In the sixth chapter of Revelation and the 5th and 6th verses, we see the black horse -- symbolizing the apostasy that moved in on the morning church. There, on that horse is a man with balances in his hand saying, "A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny. We hear it taught that that is Roman Catholicism issuing out the Word at a starvation rate. I say, now, I don't believe that Roman Catholicism ever had the true Word. That might seem upsetting, but please, let's go back and read the Book as it is. If Roman Catholicism ever had the Word, why would it be black? How can you give away something that you never had? If you are going to say they had the Word once, then you have to own the fact that they tell the truth when they say they had the Word from the beginning. Sorry to say, I don't believe they ever had it. Stay with me please. That black horse is a symbol of the apostasy.

The morning church apostatized. Someone says, How do you know? The book says so. Let's read here in the 6th chapter of Revelation and read it slow, the 5th and 6th verses. We have to get 'this' to understand our lesson. "And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo, a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand." Now, underline this. "And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny." What are the four beasts? -- a symbol of the church through all ages. Who said that? Rome didn't say a measure of wheat for a penny. That came right out of the four beasts. The four beasts said, a measure of wheat for a penny. Apostatizing ministry turned from the Word and measured it out at a starvation rate. What are you going to do with that? It says, a voice came from the midst of the four beasts -- that is the church. God bless your heart, it was the people of God -- let's just analyze a little.

Where do you think that beast or that woman in the 17th chapter of Revelation came from, that was in the wilderness? A good part of that was made up of backslidden individuals, people that had rejected light. A modernizing, apostatizing ministry, if you please, is symbolized by that black horse saying, "A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny." Rome did not have the Word to give out. The Scripture said a voice from the midst of the four beasts. Now, that was bad enough back there, but I want you to see something here. Papalism did not hurt the Word and the Spirit. It hurt not the oil and wine. In this apostasy and during papalism, the Word and the Spirit were not hurt. They prophesied all through it. They fed the church in the wilderness all the way through it. You think God had other food for the church in the wilderness? He fed them the same food -- the bread that came down from heaven, the good Word of God. Papalism did not hurt the Word and the Spirit. They turned it down -- they rejected it. You can not hurt the Word of God by rejecting it. That does not change it. What hurt it? 'Right here' is where we hurt the oil and the wine, when they added to the Word and took away from the Word, that is what hurts it, that is what kills it. Somebody said, I don't believe that is right. Well, let's get some Revelation to back us up.

The 11th chapter of Revelation tells us that the Word and the Spirit lived clear through here, for 1260 years they prophesied every day. They had to be alive to preach. They were in sack cloth, but they lived and prophesied --right here is where they laid dead for 350 years. 1530 - 1880. What killed it? When they added that leavening to it my friend, that is what killed the Word. When you add to the Word of God, it is not God's Word any more. That is what killed the Word, my friend, and kills the power of it. You let God's Word be just like it is and it will produce just what He says it will. But when you add to it or take away, it is liable to produce anything. This Word of God is God's Will. The Hebrew writer said in the Hebrew letter that a will is of no affect unless the testator died. What is he talking about? You can write all the wills you want to, but as long as you are still alive they do not amount to anything. Why? You might change your mind. But after you are dead, then that will, my friend, will stand.

Paul said Christ died and signed God's will with His own blood -- that made it of affect. If we will let it be just like it is there, it will prosper in the thing God sent it for. Isaiah said it would. That is where consecration comes in. My father died and left a will. After we had buried him and days past, we went down and the judge read the will and he left everything to mother, but before he would make a move to probate it, everyone of us children had to sign a waiver that we would leave it just like that. After we had all signed the waiver, he said the will will stand. It cannot be broken. It will stand in any court. But, if I had 'raised up' and said, I don't want it that way Judge, I want him to give me so much, the Judge would say, "Listen son, that isn't your dad's will, that is you will." Well, Amen. You know what I am getting at. Let this Word of God stand just as it is. Its power is killed when you try to change it and add to it and revise it, my friend. Nothing but the devil is after this thing, but I thank God for the good old Word of God that stood down through the ages. Men have raised up against it and fought it. We preached here for six or eight days now on the beasts and the spirit and all that have come up against it, but the World still lies this morning. I tell the people, this Word of God is like the old blacksmith's anvil. Every blacksmith comes and lives sixty to eighty years and pounds it and after that, they are gone; but the anvil is still there waiting for the next generation to come and 'pound it a little.'

