Transcription
Thank you. [Music] [Music] Praise the Lord. Open your Bibles back to Second Kings, and we're going to start today a little bit more deeper into the subject of mantles and what they are and what they are not. I've never taught this particular group of lessons before in my life. I've been trying for a while to figure out how to say things. When you're a preacher, you can say things and you can create a whole problem, or you can create something, create a confusion or a wrong, um, attitude, and you don't mean to. Stop. I've always tried to keep things closer to my chest than I've kind of fine-tuned a little bit, so you're my first guinea pigs with this. How's that?
I want to go ahead and go to my lesson. We've got a little bit of time, so I'm going to do a little bit slow, and and we'll see how we go. The world of mantles, understanding them in our circles. This is a word that is used often, but I don't think it's understood as deeply or as correctly as it should be. We fold the vocabulary, or our verbiage, throws anointings, importations, giftings, and mantles all in the same bag. All four of those things are different, and the most oddest of the four is the mental world. Because in the world of giftings and anointings, those are great things, or impartations, as you would get them. You can get an impartation or an anointing blessing from a certain anointed man or woman of God, and it'll be in your life. And if you cultivate it, it'll be a part of your ministerial function, it'll flow through you. But that doesn't mean that you've got the mantle of that person. Uh, let me tell you like stories. Let me tell you a quick story before I read my scripture.
My spiritual father was Lester Summerall, along with Oral Roberts. I just happened to land in those two worlds so beautifully. God orchestrated my life to be so nice and to be with all the right people at the right time in the right place. And if you actually love Jesus really good, he'll do the same thing for you. But you can't have the mindset, "I'm in the wrong body, I'm in the wrong family, I'm in the wrong." That just destroys all of God's workings on your behalf when you don't like anything about how he made you. You gotta actually like what you are, how you look, how you function, and enjoy yourself. Thank you for the three amens.
And so, let's just summer on was a young man and was trouble with a man by the name of Howard Carter. Howard Carter is the man that brought the revelation to the Full Gospel people on the gifts of the Spirit. Before he came along, when you say somebody has, uh, has the word of wisdom, they think you were Solomon. Sure. I remember that being taught to me in Sunday school as a little boy, and they weren't being foolish. That's what they thought. And so Howard Carter was an Englishman. In the First World War, they drafted him, and he went to, to the draft committee, or whatever you do, and said, "I'm not going to shoot Germans because I like Germans and I have German friends." Well, if you don't go to war, and you have to go to prison, he said, "Can I take my Bible with me?" And they go, "Sure." He goes, "I'll go to prison." So he worked in a hard labor camp during the day, and at night he would study the Bible in his cell. And why he was in that cell, God gave him the revelation of what the nine gifts were and how to teach them. Brother Summerall wasn't probably a 20-year-old, 25-year-old young man that got it saved and put them together, and they traveled around the world together. And, uh, Howard Carter is an unsung hero that you should discover. He wrote a book called "Questions and Answers on the Gifts of the Spirit." You may want to get it. It's still available. So you all think you're deep in revelatorial, you're just repeating Howard Carter's revelation is what you're doing. It's correct. That's why it stayed, that's why it still functions, and that's why we're all teaching because it's correct.
And so, brother Summerall traveled from San Francisco around the world that way and came into Europe during the beginning of World War II as it started to rumble. And he kept hearing about a man named Smith Wigglesworth. Smith Wigglesworth had a reputation while he was alive of being a faith preacher and having quality miracles and multiple numerous notable miracles. And he was also known for his abruptness about how you would pray for people. He didn't do it in every service, but he did it enough to where it lived as a part of his legend that, uh, I've actually talked to people that he punched. I think you know that he shoved out of the prayer line. "I prayed for you last night, you asked me again, it's unbelief. Get out on the line now." That's Wigglesworth. I'm not saying it has to be you, but that's where the Wigglesworth. And they asked him one time, "Why do you hit people or punch them?" He goes, "I don't. I punch the devil, they just get in the way." So his personality and his manner worked for him. I don't know if it'll work for you. You might want to try it once if it works, but that was just how he was, and it worked for him, and, and God used him.
So, brother Summerall wanted to, uh, meet the man that he heard about the miracles and read the articles about him in the, the Christian magazines of his name. So he got to Great Britain, and Wigglesworth and Summerall met. And Smith Wigglesworth said, "I've been reading about your travels with Howard Carter." Goes, "Summerall was a writer, so he'd write about his journeys around the world. They'd publish it in Christian magazines." So, uh, Wigglesworth had heard about it and noticed that they were in some pure articles that he had seen around, uh, different churches. And, um, asked brother Summerall, "Would you come and preach at my Easter convention?" Well, he thought, "This is great. I get big no. And I just go see brother Wigglesworth, whereas I get to preach with him and eat with him." The whole video. And so he gets up to preach. I'm telling you a little longer story because I think you like this. And, um, brother Summerall was up telling stories and preaching and going, and he goes, um, about after 45 minutes or so, I, I felt a big hand on my shoulder. And I turned around, it was brother Wigglesworth. He said, "The Holy Ghost finished about 15 minutes ago. When are you going to finish?" And Summerall goes, "Right now." And so he, he closed out, and he went to him. And Wigglesworth said, um, "You can visit me anytime you would like. I live at 70 Victor Road in Bradford, England." So Wigglesworth, uh, gave him that invitation. And so eventually, that's what Summerall decided to go visit him.
