that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year saying, Go show thy sons unto Ahab, and I will send rain upon the earth. And Elijah went to show him sons unto Ahab, and there was a sore famine in Samaria. Verse seventeen. And it came to pass when Ahab saw Elijah that Ahab said unto him, Are thou he that troubled Israel? And he answered, That is Elijah answered, I have not troubled Israel, but thou and my father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord. Thou hast followed Galen. Now therefore, send and gather to me all Israel unto Mount Canaan, and the prophets of Gael, four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the Gael, four hundred, which eat at Jezebel's table. So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together unto Mount Canaan. subject tonight is God's program for the coming crisis as to the confrontation between realism and the living and true God that we'll be speaking on next Sunday at Mount Carmel. God has a plan, and he's looking for a man to execute that plan, and he found that man in a light. God has always had to find a man. There has been this policy down these centuries. He wants a tool, an instrument that he can use, one that's impressionable and one that submissive to his will, and God is always on the lookout for a man and a woman, do the job that he wants done. When you think of the situation here, this confrontation that was coming up, God was going to need a man with certain calibrate. and he found one in Elijah. You notice not much was revealed to Elijah on this occasion. Just two things in verse one, go and meet Ahab, and there shall be rain upon earth. That's all. Just that one message, no details at all. And that's been the way God has worked over the center. The whole world of this occasion was engulfed with dualism, the apostasy of dualism. And here is to Elijah. He thinks of the situation. He feels very lonely. He says, Lord, I only am left, and they seek my life. God says, here's something that's showing up, Elijah. There are still seven thousand who have not yet bowed beneath the day. That must have been quite a joke to Elijah. He thought he was the only one that was known to God. God says why, and God knows how many exactly he counted them, whether they included the one hundred, that the man that we talked about last week had hidden the cave, I don't know. At least God says, I have reserved seven thousand, and they had not followed the need of bearing They're still true to me. They may be scattered, Elijah. They may be a little household, little group. But he says, I know them. I know where they are. And I know that Ahab doesn't know where they are, or he hasn't killed. Children and Ahab doesn't know where they are, that she would have them picked up. God says that there are seven thousand. So you're not alone, Elijah. The whole thing doesn't rest entirely on your shoulders. I have others. And to good thing when we wake up to that fact that we're not the only ones. We're not the only ones that are true to the Lord. There are many. Here and there throughout the country and throughout the world in dark places you'd never imagine to find a Christian. But there's generally one here and there's one there. That hasn't powered the need to want godliness into this wicked world. In their heart they'll let frighten. who was this part of surprise to Elijah. So I want to see this down through the ages. God has always had his man for Christ's. I don't know whether you know anything about the time when the church overran the Christian community and the crescent was put up in spirit of the cross. That happened. But God had his man and his man came to the front and the cross. return to where it previously was. You can think also at other times when Rome held up deadly grip upon the continent and the Europe for the thousands of years, known as the Dark East. Here's the power of Catholicism. Very, very with our covenant, dictating policy, dictating politics, using the kings and the victors as pawns in her hand to carry out her will. and to put to death all who would protest her dogmas and her slaves. The time came came when God had a man, Martin Luther. And Martin Luther lit the flames of fires of decadition as they broke out all over the U.S. and shift the policies into its foundations, the effects of which still last today. And I think that another case four hundred years ago when Scotland was drifting toward modernism. That's a strange statement, isn't it? We think that that only belongs to this day. That that time Scotland was drifting toward liberalism, liberalism, modernism. But God had a man by the name of John Knox. He had been ordained a Catholic priest that He was led to trite later by a man by the name of George Whitton. And this man, John Knox, he went out to preach the gospel after he was saved. When he preached, he preached high donation. He preached the old-fashioned gospel. And he preached against that very thin stuff. And very merry of England. Those wicked queens and their wicked regimes He preached fire and damnation, and he changed the thirst of Scotland, and Scotland returned back to the word of God again. Mary, Queen of Scots, Mary Bloody Men's many, Mary of England, said they feared the