God’s Provided Way for This Day
64-0206 · Bakersfield, California
29 That’s what’s the matter, today, with the people. A new Birth, they all dodge it. They don’t like it. Oh, they have substituted something for the new Birth, “come up and believe, and that’s all you have to do.” The devil believes, himself, and you know he is not born again. There is a new Birth. There is something goes with it, it’s kind of unfitting, untasting to the world.
30 Any birth is a mess. I don’t care where it’s at. If it’s in the pig pen, or—or a hospital. A birth is a mess.
31 So is the new Birth! It’ll make you do things you didn’t think you would do. It’ll make you get down at the altar and cry, scream, wash the paint off your face, raise your hands, praise God, speak in tongues, and all kinds of things. The new Birth will do that because it’s God’s provided way to be borned again.
32 You have to die. You have to die before you can be reborn. Any seed has to die before it’s regenerated again. Unless it dies, it abides alone. A man has got to die to his own thinking. He’s got to die to the thinking of anything but God’s Word, and come His way. That’s God’s ground. We don’t meet Him on our thoughts; we meet Him on what He said do. That’s God’s provided way for it. People dodge it; they don’t want it. But it’s true, just the same. It’ll, it produces death, and you have to die, die to your thinking.
33 “Well, I know the Bible says it, but I can’t understand it.” Then stay there till God reveals it. That’s right. It’s got…That’s the new Birth.
34 Ducks and geese, they’ve never found a better way for them to go South, than to swarm first. And that’s right. You’ll see them all get together and they’ll come themselves, some kind of an instinct draws them together, and they get together and swarm before they fly, before they go South. What is it? It’s revival time, when they all get together. Did you ever hear such a chattering in your life, as to hear them geese get together, or them ducks? I never heard such! And they have…There is no other, better way for them to do it.
35 Many a times, up in the north woods, I watch the first beginning of the cold weather, in Canada. A bunch of ducks born right there on that lake, they’ve never been off that lake, this little fellow hasn’t. And the first thing you know, a cold breeze comes down from the North. This little, little old drake, he is just born a leader, gets right out there in the middle of that pond, sticks his little honker up in the air, honks four or five times, and every duck on the pond comes right to him. And he rises from there, and goes just as straight to Louisiana as he can go, to the rice paddies.
36 Why? They’ve never found a better way for him to get there. You can’t herd them together. You put them in a cook and…a coop, and truck them down there. That duck has got better sense than that. And you put him in that coop, to take him down there, he knows he’s headed for the slaughter pen. That’s exactly right. He goes God’s provided way.
37 That’s the way man ought to do today, not be herded in by some denominational coop. But come in the way God said come in, by the baptism of the Holy Ghost and the new Birth, swarming revival. Not church joining, soliciting from door to door, and passing magazines; but a Birth, being born again, filled with the Holy Ghost, God’s way, freeing himself from the world. Right! Believing God’s Word! The hour is here. That’s what we must believe.
38 Man, you can never…I don’t care how many man would try to go to that duck pond up there and say, “Now wait a minute, you little ducks, got something to talk to you. We got an educated duck here. He’s got a Ph.D. and an LL.D. I’m telling you, he can lead you.”
39 Them ducks got better sense than that. Yes, sir. They don’t care about his better education, whatever it is. They can tell the certain honk he gives. It’s an instinct. Oh, my! The church ought to know that much about the Word of God!
40 It’s a certain uncertain sound. The Bible said, Paul said, “If the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who can prepare himself for battle?” That’s right, if the church—if the church give an uncertain sound of “joining.”
41 God said, “Birth!” What the Birth did there, the Birth does the same today, because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. What He was then, He is today. What they did then, is the same thing we do today. The way they got It there, is the same thing they do today. Same Thing they got today, is what they had back there. If It comes at all, It comes that way. That’s the way, God’s provided way. It never changes.