His first visit to brother Wigglesworth's house, which today is in a Muslim neighborhood, and Muslims live in the house of brother Wigglesworth. Some rich Christians should go buy that house and make it a prayer chapel or something. It just don't feel right. The Muslims live and pray to Allah from the same floor that, by the way, goes with God's faith and prayer from heaven. Maybe it's just me, but I, that's the way I feel. So, um, he went to the house, and brother Summerall said, "I looked like an Englishman. I had a bowler hat, you know, the Charlie Chaplin hat, the umbrella, the newspaper, and, you know, that's the way they walked." And so he got on the train in London and went up to Bradford and walked down the street and knocked on the door by the Wigglesworth house. And Wigglesworth was a tall, big man, big hands, plumber kind of man, and, uh, opened the door, and his body filled the whole frame up the door. And there's two Wigglesworth, perfectly dressed, ever here in place. And a little less, "Good morning, Mr. Wigglesworth." He goes, "What's underneath your arm? Newspaper and umbrella?" He goes, "I don't allow lies in my house." "Excuse me." And he took his newspaper and ran down in the bushes and put it in the bushes, and then came back. And Smith goes, "You can come in now." He goes, "And it was the strangest visit I've ever had with any person in my life." He said, "Sit down. Let me read you the Bible." He read the Bible a few chapters. Said, "Now, let's pray." They got done praying. "Let me read you some more." And all morning long, we went back and forth, back and forth like that. And then the daughter Alice said, "Dad, uh, lunch is ready." So they went to eat lunch, and Wigglesworth and I would talk about just a few other things besides prayer and the Bible. But he finished his meal first, and lasted, "I'm tired now. Come back if you want. Have a good day. Nice to meet you again." Walks out. So Lester finished his nonsense. This is the weirdest visit I've ever had to any person in life. He said, "I don't know if I want to come back." Get on the train. Is it halfway back to London? I found that I had something in me that it wasn't there before. And I thought, "Ooh, I like that."
And he kept going back over the few years that he lived in England before the war. One day, he received in the mail a letter from the British government that said, "All foreigners must leave because the Battle of Britain is about to begin, and they didn't want to have to deal with foreign responsibility during the time of the crisis that was at hand." So, brother Summerall was making his goodbye to all of his British friends, and he wanted to make sure he went to see brother Wigglesworth to tell him in person what was happening. So he took the same train up, walked down the same street, knocked the same with the door knocker. And this time, we go to where he said, "Come on in." Goes, "Lester, how to come to Wigglesworth's house? No newspapers." And, um, he said, "Brother Wigglesworth, I, I must leave. I have to say goodbye today. It's my last visit for a while." He said, "Uh, you know, Hitler's on its way to, to try to attack your country." And Wigglesworth made some comments about Hitler being demonic and of the devil and full of lies and would go to hell and burn, which I think was probably true. And he said, "Before we even went into the parlor, he laid his hands on my shoulders, and power came on him where he dropped to his knees. And Smith laid his hands on him and prayed and cried." Where Summerall said, "The tears dropped off of his cheek onto my forehead." And he prayed, and in that prayer blessing, he did this: "Give unto him a portion of my spirit of faith." Now, if you knew brother Summerall, his, some of his gruffness came from the Wigglesworth impartation, but he did not receive the Wigglesworth mantle. That has never been, according to historical records I have, has never been picked up. There have been people that had that impartations for brother Wigglesworth, and probably the greatest one that I knew, that when I would see brother Summerall preach at times, I could tell when it flipped from Lester to Smith. But if you didn't know that, you think, "Ooh," but I thought, "Oh, there it is." So I knew what to look for. He had an impartation, he had a spiritual blessing that we call an impartation, but he did not get the Wigglesworth mantle. Now, we throw all those words together, but they are distinctly different. So I'm going to try to explain what a mantle is. Now, please grace me that, Bobby, if you hear me teach this again in a year, I'll be better at it because you're my first guinea pigs. So, uh, you'll get it raw and unrefined, if I can say it that way.
