SPEAKER_01: Turning your Bibles to Genesis chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you love God's Word?
SPEAKER_01: I know when I got saved, I started reading the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: I'd read the Bible for years, but I didn't know anything it said because I wasn't saved.
SPEAKER_01: After I got saved, I started reading, and I started reading in Genesis.
SPEAKER_01: I got so blessed reading Genesis.
SPEAKER_01: I don't really understand how people can read Genesis and not understand the Bible or understand what God's plan was.
SPEAKER_01: I sometimes dream in the middle of the night, or I guess it's the middle of the night, might be towards morning, or and God speaks to me in my spirit, and I will hear scriptures over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: And a few weeks ago I woke up and this scripture was embedded in my thinking.
SPEAKER_01: And it came out of Genesis chapter 3, where it says in verse 8, and they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_01: And that statement just stuck in me.
SPEAKER_01: In the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_01: I woke up.
SPEAKER_01: In the cool of the day, in the cool of the day, in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_01: So I went back and found it and started reading.
SPEAKER_01: And it in some places it talks about the cool of the evening, the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you may not be old enough to appreciate this analogy.
SPEAKER_01: But when we were kids growing up, there was no air conditioning, there was nothing like that.
SPEAKER_01: We had a ceiling fan or a window fan or a hand fan.
SPEAKER_01: And that's how you kept cool in the hot summertime in Arkansas.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know how long it took us to get air conditioning.
SPEAKER_01: But in the evening, when the sun went down, we go sit out on a porch in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_01: We had worked all day, or my parents had, and when I got older, I had.
SPEAKER_01: We came out and we sat on the porch.
SPEAKER_01: And if you had a swing, you sat in the swing.
SPEAKER_01: And there was a breeze.
SPEAKER_01: And now the porch, you may not have a porch on your house.
SPEAKER_01: They don't build houses with porches on them much anymore, but they did then because you had to get outside the house because it was hot in the house.
SPEAKER_01: You sit out there in the cool of the evening.
SPEAKER_01: And the neighborhood wasn't like it is today.
SPEAKER_01: You know, it was peaceful and quiet.
SPEAKER_01: And the first house that I remembered that we lived in, my dad had come home from the war, and he bought a house on Martin Street, South Martin Street.
SPEAKER_01: And it was$7,500.
SPEAKER_01: That was the whole house.
SPEAKER_01: Had one bathroom, one bedroom, one living room, and a kitchen.
SPEAKER_01: It was$7,500.
SPEAKER_01: I can still see that.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I took my granddaughters over there, my great, yeah, my granddaughters over there one day to show them where I grew up.
SPEAKER_01: 2113 South Martin.
SPEAKER_01: And I got to the address and the house was gone.
SPEAKER_01: I said, what happened to it?
SPEAKER_01: They demolished it, it tore it down, or it fell down because it had in a need of a lot of work, even when we lived there.
SPEAKER_01: Holes in the floor.
SPEAKER_01: But it was home.
SPEAKER_01: And we would go out and sit on the porch every evening and watch people walk down the sidewalk.
SPEAKER_01: We knew all our neighbors by name.
SPEAKER_01: And it was a friendly neighborhood, and we just enjoyed sitting on the porch, and the breeze blew, and we sat there in the cool of the evening until the mosquitoes or bugs or something, you know, drove us, and we went back in the house and turned on the window fan and went to bed.
SPEAKER_01: This is what was sticking in my head in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_01: Now, for the sake of time, I'm not going to go back and read all of the Genesis account of what God was establishing here.
SPEAKER_01: But I will say this, and I want to read from Haley's Bible commentary.
SPEAKER_01: This is one of the first books that I ever read when I was studying as a new Christian.
SPEAKER_01: And it talks about those beginning days, and it talks about Abraham, or Abram, as he was known before God changed his name.
SPEAKER_01: And it talked about the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_01: And it talked about how God visited with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to see the significance in just a minute.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is what fascinated me.
SPEAKER_01: The Garden of Eden was a garden that God planted east of Eden.
SPEAKER_01: Eden was a city.
SPEAKER_01: And in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, you can see the excavation of the city of Eden.
SPEAKER_01: It was called Eridu by the Babylonians.
SPEAKER_01: And God built it.
SPEAKER_01: And he put Adam and Eve in the city of Eden.
SPEAKER_01: And he told them to keep that garden and to till it.
SPEAKER_01: To keep it from ruin, to keep it from being invaded by an enemy.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, you know the story he told them not to eat of the tree of the fruit of the knowledge, good and evil.
SPEAKER_01: The day that they did, they would die.
SPEAKER_01: Dies plural, two deaths.
SPEAKER_01: They die spiritually, which is separation from God.
SPEAKER_01: And they die physically, which is the physical death.
SPEAKER_01: And they didn't do it.
SPEAKER_01: They disobeyed God.
SPEAKER_01: But God told them to dress it and to keep it.
SPEAKER_01: And I heard one evangelist say one time, said all he had to do, all Adam had to do was when the serpent came slithering in, he just had to tell him, get out of this garden.