prayers of John Knox within their borders and all the armies outside their borders. That shows you what God can do with a man when a time arise when God hath to step in. and has to speak. In another case, three hundred years ago, anyone was held in the gift of leprosy, an apathy. And I want to say this to hear a lot about modernism today, and it is to be feared that I'll tell you something just as satanic, and that's the apathy among God's people, and the brazeness and arms of God's people. That's just as much as the devil has modernism. I make no mistake about that. Who did God raise up to end when this apathy overtook England? He raised up a man by the name of John Thumblin. He referred to before. And how he used John Thumblin to write Pilgrim's progress. Along with him and after him came other men, like Calvin, Wesley, Whitfield, Tyndale, Whiteley. These were men of God. But God raised up to spend the time of apathy in England, and England was turned back to the gospel, and saw one of the most glorious errors when she sent forth missionaries and battalion rule the way, and sent forth missionaries to almost all parts of the world. That's the result of God laying hold upon instruments when he wants it, and he uses it. When it comes to fighting modernists in the day, I don't know of anything that will fight it better than the old-fashioned gospel of the grace of God. That's what will break down martyrs. That's what God loves you. And I know that's what people don't like to hear. They don't like to hear fire and stone coming down from heaven. They don't like to hear blessings and judgments. But that's what God uses. He used it when he used John Knox. The thing he doesn't like is the old-fashioned prophet. They don't like the thunder of the judgment of God that's coming upon this world. They're turning into all the money they possibly have. All kinds of schemes and plans to try and bring about world conditions. To try and bring about the condition of the whole world. If there's anything that God will contain, if yet, this world is not going to be brought about by surgery, Paul. It's not going to be brought about by the church. running out of town, all wicked men and women, and closing down these dens of vice and nicotine? No. The only way Mormonism is going to be stopped is by preaching the gospel of the grace of God and men and women, getting to know Christ as Savior, and witnessing to God himself. When the time comes, then the church is ready. God will take his people home to heaven. Then he will deal with the empty shell of Christendom that left behind, as we have said, in the scarlet women, yet the men are still new. We'll say more about that when we get to Jezebel than the future men. So now we come to Elijah, the man of his day. God found the man. He was willing to do what? The man who would inquire enough of God through his word and care to be the instrument. God could use the carry of his children and his son. and God hadn't changed to this day. I'll tell you what it's going to cost. It's going to cost Christians. It's going to give him to God's presence to spend hours in his word and time on their knees before God with a surrender of that. If we're going to see a turn in the tide of things before us today, then the price has got to be paid. And these men who acquired God's will and executed God's will were men who saturated their souls with the presence of God and with the word of God, God to speak to them. And he didn't have to shout to them. They were close enough to God to get God's whisper. And that's the price you pay for the divine guidance today. You don't get it in a seminar in the classroom. You did it in your room before God. And that's where you get it. That's how Elijah comes. So we find Elijah coming to the front and this is a change. And you notice he just had that one command. That little plan. Then show thyself to Ahab and rain will soon come upon the earth. This was the first real step toward the confrontation of Mount Karnat that will be sitting on next Sunday. Those of them that Elijah was filled with a consuming passion for the glory of God. He said, Let it be known this day that thou art God. In verse thirty-six of chapter eight, let it be known this day that thou art God. He looked along and he saw the idols of the world. And they will claim to be God. Other false gods claimed attention. Elijah says, O God, let it be known that this day that thou art God. The only true God. All these are false gods. This was his consuming passion that God get first place. That God get permanent. That God get clean. That's what he was. He neither knew nor cared what would happen to himself. All he thought about was God's will. Am I concerned about my sight, my own interest, or am I concerned about God's love? All this petty, sulking stuff going on among Christians, concerned about their feelings as they're thrust into God, what about God's love? Who are you pleasing? Who are you glorifying the devil that you're doing those things? Not God. Elijah was consumed with this passion of the glory of God. He cared not what happened to him. Then Rahab took off his head and walked. He desired God's glory and God's glory alone. He saw the idols in the countryside everywhere. He saw