First off, the word mantle usually refers to a garment or a cloak that someone wears. If you'll notice yesterday, Amy McPherson's picture, she usually had a little cloak, a little, a cape that she wore, and she wore white. And people thought she had this, this, uh, dress code. But really, the way that turned out, but she was so poor in the early days of her ministry, she went to the place where maids brought their dresses to work in because they were cheaper clothes, and she bought three of those that she would wash and iron before she'd come into town. She's going to preach, so she looked gorgeous and beautiful. But that's all she had. The kids had church clothes and everyday clothes, one set, and that's it. So her home, her whole, uh, disposition with the cape was not, uh, anything of prestige. It was just what she could afford. But it grew into the imagery. So the cloak is a garment or a coat that someone wears on the outside. Sometimes the word mantle is used in military armory as well. There's, uh, armored, uh, that you hear something they call a mantle upon their chest. Old terms, but we have that. So the, the cloak in the natural is for warmth and protection, warmth and protection from the elements on the outside. Now, that is a natural definition.
In Second Kings, chapter 7, verse 13, Elisha took up the mantle of Elisha or Elijah, and it fell from him, and he went back to the book, uh, by the bank of the River Jordan, took the man home, hit the waters, and hollered, "Where's the God of Elijah?" And the water split. So that meant to him, he had received it. It worked for him. He now had it, and so he had the mantle, the cloak that fell. So spiritually, a spiritual mental, to me, number one, is an enhanced force of God that is working through a person to set a major definition or an establishment of truth. It is a person who over time has developed a certain type of intimacy with God to understand the ways of God that make what God does through them a force, not just a blessing, but a force, a standard. It will become in the future. Um, a mantle, as I said yesterday, is stronger than an anointing and an impartation. Write that down. A mantle is stronger than a singular anointing or an impartation. We'll, we'll keep defining in a minute. Mantles are developed over a person's lifetime. It is not just a one-time incident of occurrence of something. It is a lifetime of cooperation and working, understanding the ways of God versus just the acts of God, and you begin to know how to work willfully in that force. A mantle contains, all right, this is very important. A mantle contains a person's assignment and the instructions on how to walk in that assignment. A mantle has within it the equipment and the gifting that God gives the person to accomplish that work. It's in that mantle. Look at you again. It has the person's assignment, its equipment and gifting, its instructions in it. It's, it's a full package deal. Sometimes it is hard for one person to carry one's mantle, and we'll talk about that in a minute. It's possible that two people could carry it in a way. Normally though, scripturally though, we see it on a singular person or a singular individual. So, um, and a mantle is normally not given until the time of death. So all this mental talk about, "I'm giving you my medal now." Are they dying in the next seven days? Well, then you didn't get no medal. Mantles are granted at the death of the person that carried them. They're alive, lifetime anointing, lifetime package, a lifetime ministry, and when they die and they graduate to heaven, then it is now no longer on a living person, and it sits quietly in the spirit world, waiting for whom to take it, if they're going to activate it and use it, or it just sits there. Probably in the spiritual storehouses, there's probably hundreds of mantles just sitting, waiting for somebody and heaven to work together to get it. Everybody still with me?
So the, the mantles, you notice the old-timers had more knowledge about them. Young-timers, they, every time someone died of great statute, they talked like this. How many ever heard the old-timers talk like this besides me? Nobody in the room. One, two, three, four. You have too many young people in your life. Go find some old people. Go find some old, unusual, uncomfortable feeling saints, and those are probably the real spiritual ones. That's why you're uncomfortable because what they carry convicts what you are. That's why there's an uncomfortableness. Side note, you have to know how to be around greatness to receive from it. Sometimes God arranges you to meet people and to come into, to relationships, and you don't know how to be around greatness, and you lose the reason for God's arrangement of that meeting. It's not for a photo op to put on Instagram. That's what they do. Sometimes you want to film me or picture me, put it on Instagram, and don't hear one thing I said. So I wasted an afternoon with an idiot. I could have stayed home and been happy when I spent an afternoon that all they wanted was a picture, a few funny stories, and that's it. That I got dressed for this. I, I don't waste time with fools anymore. If you want to be stupid, then stay stupid. If you want to state that level of intelligence, then just stay right there, and I'm not going to bother. If you like the fantasy world that you may be in, then God bless you. That's not very nice. You know what's not nice? You didn't get what God sent you to get, and it's not my fault. I showed up. Good evening, everybody. Are you still with me? All right.
