Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the outcome (the end of their life) of their way of life, imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever. Hebrews 13:7, 8.
The fundamentalist has great faith in the historical Jesus, or in the history of Jesus. He says, “I believe the Bible from cover to cover; and I believe it all happened, every bit of it: the way the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, the story about the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, and Jonah being swallowed by the whale. I believe all of it.” He accepts the Bible completely as a historical book. But if you speak to fundamentalists about seeing the stories in the Bible happen again, they reply in dismay, “Oh no, we have carefully built a dispensational teaching whereby we believe that those things happened, but they were for that time. Today nothing is happening. But we read the prophecies, and we know that one day something more is going to happen again.” The fundamentalists leave themselves without a present Christ to deal with the problems of sin and oppression and to bring deliverance just as He did before.
The book of Hebrews closes with the admonition that you should remember those who led you, who spoke to you the word of God. You are to consider the outcome of their way of life, or as some put it, the end, the objective, or the conclusion of their way of life.
We are faced with the Scripture: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” If we say that we believe the Bible from cover to cover, then we are faced with the necessity of not only believing that Jesus lived and that He did all of those things which the Scriptures say He did, but we have the other admonition, too: we must believe that He is just the same today, and tomorrow, and forever. We have to accept that; it must be a part of our faith.
Faith does not stand just on a history; faith stands on the repeatable nature of that history. I want to impress upon you the word “repeatable.” It means that something can happen again and again and again. Everything that happened in the past is repeatable now. The Holy Spirit was given for the purpose of actualizing, in your present situation, all that has been provided and all that has happened in the past. It bears repeating that you do not have a walk with God until you accept that basis for a walk with God. You cannot walk with the Jesus who was; you have to realize Him in the present. That is why He said, “Before Abraham was, I Am” (John 8:58). You believe in what Jesus was in the past. You accept the glory and the wonder of it, but you must believe also in who He is right now. Right now He is the I Am—not the great I Was.
Your attitude must not be one of coming and hearing about the great Teacher, about the great miracles and wonders that He performed. If you are conditioned to the past and you accept only that, there is a real flaw. The fact remains that the Holy Spirit is given to repeat in your life the things that happened in the lives of the men of the past. The Holy Spirit brings again the victory of that generation when Jesus died and rose again and ascended on high, when all authority in heaven and earth was given to Him. You must believe that all of these things are repeatable and are brought forward to the present time.
The reason the Holy Spirit is given is that the past history of the Word is repeatable. I want to emphasize this: it is repeatable. When you come to the Communion Table and partake of the Communion, you must believe that the Holy Spirit is bringing to you something that is very, very real: the death of Christ and the shedding of His precious blood for you and for me, so that we can be totally cleansed. Jesus said, “This is My body and this is My blood.” When you partake of it, you must believe in the repeatable quality of His death and sacrifice, that it is brought forward to you and is actualized in your life at that moment. Then it becomes your possession; it becomes a reality to you, just as if you were kneeling right at the foot of the cross and His precious blood was spilling down upon you. This is the attitude with which you must accept the Communion. Otherwise, there is no reality in it for you.
More and more people are turning away from the churches because they find no reality in them. The churches are great institutions with a real program. The people know that, but the unbelief has come in and modernism has been born under the pressure of teaching people that those things which happened in the past are not happening now. In order to justify their unbelief that none of it can happen now, they feel that they must turn to modernism and say, “It really did not happen then, either. We have to demythologize those stories of the Bible; we have to reconcile them to the fact that the miracle is in the eye of the beholder. It only looked like something miraculous was happening.”
You must relate this to yourself personally. If you are trying to believe the promises of God and are finding it difficult because your unbelief rises up, you will find yourself looking back to what God has said and done in this walk, and you will wipe it out by saying, “I don’t believe it.” If you do not believe in a walk with God right now, you will reject the walk and all the years and generations behind it. It will be a total rejection in your heart. The stories in the Word of God cannot be accepted without believing that they are repeatable, that they are valid right now and that the Lord is bringing those things forth by the power of the Holy Spirit. You cannot believe that Jesus defeated Satan, that He triumphed in His cross over principalities and powers and made an open show of them without believing that the manifestation of that victory is your prerogative today. You have to believe it is your prerogative today. You need not submit to anything Satan is doing! Believe and accept, absolutely and totally, that the victory of Christ over Satan is your heritage. The Holy Spirit makes it repeatable; He brings it into this generation and actualizes it in your experience.
