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     1. It’s Real   (4:48)
     2. The Violent Take It by Force   (34:01)
     3. Sail On!   (4:53)

Matthew 11:11-12.  Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.  ¹²And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.

Luke 18:1.  And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;

Luke 11:9-10.  And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.  ¹⁰For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

Jesus says, “Fear not, little flock; it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  The Kingdom is here, thank God!  But it does take a little violence.  Ask the people that are really saved—I don’t mean the people that say they’re saved and smell of tobacco, or of booze, or have other bondages in their life, but I mean the people that are really saved, in whose hearts the bells are ringing, who can say, “Redeemed, thank God!”  Ask them how they got there.  They did some violence to it.

Last Friday night, we had this text before us that if you’re in a dump, or if you’re in unbelief, or in a bondage, or in defilement, or in sin, or in discouragement, or anyplace, you don’t have to stay there, thank God!  The door is open.  The veil has been rent, thank God!  It has been finished.  The Kingdom is here.

But the Bible makes one thing very clear: that it doesn’t just come like roast duck flying into your mouth.  No, He says, “Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”  Ask those that are really saved.  Are you really saved?  Are you satisfied with the experience you have?  If not, why, then you don’t know yet the fullness of salvation.  It’s ready for you, hallelujah!  You can come and claim it.

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I can almost always tell when people come to the altar whether they’re going to get something or not.  There are these lazy kind that come because somebody else watches them, and then they watch the clock.  You don’t need to come at all; go home and sleep.  But when I see them running...

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The kingdom of God is real salvation—is “righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost.”  The kingdom of God means that Jesus Christ reigns, hallelujah!  And when He reigns, the old dumps have to go, and the flesh has to go; “sin shall not have dominion over you.”

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Oh, ask those that are really saved what it cost them. Oh, they’ll say, “Nothing.  Why, no; nothing—to exchange my rags for beautiful royal garments, to exchange my poverty for the riches of Christ!”  Why, beloved, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?”

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Listen, if you would “do violence,” do violence.  Praise God, it’s there, thank God!  It is here.  Praise the Lord!  My God did not purchase deliverance and healing for the body, and hang it away where you can’t reach it.  He said, “Get up, take your bed and walk.” “Rise, go and show yourself to the priest,” hallelujah!  “Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”  And again He says that “men ought always…” …to go to the basketball game? or lie in bed in the morning?

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When you look into the face of Jesus, and you hear His voice, and you hear Him say, “All things are possible to him that believeth,” it’ll put a little ambition into your bones, a little initiative.  I tell you it will.  It’ll put the sparkle in your eye, and it will make you rise up, hallelujah!  It will make you get the best of that laziness—put a little initiative there. 

Initiative… You know what it is, initiative?  Very few people have it, but God will give it to you if you want it.  “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”  Most people don’t have to be about their Father’s business unless they get doughnuts and coffee for nothing—then you’ll get them.  The Salvation Army does that, you know.  And they come.  I’ve known fellows that go through the whole town and they get saved in every mission because they get doughnuts and coffee free of charge.

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I wanted to meet God.  I didn’t know anything about prayer, but I said, “God, I’ll do like a baby when it’s thirsty.  I’ll just cry—‘I will cry aloud and Thou shalt hear my voice.’”  Oh, I sought to meet God.  The promise that God will draw nigh to me: the violent take it by force.

I wish I could wake up some old lazy bones in this meeting.  Do you know that you’re getting lazy?  Do you know that the devil of laziness gets into your bones?  Do you know what wonderful creatures your bones are?  They ought to be full of life, they ought to be full of the Holy Ghost.  There ought to be within you something that was in the bones of Elisha when that corpse touched his corpse and sprang into life.  Even when he was dead, he prayed.  Even when he was in the grave, he prayed the prayer of faith. 

Oh, beloved, the violent have something to get.  There’s something to receive.  And God in His great wisdom requires pressure, violence—“Let us therefore labor,” “Let us fear lest a promise being left us of entering into His rest any of you should seem to come short of it.”

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I tell you, it doesn’t take too much violence when Jesus Christ sees an effort on your part to get into that wonderful rest, He’ll show you that He has finished it on Calvary’s cross, and faith is the victory.  But it’s because we don’t care.  We just don’t care.  We can hear it a thousand times.  How many times have we been convicted in our souls over some things that we know are wrong in our lives?  And the time comes when God says, “Now, that’s enough.”

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Oh, it pays a million times over!  “Every one that asketh…”  Every one that asketh of God in faith: “He is,” receiveth—what?  Why, “all the fullness of God”—all that fullness, the Kingdom.  The Kingdom.

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A man anxious to be baptized. “‘I want to be baptized tonight!’  I said, ‘Well, tonight we have no meeting.’  He said, ‘Don’t you have a bathtub?’”    (from 4:32)

Da kannst du etwas holen.  Da kannst du was holen. — You can get something there.

Es lächelt der See, er ladet zum Bade,
Der Knabe schlief ein am grünen Gestade

This is the opening of the play Wilhelm Tell by Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805):

The smile-dimpled lake woo’d to bathe in its deep,
A boy on its green shore had laid him to sleep;

Der erste in der Schüssel drin, der letzte wieder drauß:
so fleißig  […] keine […], wie der im ganza Haus.

This is a modified quote, partly unintelligible, of the last half of the first stanza of “A Schlosser hat an G’sellen g’habt” by Johann Konrad Grübel, making reference to the old custom of everyone eating out of one pot of soup placed in the middle of the table.  The English equivalent would be along these lines:

A locksmith had a companion, who was quite slow in filing;
but when it was time to eat, he was in quite a hurry.
The first one in the bowl, the last one to be out -
in the whole house was nobody who was as busy as he.

“Companion,” once the master said, “Listen, this I do not understand!
As long as I live and can think of, it is said:
‘As one eats, so one works’—but with you this is not so;
Nobody has ever filed so slowly and devoured food such as you.”

“Ho,” said the companion, “I have no problem to explain this, for everything has its reason:
A meal is quite short, but work lasts 14 hours.
If one should eat a whole day in one stretch,
Soon it would go just as slow as it is with the filing.”

Billy Bray

Deeper Experiences of Famous Christians, by James Gilchrist Lawson.  “A dear minister gave me the book that I would advise all young people to have… it’s a compilation of biographies—short, but wonderful.”

Date: 1956.  “For eight years now, since 1948…”

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