Baal, the God of Baal and the God of Astor, supposed to be the male and female deities of Baalism. He saw these idols. He saw the idol Micans and Timos and Lilith. He saw their wretched altars all over the country. He saw the martyrs, prophets of God, and he saw the promised land, groaning beneath the odd sea, and deadly rites of these gods. He saw everywhere but the country. His soul was stirred to think that these gods had betrayed the God of his fathers, the God of Abraham and his country. And as he saw the situation, his soul was stirred. with cause of his desire to see God glorified and fallen. He was willing to throw himself in other things. He was willing to make a nothing that is God might be everything. He was willing to shake into insignificance that only God would be exalted in the prominence of this. That with our Elijah's only passion. This should be your passion and mine too. I don't know that it is. If we're a success or if our church is succeeding, we can be satisfied. If not, if I'm not a success, then the church is not a success, I be kept. There's something wrong there, and that's the glory of God. God should be glorified. His glory must be for. He will not give that glory to another nor praise the golden energy. God wants to be glorified. It's not my feelings, my attitudes, my little likes and dislikes. It's God's glory. And that with Elijah's passion, I remember that this passion consumes all of us. Such an extent this passion consumes all of us based on corrupt and selfish in me. of their human beings. He was also convinced that this God was the only God. Now is the thing of God, and the world of all there are many ways to have lots of religion. Let me tell you, there's only one way to go. And the Lord Jesus Christ is that way. There's only one God. Christ says that they might not be the only and true God, and Jesus Christ is our assembly's answer. This was a life of passion, because he was simply that this God was the only true and living God. Furthermore, he realized he was only a servant. You'll find that in verse thirty-six. He was convinced that he was only a servant, just a poor servant. And that word in the Old Testament means a slave. Now a slave in the Old Testament didn't dictate or draft any plan. for a pilgrim. All he was to do was to obey. The master did the dictating. The master did the drawing of the plan. And the master gave the orders, and the slave carried them out. And so Elijah is Lord, and just the slave. You know how this is to be brought about? You know how with the deal with Ahab than his wicked white desert then? You are about this confrontation at common. Lord, I'm just your slave. You are the architect. Do the rules of God the plan. Just let me know when I'll execute and I'll carry them out with the strength and the grace you did to me. Yes, that's it. It's not my plan. It's not my scheme. It's my master's will. I will. I'm nothing more. I'm nothing but Elijah says, Lord, I'm just your truth. What do you want done? I'm just your truth. I'm just the checker. You're playing the game and you'll lose me where and where you like. Are we that submission to God? Lord, here I am. Just like it's Elijah, he was surrendered. He was yielded. He was empty, he was plastic, to be molded by the hand that reaches down from heaven to no older men, no one as God desires and uses them as he pleases. That was a lively desire. I'm just a servant. Lord, you're the only true God, and I'm just your servant. Do you know it all? I know little and nothing. You just have to give me the wisdom, you'll have to give me the strength, the ability to carry this planet. Are we not too strong to kind of do in our own things of God? Yes. But we think instead of letting God do His thing to us, and I am anticipating that we'll sing the way it views these days. But is that a case for me wanting to do and figure out my little thing, what I will do? It's a case of coming before the Lord and good Lord. What is your plan? Work it out to me. I want your plan. I don't want that. I'm afraid of mine. So often we miss what he sorely wants done and carry out. We carry out sometimes our own whims and panties. Are we missed? what we need, what God wants them, just because of our impatience and our failure to pay the price to obtain the will of God and the strength to carry it out. How are we to know? Elijah was eagerly desirous to know and with us of God's blood. And I want you to know this. Jesus, I am thy servant and have done all these things according to thy good. God's plan is God's purpose for it. All things, as one says, Joshua, Elijah, according to your word. That's significant. God will never lead any one of his children apart from his will. He will lead you. He will plan your course. You program your activities of turning to His Word. And don't think for a moment the Spirit of God will lead you one step outside of the line drawn by the Word of the Living God. That's where we sometimes go a step. You think that God has two standards around the little table of God's, and I can get a little leniency here, and leave it there, and only Him, only on it. You'll be led by God. Within it the company of God's will, he'll lead you according to his will, and the other will. This is Elijah's