Resist The Flesh

You can be seated. It's good to be here. Good to know that the Lord is meeting with us in our morning services and that He is blessing us. It's always a thrill to come into the house of the Lord Jesus, especially a thrill to see the enthusiasm of different ones that care enough to come out in the early morning to be with Christ. There is something about the early morning services that is especially rewarding. I notice that on Sunday morning and I suppose one of the things is that God knowing that Satan savors the things that be of the flesh, that people love to sleep in in the morning. There is just something about the flesh that is weak. Jesus confessed that the flesh is weak, but the Spirit will give us strength. It will give us strength, and if we really have a desire to do something for God, then God will give us the strength to come out in the early morning services and resist the devil. That is, you know, the Bible said resist the devil, he'll flee from you, and a lot of times the thought is: How do we resist the devil? By resisting the flesh. That's the only way you can resist the devil, is by resisting the flesh. The weakness of the flesh must be resisted. In every, every way that the flesh offers itself to you you must resist it. No matter whether in appetite, passions, or whether it's the gullible desire of materialistic values in the world, or whatever, you must resist it. The flesh wants to have a career. The flesh wants to have an education. The flesh wants to participate in sports. The flesh wants passions. The flesh always wants something. It wants to be rich. It wants conveniences. It wants to be comfortable. It doesn't like inconvenience at all. The flesh wants to think what it wants to think, you know. In it's mind it wants to evil surmise, and gossip, and backbite, and find fault, and justify itself, and cuddle itself, and feel sorrow for itself, and blame everybody for every problem that self has when really it's nothing but Lucifer. He's just uncomfortable over the fact that he can't have his way himself. If anybody hinders him in any way he's all disturbed about it. So then, we must resist self, and of course, this comes back to my thought about the early morning services. They're refreshing and it seems that we get something of great value, something especially that we don't get out of other services. And I think the reason is because we deny self. A lot of times people come to services, like on Sunday morning they come, and they haven't eaten any breakfast. They get off a little early and they don't have any breakfast, because they'd rather sleep a little late than eat, so that kind of puts them in line to where you can talk to them about the glorious things of God. Anytime you don't eat it kind of slows down the old energetic side of life that's called the flesh. A lot of people don't understand the benefits of God in the sense of fasting and praying, but when you fast, your energy, your natural energy begins to subside, and it begins to get down at a low ebb, and when it gets at a low ebb the passions don't work to good, so the appetites aren't to sharp toward the passions. Satan doesn't have as much strength, and then during this period of time if a person is praying that means that their spirit, the Bible speaks in one place of my spirit praying. That means that your spirit is praying. And in that your spirit is praying it's drawing nigh to God while the flesh is being overcome in that the flesh is getting so weak it can't hold the spirit, and then you are praying in the spirit to the spirit of God, then you're beginning to be filled with the wonderful virtues of the Lord Jesus. You are breaking down the middle wall of partition. If you'll notice when a person gets way up in age, if they live a long time, when they get ready to die, if you'll notice they kind of go and come. Go and come. The reason for that is not mental fatigue. Most people say, Well, that's mental fatigue, you know. The person just got so old that their mind has just gone bad on them, and they just don't have the mental ability. No. It is true that their mind is going and coming in that their strength is leaving them and it takes strength to command the operation of the brain, but it isn't mental fatigue. It isn't old age, because sometimes people live to be a hundred and twenty. Moses lived for many years and he was still alert in his body. And so it was with Enoch that lived several hundred years, and so it was with Noah that lived nine hundred years, and also Methuselah and others that lived to be aged people. Their minds were sharp and clear. So, what is it? It is just the spirit departing from the body. That's what it is. The spirit begins to depart because as you get older you're not as active as your forefathers were and you get weaker and weaker, even at an early age, whereas men lingered long in years gone by. Sometimes they'd just have to give up the ghost. Like Jacob and others they'd just have to call the children, bless them and say, I'm tired of it. I'm fixing to go home and just yield up the ghost. See. You have the power to yield up your spirit. A lot of people live an immature life. They never reach real maturity in life, just natural life. They just give up the ghost at noonday, the Bible tells us. And in this you have the power to hold your spirit even when afflictions are in your body. But people get in so much pain, and so much misery that death is a relief, and they want to get out of it and they pray to die. Some people get so old. I've talked to some that's real aged, maybe a hundred years old or more and I've heard them tell me, they'd say, Bro. Pike. You know, I remember one especially, I talked to him. He was a Christian man and he was a hundred years old, and his wife I believe, she was ninety-nine. But I talked to him about living. I said, I guess you are really happy to know that you've lived a hundred years. And he said, No. I'm thankful to the Lord, you know, that I'm here, said, in the sense of life, said, but I really don't want to be here. I thought that was kind of odd because I like being here, you know. I said, Well, for what reason, you know, do you feel like that? He said, Well, I get