I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Romans 12:12.
Satan is making a bid for the minds of the world, and there has been created over the whole world system of this age a tide that is sweeping men’s thinking, causing it to change.
Few areas in our country today are reactionary enough to have withstood this silent social revolution that we are in at the present time. People don’t have the same attitudes that they had five years ago. All you have to do is go back and read or review attitudes of five, ten, or fifteen years ago to realize how much things have changed.
We preach a message today that people rejoice in, but when that message was first preached twenty years ago, it was so revolutionary and people were so hostile to it that there were those who would stand in the services and denounce us. It was viciously, bitterly opposed by people who do not believe in the restoration. During the last twenty years the opinions of people have changed so much concerning spiritual things: some have drifted far from what they believed in; others have progressed and they’ve accepted so much more.
Satan, though, is making a bid for our minds, and there is only one way to be preserved from this: there must be a way which we can be transformed by the renewing of our minds. This will give us an anchor that will keep us from this tide of accepting. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many will wax cold. Matthew 24:12. In the last days deceivers will come, deceiving and being deceived (II Timothy 3:13). False prophets will arise to show miracles; if it were possible they would deceive the very elect (Matthew 24:24).
Brainwashing has become a major military tool. We are in a time now that we do not even know what could be registered on the television or moving picture screen, things that flash on so rapidly that the eye and mind do not even record it, though subconsciously we register it. These are the days of being tricked into things. A sign saying, “Eat popcorn, eat popcorn,” can come on interspersed throughout a picture, and although people do not see it consciously, when the intermission comes they all rush out to buy popcorn. You do not know what “hidden persuaders” are being ministered to you, or what things are coming to change your attitudes. Who knows what devious communistic methods have been used to demoralize and change the attitudes of the American people?
The battle is on for the mind, and the tide is overwhelming the world. It is very important that we find the way of ministering to our children, because in another few years school systems, text books, and many things will begin again to mold people’s opinion, not to make them without character completely, but to so precondition them that they will not be open to God. It can be done. Today we want to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We want to be transformed, not fashioned according to this age, but delivered from it completely, until our minds are brought into a new approach and an entirely new way of thinking.
The Word tells us … the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. Romans 16:20. Do you believe it? Why do you believe it? What gets through to your mind to make you believe that? Does it appear that the devil is on his last legs? There are now more people openly worshiping Satan in the United States than at any other time. Does it appear that the churches are winning the battle and the world is being converted? It does not so appear. What makes you believe that the God of peace will bruise Satan under your feet shortly?
What is your faith based on? Is it based upon what you see and hear, upon what you read in the newspaper and receive from television and radio? Is that what makes you believe that we are about ready for a great tide of revival, renewal and restoration to sweep over the whole world? No, it is a word from God that makes you believe it. If you are not really walking with God in miracle faith, in order to be transformed by that renewal of your mind, you might as well now face what is wrong with your thinking.
Where is the wise? and where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God… I Corinthians 1:20–21a.
The world through its wisdom knew not God. Why are not more brilliant scientists devout Christians? Why are so many atheists among those who are biologists, nuclear scientists, astronomers? So many of them have no faith in God because what knowledge and wisdom they have is based upon their senses.
They cannot see God, but they can see minute forms of life moving around under a microscope; they can look through the telescopes and see the heavens. They see the way things react about them and they put together what the eye sees and what the ear hears, what they’ve studied and accumulated in the way of knowledge of the functioning of things, and they say, as the Russian cosmonauts said, “We didn’t see any angels, we didn’t see God.” If they travel to the end of the universe they won’t necessarily see God, because the knowledge of the Lord is not arrived at through the senses but through another way.
Whatever you see with your senses is going to come after you have a knowledge based on something besides your senses. After Lazarus died, Martha came to Jesus, saying, “Lord, if You had been here, our brother would not have died, but even now we know that whatever You ask, God will do it.” The Lord said, Said I not unto thee, that if thou believedst, thou shouldest see the glory of God? John 11:40. He was pointing out that first you believe and then you see.
“Well, how can I believe? Lord, show us something and we’ll believe.” He said, All things are possible to him that believeth. Mark 9:23b … Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. I Corinthians 2:9–10.
