Seizing Spoil and Prosperous Plantations

There was that man that just had one demon, one devil, unclean spirit. And somehow it got cast out of him. Just as the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, well, it’s a wonderful thing, the freedom. Because just one demon. For instance, that man that had the demons cast out of him there at the graveyard, and how many swine were drowned? He had 2,000 demons in him. So you know he was possessed, he was wild with demons. They couldn’t hold him in the city. So they bound him. And they couldn’t hold him anywhere, so they put him out in the graveyard there, and had him all shackled with chains. And he could pick any of those locks loose or chains loose. He was so possessed. How he started, we don’t know.

As Jessie Penn-Lewis has brought out, and I don’t know whether she has this brought out as clear as I had it, or I have it as clear as she has it, but there is an oppression – people that are oppressed or depressed, and they think it is just for a time. They don’t get over it or they go on forth. There are degrees of the “sion’s” – oppression, depression, and then comes the obsession. Because after a person is oppressed or depressed, and then they go on. And it’s a driving, it’s a force there driving – the enemy – into these “sion’s”. And you find a person depressed, and you find them oppressed, and then you find them obsessed to get something. You can’t think, well, I don’t have that. You do, and you have temptations on it. I believe everybody has the temptations on it, to be oppressed, to get down about something, whether it be depressed, and then another time to get that awful condition, and it’s an obsession. Well, say you have a hurt feeling, or you’re not wanted, or whatever it is, and you get an obsession on it. And then watch yourself, when you start with that. It’s very good to shake yourself loose from that. Now how far these things lead into until there is a possession (another “sion”). And then there’s scarcely, if any, hope.

This man was possessed. With the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s hope. And the fact that he ran to the Lord and said, “Oh, we know who you are and don’t torment us, don’t torment us,” the demons were saying. But all the time, the man was bowed at the Lord’s feet. He came for help. He didn’t just keep on raving up and down the graveyard and screaming against Jesus and saying something. The demons talked, grant you. But he bowed at Jesus’ feet and showing that even though he was possessed, he wanted something done, he wanted to be loosed. There was his will in there. His will was in there somewhere to ever run toward Jesus. Because if the demons would have had their way, they would have had him running the opposite way. So he would have been running away from Jesus, “No, no, don’t come to get me, I’m leaving.”

And there are plenty of people that do that, when they once get the light, or they once get an idea of what it’s all about, then they start going the other way. And you’ll find people start putting up the arguments about anything that touches them. And you and we are people that are made up of arguments. As soon as the thing is touched, “but, but, but,” and then try to figure on an argument to get you out of that. The whole thing, the whole life, is on this line of arguments that will put you out as something, and it’s somebody else’s fault, or you weren’t in it, or you didn’t mean to do it. Just so that everybody or anybody that is dealing with you, now please understand that you really didn’t have the fault in that, and it wasn’t you at all. But the argument takes place.

But thank God for that man that ran to Jesus. And though the devils were putting up an argument, “Don’t cast me out,” – it was entirely devilish – the man wasn’t saying that. The man wasn’t saying, “Don’t do anything for me.” The demons had such hold of him that they were talking, it wasn’t the man talking. You have to know how to discriminate when you deal with demon people who is talking.

I remember there was a not-too-young a man was talking to me, and he called me all kinds of terrible names and even filthy names. And he looked at me and called me, and I said, “Now,” so-and-so, “I heard what the demons think of me. What do you think of me, I’d like to know what you think of me?” Well, on his own, he ran out of the house. He ran out. On his own, he ran away. So he didn’t want something done for him, he didn’t want anything done for him. He could have stopped. Later, he said and he apologized somewhere and somehow that he was wrong, that he shouldn’t have done that, the awful names that he called me.

But on the other hand, he didn’t and has never come to the Lord to say, “I want this thing put down.” There has to be a willingness on the part of people, most part that are demon-obsessed or demon- … – anything with a “sion” with it – that they have these things. It’s a question of whether they want them cast out or delivered from whatever it is.

Now this man, I don’t know how this man here got just this one demon. Most people, when they come to the Lord, because of their past life, because of something or because of curses, because of their family, because of one reason or the other, there are demons, more than one as a rule, demons. When you come to the Lord Jesus, you don’t get rid of them when you’re born again. You get rid of your sins, but what happens about the demons? There is still the bondage of the demons, and they are not washed out by the blood, they are not flushed out, they have to be cast out. The casting out of demons. They are not flushed out, they are not automatically put to flight. So you find people that are washed in the precious blood, born again, and still need the deliverance, and know that they need deliverance. But then, it’s putting yourself entirely into the hands of God, not resting. We see the difference. Because there are people that absolutely believe that when you are born again or washed in the precious blood, you wouldn’t have a demon left, because they say how can the Lord be there alongside of demons. But you look at their lives, and you look at your own, and you look at somebody else, and you know that there is still the bondage. You still have bondage to this, that and the other. And it’s according to how quickly you can come to the end of yourself to be dispossessed and how quickly you can let those things go, so that the Lord can dispossess you from the things that are binding you.

