SNT 0445 Easter: 1 Corinthians 11
Easter: 1 Corinthians 11
March 29, 1970
SNT 445
Format: audio
Publication Date: 03-29-1970
Victor Paul Wierwille was a Bible scholar and teacher for over four decades.
By means of Dr. Wierwille's dynamic teaching of the accuracy and integrity of God's Word, foundational class and advanced class graduates of Power for Abundant Living have learned that the one great requirement for every student of the Bible is to rightly divide the Word of Truth. Thus, his presentation of the Word of God was designed for students who desire the in-depth-accuracy of God’s Word.
In his many years of research, Dr. Wierwille studied with such men as Karl Barth, E. Stanley Jones, Glenn Clark, Bishop K.C. Pillai, and George M. Lamsa. His formal training included Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Theology degrees from Mission House (Lakeland) College and Seminary. He studied at the University of Chicago and at Princeton Theological Seminary from which he received a Master of Theology degree in Practical Theology. Later he completed his work for the Doctor of Theology degree.
Dr. Wierwille taught the first class on Power for Abundant Living in 1953.
Books by Dr. Wierwille include: Are the Dead Alive Now? published in 1971; Receiving the Holy Spirit Today published in 1972; five volumes of Studies in Abundant Living— The Bible Tells Me So (1971), The New, Dynamic Church (1971), The Word's Way (1971), God's Magnified Word (1977), Order My Steps in Thy Word (1985); Jesus Christ Is Not God (1975); Jesus Christ Our Passover (1980); and Jesus Christ Our Promised Seed (1982).
Dr. Wierwille researched God's Word, taught, wrote, and traveled worldwide, holding forth the accuracy of God's "wonderful, matchless" Word.
(Recommended reading - Deu 28)
Gal 3:13; 1Co 11:29, 30; Psa 105:37; Mal 3:6
Exo 12:7, 8, 11; 1Co 5:7; 1Pe 2:24
1Co 11:29, 30, 24, 25; 2Co 5:21; Rom 10:9, 10
snt-0445_easter_i_Corinthians-11(vpw)
This is a record in the Word of God which is addressed to the church.
Years and years ago now, as I had researched out the significance of Holy Communion, I wrote a little booklet along this whole line and subject that we are gathered here for tonight. It’s entitled, The Cross in the Broken Body.
I was a minister in the church. I had graduated from three seminaries at that time, but no one had taught me the significance of Holy Communion. Just no one. How in the world you can go through all of this I don’t know, but we seem to do it. And we just seem to be able to go on year after year without really tapping into any great power and great resources.
I used to say to myself in my mind, well, why do we have the bread and why do we have the cup? And I thought, well, I was taught they both meant the same thing. And naturally, when I began to doubt I got sort of feeling bad on the inside. I thought, well, who am I to doubt what I've been taught all along? And I felt a little bit condemned because I was beginning to doubt.
Why would God place two things like this to do the same job? Why would he give us the bread and why did he give us the cup?
And after I got through that period of condemnation, getting into God’s Word, it was God’s Word that took the condemnation out of our life and brought to me the knowledge that I currently believe this great record in Corinthians teaches. And that record in the teaching that has just blessed hundreds and hundreds of people across the nation.
When you come to the Holy Communion where you have the two elements of the bread and the cup, you’ve got to take it way back in the Bible, to the very beginning when God instituted the Passover. The fruitfulness of what we are doing here again tonight will, to a marked degree, depend upon whether we are really seeking deliverance from our sicknesses and the consequences thereof, or whether we are looking basically just for an excuse for sickness.
If you and I are not seeking complete deliverance for our lives, then all we will get is an excuse for the bondage in which we are engrossed and encased. There are people today who literally – Christian people – who literally believe that it is God’s will for them to be sick. Well, if it’s God’s will for them to be sick, then it has to be God’s will for them to be full of sin too. Because we have two elements in the Holy Communion, we have two elements in the death of Christ, we have two of them in the Passover.
There are people who not only believe that God is the author of, but that God is real happy when people get sick because it makes people humble. They believe that God makes a person better by making him sick.
