How To Live For God - Part 1
When the Lord began to open up to me the great message of the cross, which was now some twenty-odd years ago, I thought in my heart that the church in general would be thrilled to know this great truth. But a few days later, the Evil One began to speak to me as an angel of light, and Satan can be very convincing—I mean very convincing—as an angel of light. It sounds like the Lord; it looks like the Lord, but it’s not the Lord.
And He began to tell me, “The message that you’re preaching on the cross, there are a few who need it, but only a few. As a whole, the church is doing great. You’re preaching to the choir; they don’t really need what you have to say.”
Let My People Go
This went on for weeks until I almost came to the place that I believed it. And one Sunday night, Donnie was preaching, not on the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage, but he happened to mention in passing the word that the Lord gave to Moses for Aaron to give to Pharaoh: “Let My people go.” Glory to God! I want that to sink in. These were slaves—slaves to Pharaoh—and “Let My people go” was the word that came from Almighty God.
If you’re bound today by the powers of darkness, that word is still powerful: “Let My people go.” If there are bondages in your life hindering you, hurting you, and dragging you down, the word of Almighty God is still just as real as it was that day some 4,000 years ago: “Let My people go.” Glory to God! I don’t think you feel that like I feel it. You’re a child of God, you don’t have to be bound by nicotine, alcohol, drugs, jealousy, unforgiveness, or by any other bondage. “Let My people go,” glory to God!
You say, “Brother Swaggart, I’ve tried everything in the world, and I can’t kick this thing,” whatever it is. Well that word is to you: “Let My people go.” And I want to tell you something: Satan must obey the Lord; he has no other choice.
My People
And when Donnie said that, “Let My people go,” the Spirit of God came all over me. I began to weep, literally sob. The Lord spoke to my heart and said, “Son, what you’ve been hearing is of Satan; it’s not of Me. My people are in a bondage of darkness, the same as the children of Israel were in the time of Pharaoh; they were slaves. They had to do what Pharaoh told them to do, and it made no difference how hard it was. He said, “My people are in the same condition as the children of Israel were as slaves in Egypt,” and that’s bad, friend. The only answer for it is the cross. There is no other answer. Let me say it again: the only answer is the cross of Jesus Christ.
The Church
Second, if I remember it was 1993. We had the morning prayer meeting in the board room over at the main administration building. There were maybe six or seven people there, that’s all, and I was crying out to the Lord for this ministry here, and He spoke to my heart and said, “I’m going to help you, but My church is in a pitiful condition.” And these are the words He used, coming from the first chapter of Isaiah: “The whole head is sick, and the body is full of sores.” Let me say that again: He said concerning the church, “The whole head is sick, and the body is full of sores.” But then He told me, “I’m going to start a move at Family Worship Center that’s going to girdle the globe.” We were not on television then as we are now; we were on for one hour a week; that was it; I never dreamed of what is happening now. But we’re seeing the beginning stages—and I want to emphasize beginning—of what the Lord spoke to me: “I’m going to start a move at Family Worship Center that’s going to girdle the globe.” Glory to God! It’s going to touch untold thousands—tens, hundreds of thousands of people by the power of Almighty God.
The church today doesn’t want to admit that God is not only a God of mercy and grace, which He definitely is, but He’s also a God of judgement. Understand that. He’s a God of judgment. The deeper in sin that a nation goes, and let me say something else before I finish that sentence: the Lord chastises His own people, and He said if you do not ever experience any chastisement, you’re not My child because if you’re Mine, I’m going to chastise you because I love you. When it comes to the world, He will let it go for days without number, but there comes a time when He says, “It’s enough.”
Let me tell you, what Congress is doing, and before I finish that sentence, I thank God that the state of Alabama—they said it’s against the law to abort a baby—God bless Alabama, God be praised for Alabama. In reality, that baby is a viable human being at the moment of conception. But I thank God for politicians who wouldn’t give in. And I pray that Georgia will not allow Hollywood to sway her, but if she’ll stand up and say, “We are going to do the same identical thing in Georgia,” God will bless the state of Georgia.
The deeper that a nation goes into sin, at a point in time, God will send judgment. I stood at Dachau outside of Munich, Germany. The Germans are a great people, some of the most brilliant people in the world. I looked at the gas ovens, opened the doors, looked where human bodies had been pushed in, and over a hundred of these crematoriums were built all over Eastern Europe. But there came an hour that God said, “It’s enough. It’s enough.”
Every major city in Germany was bombed until there was nothing left. One city in particular, Hamburg—it was called “the night that Hamburg died”—over a thousand four-engine heavy bombers at night dropped their payloads over the city followed by more than a thousand American B-17s in the daylight hours that dropped their loads. When it ended, they saw streaks on the concrete all over Hamburg, and they didn’t know what they were. They finally figured it out: when fires burn at such intensity, they create a hurricane, and as the wind forces dragged them toward the underground substations every one of those people had clawed at the concrete with their bare fingers trying to hold on to something, but to no avail. Authorities said those red streaks were trails of blood from all those human fingers clawing at the concrete. Incidentally, every last one who was in those substations died, and there were thousands of them. Nearly 100,000 died—more than when the atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Whenever America legalizes abortion and legalizes homosexuality and these things that are against the Word of God, at a point in time, God will say, “That’s enough.” Recently I heard a preacher on television say, “Even now, we might be in the beginning stages of the great tribulation.” No, we’re not. This coming great tribulation, which is seven years, will be the worst the world has ever seen in its history. Jesus said it will be worse than anything that’s ever happened, and it will never happen again. Meteorites bigger than this building (Family Worship Center) will fall from heaven, and in the Middle East, over a third of all of the people will die that’s on the land; the sea the same way.
Of course this same preacher does not believe that the rapture of the church is coming. Well, he’s wrong. The Lord is going to take His church out of this world before the coming great tribulation, praise God. He has not appointed us to wrath. The Lord is giving the world—not just America but the world—an opportunity to get right with God.
Pastor Jimmy Swaggart
