You see, in the beginning, the creation that we have, recorded in the Word of God, is not the creation, it is the re-creation. The first creation that God made, we don't know anything very much about it, only that it was ruined through some catastrophe. Now, this is speculation. I'm not giving it as revelation, this is speculation. and never get speculation mixed up with revelation. Revelation is one thing, speculation another. God has given us much by revelation which we may accept, although we don't understand it, we accept it. He has given us much by way of revelation which is still to be interpreted to us. Very much. We get very little interpretation. That's the whole phenomena of life and nature about it. We get very little interpretation of it. But it is there. It is God's first elementary and primary approach to man. God has always sought us. He still seeks us. His first approach is always through the inanimate. Because it's an out-fling, an out-expression of himself out here. It's not articulate. Now that is God expressing himself, approaching us. I want to get into that because that's in one of the Psalms, and it's threefold. His approach is threefold. His first approach to us is always through inarticulate, inanimate nature, or creation, which is a phenomena of his Word. His second is through the Word, which takes a hold of that and begins to expound it and explain it. The third is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who takes those and interprets them to us. You get me or don't you? His first approach is all inanimate, inarticulate, creation. The heavens declare the glory of God. Hebrew preaches, not declare, preaches. The heavens preaches the glory of God. Well, as it says in the psalm, there is no voice, there is no language, and yet they are thundering. It's all lost by a poor English translation. There is no sound or voice where their voice is not heard. Oh, that's horrible. It's not that at all. It says, in this great manifestation, there is no voice heard, which is of our language. No voice that we hear, but they're thundering, the presence of God. Now, your first inanimate revelation is that. That's God's first approach to us. His second is through the revelation of the Word, the truth which he has left, which picks that all up and begins to interpret. Then third, by the indwelling of his Holy Spirit, which takes the two and makes the complete Trinity, a revelation. Follow your trinity all the way through. The trinity is all the time coming up in the things of God. There's a trinity there all the time. When I'll come back in that story of creation, we don't know what the first creation was. We haven't any record in history, and if God doesn't tell us what it is, then my little speculation is silly. So I just leave it silent. And people come and say, Brother, what? I said, I have no right on this because there's no revelation. But if you want to probe in there with your imagination or speculation, you can do it. That doesn't satisfy me. My guess is as good as your guess. And you're only doing but guess. I'll take what God has revealed. In the story of our record here in Genesis, we say, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, between that and the next verse, there may be millions and billions and billions of years that we don't know anything about. Because it's not, and the earth was. No, the earth became. How many can see a difference between the earth was? He did not make it void. God can't create confusion. He's the author of order But he can't take confusion and bring order out of it, but he is not the author of confusion Well there in that verse you find this horrible confusion the whole world thrown into a confusion In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth by Rasheed Bara Elohim a Hashem I am and you go on in that Hebrew. It's majestic. It's beautiful. I love it. I It's God in his majesty. In the beginning, God, bara, creates, not evolves, creation as a distinct act, bara. We have the other words for that, but he's using bara. That is a distinct act, not an evolutionary process. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Then there's a cause. Thousands, millions of years, for all we know, and that earth became that earth became a confusion and a judgment of God upon it. Now we don't know why, whether there had been some creation that we know nothing about, that had failed and God brought judgment, we don't know, only it does say it became a confusion. Then we find these two words that I say, thinking of the water, Tohu and Bohu. And that goes way back to the most primitive, even primitive people who haven't lived very much of any revelation, still cling to these tales, we might say. They're almost like myths, if you know what I mean. Like an ancient myth that has haunted humanity. And here is this water thing, this Isn't it strange some of us have that feeling? The water in the ocean is wonderful, but I don't like to be by it too long. How people can go down lying in the presence of that roaring, terrifying thing that goes... Now, that's my reaction. I can't take it. I say, just a little afternoon, here's plenty. Let me get away from this horrible... Do you know, I believe that's of God. I feel