SPEAKER_01: This doesn't belong to you.
SPEAKER_01: But he didn't do that.
SPEAKER_01: Eve was deceived, but Adam willfully disobeyed God.
SPEAKER_01: And they were separated from God after that because sin had entered into the human race.
SPEAKER_01: In Corinthians, it tells us that death did not come from man.
SPEAKER_01: Death came, I mean, excuse me, death did not come from God.
SPEAKER_01: It came by man.
SPEAKER_01: It says, by man death came.
SPEAKER_01: And by man life came.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was the last Adam, it says, and he redeemed us and restored us back to the innocence and the life that Adam and Eve had with God.
SPEAKER_01: And so here is Eden.
SPEAKER_01: It's uh you can see in the Ashmola Museum in Oxford, England, and it was excavated in 1918 by the British.
SPEAKER_01: We have been to the British Museum in London, where the city of the Ur of the Chaldees is.
SPEAKER_01: It was also also excavated by the British.
SPEAKER_01: And they had, ladies, you'd like to know this, they had the jewelry that the women would wear, Sarah.
SPEAKER_01: It was pure gold.
SPEAKER_01: Pure gold.
SPEAKER_01: Pure gold, you can almost see through it.
SPEAKER_01: It's just it's so pure, there's no impurities.
SPEAKER_01: They had underground sewer systems, they had libraries, and so these were not cave dwellers.
SPEAKER_01: And the city of Eridu, or the city of Eden, is right at the mouth of the Tigers and Euphrates River in the Persian Gulf.
SPEAKER_01: That's where all the fighting is going on today.
SPEAKER_01: It's where it's happening in Aram.
SPEAKER_01: And in that garden, now listen to this.
SPEAKER_01: In that garden was the ox, the goat, the sheep, the horse, the pig, the dog, the apple, peach, pear.
SPEAKER_01: Those were trees, cherry, mulberry, gooseberry, vines, olives, figs, dates, almonds, wheat, barley.
SPEAKER_01: We're not talking about a bean patch here.
SPEAKER_01: This was a magnificent place.
SPEAKER_01: Spinach, radishes, onions, uh, fruits, vegetables.
SPEAKER_01: It was the cradle of the human race.
SPEAKER_01: And the Babylonians described what happened in what is called the Weld W E L D Weld Prism, P-R-L-S-M.
SPEAKER_01: It was a stone that all this was carved on by the Babylonians.
SPEAKER_01: It was the traditional Garden of Eden, excavated, verified according to the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to skip over to the scriptures right now, but this is just a historical record of what has been found, excavated, and what's verified.
SPEAKER_01: Now let's go back to Genesis and let's go down to Genesis chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, they've already eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
SPEAKER_01: They've already been separated from God.
SPEAKER_01: That's what spiritual death does.
SPEAKER_01: It separates you from God.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean you won't exist anymore.
SPEAKER_01: But they were separated from God.
SPEAKER_01: They had never experienced that before.
SPEAKER_01: And so let's go to verse 7.
SPEAKER_01: And the eyes of them both were open, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons, or the marginal reference says girdles.
SPEAKER_01: They made clothes out of fig leaves.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever taken a good look at a fig leaf?
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever held on to it if you've ever picked figs off a tree?
SPEAKER_01: How would you like to have a girdle made out of a fig leaf?
SPEAKER_01: It's itchy, it's coarse, it's not comfortable, it don't stretch, it's and they had a they had to make clothes out of that to cover themselves.
SPEAKER_01: Now let's go on.
SPEAKER_01: And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_01: And I want you to get out of this tonight.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to get out of this.
SPEAKER_01: The cool of the day represents a time of peaceful communication between God and man.
SPEAKER_01: That's what I want to imprint you with.
SPEAKER_01: The cool of the day is peaceful communication between God and man.
SPEAKER_01: I'm amazed at the legislation that states are having to deal with now to keep children off of the cell phones and make them put them in a locker.
SPEAKER_01: They can't carry them in the classroom.
SPEAKER_01: And I saw something the other day that there are restaurants now that will not allow you to take your cell phone into the restaurant anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Because they get so many complaints of people that are trying to eat and talk, and they can't for cell phones dinging and ringing and going off.
SPEAKER_01: That we have actually overintelegized ourselves to the point where we have no more fellowship with people.
SPEAKER_01: I've seen people in restaurants, husbands and wives, maybe sweethearts or whatever, and they're sitting there and and they don't sit there and look at each other and talk anymore.
SPEAKER_01: He's on his phone.
SPEAKER_01: She's on her phone.
SPEAKER_01: They're constantly being distracted.
SPEAKER_01: Kids are being distracted in school, so they can't take their phones into the schoolroom.
SPEAKER_01: You didn't have that in the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_01: You you didn't have AI, you didn't have all the distractions, you didn't have TV.
SPEAKER_01: I I think, and I was ten years old before I ever saw a television set.
SPEAKER_01: And I found out who invented the TV set.
SPEAKER_01: His name was Philo T.
SPEAKER_01: Farnsworth.