The Word of God has taken the worst and the most serious pounding of any other thing that was ever given to us, but after all these multiplied hundreds of years and the pounding and the persuading power put on it , she still stands in her fulness today...ready to deliver a people. I think of old Solitare, that got so stirred when people talked of a real experience with God. He just got so stirred he said it took a few ignorant fishermen to establish Christianity and years to do it; I am going to show you how one Frenchman, in one year, can wipe it out of existence, and he set his presses to sending out false and erroneous doctrines against the Word. It was not very long until God called him in death. The Geneve Bible Institute bought his presses and for years his presses were used to press Bibles and his storehouses were filled with Bibles.

You might as well give up fighting against this thing, brother, it will be a rock for you to build on if you 'take it,' but if you turn it down, it will turn around and 'grind you to powder.' That is why, if you please, God is so after Babylon (religious confusion) today. They have raised up against this Word. They won't take it to build on, but God is turning with the Word and grinding them to powder. Papalism did not hurt the Word. Men and women that reject it do not hurt it. The man or woman that is hurting the Word and the Spirit (both of the witnesses), my friend, are those that change it. The Revelation proves it true. I asked you who the plagues are put on. The 18th chapter of Revelation deals with sect babylon, not papalism -- sect babylon. Put here right where she belongs. Sombody said, how do you know? God said, "Come out of her, my people," and God's people never were in Romanism. No...why? To be a child of God, you must be born again and Rome has always fought a born again experience. Brother, God's people were in sect Babylon. It said, "Come out of her, my people." Who does God put the plagues on? The 22nd chapter of Revelation said if any man not reject the word, but adds to it, or takes away from it. If he adds to it I will add to him the plagues. There is the one He is after.

I want you to see something. Whenever Protestantism began to go back and strike up an alliance with Rome or Catholicism, she turned to darkness. And whenever the Church turns to Protestantism and begins to strike up an alliance, she is turned to darkness. The plagues are after that individual that will add to it or take away; won't give it all. If you will read all -- down through Chapter 22 of Revelation, verses 18 and 19, "For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto these things" (you be careful what you preach). We still have to be careful what we preach. Why? We are in a day and age, my friend, when the sickness is being shot , if you please, like a poison arrow out on the saints of God, that is putting groupism in their heads and trying to get them to add just a little bit her, and make one Scripture a little stronger. Trying to get people to do 'this' a certain way or 'that' a certain way, trying to be separate. Better look out! Be sure you have Bible for that, for what you preach, because, brother, if you don't, you are going to get the plagues after you. And you dare not take the least bit away because if you do, it is liable to take your whole part out of the Holy City and your name out. You preach God's eternal Word and it will make a separate people, that is all that is needed. Thank God for His Eternal Truth and what it will do for us. All I am saying is, Let's be sure we have the truth for what we are preaching.

The Word was given at a starvation rate, my friend. The bad part here, remember, the three measures in the 6th chapter of Revelation. Here we still got the Word at a starvation rate, but some old corruption put in with it. That is worse. It is bad enough in the apostasy to go at a starvation rate on the Word, but here we have got three measures of meal again and added to that, some corruption that brings death. Death and hell followed this business, right in here, is death and hell. We read in the Word of God where it comes to pass. What are you talking about? The Word of God tells the thought of today more clearly that this business is the depth of Satan. He scraped the bottom of the barrel when he pulled this deal, to a certain extent. Why? God bless your heart, it is just like taking a glass of milk and putting a few drops of poison in it. It will kill you just as much as if it was all poison and that is just exactly what he did here when he pulled one of his worse ones. He took truth and hid corruption in it, and all people could see was that truth, not realizing there was poison in there, that was killing them as much as if they drank all poison. Hid a little leaven in there until the whole was leavened. It all ended up poison. My Lord and my God, may we see it.