in my inner being the very thing that that thing is. I feel it. I feel a reaction to it. It is never, it never will be quiet. It is still grasping. And so God said, be still. How did He quiet? If we would have wanted, if man, humanity had ever wanted to quiet it, we would have built a great strong wall against it. God doesn't do that. We have a big God. I'm glad I'm hooked up to him, aren't you? He can fight battles for me, do things that I couldn't do at all. And so he wants to stop this ugly thing from consuming the very earth. And he takes sand. Weak as sand. He says, there, you can come just so far. A barrier of weak, tumbling sand. Who could do that but God? Man would have some strong bower. He says, you don't need that. Give me this crippling sand. All along the edge of the ocean. And the ocean door goes up and goes right back again. He is trying. Now, that is the old bohoo. Now, let me help you. That is a confusion. a confusion, tohu, bohu, the terrifying abyss with no depth, no sounding of it, and this roaring of the confusion. And it says, and the Spirit of God moved over the deep. No, no, no. The Spirit of God brooded, brooded over this chaotic thing. And your word is exactly the same Hebrew root, which means incubation, and it's used of a hen when she sets up the nest with the eggs. It's the same word. How many of you know how an old sippin' hen, she broods over those eggs? Oh, I would raise her in the country, and I'm glad. We had to set hens more than once, and then put our hens in, and I would find that there was another egg, and she brooded. Now that is the word in Hebrew. Why? Because your word to prove signifies life to be released or brought to its evidence. As I said the other day, that chick, that bird, has to be concealed in this egg before it can come to its life that it is a period. It belongs there. Let it be there. But as it develops, sheltered by the egg shell, it must break the shell to be released before it can come into the fullness of its purpose. And we're in these processes, every one of us. We are breaking, breaking loose, continually, the old creation bondages of our spirits which were made for God, bound and held and captivated to the laws of sin and death and ruination. Now, and the Spirit of God brooded over the deep and brought forth the creation that we know of in the world today. Then we begin with God bringing it into evidence, and the first yom he did this, and the next yom he did that. In the next, yom, now that's day, it doesn't signify 24 hours, however it could, but it doesn't. Yom means an indefinite period of time, but it is a period in which a certain thing is accomplished. A yom can be 24 hours, it can be 25 years, it can be a millennium. This is the day of the automobile, how many hours in it? Well, it means a period in which certain things are manifest. And that's the use of your word. Why? I don't like to teach in Genesis because people get all upset and confused. They become too literal. And they say, 24 hours! Well, I said, how did you get it that way? It could mean 24 hours if you want to, because it doesn't say it is 24 hours, it merely says aeob, which is a period of time in which he will accomplish something. So in our first yoom, our first period, certain strange phenomenal things happen in the Earth's formation. I can see how we can have ages and ages and ages and ages. But if you want to believe everything has happened in 4,000 years, you may do so. No, I don't. You've got to give me my liberty and I'll give you your liberty. I think there has been ages and ages and ages back of any of our creation. I can't help but believe it. And we're finding evidences of it all the time with science. That's why religionists don't like the scientists. And I always say, listen, never be afraid of anything a scientist discovers. Isn't that right? And don't quarrel with it. Just say, I haven't any light yet from my side how to interpret it. But you found it from your side. I accept it. that I can't give a full interpretation in life. I don't know why I'm talking like this this morning, but did you see what I mean? I can't fit into half of the categories that they have. I just can't fit into them. And God doesn't blame me. He just lets me have a lovely time with Him. And I don't feel narrowed or condemned at all. I just feel I have a magnificent God, a tremendous God, and I can't put Him in a peanut shell. with holy hoes and all that funny stuff. Don't do that. God is too big for that. I feel like that little Jewess that I was talking about last night, this Jewess that I had been dealing with, and I didn't know she was a Jewess, but she'd been helped by my work and my message, and she was getting real light, and one day she just said, And I said, well what church are you in, my dear child? And she says, I'm a Jewess. Oh, I said, you are? But she says, this light, this revelation of God is just too big for my synagogue. I just wanted to hug her, she looked so cool. I thought, oh, you dear child. Do you know she gave a terrific testimony, or don't you know she did? She gave a terrific testimony, and her face was shining. She said, but this God I'm finding, oh, you tell me about God. She said, this God, he's just too big for my