SPEAKER_01: And he was a young teenager, he was in his late teens, and he built the first television camera and receiver.
SPEAKER_01: And uh in the 50s is when television started, well, maybe the late 40s, early 50s, television uh started.
SPEAKER_01: It's a sad story, but he, you know, built it and people, you know, were looking at it, and RCA found out about it.
SPEAKER_01: So they came down and looked at it, and they offered him$100,000 uh for his invention.
SPEAKER_01: And he sold it to him for a hundred bucks.
SPEAKER_01: I mean a hundred thousand dollars.
SPEAKER_01: Who if Philo is still alive, uh, which I don't think he is, don't you know he's been kicking himself for all these years?
SPEAKER_01: He sold that thing for a hundred thousand dollars, but the television can be a blessing or a curse.
SPEAKER_01: When we were kids and television came on the scene, because we'd sit, we'd sit in the living room, and then the radio is the one that was on the big table.
SPEAKER_01: The the radio was almost as big as that keyboard there, and you sit there and everybody listened to the radio.
SPEAKER_01: We had our favorite programs.
SPEAKER_01: Uh one of our favorite programs was Amos and Andy.
SPEAKER_01: But most people don't know they were two white guys.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't until television came out that they portrayed them uh as uh two black gentlemen.
SPEAKER_01: Uh Fibra McGee and Molly.
SPEAKER_01: Uh Jeannie's favorite one was uh Let's Pretend.
SPEAKER_01: It was and believe it or not, Gunsmoke was one of the first radio programs.
SPEAKER_01: Uh and then television came along, and you could see people.
SPEAKER_01: There were people that you could could watch.
SPEAKER_01: And we had Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best.
SPEAKER_01: Uh uh not Osborne, um Harriet.
SPEAKER_01: You had all these family shows, and the father knew best, always.
SPEAKER_01: And so the culture was actually being improved until the 60s.
SPEAKER_01: And a guy who just recently died, and they just really honored him.
SPEAKER_01: Um forgotten his name now, but he's the one that changed all the television shows and the television viewing.
SPEAKER_01: He came up with the programs like Maud.
SPEAKER_01: He came with the programs of um the angry guy that was always chewing everybody out and Archibunker and all that.
SPEAKER_01: He came up with the total change in the uh human family.
SPEAKER_01: And uh you know that's when everything started going downhill, and everything was affected because that's what we were feeding on.
SPEAKER_01: You you d you no longer watched howdy duty and that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_01: You were watching people uh curse each other and kill each other and all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_01: So the human human race began to degrade because uh we didn't have any laughter anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Well, it was perverted laughter.
SPEAKER_01: You didn't have any clean, and of course we didn't watch television because we didn't have one.
SPEAKER_01: And so we read.
SPEAKER_01: I asked my mama, I wanted to do something.
SPEAKER_01: I'm bored.
SPEAKER_01: She said, go read a book.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what we would do.
SPEAKER_01: And I came home from school and I was hungry and I wanted something to eat.
SPEAKER_01: She said, eat a carrot.
SPEAKER_01: You know, there were there were no toinkies, there was no, you know, eat an apple, eat a carrot.
SPEAKER_01: Life was different.
SPEAKER_01: With Adam and Eve, every day it said they heard the voice of God.
SPEAKER_01: Say they heard the voice of God.
SPEAKER_01: They heard the voice of God.
SPEAKER_01: God was speaking.
SPEAKER_01: They heard the voice of God walking, say walking, in the garden.
SPEAKER_01: He wasn't just a vapor that appeared.
SPEAKER_01: He was walking in that garden.
SPEAKER_01: It was a real garden.
SPEAKER_01: It was a real place.
SPEAKER_01: The city of Eridu, the city of Eden, was a real city.
SPEAKER_01: It was excavated in 1918.
SPEAKER_01: He said all of these places really existed.
SPEAKER_01: They weren't just some story.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I was reading this afternoon about some of the commentary that people have drawn from, and you'll hear and see this stuff on even Christian television.
SPEAKER_01: They've written books, and there's just been a real, how would I say, discussion about Nephilim, the giants and the angels.
SPEAKER_01: And there are three basic theories.
SPEAKER_01: These angels, sons of God, as they're called, they're those that believe they were fallen angels, demon spirits, and they cohabited with women and produced giants.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, the people that argue against that say, well, that goes against the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't say they were demon spirits.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't say they were fallen angels.
SPEAKER_01: It says they were the sons of God.
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, others believe, well, they'll be talking about the sons of Seth.
SPEAKER_01: They could be talking about natural people.
SPEAKER_01: Angels don't uh marry.
SPEAKER_01: They don't aren't given in marriage, they don't reproduce themselves.
SPEAKER_01: You don't hear about baby angels.
SPEAKER_01: So there's all kinds of theories out there.
SPEAKER_01: And when I read further into some of the commentary, these people would start quoting passages from the book of Enoch.
SPEAKER_01: My brother and sister, there is no book of Enoch in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: It was not canonized, it was not thought worthy of being anointed and canonized.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't put in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: And they draw a lot of their information from the book of Jasher, uh, the book of Josephus, the book of Enoch and different ones.