“If we could just see something, we would get into this walk. Do a miracle that we can see.” During the time of the great healing meetings, people were running from one healer to another—and no matter what they purported to have seen, they never grew in their faith. But faith is not based upon the testimonies of people; it is based upon the Word of God.
One man believes, “By His stripes I was healed,” and receives his healing. Another man looks and says, “Because he was healed, I’m going to be healed.” But that first man was healed because he believed the Word; the second man is believing that God will do the same thing for him that He did for the first. Their faith is not based on the same thing at all. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, it has not entered into the heart of man—we will never get it on the natural plane. How do we get it? God has revealed it to us by His Spirit.
But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God; that we might know the things that were freely given to us of God. I Corinthians 2:12.
How are we to know what God has for us? There is only one way we shall know: through revelation knowledge. The knowledge we have comes from two sources: first, from what we are taught, what we see, what we experience on a natural plane, through natural reason and natural sense; but there is another source of knowledge upon which faith can be built, and that is revelation.
Jesus said, “What are they saying about Me? Whom do men say that I am?” “Moses. Elijah. One of the prophets.” “Whom do you say that I am?” Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” “Ah, blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jonah, for flesh and blood did not reveal this unto you—you didn’t get this through sense knowledge, through what you heard or what you saw, but the heavenly Father revealed it unto you. It was revelation knowledge; and upon this rock I will build My church.”
The church is not built upon the senses; it is built upon a revelation from God. Men believe because God reveals something out of His Word to their hearts. We believe in the restoration because God says He is doing it, because it is a revelation to our hearts.
When there seemed to be no one really believing in this move, it was real to my heart because it was a word from God. It is still a word from God and I am still going to believe it. Suppose everyone tomorrow would rise up and say, “We don’t believe it.” I would quote a Scripture to them: Let God be found true, but every man a liar… Romans 3:4. We have to believe a revelation truth. What we have, we receive by revelation; we do not receive it through the reasoning of what our senses have discerned and discovered.
The world by its wisdom knew not God (I Corinthians 1:21), but by revelation we know Him. Jesus brought this out time and time again … I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes.… no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him. Matthew 11:25b, 27b. The Son knew the Father and no one else would get to know the Father unless the Son revealed Him.
Jesus said, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me. John 14:6. Go ahead and build your tower of Babel. Try to get up there where you can analyze and see it; it will all be confusion. There is only one way: by God revealing it through the Word. Don’t just read it, read it with your senses; read it with an open heart, seeking God until the Word becomes a revelation to you.
The day that God begins to leap at you from those pages, you will know Him, and you will know Him through revelation knowledge, not through sense knowledge. The next time that you begin to look at the circumstances—your problems, your bills, the reactions of yourself under pressure and you become discouraged, just remember what you are doing. You are believing in your senses, you are not believing in revelation.
We have to re-educate our minds. “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, to prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Begin to think differently, and react differently to circumstances. Can that happen? Yes, you can pray, “Lord, reveal to my heart what this is all about,” and the Lord will show you.
What did people think about, when Jesus Christ was crucified? They wept; the disciples hid behind locked doors. Two went off to Emmaus (Luke 24) to talk between themselves; Christ came and walked with them. “We sure had our hopes set on Him, but it is three days since He died.” Oh, fools, it is so hard to believe all that the prophets said, that is what you should be listening to. You should be listening to what God says, for that is the whole basis of your belief.
They thought things looked bad, but those same people were soon moving into revelation after they had been beaten and warned not to preach any more. They gathered together in a room and when they began to pray, the place was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. They believed what God’s counsel had already foreordained should be done. They had a different attitude about it, then: “The devil didn’t win a big day; he didn’t do anything that God didn’t let him do. Christ died for our sins according to the will of the heavenly Father, not according to the will of Satan.” Then they saw what it was all about.
When something looks like calamity, it is because we are looking at it in the natural plane. How about looking at it in the spiritual plane? We must have a new basis of faith. It has to be based upon what God has said. If we see one of our brothers lying so dead that rigor mortis has set in, and three established prophets walk over and prophesy that he is alive, you had better disregard the rigor mortis because he is going to walk home with you. It will work that way when we dare to believe it. We have gone too long being wiped out by what is going on around us. Don’t waver: be anchored in the Word of God.