You find Job, who was watched so closely by the devil himself. He was absolutely watched – every move he made. The devil had everything just like that, which he does pinpoint at anybody’s life, not only Job. Just find there in the first chapter of Job how he was just watching, watching. And he was charging that Job had selfishness in him. And there is something understood that even though you want to be good or you want to be the best or thought the best or whatever it is. And even that you do good or something and you are right in people’s sight, it’s because in the real end, there is selfishness there that you want to be something. It is known that people and people say that, well, even the goodness that you try to be, there is selfishness there, that you want to be right. And you can find that in Job’s life.

And when the enemy was permitted to take these things away, his possessions, his children, and his flocks and herds and finally his health, he still didn’t get the message. You’ll find him arguing his case. He argues chapter after chapter, chapter after chapter. And he says, but, I this.

Of course, we know the answer is self-righteousness, but there is self in it, and selfishness in it because he wanted to turn out right, and he argued. Well, he did the right thing with his wife. He said to her, “What so foolish a woman as you telling me to curse God?” He said, “Can we take good and not bad in the hands of God?” With his lips he did not sin. But the arguments he put up. And that’s most everybody’s trouble. The arguments that we put up to try to keep our integrity and to try to hold our… in the end selfishness, self-righteousness or whatever it is, that we wouldn’t want to appear or we wouldn’t want people to think or whatever it is, it’s there that keeps a screen going. The screen is there, that God cannot get down underneath of it, and the person to be entirely relieved or delivered or dispossessed of the demons.

Well, all those arguments that Job puts up with those three friends and then with the other young man that comes in, just argument after argument, and then he starts with God. And he argues his case before God in and out. And God answers. And it seems so lengthy and so useless, and we would wonder why God would ever go through with all those things with Job and ask him all those questions, and ask him, well, you just couldn’t go through with them, it’s just chapter after chapter. And the Lord says to him, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. Hast thou with Him spread out the sky which is drawn?” Well, it shows here, and said, “Hitherto shall thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stable – where were you then? And have you entered into the treasure of the snow? Where were you when the water course was overflowing? And does the rain have a father?” He asked him all kinds of questions. “Out of whose womb came the ice and the hoary frost of the heaven? And then can you tell about the stars, do you know anything about them? Do you know the ordinances of heaven? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds?”

Now, all that you’ve got, so there had to be, is such a realization that comes over when you get into this, how far Job had gone. He had gotten to such a high place it’s not fully realized as he states his case and he says what he was and who he was and how he was. Because he was a very important person, he was a very high class person. He was a very knowledgeable person, he was the person that people had to tip their hats to when they went by. He was that kind of a man that he sat in the gate, and he was really somebody to look up to, and he had wisdom.

But he just went over bounds. And you don’t get onto it so much until you go into all of these things that God asks him. If God took all that patience and all that time and all that asking of questions and asking him who he was anyhow, there must have been something so deep-seated in Job that was almost to the place where he could hardly be touched. And God had to take him through….

Well, someone has said or it’s known that this took a year, this whole book took a year. Whatever the length of time, I don’t know that it took Job to come to himself. But it took him plenty of time with all these arguments and all these chapters. Whoever wrote it – it is not known who wrote it – but it’s known as the oldest book of the Bible, if that is true. And someone said Moses wrote it. We don’t know. We don’t know how it came into existence, and some people would like to take away from that it is that authentic or some other thing. Almost all of it is poetry, it’s just the most beautiful thing for literature to study. It’s absolutely perfect, it’s a perfect book written perfectly. But you don’t get lost in that, and you wouldn’t want to be lost in that. Because those people that get lost in that, they don’t think that it is really authentic, and they think it’s more given to literature or beauty or poetry or whatever it is because it is a beauty in literature. And people just put it in its place with the highest class of literature. So we know that it is wonderful. But we don’t get lost in that. We take the value and ask for the spiritual value out of it.

And when we go into all of this that’s beautiful poetry – “Have you entered into the treasures of the snow?” – and all of that in the original, beautiful. And yet we know how serious this is for a man to have ever gotten so high-minded that he puts himself in a sense up to where God is, when God has to go through all these measures to get him down to where he belongs. “Well, where were you when I formed the worlds? What do you know about the heavens? How do you know this and how do you know…?” Just read it through – it’s the most interesting when you read it with this light upon it. That this man had gotten to such a place that God had to work him down to nothing. And how long it took for him to ever come down to nothing until his mouth was entirely shut.

For he comes over here and he says…: “Then Job answered the LORD, and said, ‘Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth’” (Job 40:3-4). So he came to it finally. I am not going to do anything anymore to think that I have gotten somewhere or that I am somewhere. I put my hand over my mouth. In other words, I am going to shut up. He said, “Behold, I am vile.” Praise God.

This is when you are drawing to the closing of the chapter of all the forty-some chapters that he has gone through until we know the 42nd chapter there, the ending up. And he says, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6). And all that it took for God to bring him to the end of his poor little self. The pride of life. You can take the worst kind of a creature, the most ignorant. You can take the person that is, well, the most ignorant, and they will have that devilish pride. “Well, no, I’m leaving.”