In the same way, you must believe to experience the cross of Christ in your life. We know that Jesus died and rose again, but the Word tells us that we too died. We died, and if we then be risen with Christ, we seek those things which are above (Colossians 3:1–3). You must have this experience repeated in your life. You do not have a walk with God until you believe for the Holy Spirit to bring these experiences and realities of the past—which are in the Word—into your life, repeating them and making them actual experiences of your own. This is the sum total of what faith is. This is a day of fulfillment, and it is a day in which we rest upon the promises of God.
I think that the position of the fundamentalist is absolutely inconsistent when he says, “I believe the Bible. I do not believe in much for us now, but I believe in all that God is going to do: He is going to rapture me out of this earth and I will float around for seven years; then I will come back and watch the Jews rule the world.” (The fundamentalist believes that the Jews will rule the world and be the head over the nations.) I do not really put much confidence in their faith in that. If they cannot believe that Jesus is real now, how will they believe that He is real in the future? If they believe that He was real in the past, how can they refuse to believe that He is real now? If our Lord and Redeemer was something special and wonderful then, He must also be something special and wonderful now. He has to be the same, yesterday and today and forever. There must be an expression of the Lord’s victory in us right now. We cannot embrace that fact and live and die without laying hold upon the reality of it as it is actualized through the Holy Spirit within our lives.
Christ must live within us just as He lived in the apostles in the early days. He must live within us now, and if we cannot accept that now, neither will a rapture or anything else change the situation for us. The whole crux of the matter is that there must be a true walk with the Lord right now. If you have embraced the truth of the walk, the reality of the present and all of the past, and even if you are contending for the faith that was once delivered to the saints, your faith is not much unless you accept it right now. Unless you accept it right now, this walk with God is not real to you.
We read in Jude 3: … I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. You find that expression in the book of Hebrews many times—“once for all.” A sacrifice that Christ made once for all means that one time accomplished it for all time. The same thing is true of the faith. I want to communicate to you what you are believing in the restoration of the Church. It may be a new slant for your thinking. God is restoring many things, but it is the Spirit of the Lord that has stirred up people to reach into the faith that was once, for all time, delivered to the saints. There never was any such thing as an eroding away of the faith or of the authority. The Word was always the same whether people wanted to walk in it or not. It was the same in the Dark Ages when man turned to the diabolical traditions and to everything else but to the reality; there was nothing real happening. I am sorry that the faith then became a political issue; but even if nobody on earth was walking in it, God had still committed it. It was the faith that was once for all time delivered to the saints.
We are not to struggle so that God will give us back salvation, give us back the Holy Spirit, give us back the gifts of the Spirit. They were given. He ascended on high and He gave gifts to men (Ephesians 4:8). When it comes to these gifts, the fundamentalist is again inconsistent. He says that the gifts have disappeared; therefore they are not for us today. It is true, they have largely disappeared, but that does not mean they are not for us. The faith was given once, for all time. The Holy Spirit will actualize the faith that was given in the past if we will contend for it. We must reach into it today just as people did in the past. The past was loaded with blessings. Those blessings did not deteriorate or disappear; men just drew back in their unbelief and concocted a thousand different doctrines to explain their unbelief. The truth of the matter is, as the Lord says: “I am the Lord; I change not” (Malachi 3:6). Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever. All of this that He wrought for us and gave to us did not disappear; it did not vanish. The problem was just that men did not walk in it.
What needs to be restored is not the faith which was once delivered to the saints, but rather the men who will contend for that faith which was given to us once and for all. You may think that we will have another day of miracles. Yes, we will have a special time of miracles now, but miracles will work any time, in any place, in any climate where a man believes God. He is no respecter of persons; the provision is there. Do not condemn the fundamentalists because of that tricky, deceitful way they have handled the Scriptures, lest you find yourself condemned by the same principle. Do not sit back and say there is a walk with God unless you believe that you are going to really walk with God, and unless you believe that every bit of the Bible is repeatable. The Holy Spirit will make it repeatable; contend for it. Love that word “repeatable” and the basic truth that God wants us to see in it.
What is really happening now is that the Lord is bringing forth the Holy Spirit to us. The Holy Spirit is now provoking us to contend audaciously, viciously, and violently for what He has prepared. Those promises are ours, and the very violent nature of faith causes us to refuse to be deprived. We are not just battling because we are on a big ego trip, but because we are refusing to be deprived of what God has provided for us. That provision absolutely stands. Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35).
Paul wrote to the Corinthians: But just as it is written, “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him.” Notice that! For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God. I Corinthians 2:9–12. All of those things that eye has not seen nor ear heard are ours.