So a mantle also has within it a degree of authority. There's a residential authority in a mantle. Um, there's an audaciousness in it, the people that carry it. And so let us make sure that we don't assume that we've got a mantle when we don't even know what one is. If a person is going to receive a mantle from a spiritual parent or a spiritual leader, here are some things that are obvious in scripture. If you read from verse Second Kings 2, from like verse 9 all the way through, you'll see a storyline. You'll see that Elijah asked Elijah, "What do you want from me?" "I want a double portion of your spirit." And he said, "This is a hard thing." Mantles are a hard thing. My question is, why is it hard? And can we describe the hardness? Why is it hard? Well, when you go through here, there had to be, number one, a person receiving a mantle, not a spiritual blessing or even an impartation, but a mantle cloak that comes upon them, has to be, number one, in a long-term relationship of some kind with that person. That is the typical. May not be for every situation, but it's typical. So you don't get it in five years. It takes time. Normally, it's a lifetime type of relationship of of commitment there. That is done by the heart of the younger toward the senior, because if the senior picks you and you're not willing, it's a wrong function. So the, the senior must just do what they're called to do and reform the works of God and do what needs to be done. And if the younger, it gets their attention, "Wow, okay, I like this," and then they start pursuing something of a relationship of a friendship. That's where it starts. If you really have an eternal desire for that which rests upon a person, and you have an inward hope and an inward, "I, I like that, I want that," and it's not just an emotional fleeting of a moment when everybody else is now bored with them, you're still intrigued with them. When everybody else forgets them, you're still like, "I'm here." There's something there that is beyond the emotional attraction. There's a spiritual hope, a spiritual want, a spiritual union that is forming, and it takes time.
You'll notice in the life of Elijah and Elisha that when Elisha becomes the great prophet, there is the king that said, "Isn't there a prophet we can inquire of?" They said, "Oh yes, there's Elisha, who poured water on the hands of Elijah. That's called servant." Is a serving requirement in the reception of a mantle, not just in the public forum, but in the private arena, when nobody sees, to do the mundane, to do the unapplauded, because it's in your heart to do it, it's your honor to do it, it's something beautiful to you. It doesn't matter what it says to anybody else. There's a relationship there of serving. Most people come to ministers that have some influence or, or a fame, I'll say it that way, for what they can get out of them. I've never seen the epidemic of that until this last generation that showed up in ministry circles. Mayor here to get the next step, not to serve and to find the way of kingdom operations. That is why we do not have great American Christian leaders right now, because then that are to be rising are drunk on the appetite of the world's stupidity, assuming what they have learned in the second world works in the church, and it does not. The culture may change, but the kingdom remains the same. So we have a younger generation who wants a mantle, wants an anointing, and will pay any cheap price for it. And they try to collect anointings like little boys collect marbles. After a while, they have a bag of anointings, but no ministering, because they had not learned to serve. The great power of God sets on the back of the servanthood of your life. If you cannot serve joyfully, you will not have great power. If you have not learned the beauty of servanthood, you will not be a great general. You will not be a person that carries one of these rare things that we call mantles. And if you can serve without recognition, if you can serve without applause, you serve because it's right, and you joyfully do it, then on the back of that type of disposition to come the great mantle that is in front of you. A mantle is is pursued over a long period of time. You must have a closeness with that person. This breeds, or this brings a concern. Long-term relationship of serving and closeness. Normally, there are exceptions to these comments. Could breed familiarity problems. There is the person that walks in that position must not ever allow the time to come they don't see who they are in God, who these people they're looking at are in God, and keep the right honor and the right respect, no matter what you see, no matter what you hear, or no matter what is done. If you don't have that personal self-discipline to do that, then you're not a candidate for a mantle.
Now, let's just take this in a simpler way. How many people start serving in a church and get close to the senior pastor or the assistant pastors, and then after about six months or a year, they get mad because they've now grown familiar and they've lost the right disposition of of posture of honor, no matter what you see, hear, or feel? Because all preachers have to live the word like you do. The only difference between you and me is I preach it, but I also have to live it. So when you're around me, you will see me struggle and see me deal with my own life like you do yours. And you cannot let that personal, uh, awareness you now have to cause a complication in your honor and your serving. If you cannot process the humanity of leaders, then do not get close to them. If you cannot process that they must work through with their marriages, their children, their own life, their money, everything that we deal with in everyday life, they have to as well too. Having that anointing does not exempt them from living by faith, overcoming by faith, resisting the devil, and all the other things we've got to do. Sure, it's quiet in our Baptist gathering. Am I helping anybody? All right.
Some of these things I think are obvious, but I don't know if, if people are aware of them. When you're close to them, you say for the third time, you'll see the warts, you'll see the difficult moments. I've been around, just to use myself as an example, just for a moment, since I was 17 years old. I've been with practically every great preacher in the world. I mean, I've been 127 countries, so that's not too far from a from a fact, for sure. I've had the privilege of knowing. There are people in other conditions that are more powerful than some of these Americans who think they're all that because they're on TV. I've seen more miracles in Africa than I have in America in the last 10 years. There's, there's a revival in Africa. It's worth moving over and enjoying it for a while. See, but Africa, yeah, Africa's got it. Maybe Africa's got it. Africa is no longer the begging little nation, "Help me, help me, help me." They've got money, they've got churches, they've got cash, they got anointing, they got miracles, and they're taking over. There's a Nigerian church that owns their own, uh, signal on the, on the satellite just for their church. So put that in your pipe and smoke it. An African church, a church, not a network, a church bought their own little signal on a satellite. They can beam their church 24/7 to the whole world, and that's what they do. Is that great? So you better wake up, Americans. Africans are going to pass us by in a New York minute. God bless them in doing so. Y'all still with me?