People, God does not send sickness. God is not the author of sickness, disease, or of death. God does not need to send sickness or disease to prove His people. God has sent his only begotten Son, He’s given us His Word, and it’s His Son – by His Son and by His Word – that God proves us; whether we believe that Word or whether we reject it.
The Corinthian church, as you heard me read, was a carnal church. They were born again of God’s spirit, but they had not renewed their minds to the greatness of what God had accomplished in Christ Jesus. There was among that Corinthian group a division. There were heresies. There were different sects among them. This was all indicative of the carnality of a church. Not only was that true, but they were loaded with sickness. Division. Strife.
It has never been God’s will for people to be enslaved under the bondage of sin. It has never been God’s will for people to be enslaved under the bondage of sickness. Sin and sickness are both inaugurated by the devil. And of course most people don’t believe in the devil, but they’re sicker than a devil anyways. Right. He is the author of it. And as it says in the Word of God, that Satan is the author of death.
God is light. In God there is no darkness. He is light. And for these people who teach that God is the author of sickness, they are entirely illogical in their life. Because the moment they get sick themselves, they go to a doctor. Or, if they get a nice headache they either take Aspirin or Bufferin, depending on what TV show they’ve been watching.
Sheer logic tells me that, if God is the author of sickness then anybody that would be taking an aspirin would be endeavoring to defeat the will of God. Logic tells me that, if God is the author of sickness then you ought to praise Him when you're sick. Not only praise Him for being sick, but you ought to praise Him and thank Him for making you twice as sick as you are because then you’d have twice the thanksgiving. That’s right.
So if God puts cancer on you, you ought to pray to give you two cancers because you’d be twice as much glory to God.
I understand that a certain person is out with a film. I just heard this. I’ve heard of the film, I've never seen it, but of course they have. And they were saying that immediately after somebody gets saved God kills his wife and all this other… holy hen, if God’s going around killing, I’d kill that wife before they got saved. What would God want to kill him for after He got him saved?
But we have been brought up in an environment where the Word of God has just been hashed to pieces, and where the true God has been literally made into Satan. And Satan walks around unscathed and free because we aren’t laying the blame where it belongs.
God told the people in Deuteronomy that, as long as they would believe Him and walk on the light of the Word they would not have any sickness. And the curse of the law was, the breaking of it, the curse was that they’d become sick.
If you’ll read Deuteronomy 28 chapter sometime, you will find out that that whole chapter basically, two-thirds or more of the curses that people brought upon themselves by breaking God’s law, is sickness.
But in the book of Galatians, in chapter 3, it says that,
Galatians 3:13:
Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us:…
Christ hath redeemed us. Well, bless God. If Christ redeemed us then I’m what? Whether you like it or not, I’m still redeemed. Whether the neighbors down the street like it, I’m still redeemed. Whether the next door preacher likes it, I’m still redeemed. Whether old Maggie Muggins mugs everybody, I’m still redeemed. Bless God. That’s right.
Christ hath. Past tense. People, I didn’t do it for you, he did it for you. And you and I ought to come to the place that we believe that what God said God meant, and what God wrought in Christ he did.
Galatians 3:13:
Christ hath [past tense] redeemed [past tense] us from the curse of the law,…
So don’t you come around try to put me under that damnable stuff, I've been redeemed. There’s a song like that. Remember? I’m redeemed. Hallelujah. Not by the good works of man, but by what God wrought in Christ when He raised him from the dead. That was a tremendous song. Might have been an old shouting Methodist dancing in the spirit. I don’t know what we’d have done. But we’ve lost the shouting Methodist years ago because we lost the Word.
We lost the Word. And when the Word isn’t there, there’s no light. We sit in darkness. And God’s people today, they’re born again – oodles of them born again of God’s spirit, but they’re in darkness. Because, you know, salvation is by grace. You can get saved, glory hallelujah, and walk a lifetime in defeat because just getting Christ within doesn’t turn you on, it just gets you into heaven. What turns you on is the knowledge of God’s Word put in your mind and your walk, your believing. Right.