strength. God's power and God's blessing are to be enjoyed only by those who know that they're in the will of God. And God is working out his plan to do this. That was Elijah's strength. He was willing to face Ahab. He had that strength, that confidence, that he was in the will of God. And when you're in the will of God, you're in the safest place on earth. Nothing can harm you when you're in the middle of God's will. That's his responsibility to then to look after you. It's your responsibility to get in the will of God. The Lord taking over from there, and he'll protect and believe. And you start to think of a manner that's telling the wilderness, whether it fall beneath the prudent clouds that hold it over the nation of Israel, and own the ones of that plant. be must abide under that which speaks of God's presence and his guidance. There were children as who were led by that pillar of fire by night and the pillar of cloud by day, that she would enter the sun, the scorching sun as they went through the wilderness. And all the time they were made under that building cloud, the manna fell, and they were fed, and they were led. The only time that you and I can be sure in the will of God and be attacked by God is when you're under that shelter in Christ, a symbol of God's present covering over his own. If you get outside that shadow, you're on your own. Like I've often told people, when you go out on a highway, put the speed limit is seventy miles an hour, you go seventy-three, you're on your own. You pass seventy, you're on your own. You stand in the rock. God will protect you. You get outside of it, you pay the consequence. And so God wants us to stay within the realm of His will. The blood within must be where God wants him to be, if he is going to be, and if he is going to be. If we have divine supply, if we have divine blessing, if we have God's divine plan, then let's get where God can communicate. And that's in his breath. That's not rushing in and getting on your knees and saying, Lord, I thank you for the day. I thank you for Mother, Father, and all our kin. Lord, amen. And you're not going to get the Lord through that way. And you're not going to get over in the sound reading of the sound of about four verses. And that's your daily need. You'll get just what you ask for very little. But if you want God's guidance and God's blessing, and taught to use you, you've got to pay a price to make no mistake about it. Fire of God, holy bones where we arrest God's brother, as on this occasion. One hates all most to refurbish themselves, but when I came south forty-three years ago, twenty-five years of age, my, if I look back now, how little I knew. Came from Canada during the Depression, down to North Carolina. I didn't know anybody in the South at that time except Mr. Mutual who brought me down. When I came down, I had one bill in my pocket. No salary, not a promise from any human being. I came to North Carolina as a young Christian, commended by the church and stopped at the full-time worker, yet I'd never sat in on a business meeting or an elder's meeting. That wasn't a place for novices. You had to be forty or eight, but I know this book, and I've gotten a life before you sat in on a business meeting in those assemblies. I never sat in one of them, and yet I was commended as evangelist. And I came down, and I said, sir, when I got in North Carolina, I trembled. I said, Lord, what do I know? I know who's the liberals. I haven't been educated, like others. And Lord, I don't have anything. All I've got to body. All I've got to share, and you can use it. All I had was my Bible, and a Bible to see soon, see. I didn't come down a plan. I didn't know how to draw up a plan how I was doing with these different cities, the approach to the city, the problems involved, and how I'd get the Assembly and Church tired of my arrestment. I didn't know anything about it. All I knew was teaching the gospel in the grace of God. And as I went step by step, the doors opened, day by day, waiting on God, God opening up his mind and opening up his will. And it was marvelous and was living a miracle every day to see how God opened up the way. And doors opened up and people were saved and led to Christ. And my need was constantly met. by some that God black might express the raveness of petalizing. Always on time, always on schedule, morning and night. That's the way God still leads and uses his people. But they've got a pair of kites. I have a preacher living in North Carolina. I'm not going to mention his name. Do you know how he spent, he stayed when I was staying, and that was his brother Nick. Of course I was, my customers would spend all my morning in my room, studying my Bible and praying to get the will of God. So this man came there and he said, I'd like to take out. I said, all right. And I'm going to show you how to treat your hostess. Well, I went to learn. And so we went to learn, down, looking, down, school, you know. And I was just going to learn. You spent the whole morning going from one store picking up paint looking on, buying nickels with you, buying a little bit. I said, this is not the way I used my morning. I said, I'm going to spend my morning praying. He says you can pray walking