And so, um, there, there are great people all over the world. The first time I met Lester Summerall, I'd seen him preach in our church at Victory Christian Center in Tulsa multiple times and had shook his hand once, which I counted as a great day. And I was on my way to preach in a camp meeting in Sweden, and he was going to be a speaker too. And, um, I, I got there, and I got up to preach my afternoon session, and what brother Summerall to sit and listen to me preach. That's called intimidation, not by him, it is by my insecurity. It was an intimidating, uh, let him. But I was already on stage, over-reading my verse when he walked in. Like, "Oh, now's a good time for the Rapture." You ever pray like that? "Lord, today would be a great day for the Rapture to solve so many of my problems today if you just show up." So I sat there and preached and, and would not look at him. Preached on the other side of the auditorium, so he was sitting there, and I would preach here. And then we went up to have lunch together, and I was in the little lunch, lunchroom with him and the host, and we were talking. He looked at me and he goes, "I've heard about you." My brain goes, "I wonder what he heard." He was, "I came today to see if it was true." I wanted to say, and he never finished. He never finished it. After that, I'm like, "Don't know if I made it or not." But, and, um, so I came, uh, to one of the other sessions through that, and he, as we were walking, he goes, "Tomorrow we shall have breakfast." He didn't ask me, he just told me. "Tomorrow we shall have breakfast." We're in the same hotel, right? I said, "Yes." He said, "At 8:30, we'll have breakfast." He was a man that, even in casual conversation, was commanding. That was just his apostolic nature. He was a world apostle. There's different kinds of apostles. There's a world apostle, national apostle, a region apostle, an apostle of a message. And you see those four kinds: world, national, regional, messenger. The messenger part sometimes blends real strong with the prophetic. That right there kind of has an element of the apostolic in it, but I do put it as one of the, the episodic functions. And some people say, "Well, I'm an apostle of the marketplace, I'm apostle that." Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's world apostle, national apostle, regional apostle, or message. They included you in those things because they wanted to make you feel important. They didn't give you the right title. I'm sure that right there would be one of the most controversial moments of the whole convention.
And, um, but you know, sometimes, sometimes, let me just back up. I'm wearing a teaching session, and you judge, you judge what I say, you judge it. But we have given people titles that aren't in the Bible. So in my world of theology, my world of ministry, whatever is in the Bible, we work with. If it's not, it's not required. And some of it should be buried and set on fire. Oh, Pastor Stephen invites me back. But we, we've gotten into trouble in the prophetic world too, by making everybody that prophesies think they're a prophet or a prophetess. Now, all nine gifts flow through all of us. I'll come back to, uh, mantles in just a minute. All nine gifts flow to all of us as we need them. God wills them as we need them in our life for that situation. One, two, or a multiple of the gifts will come to help you out. So we all have access to all nine gifts in our life. So don't ever say, "I've never been given that gift." You were taught wrong. All nine gifts, First Corinthians 12:7, were given to every person to profit with them all. All right. So where you get that teaching is from Baptists and not Pentecostals. That little bit of Baptist is still sneaking through their teaching. Well, one has this and one doesn't have that. No, you Baptist, God, read verse 7. Um, we'll follow you in the salvation evangelism part because the Baptists have that down real good. But when it comes to gifts of power, you follow us. Praise the Lord. Right.
So we, we make up titles that aren't in the Bible, and we tell people they are something when they are not that. But they're flowing in some other particular beautiful thing, like the gifts of the Spirit. If you own up the supernatural working, the gifts, 90% of all supernatural things in the Bible and church history come through the nine gifts of the Spirit. So if you want a miracle ministering, learn the gifts, flow with the gifts. Don't live on Pluto and Jupiter in outer space realm. Come back over here, get back on Earth, get back in the Bible, and just do it. Amen. Brother Roberts, I have secret ways of getting in. No such thing. We all come the same way. All right.