SPEAKER_01: And some of them, one of the books that was sent to me, I read.
SPEAKER_01: I always look at the source that they have listed.
SPEAKER_01: One of it was Greek mythology from the Odyssey.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you had to study all that in school.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know about y'all, but when we got to the Odyssey and had to read Homer, and it was weird.
SPEAKER_01: Homer and Jethro?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I understood Homer and Jethro.
SPEAKER_01: They were on um Hee-Hall every Saturday night.
SPEAKER_01: But they wasn't talking about that, Homer.
SPEAKER_01: He wasn't talking about Homer's restaurant.
SPEAKER_01: He wasn't talking about, he was talking about Greek mythology.
SPEAKER_01: So you've got to be careful what you read and where they get their information from.
SPEAKER_01: The key is to always see what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_01: They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_01: Say it again, in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what does this represent?
SPEAKER_01: I repeat myself.
SPEAKER_01: A time of peaceful communion between God and man.
SPEAKER_01: You should have peaceful communion between God and yourself on a daily basis.
SPEAKER_01: Now you can pick the time, but you can hardly have peaceful communication today if you've got a device on, if you've got a plug in your ear, if you're watching TV, if you're you you have to be still and know.
SPEAKER_01: You have to be still and know.
SPEAKER_01: I use the first thirty minutes uh driving to work every day.
SPEAKER_01: I I use those times, those thirty minutes on the road, so how long it takes me.
SPEAKER_01: Praying in the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: It's just me and God in the car.
SPEAKER_01: I don't listen to the radio.
SPEAKER_01: I don't listen to tapes or well, that day they did it right there, tapes, CDs, USBs.
SPEAKER_01: I just talk to God, just fellowship with Him.
SPEAKER_01: And you will see in just a minute how valuable that is.
SPEAKER_01: In the cool of the evening when nobody is around.
SPEAKER_01: And I still flash back to my family sitting out on the front porch, and my dad sitting over here in this rocking chair, and my mother sitting over here on the swing, and my sister and I are sitting there on the steps, and people are walking, our neighbors are walking up and down the street and saying hello, how are y'all doing?
SPEAKER_01: The evening time was when everybody was on the front porch.
SPEAKER_01: Because it was too hot in the house.
SPEAKER_01: Well, Adam and Eve set that course.
SPEAKER_01: They were talking to God as he walked in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_01: And he visited them.
SPEAKER_01: Enoch walked with God.
SPEAKER_01: I like the way Brother Summerall says it one time.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Enoch walked with God so far that God said, Enoch, we're closer to my house than we are yours.
SPEAKER_01: Come up here.
SPEAKER_01: And he took it.
SPEAKER_01: So you spend time, quality time, in the peaceful communion between God and man.
SPEAKER_01: Now go over to Ecclesiastes.
SPEAKER_01: Ecclesiastes in chapter 5.
SPEAKER_01: Ecclesiastes chapter 5, verse 18.
SPEAKER_01: Now, you have to understand and know the history of the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people call the book of Job, they call it poetic, poetic justice.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't rhyme like you would think a poem would.
SPEAKER_01: But they sometimes discount the book of Job as not being factual, and that it's more like poetry in motion.
SPEAKER_01: Not true.
SPEAKER_01: Listen to Ecclesiastes.
SPEAKER_01: Behold that which I have seen.
SPEAKER_01: It is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labor, that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God gives him, for it is his portion.
SPEAKER_01: God enjoys sitting and talking with you.
SPEAKER_01: He enjoys being with you.
SPEAKER_01: He enjoys you fellowshipping, communicating, communing with him.
SPEAKER_01: T.L.
SPEAKER_01: Osborne told us one time, the first time he visited our church, and we worked real hard to make it beautiful and pretty and so forth.
SPEAKER_01: And he said this to us: he said, beauty produces creativity.
SPEAKER_01: Surround yourself with beauty, and you'll be more creative.
SPEAKER_01: And I like to just look at the beauty.
SPEAKER_01: I like to look.
SPEAKER_01: When we used to go to Hawaii with our friends for years on vacation, and everything in the uh in the islands, to me, was just gorgeous, just beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, every day they had gardeners out there sweeping up the leaves that fell off during the night.
SPEAKER_01: And in Florida, you may not know this, but they they import sand to put on those beaches to make them look white and like powder.
SPEAKER_01: In Hawaii, the sand is not white, it's brown.
SPEAKER_01: And I would just love to I don't care about swimming pools and anything like that.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want a room that looks over the pool.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to hear all that noise.
SPEAKER_01: I want to look out at the ocean.
SPEAKER_01: I just sit there for hours and let it go.
SPEAKER_01: This surf breaking, it's it's just so peaceful.
SPEAKER_01: I love to sleep with the door open so I can hear all of that.
SPEAKER_01: Until one day, all of us decided to go down to the city park and have a picnic.
SPEAKER_01: So we went by, I don't think Popeyes existed then, Colonel Sanders maybe.