lonely. Said, All the people I know, they've already passed on. You know, all of my friends in my generations, said they're gone. Them that I was reared up with, said, They're all gone and just kind of feel in a world by myself. That was his expressions, you know. Why, I never thought about it like that. But it is true that while you age other people are aging too. And your generation ages with you, and you could get so far along until all of them just died out, you know and you wouldn't feel relative to nobody. So it is something. Life is a great thing, but you can, in life, you can get tired of living and as I say, as you get older you want to leave this world. And so then, you begin to release your spirit. And as I said, whether you release it or whether it is tearing away from your body because of weakness, its just a matter of your spirit going and coming, and you still have a good mind, as we started off with the theme of our thought there. See. It's wonderful. How many of you know that being a son or daughter of God is the greatest thing that ever happens to a person? Is that right? Being a child of God. So then, going back to the things that we were talking about; the early morning services, it refreshes our mind. It fills our mind, because we are coming there for that purpose early in the morning. We haven't eaten sometimes, and our spirit gets loose the same way it does when we are getting old, or when we are getting weak. We haven't eaten and so fasting releases that spirit, and that spirit begins to make intercession and that spirit begins to fellowship God, and the flesh begins to subside and get at a low ebb and this is valuable. This is valuable to the inner man and to the Kingdom of God for that spirit to make contact with God, and to get that flesh out of the way. So, again I say that the morning services are especially rewarding, sometimes above the average service. But, whether it's the morning service, or whether it's the night service we all should live in such a way that God's presence is rewarding, and coming to the house of God is rewarding. And we should live in such a way that we stay filled up and overflowing with God's spirit. That was the secret of the early church. The power of the early church was that they were full of the Holy Ghost. They were literally full of the Holy Ghost. Now, you may have the baptism of the Holy Ghost, you may get the baptism, but that don't mean that you are full of the Spirit. Again and again they prayed and was filled with the Spirit. You may say, Well, I've got the Holy Ghost. I'll pray for somebody and God will heal them. No. Not necessarily, even though the Bible does tell us that when you receive the Holy Ghost you receive power, in that after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you you receive power, and the Bible teaches that you are then a witness and a testimony for Christ, but the original rendering is that you receive power when the Holy Ghost comes upon you, not after. But, anyway, you may say, Well, I have the Holy Ghost, Bro. Pike, I can preach and I can pray for the sick, and I can just do great things, but that doesn't mean that you can do that just because you have the Holy Ghost. And on the other hand the Holy Spirit is poured out upon all flesh in the day that we are living in, which means a person can speak in tongues, they can dance, they can shout, they can preach, they can even say things to inspire others, pray for them and a person will be healed, because in the day of grace as long as the blood is on the seat of atonement, that is on the mercy seat, there is no unrighteous people. As long as the blood is on the seat of atonement there is not one living human being in the earth that is unrighteous in the sight of God. He does not see anybody though they murder, though they cheat, though they swindle, though they kill, though they do all of their evil things they still get by until they just stumble and stagger and something happens to them, or until they get so bad something must be done. So, what we need is the infilling of the Holy Ghost and the infilling of the Spirit, because we cannot tell whether we differ from the other. They all look alike. Stars that don't have light in the celestial world, they reflect light. So, you can't differentiate, and you can't tell the difference. That is, unless you are a real scientist. A real Christian can tell. They have a means of discernment. But, I said all of those things to help you to understand that the spirit is needful in our lives. Not just being in the rain, not just being in the days of grace, not just having the Spirit of God poured out upon us. Your sons and daughters will prophesy because the Spirit is poured out upon us. But, see, that's not sufficient. That is a dispensational grace and that dispensational grace will soon be gone, but the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men teaching them that denying worldly lust, that they should live soberly, righteously, in this present world. So then, the grace of God unto salvation is one thing, the grace of God unto permission or allowance is another thing. God doesn't see anybody unrighteous, not even the devil, himself, does God behold. God does not even behold him in his unrighteous condition, because God's eyes are so pure He cannot look upon iniquity. He even brought down a veil between Him and His Own Son, which was formed and shaped in iniquity to the extent of being sent in our image. And yet we know that He was not formed, nor was He the image of iniquity, yet He was made in the image of iniquity, the image of sin, even as a bastard child to the surrounding eyes that He might be smitten of the Father. God could not look upon Him. So then, Lucifer gets by with what He's doing and people get by with what they're doing to the extent that this is the day of grace, but it won't be long and everything will be changed folks. You people that are not living for God and just being religious, you that are always thinking the wrong thoughts in your mind when the Bible teaches that charity thinketh no evil, and you always are thinking thoughts of evil and ungodly, abased thoughts of debauchery and wrong and you that are constantly surmising