I want to jump off another story. I was probably nine, ten years old when I saw Kathryn Kuhlman. Our church on Sunday morning dismissed our whole service with a lot of other triggers to go to the, to the auditorium to be a part of her service that Sunday. That's a big deal when a church has hundreds of them dismiss and have their people all go to the meeting because they wanted them to see the miracles and to be healed. So we went and saw the miracle I told you about the other day and all the beautiful stuff. Then next Sunday, I was in Sunday school, and I'm not a Sunday school teacher. And she asks about eight of us in the class, the little small class, "How many of you want to see Kathryn Kuhlman?" All of us had gone. "Well, tell me one thing you remember about the Kuhlman meeting." Was the question from the teacher. So each one of us was telling what they saw or what they remembered. And, and I made my little comment about the nun getting healed. And I said, "And I want that every day." Somehow I was a little hungry way back down as a kid. I wanted every day. And my nice little Bible school, you got to sing, "Such a wonderful servant of the Lord," and be happy you saw her. That's a little boy, and you're supposed to obey your elders. Oh, okay. I mean, I didn't know how to resist as a little boy. So I just thought, you know, she's my teacher. And so I was happy I got to see Kathryn Kuhlman, and I'd kept that in my, in my consciousness for many years. Even when I started ministry, that there's a certain things artists won't ever get to be around or to have or have the opportunity to have if I want it. And then one day, the Lord began to blow that up. He goes, "Do I have a secret passage to my throne room that only a few people come to and everybody else goes the other way?" I said, "I don't think so." He said, "Then why do you believe like that?" I said, "Because they said this is the secrets." He said, "Well, they should have said that." I said, "Well, that's what they told me, and that's how I believed it." And it was, you see. And, um, he said, "Give me the verse out of James." "Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you." You can get as close to me as you want. I never tell any person where to stop. I beckon them always to come. And what made her great was she went in and kept coming toward God with all of her heart and love for him, and just kept walking into this presence deeper than most of you are willing to pay the price to go. That's why she had that, not because of the sweetheart in our prophetic world. So many secrets now, they're becoming stupid.
Good morning, everybody. When you hear him talk, somebody's like, "Really? Where's that in the Bible?" Well, you know, "I felt it in my spirit." You can feel all kinds of things in your spirit. It don't mean it's from Jesus. See, learning to operate correctly in the spirit world is a requirement for great ministers and mantle carriers. The spirit world has three citizens in it: God and His angels, well, Lucifer and his demons, and you, the human spirit. That is the only three entities that are out there. There is no UFOs. There is no other planet with little creatures on it. God chose Earth for some reason. Glad that he did. I like this planet. The other ones I saw don't look very nice. I like our blue planet. I like our oceans. I like it all. I don't want to go to Mars and live. Go out there and waste all of our money to find out this image about a dead brown rocks or red rocks. Three citizens. Now, in the spirit world, there's always activity. The spirit world is never quiet. It's always active. All right. But not all activity in the spirit is God. Some activity is demonic, some is human. The human presence in the spirit world has to decide what side it's going to yield to, why it's there. Now, God made a rule. He made a rule for us, not for him. He don't need it, we need it. That his word and his spiritual manifestations agree. That what you read in the Bible, the Holy Spirit performs today for you and me. So that's, they agree. What the Holy Spirit does can be found in direct storyline or principles of the word. They agree. We are to live between these two borders in our spiritual life and activity. Now, there is activity outside of this, but it's not how God told us to function supernaturally and spiritually. He said that for we are to function between the borders here and here of word and spirit. So if what you're preaching cannot be found in the Bible, then maybe you should shut up and stop talking about it. If your encounter cannot be confirmed by scripture, it is possible what you encountered was an illegal function of a wrong spirit, or it could be, number two, a religious, imaginational, euphoric feeling that your brain creates to stay in charge of you. Everybody still following me?
So in the spirit world, we Christians and ministers must choose to live our life this way. At this time, people are wanting activity all the time. The Holy Spirit does not do what you want all the time. I've been in meetings, get up to preaching, you know what God wants to do, and you can feel the crowd, what they want. "I want this, I want this, I want this." And as a preacher, you have to decide at that moment who you're going to obey. Because sometimes, you know, if you do what the Lord says, this crowd's not going to invite you back. They're not going to like you, and your offering is going to be small. I'm just being honest. And you have to decide what kind of quality Christian and minister that you'll be. Will you do what the Lord is doing, no matter what it may cost you in that moment in the natural, to be right with him, to be honorable to him, for his people in that moment? Now, some people do not know how to do that. They, they are scared of it. They don't do what the crowd wants, then they'll lose their ministry. So let me say this, then maybe you should lose your ministry. Maybe you don't have one. Good preaching, brother Roberts. See, the prophetic camp needs this kind of talk, not to destroy it, but to help fine-tune it and bring it back into a better position of obeying the Lord and to bring really gold and not brass, and really