the street. Give her time, okay? Let's go in here. Have a nice meal. Tonight she says to give you a hostess a rest every day. Eat up top. I had a great call that day, but I decided to arrive here too, but she's going to be saying, what? Anyway, we come back about five o'clock. A full day wish for this by a very simple. We both scheduled to fix that night. When he spent down in a chair, he picked up the evening paper. He said, go on upstairs and pick up your best sermon. Let me hear it tonight. And he sat in there at the newspaper until the meeting. Well, I could have had a mighty bad example set before me that day, but I was three. I looked back upon the day I thought it was this. I got confused. I don't know just exactly what is in mind of the Lord. And I thank God that I went back to my usual schedule on life is different. This is the price we pay. It's not easy. But if you want the thrill and the joy of knowing your will of God is going to cost you this price and this price exactly. You've got it nowhere else. Roaming all over town and going out wasting your hours when you can spend those precious moments. Getting something from God you might have something to give. All I say is it. It's afternoon if I walk down traffic drive over the meeting. My mind went back forty-three years ago, and I used to walk down the sunset garb with Mr. and Mrs. Chappellee. And I said, Lord, how little I knew then, and how little I know today. How frail I was then, and Lord, I'm forty-three years old today. And I'm not as young as I was once was. I don't have the keen mind I once had. I don't have the zeal I once had. I don't have the impurements I once had. And you know what changed my mind? God is the same yesterday, today, and the other. God's no older today than he was fifty-three years ago. I am. And God doesn't expect a man to do at sixty-eight that he did when he was twenty-five or thirty. God says it's good that you bear the yoke in your youth. God knows that we get old. He never does. God is eternally young. But if those things I am happy for, if I continue to study my Bible and pray and not depend on experience or formal knowledge and acknowledge my weakness now as I was weak then forty-two years ago, your readiness to help is just as foolishly what I haven't got in the way of physical endurance, God can make up for that by spiritual and after all that's worked out. That's the price that you pay if you want to know God's worth and to use of God's mercy. In Carolina, every city we went to, except one of these were, we were able to establish a church And the same goes to Albany when I came here, the same thing over again. God hasn't changed. I have. As to my capability, I've changed. But God has. And I've prayed for it. The God of the marriage that still lives, still has a plan for your life and money, if we're willing to pay the price to get it. And there's no fill on earth. And it greater than the fill, the more you're in, the greater. That's the greatest fill, aren't it? What a fill it was to Elijah. What was the fill? You know what? He gave orders to Ahab on this occasion. Here is to Elijah. And Ahab was looking for him to take off his head. Jezebel was looking for him. Henry said, We've had rain now for over two years. The land was packed. The people were dying. And they were looking for Elijah. God says, Elijah, go and meet Ahab. And I'll send you in upon the earth. That's all he has. God started filling in the details. And you know who did the filling in the details? Ahab. There is the servant of God facing Ahab. And he says, Ahab? You know what you're to do? You're to assemble all God's feet, all Israel. And you're assembling at the very place, I say, common. And tell them all they have. You get all those prophets of Baal, those four hundred prophets of Baal, four hundred and fifty. And that other four hundred that eat the Jezebel's table, the prophets of Asherah, eight hundred and fifty in all, the representatives The whole idea of this wicked system of tersevelism and of jailism, Ahab, you get them at Mount Carmel too. That wasn't easy, sir. They didn't have telephone, radio, TVs in those days, telegraphed and sung those messages. All Elijah did was to tell Ahab, give them orders, get them there. And you'll notice what it says the very next week. Ahab went. He obeyed those. Here is a man, a mere man, giving orders to the king, and he expedites those orders. And they had them every one gathered at Mount Mount. Yes, God had a plan. And he just told Elijah that all Ahab had, what he wanted done, Ahab did it. I wonder what the bait was. No, it was because he wanted rain. And Elijah had hinted at the way in the streams of God. And was that the page that caused Ahab and Jezebel to cooperate with this plan? I don't know, but they did it. And they met at Mount Pilate. All of Israel had been gathered and they came from ten tribes. The prophets had failed from their various Jewish cities. Their parishes. They came to come. And they have incensed with us. This big show that. Who will go again? And we'll speak about that. Another time. Next week there goes. But oh how filled Elijah must be. Peter, oh I'm going to see. All these idols. All these others. The stars. I'm going to see all these