and finding fault, and talking against the minister and against the church and against God's people and saying things. The Bible said, speaking evil of dignitaries and things that you don't know anything about, being vainly puffed up by your fleshly mind. It won't be long and there won't be any grace for you. It won't be long and there won't be any allowance for you, and it won't be long and you'll fall from the presence of God, from the grace of God, which is the Heaven that God has created for wandering stars, and you'll fall from the grace of God. And the Bible said, Anyone having fell from grace will be under the law and all flesh that's been judged by the law will be punished for sin, and that with death in that there is no justification by law. No flesh shall be justified by the law. It won't be long and you'll be falling from grace because the blood of Jesus will be taken off of the mercy seat and you will fall from grace, which means you, as the members of the body of Satan and as the fallen angels, even a third part of the heavens as the Bible records it, that you with Lucifer, wandering stars, your light will suddenly go out and you won't reflect light, which means understanding and the way of life or the way to continue in life, even scientists will suddenly become blind and won't be able to find any healing medicines. They won't be able to do anything that's right anymore and the darkness of Lucifer's kingdom will cause the members of his body to gnaw their tongues with pain. And sores will break out on them in boils, and they will be tormented in the presence of God. They'll wish for death, but even death will not come for consolation. It's going to be a horrible situation. Well, we said a lot of things to start on a thought, you know, that it's good to be here in the morning service. But, all of this still has to do with being in the morning service. It's just so good. Our minds are not crowded and sometimes we can receive things even if you just, you know, talk about them. Okay, let's stand together. One of the beauties of the ministry of Jesus was, on so many occasions He only talked to the people. He just talked to them. At times He would raise His voice, as I said, according to the multitude in the area. As a matter of fact, it's fascinating to stand on the Mount of Beatitudes and see the big mountain and think of the multitude that gathered and wonder how in the world, or the name of reasoning, He spoke to such a huge crowd without a means of PA system. No public address system, but He just raised His voice, and God amplified it unto sufficiency and that makes you really wonder. You stand there on the Mount of Beatitudes as we've done and having preached on the Beatitude mountain it makes you wonder how in the world He did it. Let's sing this little chorus together, can we? Want to take just a minute or two and say one more time that we're grateful to be here, grateful to be a little part of a great thing. And this morning I understand that our Brother from Griffin is a minister and I'd like to have him to come up this morning and minister to us. Like to have him to come up and testify of Jesus. I say Griffin, I mean from La Grange. Of course, we do have a Brother, he's not here this morning. I don't see him this morning, but he's from Griffin. He is a minister. But, I'd love to have our Brother from La Grange come up and talk to us this morning. How many of you appreciate the Lord? Whether a minister or not, the Lord wants him to come up here because He spoke to me to have him up here, so he must have something to say that's good, and something for Christ, because God definitely spoke to have him up here. You know, I praise God for His wonderful blessings. You know, in our meeting we don't have anybody scheduled to preach. I found out that a lot of times in telling people ahead that certain ministers will speak some will stay for that minister, and the others won't be there, and the others will come for that minister and they won't be there, you know, the others, and it's just a kind of a seesaw sort of thing, and then, of course, you don't give God a chance to really do what He wants to do, because you have everything programmed. And in that you have programmed everything God can't do a thing and you are just, you know, He just has to work with you and your program. But, I like His program better, so I just kind of leave it that way, and I ask God to help us to work with Him in His program. For many years I've come to the sacred desk, and as I've said to numbers of people, I never know what I'm going to preach from. I never have a passage of scripture marked as a rule. I never know where I'm going to read from. I open my Bible and God gives it to me. And I wouldn't suggest that anybody else do that because it might not work for anybody else, but it works so beautifully for me that even before I open my Bible, I'll be standing there and the anointing of the passage of Scripture that He wants me to speak from will already come into my heart, and I'll open my Bible right to it. Now, that might not work for anybody else, but it does work for me and that's the only way it will work for me, because I started off in my ministry marking the Scripture and having the understanding as to what I wanted to say, and picking the place and studying for hours, and running reference and whatever, and then when I would get to the sacred desk I would open my Bible and I would read from that Scripture. Then when I started to talk it was like I was a foreigner to what I had read. I would try my best to bring the anointing around and tie it into it and it just wouldn't tie at all. So I thought, Well, this is embarrassing, you know, this just doesn't work right. I wonder what's wrong with me. One day I just said, Well, you know Lord, if you're the one that's going to do the talking, I might as well just read whatever you want to read, and you know what you want to read because you know what you want to talk about and that's the way I started to doing it. For years it's been like that and it's been beautiful to me. It works just beautiful for me. So, I thank the Lord this morning for it. And I especially thank God for our Brother that has