QUESTIONS ABOUT LOVED ONES WHO ARE LOST AND WHAT YOU NEED TO DO ABOUT THAT

It took me a long time to learn why in the world you could walk up to anyone, you take a brother or a sister or you find somebody on the street or you meet them and you have never seen them before. You walk up to them and say, “Mam, I want you to know that Jesus Christ loves you. He died on the cross to pay the price so you could have a wonderful life here on earth and you could go to heaven when you die.”
And she says, “I’m not interested.”

How many of you ever had people say that to you? Every one of us has, haven’t we? I use to think, why in the world, what in the world are these people thinking about? Don’t they realize? For many years I didn’t have a clue that I had eternal life now. I didn’t realize that I had power over the devil now. I didn’t know I was supposed to be reigning and ruling with God now on the earth. I thought that was all going to be future tense. I didn’t realize that he healed me on the cross 2000 years ago and that I could walk in divine health now. I thought I would have no sickness and disease when I got to heaven. When I learned all these things I began to understand a little bit of why people would not receive this magnificent gift.

I walk up to you and I say, “Mam, did you know that Jesus has prepared a mansion for you in eternity that’s got precious jewels for a foundation.” Usually that will get to any woman, you know it? The foundations of her home will be precious jewels. She’ll give anything she has to wear one on her ear or around her neck or on her finger here on earth. When she gets to heaven, not only is the foundations of her home going to be made out of all these magnificent gems, but the streets in front of her home are going to be paved with beautiful gold. Can you imagine anybody turning that down? No I can’t. It is beyond my wildest dreams.
I would wonder, Lord, why is it, what is it? What is wrong? When I tell people these magnificent things and they just say, “I’m not interested?” And they walk off. I said Lord there’s got to be something wrong.
 

GOD’S ANSWER BOOK

Guess where you find all the answers to all of your problems. You can find them in the Word Of God, the owner’s manual. So I go back to the owner’s manual and I said, “Lord there’s got to be something in this book. Lord there are people out here that I have been praying and asking you to save for years and nothing has happened.” How many of you have ever done that? Every one of us has. How many of you have prayed like I did? “Lord would you please save so-and-so, my aunt or my uncle or my wife or my child or my whatever? Would you please save them?”
Do you know what He is telling you? “That’s what I am trying to do.”
And you say, “Lord, what do you mean you are trying to do this?”
He said, “First of all, all the answers are in my word.”
You say, “Now wait a minute Lord. If You are trying to save them then why can’t You?”
He tells you, “I have limited myself on earth to you. I have given the church all power and authority on earth. I have saved you. I have healed you. I have delivered you and I have given you everything you will ever need. When I said, “it is finished”, I empowered you with everything you will ever need on the earth to reign and rule with me, to get your loved ones saved and everything. But all you are doing is asking me to do something I have already given you all the armament to do.”

And you say, “Lord, I don’t understand this. I don’t understand this.” So you go back to the word. You want to find out. “Lord, there is another thing I don’t understand. I don’t understand why it took me 40 years to understand that you healed me on the cross. How could I read this book from the time I was a little tiny kid taken to church… how could I go to a church that never taught me these things? How come it took me so long to learn these things?”
 

THE ENEMY BLINDS US

The same enemy that was blinding the minds of people to the gospel of Christ is blinding your mind to healing. When you finally get hold of the fact that Satan has truly been completely disarmed and stripped of all of his power and armament, and he has absolutely no power and authority over you as a daughter or a son of the king of the universe.
 

THE TONGUE & SICKNESS

Not one bit of power does he have over you until you give it to him with your tongue. Satan has the power and ability to come inside of your physical body as a spirit being and put symptoms upon you. And I mean powerful symptoms. But that is all he can do. He’s going to wait to hear what you say with your mouth.

This is just like the little lady who came up here a little while ago. Something has happened to one of her children, the young one. She took him to the doctor and the doctor diagnosed him with the beginning of autism. If she buys that lie then she will open the door with her tongue for the demonic spirit of autism to come into her child. That child will receive that spirit of autism. He will get worse and worse and worse in his life. He will never be a useful individual on this earth because of a deceptive devil that lied through a doctor because he put symptoms upon the child. They took the child to the doctor. Now you are either going to believe what that doctor says or you are going to believe what the word of God says.

The devil is doing everything he is doing by deception. It took me a lifetime to learn these things. It took me thousands of hours in God’s word to get hold of these things.
 

IF YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND IT THEN THE DEVIL TAKES IT AWAY

One day I wondered why I could read God’s word and I could not remember it. I know none of you all have ever been there. I would read this book. I could take an owner’s manual for a DC8 as thick as the Bible and I could sit there and read that book and remember that book and teach that book. I could stand up before a bunch of engineers and have some guy ask me a question. The guy asked me what to do if this particular thing happens? And I would say, “Go to the emergency section page 13 paragraph 3B. It is about two-thirds of the way down on the page and this is what it says.” And I could quote it to him.

Then I started to wonder. “Lord, why is it so easy for me to remember and retain this book, but the word of God I can’t seem to remember?” Then I learned the answer. The answer was in 2Cor. 4:3-4.
I am going to read this to you out of The Living Bible. There are many different translations of the word of God. The Living Bible has this scripture translated in such a tremendous simple way. Now I know some people say, “I don’t like different translations,” but if you read them all you will learn some good things. You have to back everything up with the original Hebrew and Greek. In the Greek, just like in the Hebrew, but especially in the Greek, when you convert it to English or translate it to English the same word in the Greek will have a half a dozen different words in the English. It makes it very difficult to get the full understanding without knowing what it says in the Greek. When you learn that then you even step into a new realm, but nothing is impossible.
 