Well, what are you going to do with him? The [Plummings], they would eat out of a garbage can with their independence before they would ask you or before they would come for a nice meal, just to be independent. Just to be independent. Just for the hell of it, to be independent. They would deprive themselves for the ignorance. Because there is hardly anything that is so terrible as an ignorant person being proud. Because we and who has anything ever to be proud of? Well, it’s very ignorant to be proud of it, because we are nothing in ourselves. But then the ignorant ignorant, where we have that saying, “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.” What good is your wisdom, where the ignorance is so bliss. They rejoice, and they are blissful in their ignorance. And it’s just to say a horrible thing to see. And you don’t take it like for that one, take it for yourself. That to get that self down, what God has to do, if it ever goes down.

And with Job, it took these 42 long chapters, the arguing and the arguing and the discussion with God and for God to lay it out to the line, “Who are you anyhow?” Until Job got to the place, “I am nobody. Not only am I nobody, I am vile, I am underneath of nobody, I am vile. And I abhor myself, and I want to repent.” That’s what you call repentance. That’s what you call coming down to where you belong. And it is not something that’s mouthed or something that… well, I did what the preacher wanted me to do or what the Christian worker wanted me to do. I repented, I had a few little tears I managed to squeeze out. I did a little thing that is [drawn it out, but really what it was], but he wanted me to cry, so I cried. Or they did something with me. This.

When you read this, you really find out what repentance is that he knew that all of his scholarliness and all of his great ways. I just believe he was a man of such great wisdom of his day, that there was just about nobody like him. And yet he found out that he was nothing and less than nothing because he had charged, for instance, or put himself into the place where God had to get him down to the point where he absolutely knew that he had to be cast out upon God. That, you can say, is repentance that needeth not to be repented of. That’s what St. Paul said, “There is that repentance and it’s a godly sorrow.” And he was swallowed up with what he saw that when God finished with him that he didn’t have a word to say. And then God could do something with him. Praise God.

Then, what do we find? We find that God added to him, began to build him up, added to him. His friends came back and were merciful to him and helped him. So you know… It says there that the end of that man Job was better than when he started out. Praise God.

But as I had noted before, this man that had the one demon, not too bad a person, just one demon, not all that bad, you think. Well, my, when you think of the demons you can have, and “I’ve only got one, say, envy, pride,” dot dot dot… just name it. Well, it wouldn’t be too hard when you think of the possession, how many would that be? Up to … All that we know is it is up to 2,000 you could have. What a force there, what forces are acting there. Up to 2,000 with this one demon, one unclean spirit, was gone out of a man, and you see what happens to a demon.

You think, now what happens in that supernatural world, what happens in the atmosphere here? You can find it all the way through, you can find it with Job what’s happening, that dialogue there between God and Satan is written, this dialogue between God and Satan. Well, we know what’s happening there. That’s more than poetry. That’s more than something that to interest people in great literature. That actually happened.

Well, here this actually happens. This unclean spirit goes out of a man, and what does he do? He’s going around seeking just the same as with those that came out of that man when he said, “Don’t bid us to go out.” And he said, “Go out.” And he said, “No, not in the air, not just out in the air, we don’t want to be out in the air.” They want to inhabit. They inhabit people and animals, rather people than animals. But they said, “Let us go into the swine.” And the Lord made it convenient for them to go into the swine, 2,000. What happened to the swine? They had set that man so crazy and so wild. But the swine they could do more, they could cause them to drown themselves. They went right to the seaside or to Galilee, whatever it was, the shore there, and plunged headlong into the water and passed out. What happened to the demons? What happened to the demons?

What happens, this demon here? That gets cast out of this man. “He walketh through places seeking rest.” See, he wants to get comfortable, comfortably lodged, comfortably lodged, the demons want to be. A place where they can be overlooked, excused, argued away. If Job had never come to the end of his argument, he would have never gotten anywhere. He came to the end, he repented. He saw he was vile, he abhorred himself. But it was the finish of that. And God prospered him.

This demon is walking around through dry places seeking rest. And he can’t find anyplace to lodge, where he’s going to be near so comfortable as he was in the other place. He wants just that kind of a comfort. He wants that same kind of comfort. He liked the place, in other words. And he had grounds there. And no devils can lodge in you if they don’t have grounds by your will or because you let them be there. So he says, I will return unto my house from whence I came out. So he goes to see what’s happened. Well, this man, as we know, he had… was cleaned, it looks like he’s empty. But the main thing – it says “swept and garnished” – but the main thing is empty.

We don’t know how much time passed between, he said, “But I’ll return.” And he found that things were swept and garnished, but empty.

“Then goeth he…,” and so he had all the right. St. Peter says it’s better that we never hear, or never accept, that is, the things of God and take them, than to take the things of God and not move on with them. Why? Because then the enemy, the devil, Satan, or the demons can say to God…. Because God talks with those demons, we see that he talked to Satan. He knows them, he’s in charge of all of them, he’s at the helm. Then when they come and say to God, “There is your child,” “There is that man that had a demon cast out.” Finally, who knows how long it took to cast that one out. How tenacious that one was, we don’t know. If it was a terrible one, all of them are evil, all of them are unclean, no matter which ones they are.