SPEAKER_01: And we got several buckets of chicken, and I was me and Jeannie, Jerry and Carol Savel, Buddy and Pat Harrison.
SPEAKER_01: And we sat under the palm trees and ate our chicken dinner.
SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden I began to notice, well, these palm trees look pretty bad.
SPEAKER_01: You know, and then there's trash all along the sidewalk, and um uh the surf is, you know, brought up all kinds of stuff from the ocean.
SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking, what's wrong with this picture?
SPEAKER_01: What's wrong with it is that the public beaches are not manicured like the private hotel beaches.
SPEAKER_01: And they're filthy, dirty just because nobody's taking care of palm palm branches break and they fall off, and there's nobody to pick them up and clean them up, and there's trash all over everywhere, just like it is here in our state.
SPEAKER_01: And I never seen so much trash.
SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking I might ought to run for a trash commissioner or something trying to clean this place up.
SPEAKER_01: It's really bad.
SPEAKER_01: And um and I realized then that what I was being blessed by was man's ability to keep everything pristine and clean.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, the hotels pay them a lot of money and they charge you a lot of money, but it's peaceful and it's quiet.
SPEAKER_01: That's what God wanted.
SPEAKER_01: He was saying here, it's alright for you to sit on the porch and enjoy the fruit of your labor.
SPEAKER_01: If you have planted flowers in your backyard, if you keep your grass cut, it's all right for you to sit there and look at it and say, Ain't that pretty?
SPEAKER_01: I just love that.
SPEAKER_01: Those flowers, we have flowers all over our house until the deer ate them.
SPEAKER_01: And so we have to find out what you can buy and plant that deers don't like.
SPEAKER_01: I ain't found anything that they don't like.
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you one thing, they don't eat.
SPEAKER_01: They don't eat marigolds.
SPEAKER_01: But when we moved out there in the country, we started feeding them.
SPEAKER_01: We thought this is a novelty.
SPEAKER_01: We quit feeding them because they eat everything.
SPEAKER_01: I called the Game and Fish Commission.
SPEAKER_01: I said, how do you keep deer from eating your plants and flowers?
SPEAKER_01: He said, a 12-gauge.
SPEAKER_01: I said, no, I don't want to kill them.
SPEAKER_01: I just don't want them eating my shrubs.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, it's okay to sit there and to eat and drink and think about all that you've done.
SPEAKER_01: Now listen, it goes on down to verse 19.
SPEAKER_01: Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat, thereof and to take his portion and to rejoice in his labor.
SPEAKER_01: This is the gift of God.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever gotten pleasure?
SPEAKER_01: Now you don't have to raise your hand out of cutting the grass around your house?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_01: Some people don't.
SPEAKER_01: You know, they maybe they can't do it, or they don't want to do it, or they don't like doing it.
SPEAKER_01: But it gives me pleasure when you see a manicued uh yard.
SPEAKER_01: Or washing your car.
SPEAKER_01: Every Saturday at our house, it was customary that you cut the grass and do whatever it needed around the house.
SPEAKER_01: You would wash the car, vacuum it out, and lay out your Sunday clothes on Saturday night.
SPEAKER_01: Now I'm talking language probably a lot of people don't know about or think about.
SPEAKER_01: It was because we were trained to realize on Sunday we glorify God in everything, in our dress, our appearance, our home, and and it stuck with me all of my life.
SPEAKER_01: I almost got condemned sometimes because maybe I was out of town or I wasn't able to do this or I wasn't able to do that.
SPEAKER_01: And yet that's what God says is pleasing to him, and he wants us to be pleased.
SPEAKER_01: He wants us to look at the next verse.
SPEAKER_01: For he shall not much remember the days of his life, because God answers him in the joy of his heart.
SPEAKER_01: You may have had some tough days.
SPEAKER_01: You may have had, maybe you didn't have a lawnmower, maybe it wouldn't start.
SPEAKER_01: Uh maybe you don't own the property, you just rent it, and the, you know, the landlord don't keep it up.
SPEAKER_01: But he says you shouldn't let that bother you.
SPEAKER_01: You should rejoice in the joy of your heart.
SPEAKER_01: We have picture albums of 40 years of vacations with our friends in different parts of the world, and Jeannie will sometimes go in there and she'll disappear, and I won't know where she is, and she's in her office, and she's got all those photo albums open, and she's just looking at them, and she's saying remember this?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I remember that.
SPEAKER_01: Pictures of us when we started in the ministry, pictures of congregations, pictures of us uh recording albums in Nashville, pictures inside the studio.
SPEAKER_01: We were recording one album, and we used to do it like two or three o'clock in the morning because you get better rates.
SPEAKER_01: The road musicians would come off the road and you didn't have to pay scale.
SPEAKER_01: And so we were in there singing an album, and uh my the song that I was gonna sing was Why Me Lord by um Chris Christofferson.
SPEAKER_01: And so I was in this in the uh sound booth and I was trying to get it, I couldn't couldn't hit the particular note.
SPEAKER_01: And Jimmy Snow, who was who owned the studio, he's the pastor that I got saved under, he was helping us with our first record album.