synagogue. I thought, he's not supposed to be held in that synagogue here anymore. Well, we'll come back. and the Spirit of God brooded, not moved, brooded. Brood, it means incubation, with the hope that life will come and life came. Through all the acts of creation there was a manifestation of life moving, and life moving, and life moving, being released and coming through. Now, how many of you can see in that, just a lovely suggestion of the creation here, How many see us in the beginning as a bohu? How many can see that by nature? The depths of a fallen down broken creation that we are born in. That is my whole natural thing. Why? Because that's the ruin of Adam. Do you get me? That's the ruin of Adam. But what happens? That same Holy Spirit that brooded over chaos is brooding in your heart and in mine. That same spirit. What is he doing? Bringing order out of chaos and ruin. A what? A new creation in Christ Jesus. What do you get? Do you see it? Yes. He's brooding in your heart. Brooding over the ruination. What is it? People always harrowed. Now they've all missed out, that's why it's awfully hard to teach. They come dragging in, they've missed half the morning. Come on, let them in. Harold Jones and I, it's clear in this. It's kissed this morning with a little snowdrift. That's the tenderness of God. It's speaking with purity and loveliness. And I was thinking of creation. And so, I was talking about in the beginning how God created. in our Hebrew is, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and so on. But we don't know how far back that could be. In our general thinking, we think about 4,000 years. But I can't get it that way because when it comes to the word day, in so many days, your word is yom, which is indefinite in its duration. You can have the day of the automobile. Now how many hours in that day? Do you get me or don't you see? The word day is merely a period of time in which certain things occur. This is the day of the automobile. It doesn't have any definite points by which you can say it's so many hours. Now, in your Genesis, that is the value of that word. In the first day, meaning in the first period in which he moved with the inanimate creation, so-and-so, then the next period in which he moves, he brings forth thus, and the next period thus. If you want it 24 hours and you become literal, I have no quarrel with you at all. But I can't understand you. If you get that on a literal basis, you're going to get into difficulty. You'll get into difficulty as surely as you live. You have to have your latitude in there which God gives you. God gives you that latitude. The tradition has held us back so we don't dare to take our latitude. He didn't say 24 hours by Ingersoll Clark. He said a period. It's indefinite. How long are many times when we use the day? This is the day of salvation. This is the day of so-and-so, the day of this, meaning a period in which certain things happen. Now, in that first period, there was a creation, thus and so, and thus and so, and thus and so, and you follow it through, and scientifically it is exactly right. It is exactly right. You get a good book on science and you'll find all those Paleozoic ages, how many of you remember? Those ages are exactly parallel with what we call the day period. And any real scientist will tell you that, and if you're a Christian you can accept it, because it is that way. Those days are exactly in tune, absolutely, with the scientific discoveries of so many ages and ages and ages and ages. Well, when we said, God created the heavens and the earth, now there's a pause. And we don't know how many millions and billions of years have elapsed between the Lord God created the heavens and the earth. Then our next sentence is so easy, and the earth was without form, it was void and without form. No, it isn't, it was, it became. Can you see a difference between the word was and became, or can't you? Sure. Became means a process of some kind coming out of. It became, not it was. and the earth was without form, the earth became without form because of a cataclysm, some terrific cataclysm that has struck the earth that he made in the beginning. Now we see remains of it. We find remains of it everywhere. What awful catechism struck this Earth that would throw it in confusion that up at the North Pole you can find little skeletons of fish and ferns and flowers? How many think the Earth must have had a convulsion of some kind? Certainly. How could that be? How could you find way up in that northern territory, frozen, and only a few years ago, how many remember when they found that mastodon? Frozen in the ice, and the grass and vegetation in the stomach of that thing, which had been frozen in ice millions and millions and millions and millions of years. Well, how could that all happen? There it is. I can see how it easily could have happened in exactly what God says. The earth became, under the judgment of God, bohu, muhu, bohu. Now, then I'm coming back to where we were when this came in. You see, if you follow the story in Genesis, just as it's written, the earth became this chaotic thing. through a judgment of God, God's original creations are never destructive. There are some things God can't do, because