So I talked to a taxi driver girl, and she was Spanish, from Santo Domingo, and she says, “Oh yes, there are unclean spirits, but then there are clean spirits.” I said, “There’s only one clean spirit, and that’s the Holy Spirit.” And she says, “Well, there can be clean….” Like somebody says, “Well, there are two kinds of magic, black magic and white magic. White magic isn’t near so bad.” It’s all magic, it’s all demon, it’s all unclean, it’s all bad spirits. And so this was a bad spirit, it was an unclean spirit, he was a bad spirit. But they do have their grades.

Of course you find here, “Then goeth he and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself.” So there are degrees of spirits that are more wicked than others. And he had a perfect right because of the man, emptiness there, to go back to the man, because then God has to step back when the enemy says to God, “There’s the man. He got the demon cast out. He didn’t want to move on with you, you have the proof. He knows what it is to have a clean life, he joyed in a clean life, he was happy with a clean life.” That is saying as far as it goes – he didn’t have a molesting. How much he was joyous, but he wasn’t molested, he was clear of the molesting, because evil spirits molest. And he was clear of that.

But he did not take that freedom to mean anything in particular. So when the spirit, he glanced around, he didn’t enter right away, you notice, he didn’t jump right in. But he went around and had the perfect right to charge God and to tell God that this man, he doesn’t really want you. And it’s all in the will, it goes back to the will. It all is in the will. The man does not want you. If he had wanted you, he would have moved on, he would have been [funged] inside, he would have had the door shut and barred, he would have hated anything like an evil spirit again. And he doesn’t. So I have perfect right, not only to go back, but “seven more wicked than himself.” And they enter in and dwell there. And the last state of that man is worse than the first.

So we had just the contrary. We have Job that had that utter repentance to the bottom. And you could see it, say, with the lives of Saul and David. David sinned much more than Saul, it would look like. We don’t know how God figures these things out, but the kernel of the whole matter was in the repentance. Saul, it was not in the gravity of the sin, it was in the repentance from the sin. And Saul, when he knew he had sinned, said to Samuel the priest, “Well, just let me have your…, just grab these robes, just let me have your appraisal [praise?] or your approval in front of the people, don’t let it be known. Just don’t let it be known.”

But you hear the 51st psalm of David: “against thee and against thee only have I sinned.” Oh, just what a repentance. My, it’s so sickening to hear people say it, in comparison to what it should mean, the depths in their hearts. It’s so sickening to even hear it sung, when it’s such a poor business with the mouth without, unless that person has repented to the bottom. “I abhor myself, I hate my failings, I hate my ways, I hate that I had ever argued with God or his servants, I hate the thing that I have done, I despise it, I’m worse than nothing, I am evil, I am vile, I hate it,” and go down into floods of what you would call real repentance. But no, just ease it over, just, “Oh, Samuel, don’t go yet, I don’t want the people to know anything about it.” Because he had disobeyed.

But David, who had cried out, “Take not the joys of my salvation. Take not the joy of my salvation. Return unto me Thy Holy Spirit, O God.” That, from the bottom of the heart, is the repentance. And you can never be, I don’t believe that it can be anything, but the depths, from the depths.

You have this man here, just touching lightly over things, demon goes out, demon comes in. One day you have the demon, one day you don’t have him. One day you have freedom from such a thing, you don’t feel so down. That’s not [free]. If you’re not free, if you’re not liberated, you’re not liberated. And if it is that you haven’t been liberated, well, you can’t say, thank God that you haven’t been. But if you’re not going to move on in God, it would be better that you wouldn’t get rid of the five or ten or whatever you’ve got, if you’re not going to put it right in yourself, right into God’s hands, because you can come to a worse place.

There are those that are bound, there needs to be liberation. We have much need of liberation in our midst. And that has to come through God, only He can do it. It’s a very, you could say, delicate condition, that which passes on between God and Satan, that we have no way of overhearing or knowing, it’s just like a hotline, you could say. You have no right to it unless God would let you in on it. And he lets us in on it through revelation. He lets us in on it through whoever wrote Job, whoever wrote the book of Job.

Matthew here, this is Jesus speaking, he lets us in on it, that there’s this conflict going on all the time. God has this all the time. You think, well, God, he just rules, he sits there, and he can do anything. Not somehow that he’s made this law unto himself, that he allows demons to go forth, that he allows prince demons to hold nations under his grasp. And as you see it more and more, and it takes those that are entirely yielded to God that can take spoils in this life.

That impressed me, too, the Scripture that impressed John, that he’s given the earth over to man. What for? That we might take spoils while we’re here. In this life to bring them over into the Kingdom from the enemy’s hand. And God’s on hand, and God is mindful and God is watchful of those that are fighting the fight. Not just all the time with themselves, “Well, I have victory today, and I didn’t have it yesterday, and I feel a little down, and I stand against passivity in this.”

