of their nature. And so it is that they become, as it were, a manifestation of that parent. Paul says:

1Co 11:1 “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.”

That’s what Paul said.  He said, “You follow me as I follow Christ” (1Co 11:1).  But he says, “You emulate me. You do as I do, and you walk as I walk, and you talk as I talk, even as Christ walks and talks within me.” What a responsibility we have. And we do what? What do we do? We emulate the nature and the character of humanity with a capital H. God help us.

2Co 5:19 “To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself…”

Now, I don’t know how you would interpret that.   Who was the ministry of reconciliation given to? The clan of Harrison? The clan of Taylor?  The clan of this or that? Absolutely not. But He hath given it to Christ. Paul said it so apropos, so right. Paul said, “I travail again little children,” for what? “For Christ” (Galatians 4:19). He wasn’t wanting Christ so they could go to heaven, so that they could have an escape route, so that they could find some means at the end of the day in some tolerance or some position of ease and comfort. There was a ministry of reconciliation to a dying and hell-bound world that was hell itself.

We were talking the other day.  There is some woman who wrote a book that said that hell is in the bowels of the earth, 17 miles down. She wrote a book. My goodness. I don’t have to go that far.  I have a revelation. I don’t even have to break dirt to find hell!

 My ministry, my position, my place is in the midst of this dark­ness. You know, the land was dark because the people were darker.  Hell is all around us and we have been called to save the world, and we are so busy trying to save ourselves, to secure for ourselves some sort of posi­tion, that we are squandering our inheritance. Instead of being a son, we become a servant. I don’t want to be a servant if I can be a son.  If I have to be a servant to be a son, then so be it. Let me serve. But it is sonship that I want. I think it is sonship that you want. I think that is why you are here. Let us strive together.

1Co 5:19 “To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.”

What? The word. Don’t you love it? The Word.

Jn 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

And in the beginning nothing was created without the Word and the Word is all that there is. The Word of God and the intent, the desire is that He desires to make us sons.

God bless you. AMEN!!!!!!