The Holy Spirit, then, is stirring us up. We would not dream of what He is bringing to us. We would be filled with just as much unbelief as anyone else, but because we are listening to the Spirit and the processes are being revealed, we are being made aware of the tremendous nature of the things that God has freely bestowed upon us. They are ours. What should we do? I think we ought to be very much discontented with the walk at the present time—not critical, but discontented with it. There is a contentment we should have in Christ, but there should also be a contending for this faith. If we are waiting for God to restore it, we know by now that it does not come that way. The things God has prepared are going to come by our reaching in for them. We have to demolish more of those responses that are pure unbelief.
The Lord has shown us again in this message that He has given us the Holy Spirit, who is to teach us the things that are freely given to us by God. Those things are there. The promises and our hopes were never built upon wishful thinking; they were built upon promises from God. Many times after battling and battling, people get discouraged, thinking that the promise is not for us today. That is the same old fundamentalist reasoning. Every promise is for us today. We must contend for it. Not one thing that God has set before us in the Word as being available has He removed because anyone is unworthy. Whenever God is not moving fully, it is only because of unbelief, even as it was in Nazareth, where the Lord did not perform many miracles because of the people’s unbelief.
Instead of complaining about being hit, just hit back! When you feel discouraged, then make the devils weep; but by all means press into what is yours. Christ provided it, and you dishonor Him when you do not contend for the faith that was once delivered to the saints.
Are you disturbed by this message? When the reasonable unbelief is challenged, it is always disturbing. I have pulled the rug out from under you, and you realize that you do not have an excuse in the world for not believing. You must believe that everything in the Word is for you, and then go after it. You are without excuse. The fundamentalists could be excused because they know not the Master’s will, and they have been raised in unbelief. They have come forth as a type of Phariseeism in this generation. You cannot blame the Lord for that. You know the score; you know that everything is for you. You are one who knows the Master’s will; and if you refuse to do it and if you do not walk in all of these things, you will be beaten with many stripes.
No tragedy would be as great as to be brought into this walk and then feel that you are not big enough or strong enough to walk this way. Throw your lies aside and get involved. Start contending and believing and praying. Even if you have fallen down a hundred times, it does not alter the fact that the faith was given once and for all time to the saints and that it is yours. Contend for the faith. Break through into it.
You have been battling the devil all the way because he knows what you are trying to do and he will try to distract you. Do not accept it. Press in. Seek the faith with all of your heart and break through. Discouragements and oppressions will come to try to beat you down. The devil will try to tell you time and time again, “You are a loser; you are a loser; you are a loser.” He is a liar; you are more than a conqueror. You may not feel like a conqueror; you may not be walking like one. That is to your shame, for your responsibility is on that point. You will either have to accept totally everything that Christ has done for you, and believe for it to become a valid experience that will be actualized in your life and in you, or you will be faced with judgment. You can never escape judgment if you see the things God has provided and you do not start pressing into them. You are caught between a rock and a hard place, believe me, because much has been committed to you and you must press into it.
What do we do when the people of God are being hit? We take our position of blessing. Even while you are being harassed, there is something else to remember: you are blessed. You have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That is a fact. If you do not seem to realize the blessing, that is your fault. There are facts upon which faith is based, or there are facts upon which you are found faulty. The fact upon which faith is based is that you are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 1:3). That is the fact, and if you are not walking in the reality of it and it is not actualized in your life, then that is your fault because it is an evidence of a lack of faith. The facts are given so that faith can lay hold upon them. With all your heart you are going to walk in the reality of the Word. In this walk it has always been true that things happen because you make them happen. Contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all time delivered to the saints.
Someone recently raised the issue: Suppose that, after all, in the timetable of God, this is not the time for Him to restore the greater works and all of these other things?
Wait just one little minute. The Church is being restored in its experience because it is contending for a faith that once and for all time was delivered to the saints. God is not restoring the faith; the faith is already here. Christ has already committed it to us, so we do not have to wait for that day.
Jesus said, “Greater works than these shall ye do because I go to My Father” (John 14:12). When was it possible for a people to do those greater works? In the generation when He spoke the promise, it was possible. The disciples had the opportunity. Peter, John, or any of the disciples could have walked in the greater works. Any generation following afterwards could have walked in them. Those words were never retracted.
The promise was made before He went to the Father, so the greater works were made possible by the Lord not only in that generation. The provision is an actuality which we can walk in right now. Do not think that it will be a hundred years before these things happen. It will not be. It is for this present time. That faith has been with us all the time. In the restoration it is only necessary that we begin to contend for that faith. As we walk in it, it becomes an obvious fact, but in its provision it has been with us all the time. The promises of God are always valid; they have always been valid throughout the centuries.
Now go out and work miracles. Go out and believe for things. Are you believing in prophecies and waiting for them to come to pass? They are there; make them come to pass! We may get angry at God over unfulfilled prophecies, but what is actually at fault is a lack of persistence and a lack of insistence in our faith. We must insist on it happening!