Oh, but glorious victory that just gets over this and can take spoils. Because most people, I’ve seen people spend six years, five years, seven years, eight years, this, this, this, and for victory for themselves. What would you ever expect for a victory over the enemy, to take spoils? That would never be. It can never be, because they’re not in the line. They are just blinded to it, they cannot see it. But God wants men and women that can take spoils out of the enemy’s hands that will get through to victory and stand and have the victory all the way through against the enemy of our souls. We’re in a fight, we’re in a warfare. And just this feeble little business, “Oh…, oh…, oh….” Oh, it is so… childish is not the word. What is it? It’s vile to consider it in God’s light. Like he says, unless you hate father and mother. Well, hate is a terrible word, father, mother and everything, even yourself. Well, everything else is so under what God wants out of his people, that it is hate, that it is vile, that it is to be abhorred, that it is a terrible case to have people that do not move on and knowing the light. And still having to do with Satan, still having to do with the bondage. It is something to be abhorred. It is something that is vile. It is something that’s obnoxious, vile, that people are playing around.

As there in Job, it says, “Will you play around with him?” Do you know that part? “Behold now Behemoth, behold now Leviathan. Will you take him captive or will you play around with him?”

“Bind him for the maidens.” What are you going to do about it? “Lay hands upon him. Remember the battle, and do no more.” Praise God.

Taking the captive, captivating the wicked one, who would captivate us otherwise, there’s always the [tussle], and always the moving. But to stand and having done all, still stand. Where are you? Still bound? Plenty. Still much bondage? Still with these obnoxious things, tenacious, obnoxious, vile. To be abhorred, there, that leaves no room for God to use you, to take… As He said, “I leave it for you on the earth to do your part here. I’m going, I’m going to prepare a place for you. Where I am….” There he is, victor, complete victor over…. “I leave you, I’m going away, I’ll come back again. Occupy, you’re the lights, you’re the ones, it’s through you. Take captive, he took, he conquered. Because he conquered, we can, we are more than conquerors over what? Over the enemy. The ground that we should be taking and forgetting the things, laying aside the weights that would so easily…. Run the race, possess your possessions, is what God is calling for. Praise God.

Reading some verses from Ezekiel, which come after the prophet has spoken the words of the Lord to reprove the shepherds and the ministers who have failed to lead the sheep aright and because of whose failure, the nation—the Jews, Israel—lies in a very unhappy and uncertain and tenuous state.

“For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. 12 As a shepherd seeks out his flock when some of his sheep[a] have been scattered abroad, so will I seek out my sheep; and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. 13 And I will bring them out from the peoples, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the fountains, and in all the inhabited places of the country. 14 I will feed them with good pasture, and upon the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on fat pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. 15 I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. 16 I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the crippled, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will watch over; I will feed them in justice.”

“25 “I will make with them a covenant of peace and banish wild beasts from the land, so that they may dwell securely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods. 26 And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing. 27 And the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase, and they shall be secure in their land; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke, and deliver them from the hand of those who enslaved them. 28 They shall no more be a prey to the nations, nor shall the beasts of the land devour them; they shall dwell securely, and none shall make them afraid. 29 And I will provide for them prosperous plantations….”

Lovely words: “prosperous plantations,” “I will provide for them prosperous plantations.”

“…so that they shall no more be consumed with hunger in the land, and no longer suffer the reproach of the nations. 30 And they shall know that I, the Lord their God, am with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, says the Lord God. 31 And you are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, says the Lord God.” (Ezekiel 34:11-16, 25-31)

Oh praise God. It was in those Scriptures that I read the two words that most seemed to leap out or to illumine themselves or to be illumined by the Lord were the words “prosperous plantations.”

The Lord promises that though the people of Israel had suffered famishment, both spiritual and natural, because spiritual famishment leads finally to natural and physical famishment. Spiritual destruction leads finally to natural destruction also. And also to the converse, when a land is spiritually right: when sin is driven back, when the people are in order before God and set in their houses of worship under right shepherds and under the Great Shepherd of the sheep, so there flows upon that land blessing and peace and honor and glory and prosperity.

And when a whole land fails, as that land had failed and as our land has failed, yet the Lord will provide, within the land that has great lack, places—plantations, rich places that are grown lush with His vegetation and that are exempted from the conditions that prevail all around. Though it be a desert all around, yet there is an oasis in the desert. And the Lord says, “I will bless that sector and I will make that a prosperous plantation.”

And the condition of a cursing that will flow over a nation and the dissolution that would threaten a society is exempted upon the people upon whom God’s favor is, because God is no respecter of persons. And he would not say, “Well, because there are only a minority of godly people on the earth, therefore I will curse the entire land.” But rather, He will pour out the curse in the measure necessary and also He will pour out in the midst of the curse a blessing that those who are in the curse may see the blessing.