his nature will not permit it. We say, I have an almighty God who can do anything. He cannot. He can't lie. Do you know God can't lie? Why? There is nothing in the nature of God, the deity, divinity, there's nothing in there that would permit it or make it. He can't lie. He is bound under the law, structural law of his holiness. Everything is bound by its structural law, its constitution. And God is a holy God. He can't sin. He can't lie because there's nothing in the nature that permits it. Of course, he doesn't want to, but it's not fair. Well, then when he creates, he can't create a horrible, confused mess. No, it became that through some judgment that is not revealed. Then I always say to my students, where revelation ceases, speculation begins. And you have no authority for your speculation. But how do you know we have authority for revelation? We have all the authority in the word of God in the revelation. That doesn't mean we are able to interpret fully the revelation. Look at the things revealed in that word that none of us even touched yet. We haven't touched it. The complete realization of what is revealed in that word, we don't only just move around on the surface of the thing. Well, why? Because it is divine, and we are still in a human concept. And I don't know anyone who can take a hold of and retain or receive infinity. Why? Because we are finite. We are only finite. Or we get just a little glimpses of it. Paul said it, we see through a glass door. Yes, he says we have light, but we seek the light through a smoke glass. But it won't always be so. Someday that will be lifted and we shall see if we should. Sometimes I think that light we have now terrifies us. I don't think I could take sometimes very much more of light that we get extravagant. We get extravagant. The earth became this horrible, broken, confused mass. Now that is what he works with. Then it says, and the Spirit of God moved over the deep. And I gave you the meaning of your word. Your word is to brood, not merely move. But the Spirit brooded over the deep. It's the same word, it carries the thought of incubation, or the bringing forth of life. Just exactly the same word that's used of the old hen, that broods over the nest. She broods over those eggs, just so long. It's a period! Has to be! Not, one, two, three, eggs! No, no, no. These people who have such a technique of God, they bother me. We'll pray this, and pray that promise, and God will come out and dance for us. Oh, no, no, no, no. Sit down. How many of you know what I mean? That attitude is very, very bad. You live as long as I am. I'm 80 years old and I'm still going. And in these years I have learned something. I'm not proud about it, but I can't help but acknowledge that I have learned something. And all the king's horses and all the king's men can't take it away from me again. No, no. No, it's established. There's that word. There's that lovely truth. And so when I read it and I see it, I say, Lord, make me liberal and broad enough to receive what you say, although it upsets my little nest. How many of you know a lot of people have to have their little nests all upset? Why? Because we can't contain the thing in the little structure that we have. I wish, just for a testimony, how many of you can look back now and see where you have outgrown certain religious patterns and ideas that you held tenaciously years ago? Well, that's a good sign. You have to come out of them. Now, don't cry if he cracks one of them. And don't let the devil make you feel you've backslidden and lost the power. No, you're growing. Those are growing pains. So, here's the word, incubation, or to brood, meaning, bringing forth. And, the Spirit of God brooded over the deep. and brought forth, period by period, the whole structure of the old earth upon which we live. I can't help it. I have to take it because I believe it. I believe God is just big enough to do that. I've got a God who doesn't have to work by a clock. No. But you have to have a clock with a calendar if you stay tied in one of those funny little things. How many of you know that's quite religious? But it doesn't get you anywhere in God. No. I've never found such liberty that I've set aside from a real revelation of God in all the purity and loveliness. But this is larger than my vision. It's larger. Now, this was his first primitive revelation. God is always seeking us. Always seeking us. And in this invasion, this breaking in toward humanity, his first primitive, inarticulate revelation is all nature. That's why Paul teaches that in Romans. And he says, the unseen, unknown things are revealed to us through the things which are seen. Now in philosophy, that's a good principle. We work from the known to the unknown. We want to venture in philosophy and thinking in that field, we always start with the premise of that which is known. We work from the known to the unknown. That's our philosophic pattern, and it's right. And Paul was right. He said God's first primitive revelation is all about us in Romans. That's beautiful. The things that are of spiritual value are made known to us through the things which are seen. Do you get it or don't you? The seen tangible things. The known, we will discern the