SPEAKER_01: And he kept pushing the button.
SPEAKER_01: He said, You're flat, you're flat.
SPEAKER_01: Think higher, think higher.
SPEAKER_01: And about that time the door in the studio opened, and in walked Dolly Pardon.
SPEAKER_01: And I went, Why me, Lord?
SPEAKER_01: And we got to visit with her.
SPEAKER_01: She came to see the guitar player because he was her guitar player.
SPEAKER_01: But you look back at those things.
SPEAKER_01: We got pictures of you and your sister singing, um, and we have a picture of us on the Opry, the Sunday night Opry, when we first started singing, and we're singing, Praise the Lord, I saw the light.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we look like we looked like country hillbillies, Beverly Hillbillies, because we were still wearing bell bottoms and flowery shirts, and and you know, that was my hair was it was the early 70s, and uh but we were reminiscing in all the good times, the places that we went, the people we saw healed and delivered and set free.
SPEAKER_01: And God says these are gifts that he gives you.
SPEAKER_01: Remember them.
SPEAKER_01: Don't think, you know, that those things don't matter to him or to you.
SPEAKER_01: Now, let's go over to uh another couple of scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: Let's go over to John chapter 14.
SPEAKER_01: Now I want to bring in, I want to I want to follow this time of peaceful communication between God and man.
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's interesting now that Pastor Steele had us all just pray in the Holy Ghost.
SPEAKER_01: When I got saved, the night I was saved, February 11, 1972, we went to a church that some people had invited us to before we went down to the Opry for the Grendel Gospel time.
SPEAKER_01: We went to this church, Jimmy Snow's church.
SPEAKER_01: I'd never been in a church like that before.
SPEAKER_01: We walked in and there was a picture of Jesus painted, about that size.
SPEAKER_01: I have a copy of it in my office now by Johnny Cash.
SPEAKER_01: He had a Native American Indian paint the picture of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It's painted in such a way that wherever you go, his eyes follow you.
SPEAKER_01: And when I saw that picture and I looked, I knew who it was, I just didn't know him.
SPEAKER_01: And because and I went over here, and he's looking at me.
SPEAKER_01: So I moved over here and he's looking at me.
SPEAKER_01: Now the people in the church are all laying on the floor, on the altar, they're all praying in the spirit, praying in tongues, just like we did earlier.
SPEAKER_01: I did not know what that was.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't have a clue as to what that was.
SPEAKER_01: But I looked up at that picture and I said, Lord, it's kind of like Paul, you know, on the road to Damascus.
SPEAKER_01: Paul had the sense enough to know who it was that he was persecuting.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And I looked up at that picture and I said, Lord, please help me understand what's going on here.
SPEAKER_01: And then we left the church and went down to the Opry.
SPEAKER_01: Jimmy Snow preached five minutes, the choir sang.
SPEAKER_01: Johnny and June gave their testimony, and Jimmy gave an altar call and said, If you need a new life, Jesus is the only way.
SPEAKER_01: And I was up in the balcony, Jeannie and I.
SPEAKER_01: The Rhyman Auditorium holds 3,000 people.
SPEAKER_01: And he gave an altar, so he said, Come down.
SPEAKER_01: I grabbed her by the hand.
SPEAKER_01: Now she's saved already, but I wasn't.
SPEAKER_01: But I took her with me.
SPEAKER_01: Went down there, ran into Tex Ritter.
SPEAKER_01: He was still living at the time.
SPEAKER_01: And then wound up backstage by accident and uh ran into Jimmy C.
SPEAKER_01: Newman.
SPEAKER_01: He was See You A While Ago, the original Cajun.
SPEAKER_01: And we we found out, or I found out, there's another world out there besides the one I knew.
SPEAKER_01: And the one I knew was not a good attitude.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't a good mindset.
SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden, when I asked Jesus to come into my heart, something happened in here.
SPEAKER_01: And I was born again.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know what had happened, but I turned to my wife and I said, Honey, something just happened to me.
SPEAKER_01: I said, I think our life is going to change.
SPEAKER_01: And little did I know how much it was going to change.
SPEAKER_01: And then I began, we came home and I started studying the Bible, asked her what I should read first, and she gave me a scroll by John Hall.
SPEAKER_01: And it takes you from Genesis all the way to Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: And I put it on the wall.
SPEAKER_01: And every day I'd go into my little office that we'd made out of a bedroom.
SPEAKER_01: And I'd read that scroll and I'd read this, and I had a Bible study course that I was taking.
SPEAKER_01: And I fell in love with God reading the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: Now people say, How can you do that?
SPEAKER_01: God was He was mean.
SPEAKER_01: No, He wasn't mean.
SPEAKER_01: He did everything he could to minister to His people.
SPEAKER_01: And they rejected Him.
SPEAKER_01: They wouldn't have it.
SPEAKER_01: He did everything He could do.
SPEAKER_01: He even told Abraham, in so many words, not like you'd read it.
SPEAKER_01: But he let Abraham know that if he would sacrifice his son, he would give Jesus as his son.
SPEAKER_01: And Abraham was obedient.