When the curse came upon Israel in the form of serpents that went forth to bite the people and to infect them with a fatal virus, a poisoned substance, that would take their lives, the Lord provided in the midst of that situation—it was a desert situation—He provided an answer. And that was a brazen serpent to be lifted up upon a pole. And everyone who looked to that brazen serpent in that condition where people were dying and groaning and going, everyone who looked at that serpent found that life overcame the curse, and that the poison effect that threatened to destroy their bodies was broken at that point and had no more effect. And anyone else who was in that condition of being poisoned, who could see anyone else—well, that man there, that woman there, they were poisoned too; they looked at the brazen serpent and it broke the power of that curse. And so it passed from the people as they all looked to the figure that represented the Lamb of God, who was bearing in his own body on the tree the sins of all the earth.

And through this year, we have been blessed so often, in so above the measure that you would think we deserved with the riches of God’s outpouring of His word and His wisdom upon us. And time after time we have come to pools of water in a parched and dry land. And yet there has been a pool of fountain there of water bubbling up, a spring of life bubbling up in the midst of this land, keeping us from the things that we would ourselves be infected by, because we dwell in the society like all the others. And we would be subject to the curses, to the influences, to the sinful influences that have gained ascendancy in America, if not entirely, to some degree. And yet the Lord has made us a prosperous plantation, praise God, and allowed us to dwell in richness. And you can be dwelling in richness, not two blocks or half a block from where people dwell in the most dire spiritual poverty and need, with hardly a glimpse of green or of flowering buds or anything else that evidences that there is the water of life springing up.

Several weeks ago there was a message that Hannah brought that had three parts. And because I had to leave for work precisely at 12:22, I had the first part and the second part and the start of the third part. And I had thought, well, by logical development the third part will go thus and so and be very interesting and be very strong, no doubt.

And then I heard the third part some days later in the middle of the week and it changed quite suddenly from that which I thought had been the logical conclusion to the preceding two parts and became a very different ending.

As you recall, the first part there were broad—this took a long time but just to be very brief—the first part was about a man named Job who lived upon the earth and was very great. And it was also at the same time about a scene in heaven where the accuser, the devil himself, went as close to as he can get into the immediate presence of God and began to make charges against the man Job.]

And we also saw that as that conversation was going on in heaven between the Lord God Jehovah and Satan, and as Job was upon the earth, there also went into action in a certain point devils and other men to oppress Job. And so we saw a light that every level from the earth: Job upon the earth and other men upon the earth, devils acting upon the earth’s situation and upon other men. Above that, Satan acting over his hosts and also acting accusatorily in respect to God, and at the very center of it all was this poor little man Job.

He was the object of what God was talking about. He was the object of what Satan was talking about. He was the object of what the demons were doing. He was the object of his wife’s own bitter accusation, “Curse God and die.” He was the object of what other men were doing. All those levels of spiritual reality played upon him.

And the Lord allowed this terrible season of testing to pass upon that man for one reason only: that—one, well, two reasons really—the devil might be shown there was a man upon the earth who would be faithful to Him (HL: To God) through anything, who would not turn, who would not change his testimony that God was good; and also that out of the fires he might have a better Job, for Job was excellent to begin with, a mighty man, in very good things.

And at the end he was blessed beyond measure, spiritually enriched by what he had gone through, having faced the host of hell really that was set against him, and having conquered by what? By his testimony finally and by listening to the Lord’s voice. So we saw all that for Job.

And then we saw another man out of whom one demon had been cast. He was a man who had a demon, and it was cast out. And he was cleansed and empty. And the question was would he thereafter become a vessel unto honor, a vessel of the Lord, possessed by the Holy Spirit, ordering all his life before God? Or would he, to the contrary, become the object of demons occupying him again?

And as it turned out, we saw, that the last state of that man was worse than his first state, because worst devils than the first demon he had came into him and took him over, and very much the opposite result of what it had been with Job. Tremendous events in the spiritual, in the natural.

What then, was the third part? What was the conclusion to which all the logic of the case of Job, all the things that went on there, and all the logic of the case of the man with the one and the seven demons? What was the great application, the rallying cry out of all those things? Do you recall, I wonder?

(HL: Let them answer. Let’s see. You can see how the enemy fights, can’t you?)

Nothing that has been spoken is wrong. (HL: No.) It’s all accurate and I think Lee had a very valuable reminder of the Gadarene case, because it was a very important part of the message. But it wasn’t that to which all of the message drew to, as the keystone or the capstone.

…me, me—good as far as it goes. If there has been a failure—and there has been—of Christianity, of the Church, of the people of God in America, it has been the failure at this very point, to understand this, that Christianity is more than a religion of individual benefits. I obtain salvation from God. I obtain cleansing from my sins by the blood of Jesus Christ. I obtain a hold of eternal salvation to be with Jesus forever in heaven, praise God.

But what about the time between salvation and translation—a space it may be of years in our lives. What is to happen there? Well, what is to happen there? It’s something that can happen nowhere else. Because when translation comes, all powers of evil will be put under the feet of Jesus Christ finally and forever and for good. And there will not be another half-inch of territory to have to be conquered for Him spiritually or naturally. God shall put all rule and authority and power under His control.