unknown through a reception of that with this ministry. So he says man is without excuse. Man is without excuse. He should know there is an other side. There is otherwise beside the immediate. Now you people from Africa, any foreign field, how many of you know the heathen already know that? The heathen already are conscious that there is something beyond this. Now they don't know how to name it. They don't know the significance really of it, but they are conscious of it because they are a human being. And therefore, any phenomena that is past their little recognition or interpretation, how many of you know they make a God right away of that? Yes, they do. That's only a normal, normal reaction. And I believe God takes it for what it's worth in their little thinking. Now I'm not talking about salvation. Do you see what I mean? God begins working with them from that premise. Any phenomena that they can't interpret to them like a mystery, it is always deified right away. There's a spirit. A spirit. The spirit of that. The power of that. Our American Indians are full of it. The foreign field is full of it. Well why? Because that is the most elementary primitive response of humanity to this inarticulate revelation of God speaking. The heavens preach, not declare, the Hebrews, the heavens preach the glory of God. That if you look into the heavens, and are at least a grade above a cow or a cat, there will be a response. And you will sense there is something there beyond the here. Who made it? Why? All of that is your primitive elementary revelation. And in the Psalms, it follows this pattern exactly. If you had the Psalm open to us this morning, I don't want to bother with you reading it, because when you read and fumble around, you don't listen. That's the reason sometimes I don't ask them to bring their Bibles at all. I want you to listen, and not, because then I'm six miles down the road. I talk and think too fast for you. And so sometimes I say, don't bother to look it up now, look it up later. But in that psalm, you'll see that it goes in strophes. In Hebrew poetry, we move in strophes. We have paragraphs and rhyme and meter. But in Hebrew, it's with a strophe, a thought content. And in that psalm, it begins with, the heavens declare the glory of God. The heavens, you see, the permanent, showeth his handiwork. That is, all nature is sounding it, and that's Paul's teaching in Romans. All nature is declaring and sounding it. He says that every man, he's without excuse, if he's at all intelligent, he should know there is a supreme being back of all of this. And he puts him in his place and he says man should know it. He is without excuse, unless he's a stupid cow. We don't expect cows to know anything, but if he's human, we expect him to have some response. Now, a few verses, if we had the psalm, look it up later. From that instant he begins to say, thy law is so and so, thy word is pure, thy precepts are so and so, and he has at least five declarations of this revelation coming to us. through the media of the word, thy law, thy precepts, thy commands, thy judgments, and go on. And you have about four or five verses given over absolutely to that. Now what is that? That is your second-fold revelation coming to us through the word of God, because you have accepted him through what you have found here. He says, I can come closer. by word. And so when we read that word, we'll find it has commands, and judgments, and precepts, and all of that. Now that's the revelation of God through this word. And this word is a revelation of God. But he doesn't stop. Now in that psalm, a very strange thing, I noticed it. You'll notice it too. Almost always with a psalm, it begins with some personal attitude, or longing, or desire. And a person is introduced. Praise the Lord or the Lord is mighty and all and you find personality you don't find personality in In this psalm until the very last You have the revelation of God in all nature the heavens declare and Then you have the revelation of God through the word, the precepts, the teachings, the laws, the principles, and it's all in there. Then he comes down and says, by these are thy servant warned and instructed and taught. How many see it now? By these. Means what? These two revelations. Now it's the first introduction of personality, and it's the first time he speaks of a person at all. A person is not mentioned in that psalm until the very end. Why? Because now this person gets the benefit of these, and by these is thy servant Then he begins to give God the praise. You see, it's a beautiful thing. I wish I could have an hour on that song. It's terrific. But it's good. It's good. Now we'll come back to this mountain thing. After all this lovely mountain, I just love you this morning. You inspire me. Don't you get inspired with God's doings? Oh, I can sit and... It inspires me. The water, doesn't it? of that bull, and you know God uses it as judgment? How many know the flood? What was it? Water was the medium. Water was the medium of his judgment. And the roaring, roaring scene. The scene of agitation is always humanity. That's always humanity. But you see, God will take care of that. But sometimes, some of these things hang to us. May I tell you