SPEAKER_01: That's why he's called the father of our faith.
SPEAKER_01: And God did everything for them.
SPEAKER_01: And one morning I woke up when I wrote the book called No More Limits.
SPEAKER_01: I woke up and I wanted to find that in the scripture.
SPEAKER_01: I went to Psalm 78.
SPEAKER_01: And it says, Israel forgot what God did for them.
SPEAKER_01: And they did not remember the miracles that He performed.
SPEAKER_01: How he got them through the desert and took care of them.
SPEAKER_01: They limited God.
SPEAKER_01: That's what it says in Psalm 78.
SPEAKER_01: They limited God.
SPEAKER_01: They did not remember what He had done for them.
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, a little nugget out of here.
SPEAKER_01: Just sitting and meditating.
SPEAKER_01: God, how you've delivered me, how you've saved me, how you've filled me, how you've blessed me.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And fellowship with Him, it'll make a difference in your life.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to have some great revelation or confess, you know, something for 40 hours a week.
SPEAKER_01: And you just need to fellowship with Him, communicate with Him.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I just love you.
SPEAKER_01: And He'll say, I love you too.
SPEAKER_01: I think the most beautiful times I had growing up as a Christian is when we started singing and I had a guitar.
SPEAKER_01: And I would go in somewhere where I could be quiet, because I couldn't play the guitar.
SPEAKER_01: I just had to get a Mel Bay guitar book and see where to put your fingers on the frets.
SPEAKER_01: But I would sing to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Just sing to him.
SPEAKER_01: And I could feel him smiling.
SPEAKER_01: And then I got busy.
SPEAKER_01: And one time he asked me, he said, Why don't you sing to me anymore?
SPEAKER_01: Whew.
SPEAKER_01: So you go get your guitar and you start humming again and sing to him.
SPEAKER_01: And uh he just wants to be with you.
SPEAKER_01: He wanted to be with Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_01: Now I can I can tell you some, you know, detailed information.
SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, when Adam and Eve realized they were naked.
SPEAKER_01: If you studied that out, it doesn't mean it doesn't have the same connotation as they were nude.
SPEAKER_01: They were not, they were not nude like you would think of nudity.
SPEAKER_01: It says they were naked, if you study it out, it says they lost their covering.
SPEAKER_01: Their covering was the, I don't know if I can say the word correctly, the etheral, etheral uh light that was around them.
SPEAKER_01: It's like when Moses came back from Mount Sinai and it says his face was shown with light.
SPEAKER_01: That's the covering that they had.
SPEAKER_01: They had a covering on them as long as they obeyed God.
SPEAKER_01: But when they disobeyed God and sinned against him, they lost.
SPEAKER_01: The first death is plural, is spiritual.
SPEAKER_01: They lost that relationship that they had with God.
SPEAKER_01: And they hid themselves.
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just only natural for you when you sin or make a mistake or whatever you do wrong, and you know it.
SPEAKER_01: You don't want to go to church, you don't want to pray, you know, you want to go hide.
SPEAKER_01: Well, he knows where you are, he knows where your hiding place is.
SPEAKER_01: I remember when Jeannie's mother died, and she was so kind, and she was my second mother, and uh she would come over and spend Saturdays with us and they'd go shopping together, and she was so much a part of our life.
SPEAKER_01: When she died, Jeannie missed her so much.
SPEAKER_01: She went to Dillard's and tried to shop because they'd go shopping every Saturday.
SPEAKER_01: And she had a kind of a vision where she saw her mother and she had her arm around Jesus and he had his arm around her.
SPEAKER_01: She just busted out crying and came home.
SPEAKER_01: And one time she said, I hate death.
SPEAKER_01: And God said, I hate it too.
SPEAKER_01: It's my enemy.
SPEAKER_01: Death didn't come by God, it came by man.
SPEAKER_01: And you you develop these fellowship times, and you don't ever want to lose them.
SPEAKER_01: Babies, your children.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we just had our fourth great-grandson.
SPEAKER_01: He's one year old.
SPEAKER_01: His name is Jude.
SPEAKER_01: Saint Jude.
SPEAKER_01: Well, we don't know whether he's gonna be a saint yet or not, but that's what they they named him.
SPEAKER_01: And he he just precious.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you just look at that baby boy and he just smiles.
SPEAKER_01: That's why they named me happy, is because I was such a happy baby.
SPEAKER_01: I smile all the time.
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know what that meant until I got saved.
SPEAKER_01: I really didn't.
SPEAKER_01: I just answered to the name, but I realized what it meant.
SPEAKER_01: It means blessed, fortunate.
SPEAKER_01: It's it's a great name.
SPEAKER_01: But when God called me to preach, he called me happy.
SPEAKER_01: And that wasn't my real name.
SPEAKER_01: My real name was Howard.
SPEAKER_01: And the only thing I can figure out is he didn't like Howard anymore than I did, so he called me happy.
SPEAKER_01: That was my my grandmother named me that.
SPEAKER_01: So uh I fell in love with God because he was doing his best to show his people his love.
SPEAKER_01: But they wouldn't have it.