And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Genesis 2:16, 17.
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden? That was Satan’s first question: “Did God say this?” Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden And the woman said unto the serpent, Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil. And when the women saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat… Genesis 3:1–6a.
The minute that the devil could succeed in getting the woman to analyze things from the natural realm, he had her beat. And he’ll have you beat, the minute that he gets you to shift from what God says to your heart to something else—to take a look, to analyze it, to look it over, to reason it out from a natural realm.
We try to mix revelation and sense knowledge, and I have a feeling that we shall never break through to the finances God has promised us for His work, and do everything that God wants until we come to the place where we hear His voice, we have His word, and after it is confirmed by two or three witnesses, we step out and do the word of God and let everything else go by the board. We don’t care if an expert tells us we are doing it wrong; if God says we’re doing it right, we shall listen to Him.
Our thinking has to be shifted to another basis. We are not getting anywhere by being men of reason; we shall get somewhere only by being men of revelation. You say, “Well, we could fail.” And it is true in the natural plane that ninety-five percent of the new businesses, where people are using all the reason they can get, are failing when they start. That is a high mortality rate. Let’s try it God’s way and see if God can bless. We haven’t reached the place where we trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding. We’re still leaning on the understanding and reason that we get on a natural plane.
We have a witness of God that everything is right, we have a witness from God about divine health, we have a witness from God about this move reaching the whole earth. We have a witness from God that all things are ours, that finances are going to flow. We are not going to look back and say, “It must have been a true prophecy because the finances have been up, we’re doing a little more. It’s true we’ve had some miserable days of sickness since the promise of divine health came, but let’s just rejoice in how well we have felt.” No, let’s believe for the fullness of what God has said about us.
We are going to trust Him. “This walk has gone so far; let’s look around and take a few polls, analyze it, build some statistics to see if this is really a move of God.” We will never know that way. The day that King David was tempted to take a census so that he could see how many men he had for his army, God said, “You’re leaning on numbers, on what you can see, on what you can count, rather than on Me. Now I’ll give you three choices of what I am going to do to you.” And David chose to be plagued under the hand of God. Taking the census was a sin.
“Let’s analyze, now. Let’s see what we should do and how many people we can count on. We’re going to build a church.” That is the wrong approach. When God says, “Build it,” we are going to build it. Why worry about the people? If God says we are going to build a church, He will move on people’s hearts and they will be there. Whatever God says to do, that is what we will do. What God says not to do, that we will not do.
It all means spending more time waiting on the Lord. Without this, we could have a lot of misdirected effort and sickening failures. We have to know what God wants. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. I Corinthians 2:12. We have received this Spirit so that He can reveal to us the things that God has prepared for them that love Him. God has revealed them to us by the Spirit. We will never get to know these things except by the Holy Spirit. That is why Jesus said, “He will lead you into all the truth; He will take of mine and manifest it unto you” (John 16:13a, 14b).
Revelation is the only way you will know what God has for you. You should not pray all the time to be released from your circumstances. “Look, look! They’re closing in on me! Oh, God, help me.” Look at the Scriptures. The Scripture says, “Thanks be to God which gives us the victory” (I Corinthians 15:57). He has given us all things which pertain to life and godliness (II Peter 1:3). What about all of the things He said? We should say, “Lord, it is all mine now; reveal it to me. Away with doubts. Lord, I believe you!”
Refuse the circumstances that beset you. You magnify the devil and shrink God’s great manifestation of His love and provision when you whine and complain and are more concerned about the Egyptians of Pharaoh’s army then you are of that cloud that is leading you. The Word of God says, … I will in no wise fail thee, neither will I in anywise forsake thee. Hebrews 13:5b. There has to be revelation. You are either going to stand out in the middle of the wilderness and shake to pieces with your fear, or you are going to stand and say, “Hallelujah! I’m on my way to the promised land!” You will do one of two things; you will murmur and complain, or you will move right in for what God has for you.
You have to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. You have to think differently from the way you or the world thinks, and think more and more as God says. Read your prophecies. If it is just the simplest little word, stand on it. You may say, “Nobody has ever prophesied over me,” but you are getting prophecies all the time; you are getting sermons. Stand on them. At the top of every one of these pages write, “This is my word from God,” and sign your name, tuck them all in your pocket, read them and believe them.