about something else and then come back to this? You see, well, I have a retreat. That's why I don't like these meetings public, where a lot of folks don't know what's the matter with me. I like to be with people who take me and allow me to help you. Now, I was analyzing this idea of why I should personally have this strange reaction to the sea and the water and the depths and all that. I thought, well why is that? That seems to be such a strange, primitive hangover. I don't believe in reincarnation. I don't believe in reincarnation, but I think if you were honest, have you ever had periods in your life when something flashes over you that you seem that you have sensed or known sometime, or have you ever had that? Well, I have it too, dear. Those things I like to take to God, and what's all this about? Well, sometimes they are little intimations of something way, way back that has caught on to the consciousness of our human setup and is repeated. Now, in psychology, you remember our three great psychoanalysts. We have Froude and Adler and Jung. Jung, our great Swiss one, who died only two, three years ago. Do you remember those three great psychologists, and they were psychoanalysts, they had their theories. Well, now Jung is the only one who projects this theory, and I always felt there was something to it. We have what we call the state of consciousness, that we are all very well acquainted with, but in our last years we have found that there is a place of the subconscious in every one of us, isn't there? We have to acknowledge it. It's there. That sounds like the flesh. Oh, your grandmother flesh. You sit down. I can't get anywhere with you. Go on, play with your rag doll. Get ready, come around here. I want to talk to you. No, there is a subconscious traffic in our makeup. How many know all these sensations and all of this that we witness here in the surface consciousness, how many know it leaves a deposit down here? We are reacting agents. Whether we like it or not, we react, even unconsciously, to every external stimuli. I don't have to make myself conscious of it, but I react to every stimuli that touches me. Exactly the same as I respond and you respond to every choice you make. Oh, you say that's a little choice. Now listen. Here I stand. Now, what am I? Right here. I am right now the sum total of ten hundred thousand choices which I have made, because every choice did something to the development of who I am. That's right. If I have made a good choice, how many know it releases and brings me through? How many know if I make a poor choice or an ignorant thing, how many know I'm blurred by it right away? Why? Because God made us responsive, sensitive. Some of us are highly sensitized plates, I guess that's all you can call them, because we feel and know and see things. You don't know how, but we do. I don't know why or how, but I do. Sensitized, because everything that touches my spirit, I'm essentially, you are essentially, a dynamic, living, responsive spirit. That's what you are. But you get yourself mixed up with your body. You've never seen flesh at all. You've seen the body that I walk around in. And some of its reactions are due to who I am inside functioning. But you've never seen me. Why? Because you are a spirit and so am I. I've become acquainted with the house that you live in. But aren't you something more than the house you live in? Well, I hope to tell. Surely. Well, this is the darling place. Now, since we have this conscious state, there is also this strata, this strata. Now, Jung is the only one I know who promotes this theory. And sometimes I think he has something there. He says there is not only the conscious, subconscious, but the social conscious strata. A depository. A universal reaction that is common to many people in the universe will be deposited here. How many of you follow me? Can you see what I mean? Now, I feel sometimes we touch some of those shadowy things. in our consciousness here. I don't know if you like it or not. Now I'm not backslidden. I'm pretty thoughtful. But I agree, I'm wise about some things. Because I have had a consciousness of it. It's just a faint suggestion of it. It is a reflection from this, what we call the social consciousness. A consciousness of things which is socially so, universally, in here, in the country, all over. Basically underneath they will have that. And it comes to the surface. It comes up to the surface and we touch it. We touch it. Some of us have it and we don't know exactly what to do with it, but I can't deny it. It's there. I can't always interpret it, but I know it's there. You've touched it yourself. You have touched it, but you didn't know what to do with it. You may say, I think I lived once before. No. I don't live in reincarnation at all. I think we are individuals who retain our identity as an individual and not being recast and recast and recast. Not at all. But I can't help but know there is something in this theory. There is something in this theory that I have touched it and you have touched it too and didn't know what to do with it. Let's have a show of your hands. How many of you have, once in a while, just a sensation, a consciousness of something you felt might have been