the fire and not strange fire into the houses and the hearts of our listeners. The spirit world, you, you can lean into the wrong side. And what some people are in the prophetic moment right now are doing, they are moving in the spirit correctly, and when it's not what they want, they move on the other side and don't know they're doing that. And we're getting a mixture instead of a purity, and that causes a weakness and other demonic traits to begin to be seated, and it'll germinate and grow over time to the point we've got it this way right now. We can all, you can see it where many prophetic people exalt their encounter above the scripture, and this is how they function. This is an illegal function. This is not how you do this. Some will make it equal. Now, I can visit there, but I can't hang there. That, that still makes me nervous. I want the word above all experiential things, and that it must produce. And you can't bend the scriptures to make it work either. It is or it's not. Are you telling me that what I had was not of the Lord? Possibly. So I become your enemy because I confront that. Like, I, I was preaching for a pastor in Long Island, New York, many years ago. Sends a God pastor doing his midweek service. Saw us in his office before. I said, "What have you been preaching on, pastor?" Because you can learn a lot sometimes, about 10, 15 minutes, you just ask a pastor what you've been preaching on, and they start going, and wow, sometimes it's very powerful. So I learned to do that as a habit. Just like, "What have you been preaching on?" And listen, I've learned so much in those few minutes. And this one would shocked me. Goes, "I've been preaching on the books of Enoch." I thought, "Enoch books? I think it's like six or seven verses of Enoch in the Bible." I said, "Did you say books of Enoch?" And he pulled them out. "Yep, here, here's the books of Enoch." I said, "Where's that in the Bible?" Well, Enoch's in the Bible. I said, "I don't know if Mr. Enoch wrote those books." Well, "It feels right." I said, "Well, you know, you feel right on the third piece of pie, and it kills you next week too. So you might be careful." He was taking up sacred time of the pulpit to preach something that was not in the scriptures or in line with the scriptures because he thought it was great that Enoch helped build the pyramids. I'm like, "Who cares?" And he got mad at me and invited me back, but I was right.
So let me give this to you. I'm just taking a little journey here. All this goes into building the kind of life that a man who can sit on what the Bible speaks a lot about, you do the same. What the Bible speaks a little bit about, you do the same. And what the Bible doesn't talk about, you do the same. Very simple, powerful ministerial truth. Please obey. It is so simple that most prophetic people miss it because we're trying to get the new heavy ready. Um, preach the word, win souls, pray for the sick, minister hope for the hopeless. If a revelatorial thing, an utterance of that caliber comes forth, praise the Lord. But we're trying to be deep and spooky and becoming pathetically weird instead of relative and powerful as the biblical prophets and many historical prophets have been throughout time. And I want us to make the adjustments so we can be that in our time. Does that make sense to everybody? Am I still love me? The Bible tells you have to. All right.
Let me go back to you about the Summerall story, but that was about 10 minutes ago. I hadn't forgot. Um, so I, I get dressed. We're supposed to be at 8:30. I'm up by 5:30. I'm showered, comb my hair, shine my shoes, pressed my shirt. Back in the days, you wore ties. Today, you wear like you're going to the gym clothes. Uh, about side note, how you dress shows the respect of who you're in front of. So when you, when you approach greatness, don't look like a hillbilly. Look the best you can be, and make your clothes that you have look the best and the cleanest and the pressed. And your shoes, even if there's holes in them, make that top thing shine. How you approach greatness determines the depth by which you may gain something that day. If you're casual about it, it might or might not get it. But you come. So I got up early. My mother did not raise an idiot. I got up early, shine my shoes, pressed everything, looked good. Went down early, picked my table for him and me out, told the steward, "Nobody else sits at that table or that table. It's a private conversation." And then I went and waited for 30 minutes in front of the elevator for him to come off. I was there that early. He walks off, goes, "Hmm." Summerall talks him. You've got to learn those "hmm." I found out later that was a good thing. He's here. You know, the young man is here, and he's before me, and I'm not waiting for him. I said, "Dr. Summerall, I have picked out a table for us right here. Would you like to sit there?" "Hmm." I learned that was a guess. Yeah. He sat down, and I had prepared a couple of questions, but he interrogated me, which was terrible because I didn't know what the right answers were. And I learned out later, the right answers is what the truth is, not what someone wants to hear, what the truth is. He said, "I've heard of you, and I've noticed we're selling your books in my bookstore. I've not read any of them." "Watching them?" Well, I had about 14 books by that time. And I said, "Well, which one?" He goes, "All of them." So I had to go through every book and give a little wire wrote it, what it's about. You go, "Um, all right. We'll leave them in the bookstore." All right. That's what he said. So, wow, I get to stay in the Summerall bookstore. My books have survived the test. We've made it. And we made some other conversations and things, and, and he'd be like, "Smith finished before I do," because I was doing all the talking, and he was eating. So there's always that problem with the food factor there. And he goes, "Well, um, I live in South Bend, Indiana. You should come and see me sometime." I said, "Oh, thank you for the invitation." To them. And he walked on, uh, out to get to the meeting he was speaking at, and I finished my breakfast quickly and followed.