come from down in La Grange, Georgia, he and his companion. How many of you appreciate having him with us this morning? I want you to give him your undivided attention as he comes this morning and let's enjoy what the Lord's got to say to us. (The visiting Brother ministers.) So rich and wonderful through the whole message. It was just beautiful. The words of Truth, there's nothing to be compared to the words of Truth. God truly wanted him to speak to us this morning. He told me very definitely. There was no mistake about it, that He wanted him to speak to us. You know, it doesn't matter whether we are strangers or whatever, the thing is, we are Brothers in Christ. We are kindred in the Spirit and God knows what He's doing and to me it is always so rich and so wonderful to know that God is having His way. You know, if you come here and God doesn't have His way in His own house that's terrible. If I went down to Brother John Lane's and John couldn't have his way in his own house that would be horrible, John. And so then, I feel, you know, that we need to at least let God have His own way in His own house, because we come to see Him. Praise God! Let's stand together. It is so wonderful this morning to have you here. We're glad to have our Brother and Sister Taylor here this morning. They came down from the Carolina's. They were with us last night and they make it a point to try to fellowship us and be with us in service. They are very wonderful people. I appreciate them and the others that come with them. They have sons and daughters and brothers and sisters also that come out to our meeting from time to time and it's just wonderful to have these folks with us. We have the others that come. Some of them from one place, some of them from another place and I appreciate Ricky and Mike. They are just staying right on through the campmeeting. They came down and they just decided to stay right on through it and I really appreciate these fellows. Appreciate our Brother Daniel Smallwood. He's still with us. Daniel has been with us a number of days and Daniel has found something that has really thrilled his heart. Brother Larry Bullard and wife, they are moving down, and I'm so glad to have Larry. I've known Larry for a good little bit now. They came to be with us in our ministry not, well, it hasn't been that long ago that they really lined up to be with this ministry, but they've been acquainted with it now for a good little bit. And also our Brother in back of Brother John here, were glad to have him out here. Brother and Sister here, seems like I ought to know him. What's the name, Brother? Our Brother right behind you there, John. Brother Horace? Where are you from, Horace? Indianapolis? Oh, Brother Wilson. We were talking about Brother Wilson last night. Brother Wilson Hembrey. Yeah. Wilson was down a few days ago and spent the day with me. As a matter of fact, he spent about all day long. Did the missionaries come up your way? Did the ones out of Trinidad come over? They didn't. They were going by to see Brother Wilson. Brother Wilson is a wonderful person. We led him into the name of the Lord Jesus and baptized him a number of years ago, and he is a very staunch outstanding figure among the Brother Branham following. He's travelled into a lot of foreign fields, into India, and different places. And we are certainly glad to have some of his people here. We were also talking about Brother John Carnes the other day. Brother John, he has a good little congregation back off in, I can't remember where the place is now. It's quite a ways from here. Over in Alabama somewhere, and some of his people come over occasionally to be with us, and Brother Jimmy, the Brother that came in with the Brethren from Trinidad was telling us that he and John are fixing to go over into the Islands, and we were talking about John. You know, it's good to have Brothers around the different parts of the nation, different parts of the world. Some wonderful Brothers. We stopped in to see Brother Carrol while we were coming from the Olive Branch meeting. Brother Carrol had invited us over to preach there at his place. He also is a staunch follower of Brother Branham's. Brother Billy Andrews. We stopped in to see Billy and Billy had had a mishap not to long ago, but the Lord told me to stop in and see Billy. Billy has a big beautiful place there in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and just Brethren everywhere, you know, people that love the Lord and they're trying to do something for God. One over here and one over there, and wherever you go they're trying to do something for Jesus. Let's just lift our hands up together. Appreciate our Brother Keys being here. I got another call from Brother Atlee Beechy this morning and he hasn't been able to come up from the ship and be with us, but I encouraged him this morning to come on. So he's leaving as of this morning and he'll probably be with us tomorrow giving us a report on that end of the work of the Lord, and being here with us to fellowship. He's called me several times. He was so afraid that he wasn't going to get to be in the Campmeeting, but God made it so that he can be, or that is, it appears to be that way so far. While you've got your hands up, loving the Lord, I want to ask Brother Al gonzales, if he will, our Mexican missionary, Brother Al, is a great man. He's not just a spanish missionary. He's been into South America and he's been all around with us, in different places, and he has really been as asset to the spreading of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We certainly appreciate him and his wife, Sister Nabe. Appreciate having them here with us this morning and I'm going to ask him to pray the closing prayer. Like to say we appreciate having Joseph's wife down from Baltimore, Maryland. Joe came down for a day or so and I thought that I'd get to see him, but I didn't get to see him. I was real disappointed that I didn't get to see him, but we still have his wife here from Maryland, and we're thankful for her to be here with us. All right Brother.

By Rev. George Leon Pike Sr.

Founder and first President of Jesus Christ’s Eternal Kingdom of Abundant Life, Inc.

Holiness Unto The Lord