way past? Certainly. And yet I knew it wasn't. And yet they bring certain haunting things to me. Your spirit will react to it. Sometimes those things inspire me to write. How many of you know my poem, To a Wood Thrush? Well, now let me tell you something. I didn't know I was going to do this, but I guess it's here somewhere. I usually have my wood threshold on someplace. How strange this is. You can take it for what it's worth. Where is it? I guess it's here. Here, I guess it's here. Is that? Bear with me with this. But I want to show you by actual experience what I'm getting at. Because I have these strange reactions. Now this is one. I've had it in two forms. The beginning of it was when I was only perhaps five years old. I don't think I was that old. perhaps four years old, a strange response in my spirit to these external stimuli of nature and weird things and beautiful things like that, they would touch me. And I can remember when I was only, not more than four, where we lived, there was a glen And we had cows, of course, we were country people. And old Cherry, she was a big red cow, wonderful. And she used to come up, you know, and then we would feed her burdock leaves through the fence, my little sister. And we would feed her. And that was such a delight. Then in the evening, a whippoorwill would come down and flush around the ground. Never think of a whippoorwill singing in a tree. They never sing in a tree. A whippoorwill always sounds his sound in a hurl on the ground. He'd go, and he'd hurl around. Whippoorwill! Whippoorwill! Whippoorwill! His quaint, plaintive sort of a sound. It's not a chirp. It's not cheerful at all. It's almost weird. Whippoorwill! Whippoorwill! And the hurl is a wing fluttering. And I remember he used to come and flutter there. Poor kid. I didn't know what he was doing. I couldn't take it. I would go upstairs and crawl into my mother's bed and just weep and cry and weep. It did something inside of me. And then Ma would come up and get me by the feet and pull me out, you know. How dear, how dear. And she'd put me on her lap and try to tell me she was a good bird and everything and I was like... Because we're four-year-old kids. But I can feel it yet. But what is that? Now there's some kind of a strange response in our make-up to certain phenomena way off out here that has administration. Ministry. That haunts me yet. I can't hear a whipple-whip. I'm transported right away. Just as we... that beat. I'm sensitive to sounds like that. Bird calls and sounds and certain colors do certain things. So, even Mother remembered that. She said, yes, I used to put you on the lap. And I said, but Ma, it hurts so. But you see, you respond. Now, for instance, here's another thing. Oh, and this all on the tapes, isn't that terrible? Oh, dear. No, I'm not going to talk about it. I'll talk about it. Let's talk it off the mountain or something. These things are so personal, I hate them on tapes. Then they're straddled off here, there, and yonder, and all over creation, and it's really none of their business. But I'd like to be happy with you. Can't I be happy and personal with you? Or do I have to be dragged out by the ear and thrown into the public? Well, I'm A.M. King anyway. Nothing. Oh, shut them off. One time. It was at close of day. I want to see my day, period. It was at close of day. The sun had set and shadows soft along the woodlot lay. The liquid note, so sweet, so clear, within my heart awoke a strange and haunting call. No human voice e'er spoke. Where is the past from whence it came? Why could it thrill me so? O lovely note, I hear you call from out the long ago. Why do you haunt my hungry heart and strangely stir me so? Through all my life Whenever you call, I leap and want to go. My sun has set past its zenith hour. The evening air is cool, calm. Long shadows rest behind my back. I chant an evening song. I wonder, when I have to go, if I might once more hear a wood-thrush call from out the woods in notes so clear. Of one thing I am very sure, its echo I will hear deep down within my waiting heart, and I shall know no fear. like that one probably gets a feeling of it the mood of it yeah well now come back to this now he and i think june has something of course he's gone he was our one uh one uh psychoanalyst who believed in god thanks the lord he was he was from a christian family his father was a preacher said he was brought up in that atmosphere so we have these haunting things and they minister now we'll come back for a minute to this mountain Oh, you're so good to me. You let me ramble along. I want to get these things out of my system. I get so, so shut in. You know what I mean, or don't you know? I have no doubt about it. Sometimes I feel like St. Francis. I talk it to the squirrels and the animals and the birds. I want it out. I can see how he would do that. I really do. I really do. Because I've talked to him too. So it's a relief. It's alright. And God doesn't blame me at all. And he doesn't say I'm crazy. No, no, no. Now come back. I see this mountain. These lovely hills. That was his first primitive revelation. The psalmists have much to say about them. Now let me help you with that one psalm that is such a favor, and this might spoil