And so about four or five months goes by, and his secretary calls me, and she was one of my partners in my ministry. She goes, "Brother Roberts, I cannot cover you anymore. Brother Summerall keeps asking when you're coming. I'm telling you're on the road, you're here, you're there." She goes, "I'm running out of correct things to say. You need to get up here." I said, "What? What are you talking about?" He told you to come and seem. I said, "I thought it was just a social invitation of like, when you're around South Bend, stop in." It was somewhere. I don't do that. You don't have little casual things. He says what he means, and he wants it done. You better get here. I said, "All right, I'll be there by Friday." That was like, you know, Tuesday. And so I flew from Orange County, California, South Bend, Indiana, which you have to work to get to. Gonna fly through Chicago, and then on a small little vibrating plane to South Bend. You're in.
A car to drive two miles, you know. I got to his office and I sat down and he said, "Good morning." Good! I got words instead of a grunt, so I thought, "Wow, it's gonna be a good day. We got words flowing today." And he looks at me, goes, "What's your first question?" Well, I had no questions. I thought we were gonna have a nice conversation. Old man, young man, great mirror, trying to be one speaker. Stop! He goes, "Don't ever come back to my office again without questions. Don't waste my time. I had two heart attacks and a stroke." So, in my lightning-fast brain, I created questions for two hours. Probably the most stupidest thing he ever heard in his life. And he said, "Are you hungry yet?" I said, "Yes, sir." Anything to go to that office. It was just me and him in his office and I was like, my first time like that, and I was not making what I thought was good impressions.
We go to Benihana, a Japanese restaurant, and he orders three meals. One for him, one for me, and one to be cooked for our entertainment. While we ate, he likes to see all the stuff flip and go. And he so he bought a third one and brought it back for his secretary or somebody. Is what he does. And, um, I go back to his office and he goes, "I, I think we're done today." I said, "I think so. I was hoping so." And I said, "I have my flight here, two or three hours." And I said, "Um, yeah, thank you so much for having me." He goes, "Would you like me to bless you?" I said, "I would so much welcome that." He said, "Come, come around the desk here." Because it's a quite large desk and full of books and papers. He was writing. He said, "This Neil here, you sit in his chair." And he took his third finger and his thumb and cleared us out. "Um, be blessed," he says. "You can go now." And that was it. I thought, "What? What? I'm used to Pentecostal courses and you know how to flow with all of them." You know, so I was ready for a knockdown, drag out, shake my head, slap my jaws, whatever it is, spit in my face, I'll take it. I'm a Pentecostal, I'm used to this. I was not prepared. "Um, be blessed." I thought, "Okay, thank you."
Got on the plane saying to myself, "I will never go back to do that again. That was the worst day in my life. I have enough problems about him causing me to have more problems." So my whole, my whole person, the whole thing. And the Lord heard, of course, my conversation with myself. He goes, "You will go back." I said, "No, you go see the Lord and I are good friends. We can talk like that and I don't get in trouble." But he gets my sense of humor. I got you. Go. I said, "You're invisible. I'm not, you know." And on that plane from Chicago to Orange County, God taught me a lesson for life. He said, "You don't know why you're all messed up because that's how messed up you are." I thought, "Well, that's encouraging. Now Heaven is agreeing with the old man." He said, "Most people don't know what to do and they run." I said, "Well, I'm in that mode." He says, "I know." I said, "But Lord, I have enough problems being a young preacher going through all the persecution because I'm young and loud and doing all that I'm doing. And I love working for you, but I'm trying to keep mean people away from me so I can at least have kind words or a pleasant atmosphere to live at least part of the day." I said, "Now you assign me to be around Brother Sumrall, who is gruff and seems to be grumpy, which he was, with that was my perception from the first encounter like that." I said, "He seems to be a little grumpiest person that you've used really wonderfully and throughout his life." She said, "The reason why you feel so unfit because when you're with greatness, unaware to them, their strength, accuracy, and stability confronts everything inside of you." And that conversation, in that encounter, and what begins to shake and vibrate is what has to be healed, fixed, and adjusted. And the Lord said to me, "Write down everything you are feeling and saying and put it on a piece of paper and work on those things or work on two of them. And when you go back, see if you're shaking, vibrating, or feel bad there. If you still do, you've got a ways to still go. If you're doing better, you'll notice it." And I learned how to have the uncomfortableness of greatness work for my benefit. That's part of what a mental carrier has to do with a person like that because many people will run from a person because they don't understand that first step of relating. Still with me? The last test before I think great power comes to a person or even a mental becomes secured for a person is the test of self-government. Self-governing, maybe a better way to say that. What is self-governing in simple terms? It is that you will do what you're supposed to do no matter what atmosphere you're in or the price you would pay for doing it. That you will give the word, you'll pray, the person, you give them money, whatever the case is, no matter if it comes back on you as a negative, comes back on you as an attack, you'll do what is right, no matter what. And you'll do what is right even in the opposite of conflict, in the world of flattering and uplift, where you still obey the Lord in the midst of that. Thank you.
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Thank you.
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