Job began as a man of property, as a man of morality, as a man of almsgiving. God Himself adjudged him to be the best that there was upon the earth. And Job exercised governance over a certain territory, a certain province, his own plantation, and upon the people, the sons and the daughters and the people on that plantation. And it was good as far as it went, but it wasn’t good enough. And do you know what else it wasn’t? It wasn’t big enough. It wasn’t good enough, and it wasn’t big enough. And all that Job went through was to make Job better—he was the best there was. But to make him better, that he might then have more.

And the Word says, “And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job. … And the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, 1,000 she-asses. He also had seven sons and three daughters.” He had a double realm. He was a better man. And he exercised the authority on earth of God over that realm, a prosperous plantation, a blessed place, a place upon which the foot of no evil could comfortably ever set itself or even set itself. A purified place, a thoroughly godly—not just moral and almsgiving, not just high-toned, not just the best of earth, but a little province of heaven upon the earth, praise God.

The Lord has given us, we can see it with our eyes a prosperous plantation, more than one, we can see two prosperous plantations. Those who know the history can remember when there was hardly room to pray in. Now we have prosperous plantations. And we have the beginning of what? The beginning of an expansion that must grow and grow and grow. If it is in any way to meet the measure of the need of the day, shooting out, shooting out from the base of the plantation. An arm here, a foot there, an expansion there, a new territory to be taken upon which the will of the Lord may rest and in which it may be exercised.

Lee had spoken that same morning in the course of reading a Scripture a verse that said, “And the earth has he given to the children of men,” which if you look at it right it’s a very revolutionary statement. “The earth has he given…,” God has given to the children of men—and it’s absolutely true. The earth is in the hands of men. Men till the soil, men build the buildings. If there’s a 55-story building down in Manhattan somewhere—and there is, I can assure you—men have built it up from the foundation, the first floor, the second floor, the tenth floor, the fortieth floor, the fifty-fifth floor. If there’s a higher one, men have built that.

Men take of the natural things of the earth; they seize them; they exercise their imaginative and creative powers upon them and they shape them into various industries, into various enterprises, into various houses and museums and whatever else there is—all of it shaped by men. All of it reflecting their understanding of how these things may be used and exploited, filled with sin, filled with self-will, filled with unfair deals, where some get nothing and some get far too much. Filled with sin, nothing less.

And yet, all there being exploited and seized. Is there a reservoir of gas under the earth or of oil? What do men do? They take and they drill with bits and they bang into the earth until they strike the oil. And when they strike the oil and it pours out, they cap it and they capture it, barrel by barrel by barrel—men do that. It’s there; God put it there. Men seize it and use it, and we’re blessed by it, to some degree. We’re over-blessed by it at times. The oil at night here that pours up with the heat—we get more than we need.

But the point being that all these things are in the hands of men. Now is there a law in operation that says that because these things are here and because men are upon the earth that they must be exploited more and more obviously and blasphemously for evil and for sinful purposes? Is there a law that says that? If there is not, why is it so? Because it is so.

If you look this morning at the New York Times, which Benjamin brought to me last night, and the back page of two of the sections, the back page of the Book Review was a full page advertisement for the Universe Book Club and a constellation of occult books, which you can get at three or four for $0.98. Come to the feast, the devil says. And a great publisher called Double Day puts all that bait forward. You want a horoscope, a tarot card, an I Ching, your fortune told? You want power, you want better personality, whatever you want, it’s all here, come and get it, three or four for $0.98. And how many will bite, because they’ve taken of the printing press and the ink and the paper and the economic power they have and they have pushed that out in a full-page advertisement to all New York?

And you look at the back page of the magazine and you see a full-page advertisement for NYU and what does it offer? A course in astrology and witchcraft and occultism. Two full pages, seized by men and used for the devil’s purposes, because behind that—just as much as behind the case of Job—there was the devil in operation. Behind all that, there was the devil in operation.

Now there be so many unbelievers and sinners in America, and there also be so many believers and saved individuals who are members of the church of Jesus Christ who have no less right—more right—to exercise, to exploit, to use, to mold, to shape and to apply all of these things unto godly purposes, not of self-service, unto Christ’s service, to bring them into captivity.

Supposing a man had, by the providence of God, opportunity to bring into captivity $500,000—this is supposing, it may not occur, it may occur. Is it better that he bring that into the treasury of the Lord? Or that it be scattered in the treasuries of the world? Where this record company will put ads in a paper for Columbia across the street and pay for a full-page to advertise their records to promote the devil’s own message in the university.

Because the devil, Satan, actually controls to a very large extent the uses to which the treasuries of sinners are put, be they medium, small, large or huge. And there are things that could be done now for America, for South America, for other places too, that are not being done because God’s people have not understood that they also are to seize spoil (HL: Yes, I like that.) in many ways.

If an evangelist goes into a situation with healing power and a blind eye is opened—I know in Hannah’s experience there has been blind eyes, at least in one or maybe two cases, opened—that takes spoil from the enemy. That takes blind eyes, which do not perform their function, cannot see anything, can perceive nothing and feed it into the intelligence of that individual, and opens those eyes and gives that person the right to use the eyes, that gate, to take in knowledge and information, to perceive the surrounding world, and then to use that sight in a godly way.