Ah, the deception of this second beast is terrific. We read over in the 13th chapter of Revelation, verse 11, "And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth tha earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed." Now look here! Here is a deception: "he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire to come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth, by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast." Now, brethren, I know there is a lot of false fire, but in the very beginning of this thing, Protestantism right here, that old false system of religion, cashed in on God's holy fire, and makes their image. You stop and think a minute. I will make this statement. The Methodist couldn't build their organization today, on the message they are preaching now. How did they do it? They cashed in on that Holy Ghost fire that God dropped in their midst when the fire was in the camp and the sick was healed and holiness was preached and practiced. That old false system of religion, came in and cashed in on the presence of the Holy Ghost and built an organization in the midst of it. I say again, they could not build an organization on the messages they have today -- in their 'deadness and formality.' They cashed in on the fire of God to build that thing. They deceived people by saying, this is God's way, and God moved in their services and blessed the Word that they preached and they cashed in on the moving of the Holy Ghost to build up that false religion or that human organization.

I bring it down to the Church in this evening light. Let me tell you, you cannot do what these evening light brethren done as a whole, with the message they are preaching today. I preached a while in Springfield where Charlie Byers was a faithful trumpeter of God and stood there and had these charts up and preached them and rented the city hall and preached to thousands. He built one congregation of hundreds, and two or three more around him there; through his influence and this Word, that he stood for -- reached on out, Bro. Runyon knows -- God bless your heart, over into Urbanna and around. I told them that they would do well, to water what Charlie Byers built with the message they are preaching today. It takes the real thing; it takes the Holy Ghost fire of God in our midst. I have seen men that were stiff, hard hearted. I have preached to them before. I have seen altar services and they could sit in it, when the saints were weeping and rejoicing, they could sit and never be moved, but I saw the same man running to an altar one night screaming for God to have mercy on him. Why? Brother, you cannot resist the power of God that has backed up God's Eternal Truth when it is being poured out in its fullness. This thing was sent out to save the world, and she will do it, if we will preach it. Sure, it will do it. It has never lost its power.

I say again, my friend, they cashed in, back there in the early days of Protestantism, on God's goodness and God's mercy, and God's power, to build up that human organization. We can see today where the work has taken place. We know that God is rejected. Where is the Holy Ghost Fire? Where is the shouting in the camp? It might have "The Church That Jesus Built" over the door...! Someone said, "Well, Bro. Wilson, where will I go?" Well, let the Holy Ghost lead you. His sheep hear His voice; a stranger's voice they will not hear. Ezekiel said in the 34th chapter, he is gathering them out of all the places they were scattered in the dark and cloudy day and bringing them back and feeding them on the good mountains of Zion. You read it real careful. He said, "I will be in the inhabited places." Now any place that God does not inhabit, you will get no food there. Places that are inhabited by God and His Holy Spirit are where His Word is let live, where His Spirit is moving, that is an inhabited place. God says that is where He is going to feed them.

It is necessary that we be fed. He said that this Word with just a little leaven put in those three measures of meal until the whole was leavened. Let us look how Jesus used leaven. Mark 8:15, He said "Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod." Luke 12:1 He said, "Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy." Does that sound like some blessing on the soul? 1 Corinthians, the 5th chapter; see how Paul used it. "Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." Well, that is just what Jesus said it would do. He said you just put a little leaven in three measures until the whole was leavened.

Now, what was that leaven that was added to the measures of meal -- God's eternal truth, here, that human work? Earthly wisdon, James says, is earthly, devilish and sensual. That was the leaven that was added to the meal until the whole was leavened. This thing here, my friend, and churches that came into being through this era (1530-1880) have become truly and wholly leavened, completely. They are an earthly organization. They have human heads, human governments, human creeds, everything about it is earthly. The word of God has been fulfilled. In Galations, Paul said, "Ye did run well, who did hinder you." Still dealing with leavening -- I want us to see that a little business here won't hurt, isn't so. Let us listen to the Word of God. "Ye did run well, who did hinder you that you should not obey the truth. This persuasion cometh not from him that calleth you. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump," Paul says again.

Now, brethren, the same thing that stopped God's people from walking right here, was the leaven, and the same thing that did its work on God's people in this evening light in the past few years has been a little leaven. Paul said, "purge out the leaven that you may be a new lump," -- that is to the Church. Let us clean up and straighten up and purge out the old leaven. How are you going to get it out? A fresh baptism of the Holy Ghost will purge out the old leaven. We will be a new lump! [ The End ]