a picture that some of you already have, but I'll only spoil it a little so that you'll get the fullness of your picture. The psalmist says, I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. No, now that isn't what he said. Oh, now you're going to spoil it? No, I'm going to enlarge it. I won't spoil it, I'll enlarge it. You see, he is a Hebrew singer. He is a Hebrew singer. His message, from the religious angle, will be purely Hebraic. His whole conception of God will be what? Monotheistic, over against the polytheistic heathen who are about him. All of them around about him, all of these nations and groups of people and tribes have many gods. Go to the foreign field, how many gods will you find? Just oodles of them. Gods for everything under the heaven. Not only objective, tangible things, but every abstract thing. There's a god to represent even our abstract thinking. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of gods. Every item that we have has a god to represent it. Well, God had told these Hebrew people that their message to humanity would be that our god is one. Remember that how it rings through the Old Testament through the prophets our God is one Jehovah is one now That's why it's very difficult to get a Jew to see that the Trinity how many know that's the worst thing they have to fight with they can't see that God could be God the father son the whole dependency you have three gods No, we have one God with three full manifestation, but how it we all know that in essence He is one God, but he has a threefold manifestation Now, that's what the psalmist had, and he wants to declare to the heathen about him what his idea is. They had gods of the hills, and in India, if you're here from India, remember those hills in India, you look up a hill way up there, it'll be a little white shrine of some kind. They will climb up in a hill and erect a little shrine as a sacred point for the hill spirit to dwell in. Yes, they do that. I've seen them in India many, many times. So when this psalmist comes down to sing that the heathen even could hear him, he puts it in question form, and in Hebrew it's a question, and he says, Shall I lift up mine eyes unto the hills? From whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the God who made the heavens and the hills and the earth and all things. Isn't that big? Isn't that lovely? Oh, when I found that, I said, oh God, that's so good. That's so good. That is so real. Shall I lift up mine eyes, am I like the heathens who have a God up here in the hills? Shall I lift up mine eyes under the hills? From whence cometh my strength? My strength doesn't come from the hill. My inspiration may come from the hill, but my strength comes from God who made me. I get that. I love the ministry of the hills. The ministry, all nature ministries to me profoundly. He said, shall I lift up thine eyes unto the hills? But where is cometh my help? My help cometh from the Lord God, Creator of all hills, heavens, and the earth, which is so much bigger. So when I sat here this morning, Isn't it strange? We got off on this hill and now we're in this party. How many of you got anything, anyway? We've rambled from creation all over to subconscious states and poetry and... Well, this is a potpourri, isn't it? But take it for what you can get out of it. That's why I say, how many can see, appreciate my reactions in trying to speak to groups of people? I think God is going to give me strength enough to get out anyhow. I couldn't preach this to anybody. Well, that's a crap talk. No, I have found God, and I have found truth. I found reality. And sometimes it upsets some of our little theories, but I would rather give up a rag doll if I could get the things of God. Yes. And so many are still playing with toys. I don't bother them. I say, it's a pretty toy. Now, that doesn't mean I'm superior. How many of you know that? That doesn't mean that at all. You grown persons, how many are watching these two little youngsters play? Aren't they interesting? Now, do you feel superior because you don't get down and play with them? Is it because you're so superior? No! It's because you've grown. You don't feel superior. Well, sometimes we grow a little past some others that are still on a level. That doesn't mean we're superior. The real reaction, it humbles us. The nearer I get to God, the lower I feel. The closer I get to the wounded heart of Jesus, the more I'm broken all to pieces and can't take anything. I don't feel like I want to run around this way. No, I feel this way. I think that's a good reaction. Now, our loving Lord, take all this broken bread, and we don't know what all we've been talking about, everything that we thought we would, but we won't apologize. It's here. We've broken it. May these precious, lovely hearts receive some light, illumination, or even a deliverance from things that they might have had binding them. Set these spirits free by the power of thy truth, for the truth will set us free. Let the truth as it flows out every day here, free them from any bondages, artificial bindings. Set them free that they may move in a new, larger field in thee. We trust thee for it, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you. Thank you.