This move has enough words to stand on to blow up Babylon. We can do anything God says we can do. We are everything that He says we are, but we have to accept it. What are you going to believe: pains in your head; or the word of the Lord? It is His pleasure to bruise Satan under our feet shortly. It makes the victory cut and dried. Why not go on and rejoice in it? Why get so upset over the things that are coming that could just wipe you out—if you looked at them? If you look at God you are going to stand.
The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged (discerned or ascertained). I Corinthians 2:14. The natural man can’t get it, because he does not have spiritual perception. He has no revelation. The spiritual man does, for he that is spiritual judges all things, (he can get through to the revelation of it) and he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. I Corinthians 2:15–16. By revelation, by the giving of yourself over to the Lord, the Holy Spirit reveals to you that the mind of Christ is yours to think with, to know with, to be guided by.
What does Christ know? For I would have you know how greatly I strive for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh; that their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasure of wisdom and knowledge hidden. Colossians 2:1–3. We are to come into that full assurance of understanding, into the mind of Christ, and all the treasures of wisdom and understanding hidden in Christ. The world is full of people that are leaning upon their own wisdom; but the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.
We get into the right way by presenting our bodies a living sacrifice; by not being conformed to this age but by being transformed by the renewing of our minds. We prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Seek the
Lord, seek Christ by the Holy Spirit to give you revelation. In Him are all the treasure of wisdom and understanding hidden.
Some may say, “People are depending too much on ministry, and not enough on other things.” It’s true that there must be balance; you can’t have someone else get all your revelation for you. All ministry should bring you into the place where you grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord and are led by the Lord. But it is also true that our placing a premium upon revelation ministry is very, very wise in this walk. Most of the wise things that have happened to you have happened because you listened to a word that came from the Lord, and you started following it.
The greatest things happened to you when you didn’t listen to the sons of Beliel, when you didn’t listen to the workers of iniquity. No matter what they had to say to you, no matter how they would have moved you, you wouldn’t listen to them. You didn’t listen to those that would have criticized you in the walk. You opened your heart to God and said, “I don’t know whether they are saying the truth or not. All I know is that God is revealing something to my heart, and I believe it!” And you walked according to the word that God quickened to you out of the Scripture, out of the words that He had brought. The whole world could stand against you, but you stood upon what God was speaking to your heart and that is what brought you through.
Is our faith based on sense knowledge or revelation knowledge? Our faith is not based on sense knowledge. There have been many lectures and books trying to show that the Bible is really a scientific book, trying to meet the atheist and the agnostic, the professor of the university, on his ground, trying to convince him that there were a few little wonderful truths hid away in the Scripture and it wasn’t such an old fogy book after all.
Let the atheist go to hell with his doubts, if he refuses to believe, but we will do something else: “Heavenly Father, reveal it to us.” We don’t save a man by setting him off in a corner, trying to convince him that there is a God, and by trying to convince him that he is a sinner; because he will reply that psychology teaches that there is no such thing as sin, there is no God, he has no soul. He has a dozen arguments for every one you have.
Don’t try to meet him on a natural plane. If the light is hid from a man, it is because Satan has blinded him, lest he should believe, lest the light should shine to him. To plunder the house of the strong man, bind him (Mark 3:27). Start binding the devil that blinds the man whose mind is working on a natural, or satanic, channel. Bind the influences that are coming against him. Then he receives a little word of revelation and says, “Oh, I never saw it before! It is real to me.” You don’t argue men into Christ, you reveal them into Christ. It has to be some moving of the Holy Spirit. No man comes unless the Spirit draws him; it has to be revelation.
We are to be a people led by the pillar of fire; we are going to be led by the cloud—directed by the Lord, every step of the way. This walk will become more and more an absolutely Spirit-led thing of revelation from God, or it will vanish from the earth.
We all need more revelation in our lives. We need to wait on the Lord more, for too few are being led by the Spirit of the Lord. Some are worshiping and hanging on but are still reasoning out their lives so much that they could be led into a corner and the devil could get them in to some real trouble. You had better start being led by the Lord. Look to Him for revelation.