NEVER GIVE UP

2 Cor. 4, beginning at verse 1.
“”It is God himself in his mercy who has given us this wonderful work for telling his good news to others, so we never give up.”

Now, of course, that is the first thing we do. Too often as Christians we give up. The first thing you need to know is that you are in a war. You are fighting a war or you are fighting a battle in this war that our king has already won the war. We have to fight our own individual battles on earth for the souls of men and for the healing of our bodies. The devil will come to you and attack you. He has no legal claim to you, none whatsoever, but I’m going to tell you that everybody I know in church is just exactly like I was most of my life until I learned these things. Any time a serious pain or symptom came upon me, the first thing I would do is turn over in the morning and say to my wife, “Honey I am sick. I feel terrible this morning.” I might have felt terrible. I might have had the symptoms, but when I learned that the devil had no legal right to me, when I learned that, from that day forward I never claimed sickness again. I jumped on that devil like a duck jumping on a June bug when that duck is hungry. I am telling you that I gobbled that devil up with the word of God. Then I kicked him out and went out and did what I wanted to do. When I learned that, I guarantee, I have never been sick since I learned those things.

I don’t care what kind of symptoms the devil puts on me. When I learned that Jesus bore my pain, bore my sickness and removed my disease on the cross then I am not going to confess anything but health and prosperity. I am never going to confess the things of the world. The minute you start confessing the things of the world, when your tongue speaks anything besides God’s word it opens the door to a demon. That is the only way Satan can get legal claim to you, is with your tongue. That is why it is important that you watch what you say. That is why it is important that you never give up.

Verse 2.
“We do not try to trick people into believing. We are not interested in fooling anyone. We never try to get anyone to believe that the Bible teaches what it does not. All such shameful methods we forego. We stand in the presence of God as we speak.”

I so appreciate that about Brother John. He tries his best to tell you that right now a king is standing right here in this place today. He has angels here. Everything is here. He is here. Now then, if we really believed he was here, many of us would act differently. We really would. We say that, but it really hasn’t become a revelation that the king, the Lord, is here. “Lord we praise you. We worship you. We thank you for being here in this little meager meeting that we are having today. We are doing it in your name. Father we thank you that the Son is here. We thank you that the Holy Spirit is here. We worship you and praise you. May you be glorified in all we do today in this place, in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus.

He says, “Now then, so we speak, we stand in the presence of God as we speak and so we tell the truth, as all who know us will agree.” Now listen carefully to this next verse. Listen very carefully and follow along in your Bible. Your translation may read a little differently, but this is what it is saying.
 

SATAN HAS BLINDED OUR MINDS

“If the good news we preach is hidden to anyone, it is hidden from the one who is on the road to eternal death. Satan, who is the god of this evil world, has made him blind, unable to see the glorious light of the gospel that is shining upon him or to understand the amazing message we preach about the glory of Christ who is God.”

Now does your translation read something like that? So if our gospel is hidden or valid to anyone, it is valid to one who is lost. The god of this world, which is Satan, has blinded their mind to the gospel. I taught this one time in a class and a lady jumped up and said, “I never dreamed when I read that that the god of this world was Satan. I thought the god of this world was God.” See how blinded our minds are? Now when God originally made the earth, who did he give it to? He gave the earth to man. He gave us dominion over it.
 

DEATH CAME BECAUSE OF DISOBEDIENCE

He gave us authority and power over the earth and we were to reign and rule over the earth. We were to never die. We were to live forever.

He said, “I only give you one thing you cannot do. You cannot eat of that tree in the midst of the garden. The minute you eat of that tree you shall surely die.” Until that time man was never going to die. We were going to live eternally. Isn’t that awesome that God would make us in his image and give us his likeness? He placed us in this magnificent ball or globe that we call the earth and he gave it to us as a gift, free, no strings attached. And like dummies, when the devil came along, that deceptive beast, he came along and blinded the mind of Eve.
 

SATAN THE DECIEVER

He says, “Has God really said…?” Does that sound like him? “Has God really said…?” Yes God did tell us not to eat of the fruit, but he is a deceptive beast and he is very very good at what he does. The woman, in being deceived, was in the transgression. The man, not being deceived, the man was not deceived. Man had heard it directly from God and he knew that when Jesus told him you should not eat of that tree because if you do you shall surely die. So he went and told his wife. So the devil went to her. He deceived her and so she came and said, “It was good. Try some of this.”

And so he said, “Okay.” And so he did. When they did that we transferred our allegiance on this earth, we transferred our allegiance from God the Father to the devil and we transferred our dominion and authority and power over the earth to the devil. We who were made as gods of this world, according to Psalm 82:6, became the slaves of the devil. He became the god of this world and the prince of the power of the air of this world.

For 4,000 years we were Satan’s slaves. We had absolutely no power over him. The first 4,000 years of history, in the Old Testament, there is not one single time where anybody had power over the devil, where they cast out the demons or where they had done anything to Satan. He’s the boss. He killed us with impunity. He can do what he will with his own and that is who we belonged to, the devil.