prophets, these first prophets of pain. I'm going to see them to today. I'm going to see my beloved people, Israel, at the feet of God in repentance. I'm going to see them refreshing showers from down from heaven and soften this land that things may grow and light return to them. Oh, Elijah was told what he was going to witness, a few hours later. of the feet of Ahab and Zionist old, and the triumph and victory, or of his God, the older Jews are. That's what's thrilling and nice. Friend, I say this, what fills me today is the fact that those of us who are trying to do something for God and are used by God, who are trying to bring about that day of victory, and you only have one way of doing it, that is to preach God's message in the way he wants it to be. And the battle runs of divine truth and bring down all the walls of opposition in the world. Then the thing is to be in God's will and be enforced over there. Then see God win the victory in a coming day of confrontation in the battle of Armageddon. And the Son of God will descend from the sky and the ferns in the burial and the burial will not array in their own flat. Then the Son of God will defeat not only Baal, but every other idol. And the living God shall reign when the shower of death will descend upon the earth. And earth responds to the showers will come and the millennium will begin. Yes, we work in the light of that day. What are we doing? toward bringing that day nearer, bringing that day to hockey. If you give up something now, sure, I gave up something. When I gave up hockey, I gave up something I loved, and it wasn't easy to do. But today I wouldn't change places with all the hockey players in the United States. Very good. Not good. Most of them are true at thirty-five. You, like Gordy Howe, go on forty-five. But my will is coming. My will is not. You know you get criticized sometimes. I don't mind that. You used to have a saying, I played hockey. The worst pair on the ice is better than the best critic in the grandstand. That's true. I don't care what you serve in the trick of you or criticize you. Well, the poor do you make a good play. Ninety-nine good plays on the ice. Now cheer him. One must take him a boon. But remember, I'm waiting for my cheer. Whatever they'll be, not from the fickle heart of the human being, but from the one I serve in that coming day, when he will pass out the cheer and the credit. Well done. I do. I'm faithful sir. You can't have two worlds, this one and the next. If you want the next, it'll cost you this one. It shows the world. Those who laugh at, laugh at. The world laughs now that you poor, narrow-minded people, living for the Lord, giving up this and giving up that, the sword of his and she. Oh, your wisdom, your kind, your reason for that. The last of you will have the last life. If last, you say, I couldn't laugh at the eternal punishment of the history. And I think there's a horrible state, a lost soul of the ends of eternity. That's what we mean by our joy are ahead. We're not expecting them on earth. Criticism here is commendation, though. Thank God every man will be given. In accordance with what he has said, I'm bound to eat. God will make it up. Plot. We're not coming there anymore. What God wants today is a few more Elijahs willing to pay the price and ascertain the will of God. And here's the price. get into his book, for us to expect to get his will, and spend time with the author of his book, that he might reveal his will to his will. And once you get the will of God, you can be just as stubborn and determined as Elijah, because he got God's will, and that's all he cared about. He was willing to taste all the Ahab's and Jezebel's in the country. He got God's will. That's what would happen. I shouldn't have that. Then all the money, the gold is completely owed. Someday soon, all that gold will be nothing. Then eternal value will be received, handed out, and enthralled by the rest of you. What is yours is ours, and that's what is your passion. Good passion. The glory of God is up to you seeking. The glory is gone. That's the passion of your life. I'm who it is. If you're not a Christian, come to Christ tonight. He'll save you. He'll keep you. He'll use you. He'll make you happy. Life begins. Then Jesus will go. Amen. Our Father in heaven, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, will enter thy presence back beneath of thy words, Just that we will live out these things that thou has been bringing before us. We thank you that God of Elijah still lives. He may change. Wirtly friends may change. They'll leave us. One day soon, the next day leave us. What this friend will ne'er deceive us, O howe thou? Unto this we pray thee. Help us to study thy word, and if we love thee, we will show it for the amount of time we give to reading thy love letters to us. that the time we spend in our presence will through thee that we love thee. Beautifully pray, poor failures as we are, yet we thank thee's tabling grace, save us from sovereign grace till you die. And so to provide holy good, save any lost souls who tonight will reach him, save him through all their sins and give them peace in eternal life. That when the Lord Jesus touches me, Now we sing two hundred and forty-three.