SPEAKER_01: They rejected him, they were afraid of him.
SPEAKER_01: Now let's close with that.
SPEAKER_01: John 14.
SPEAKER_01: And let's look at verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.
SPEAKER_01: He'll not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak.
SPEAKER_01: He will show you things to come.
SPEAKER_01: Praying in the Spirit is praying in mysteries, and the Holy Spirit will show you things to come.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're smart, you'll start writing them down or making mental note of them and act on them.
SPEAKER_01: Go ahead and do what the Holy Spirit shows you, because there's power in that, there's miracles in that.
SPEAKER_01: Now go down to verse um.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm sorry, that was John 16.
SPEAKER_01: Let's back up to John 14.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, verse 17, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it sees him not, neither knows him, but you know him, for he dwells with you and shall be in you.
SPEAKER_01: I will not leave you comfortless.
SPEAKER_01: I will come to you.
SPEAKER_01: A little while, and the world sees me no more, but you'll see me because I live, you'll live also.
SPEAKER_01: And this is Jesus talking.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 26, it says, But the comforter, which the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance, whatever I've said unto you.
SPEAKER_01: And last, if you go over to 1 Corinthians 14, the Apostle Paul tells the disciples that he prays in tongues more than anybody.
SPEAKER_01: And in verse 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 14, 13.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, let him that speaketh in an unknown tongue pray that he may interpret.
SPEAKER_01: And I told you the story about Jeannie losing her car keys and she couldn't find them, so she just started praying in the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And every time she'd stop, she'd say, Lord, where are my keys?
SPEAKER_01: And she'd just start praying in the spirit again.
SPEAKER_01: And she'd stop and said, Where are my keys?
SPEAKER_01: She prayed three times in the spirit in tongues.
SPEAKER_01: And she fully intended to say the last time, where are my keys?
SPEAKER_01: But out of her mouth came, they're in your robe pocket.
SPEAKER_01: She went to her closet, stuck her hand in the pocket, and there were her car keys.
SPEAKER_01: He'll show you things to come.
SPEAKER_01: He'll show you what to do, what not to do.
SPEAKER_01: Then let's go on down.
SPEAKER_01: He said, If I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful.
SPEAKER_01: What is it then?
SPEAKER_01: I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also.
SPEAKER_01: I will sing with the spirit and sing with the understanding.
SPEAKER_01: So here's the practical application of what the Bible says God visited with Adam and Eve, and it says he talked to them.
SPEAKER_01: He walked with them in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_01: Say that again, in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_01: That is the communion between God and man in a peaceful environment.
SPEAKER_01: Peaceful environment.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be eloquent.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to pray.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, the Bible says in the Gospels, Jesus told the disciples, you don't need to be known for your long praying or your vain repetitions.
SPEAKER_01: I know lots of times when I sometimes when I pray, I just say help.
SPEAKER_01: Remember in January, several years ago, when Kenneth was down there in Texas, Canada, and we went down to hear him in a hotel.
SPEAKER_01: It was snowing, ice, and we got ready to come home.
SPEAKER_01: And we got almost to our neighborhood, and there was a truck that had turned sideways and was sitting sideways off the freeway ramp.
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, we've got to go there.
SPEAKER_01: And it took us hours to get home because we could only go about 20 miles an hour.
SPEAKER_01: And there was a truck turned sideways, and there was another car right beside me headed in the same direction.
SPEAKER_01: What are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_01: If I'd have put on the brakes, I'd have slid off the road.
SPEAKER_01: If I'd have kept going without any change in direction, I'd have hit that truck.
SPEAKER_01: And the guy beside me would have too.
SPEAKER_01: So I just hollered out, help! And all of a sudden we were on the other side of that truck.
SPEAKER_01: And so was the guy beside me.
SPEAKER_01: And the truck was still there.
SPEAKER_01: How did we get across there without hitting him?
SPEAKER_01: Translated?
SPEAKER_01: Did we go through the truck?
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: But I didn't say, Lord, now lay me down to sleep.
SPEAKER_01: I pray the Lord, my soldier.
SPEAKER_01: No, you just holler out, help.
SPEAKER_01: Help me, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to know all of the these and thus.
SPEAKER_01: Y'all get something out of this tonight.
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_01: Well, let's all stand to our feet.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to turn it back over to Pastor Steele.
SPEAKER_01: But first, Father, I pray for these people.
SPEAKER_01: They're precious to you.
SPEAKER_01: They're precious to Genie and I.
SPEAKER_01: And I ask you, Holy Spirit, to quicken to them, to give them peace and slow down their pace of life.
SPEAKER_01: Give them quietness and peace and communicate with them.
SPEAKER_01: Talk to them in their sleep.
SPEAKER_01: Talk to them in their spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Say this out loud.
SPEAKER_01: Holy Spirit, I give you permission to talk to me.
SPEAKER_01: In my sleep.
SPEAKER_01: In my spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_01: Now just lift up your hands and thank him for it.
SPEAKER_01: Praise him for it.
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_01: Praise you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Praise the name of the Lord.