So there are individual enterprises, and they have upon them the limitations that are upon individuals, because an individual has only so much time, only so much muscle power and energy, only so much imagination and vision. And then if you add to that individual another and another and another, all of like mind, each adding their part, you begin to multiply the power beyond addition. What three can do or five can do is not just three times or five times. There begins to be multiplied by larger factors.

And the army of the Lord, if there is an army, and an army is never composed of self-willed individuals—or if it is, it gets nowhere, it takes no territory, it slowly loses territory. And in America, I can tell you this, the church of Jesus Christ has slowly, surely, and then in recent years more and more rapidly, lost territory, where some of the very publishing houses that are now pouring out the vile stuff of the devil were begun and they were putting out 75 years ago godly books, hymnbooks and books of Scriptures. And it’s been taken away, and the devil has it more and more.

Have you ever heard of a corporation? The nation is filled with corporations. A corporation is a corporate entity. There’s a thing called the General Motors Corporation. The General Motors Corporation is an association of individuals highly and intelligently organized unto one end, the digging of materials out of the earth and shaping them into as many automobiles as they could possibly make themselves. To the higher end, as far as they can see it, of getting the larger number of profits, the highest amount of profits, that’s the whole purpose of the General Motors Corporation. And they have, as it may be, thousands and thousands of employees, all of whom are dedicated in their individual ways, having their parts in the scheme, to bring forth the capacity, the corporate capacity of General Motors to perform this function, which is passed upon itself. (Don’t look at the window, look at me, if you will. That takes it away from us, you see.)

And as each individual in that, be that individual a manager or a worker or a salesman or an oiler—whatever that is—does his or her part, the whole function comes together how often? Every day. You know, General Motors Corporation hasn’t failed, except during strikes, from the first day it was founded virtually until this day to perform its function superbly well and to bring forth to roll the cars off the assembly line and to roll the profits into the treasury.

Because “the earth has He given to the children of men” and as they organize themselves, willingly and willfully around this one objective, and as they all apply their intelligence and energy to it, the objective comes forth. It actually happens, it’s not a theory, it’s not “Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful to produce a car?”—they do it. By their hundreds of thousands, the whole thing works.

Well, there are all kinds of corporate enterprises and units in the world. And none of them, unless they are substantially governed by the Lord, can do anything for Him whatever. They can only contribute to the downslide to that landslide of which we heard of more and more evil tumbling upon us all the time.

But an alert people of God, an army of the Lord organized by the Lord, composed corporately of individuals who will all apply themselves as the Lord Himself reveals to them through the Body to that part that they are to have, the power of that to multiply and to increase and to begin to thrust back the works of the enemy is astonishingly great. As it gets momentum and goes forward, it will be able to take over more and more and thereby to take away more and more from the hand of the enemy, be it houses, be it lands or treasuries or publishing enterprises or broadcasting enterprises or legal enterprises, whatever particulars it may take.

And unless this happens in America and happens very soon, the game will be lost and there will be no hope for godliness in the mainstream of American life, for the increase of righteousness again and the decrease of wickedness. For the children of this world whose father is the devil are very busy in all of these areas: publishing, broadcasting, motion pictures, etc.—all the areas where people are bombarded by ideas and by words and by information and misinformation all the time. And if we fail just to understand here what the application of that message was and is, if we’re baffled or straitened in our grasping of it, then we as this local assembly will ultimately also fall short and fail of all that the Lord has for us.

Now why did He speak this to us? Not that we might be entertained for one Sunday by it, praise God—“Oh, wasn’t that a wonderful message? We’ll have a wonderful message next week.” But that that somehow might get into us and into our marrow so much that it becomes thereafter a part of us. And you can think on that level and you can pray on that level and you can intercede on that level, and you can wait as long as necessary, if it’s an active, prayerful, intercessory waiting, because when it comes forth, it will be like Job, it will be a marvelous work of God and much more secure against the devil’s invasion, because it wasn’t done….

When Christians go out too quickly at times, they begin to move very quickly in these worldly arenas, and they begin to get gain and all that, and you see sometimes the cheapness that comes into that because they get their eyes off the purpose and onto the gain, and there’s a cheapness that invades the whole thing. And it never takes on that character of sound godliness that cannot be cheapened by lesser things. But when these things are formed by the Lord and when we wait upon the Lord actively, all the time, waiting for Him to show us the way and then acting upon that…. We heard last week, well, don’t just wait all the time, but also get into action upon it.

As we do that, then those enlargements will come upon God’s purposes and upon our lives, for which we will praise God even as Job could praise God ever thereafter and say, “Oh God, you’ve given me twice. I had so much before, and I had so much knowledge of Thee, and now I have so much deeper knowledge of Thee. I know Thee so much more thoroughly, as the God of the dark places and the deep places, were able to carry a man through anything the devils can do. And I exercise my governance over this entire plantation Thou hast given me and all the things on it under Thee every day.” Oh praise God.

If you don’t get this fully yet, pray and ask the Lord, “Well, Lord, give me this too.” Because this is part of what the Body of Christ is to have and to act upon, in this present world, before translation, when there will be no more conflict or territory in dispute to be taken. Amen.