42 Ducks never change. They completely swarm, each year, go north, south, and whichever way they go. They swarm first.
43 That’s the way God does. He sends His Word at season, that season, then It’s manifested. And I don’t care how many other things that go on; when they see the Word of God promised for that day, being vindicated and promised, there is nothing going to stop them. “A virgin shall conceive.” And when they said…
The Voice of the Sign
64-0321 · Denham Springs, Louisiana
75 And that’s the way you’re a Christian. You are borned a Christian, not joined into it. You are borned in it. Everybody is afraid of the birth. They have some nice clean way of taking a little hand, or signing a little card, or a saltshake with some water in it. That’s not the birth. A birth is a horrid thing. A birth is a—an awful thing. I don’t care if it’s in a pig pen, or a—or a barn stall, or in a pink decorated hospital room; a birth is a mess, and it makes a mess out of you. You don’t want to give up, you don’t want this, that, or the other, but the tears will wash the paint off your face and make you a different person. If you’re born again, it’ll make a mess out of you, but you’ll come forth a new creature. See? They don’t want that. They want some easy way, you know, and there is no easy ways. As the song, he said, “I’ll take the way with the Lord’s despised few.” He don’t want to be a hotbed plant.
Broken Cisterns
65-0123 · Phoenix, Arizona
74 Then we come on down to the Lutheran reformation, and it was a great thing. The Word of God was given, “The just shall live by faith.” And when they did, instead of picking up, all together, all of them together and marching on, they made a Lutheran church, separating themselves from this group, and then it died.
75 Then God raised up John Wesley, with sanctification, the message of the second work of grace, and it was a wonderful thing. But after Wesley and Asbury, they organized it, it died.
76 Then up come the Pentecostals with the restoration of the gifts. They were doing fine, what happened? Organized it and it died. Just exact.
77 Now in the midst of all this, God is still calling a remnant out of every one of those generations. He is certainly. And it’s our time of coming out, of gathering together. And that’s what I think, the Full Gospel Business Men has played a great part in breaking down these walls, and saying that, “There is no difference in us. Let us come together and worship God under one principle, not under an organization.” If it was an organization, I’d get off this platform right now. I have nothing to do with it.
78 What it is, it’s got to be a fellowship, and not a fellowship of some creed, but fellowship in Christ, by the power of His resurrection. That’s the thing that brings Life, it brings birth.
79 And before birth can come, we realize there has to be death before birth. And a birth is a mess, I don’t care what kind of a birth it is. If it’s in a pig pen, or—or wherever it is, it’s a mess. And so is the new Birth, it makes you do things that ordinarily you wouldn’t think you would do. But when you’re ready to die to yourself, then you are borned again, a new creature in Christ Jesus, then things, open up and life becomes a new sight to you, because you’ve accepted the Person of Jesus Christ, and not some theory or some creed.
80 Or, even to the written Word, It’s got to be quickened by the Holy Spirit. No matter how much theology you’ve got, it’s laying there dead. I could have a handful of wheat; until it gets into the process to where it can be quickened, the wheat will never live. And you can have a doctor’s degree, Ph., LL., whatever you wish to; but until the Holy Spirit comes upon that and quickens it to you, as a personal experience with God, then the wheat does no good. Your learning is in vain.
81 As this Englishman said the other night here, I was so astonished at that. All the learning he had, as Paul, he had to forget all he knowed, in order to find Christ, do things that he thought he wouldn’t do.
82 But that’s the way God does, He humiliates us in our educational system. Not as I’m trying to support ignorance, but I’m trying to tell you the difference. Education can never bring Life. It takes the Spirit of God to bring Life, and that Life must not come out of just the intellectual revival. It’s got to come out of the Bible, Word revival, and that Word is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And when It falls today, and quickens, you get the same results you did in Acts 2. Exactly. It always has, and it always will be, because it’s the Spirit of God that conditions the atmosphere.
83 **It takes atmosphere to do things. **That’s the reason you men are always taught, “Bring your children here.” Well, certainly that’s right. I was glad to see my daughter, Rebekah, come in and sit down, just a few minutes ago. Some of you seen me wink at a woman, it was my daughter, so she come in and sat down. I want her to receive the baptism of the Spirit, and that’s why she is here in the meeting. That’s what the purpose of it. It takes atmosphere.
84 As old Doctor Bosworth used to say, “You can take a hen egg and put it under a pup, it’ll hatch a chicken.” Why? Because it’s an egg and got the right atmosphere.
85 I don’t care if you’re a Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian; in the right atmosphere, it’ll hatch out a newborn child of God. It’s the atmosphere that does it, no matter what denominational tag you have.