If the church has been redeemed from sickness and from sin and all that stuff, why was the Corinthian church so sick? For the same reason the church is sick today. He said they didn’t properly discern the Lord’s body. They did not appropriate for themselves what the Lord did by his body. They appropriated unto themselves by grace what he did with his blood, namely the remission of sins, but they never appropriated unto themselves the significance of what Christ did when his body was broken.
Why he said, because of this there are many weak among you, many sick, and many who are asleep prematurely.
1 Corinthians 11:30:
For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.
They died before they should have died simply because they didn’t properly or rightly discern the Lord’s body.
This Corinthian church was a small outfit compared to a group of Israelites who left Egypt one night in a hurry. But before they had left Egypt, God had instructed them to do something. He had told them that they were to take a lamb, they were to kill that lamb, they were to take the blood and sprinkle it on the lintel and the doorposts of their home, and they were to eat the flesh of that lamb. And He said to them, in the eating of that flesh they would have health for their physical bodies. And in the sprinkling of the blood upon the lintel and the doorposts, they would have a covering like the remission of sins.
And so for many years – 20 years to be specific – approximately three million children of Israel wandered in the wilderness under the most adverse conditions. Without Bufferin, without aspirin, without Carters Little Liver Pills. And what Lawrence Welk sells, Geritol. Couldn’t think of it. That Geritol is a real religious drink for my conservative Biblical friends. Of course, they never read the label because they’re against alcohol. They couldn’t afford to read it, but it has 12%. That’s a lot. Sometimes more than some of that wine you buy, almost.
Twenty years, people. It says in Psalm 107[1]. It says that there was not one feeble knee among all the children of Israel, and there were about three million.
Ladies and gentlemen, either God has gotten weaker, maybe God has died, or something has happened in our society and our time which corresponds closely with the record in Corinthians. I do not believe God has died, I do not believe God has become weaker. For in the book of Malachi God said He was God and He said, I do not change.
Malachi 3:6:
For I am the LORD, I change not;…
God does not change. If God does not change, you have only one answer left; man must have changed. That’s right.
Not one feeble knee among them. And they weren’t even living under the resurrection of Jesus Christ, they were living under the law. And yet they could wander in the wilderness under those adverse conditions, and not one feeble knee.
Class, I’m saying to you we have lived so far below par it’s almost pitiful. Because, on every hand, everybody talks us out of what the declaration of the greatness of God’s Word is. And don’t tell me they walked for 20 years without one feeble knee because they were so good. That bunch of Israelites was a bunch of nincompoops half the time. That’s right. Kicking the traces, doing everything else.
Old Moses hotfoots it up on a mountain to get a little message from God written down on two tables of stone. And while he’s headed that direction, his brother’s headed this direction – getting himself a little bit of gold and brass and a few other items to build a golden calf with. And yet, for 20 years they wandered in that wilderness without one feeble knee.
In the Corinthian church, they were dying prematurely. Many of them were sick and incapacitated. A lot about our church today. You can have a church of 5,000 members and you got 5,001 sick. It’s about the record. Well, almost. Well, have you ever been with a group of church people who have ever come forth and said, “Well, boy, praise the Lord I’m not sick. I’m healthy. I’m working with the power of God.” Meet them on Monday even after Easter, coming down the street tomorrow morning to work and you say, “Well, how are you?” “Well, I don’t know. Sort of had a miserable night. Man, I got a headache.” Or something else. Isn’t it? It’s terrible.
You get a church of 250 members and you got 250 of them sick. They used to say to me… They don’t do this so often, at least not to my face, because I read them the Word of God as the riot act, I call it. And then I say, either put up or shut up. And of course nobody wants to really put up when it comes to greatness of God’s Word. And I simply would… They say to me, “Well, if you don’t get sick how are you going to die, Dr. Wierwille?” Well, now even that’s smooth? Huh? You know what I used to say to them? “Well, how did you get here in the first place? Did you come sick?” Most of us came pretty squawkey the first time. Loud and everything else. And it didn’t take but about I don’t know how long until you were sucking away at life, and moving in on the territory that belonged to you, claiming everything, you know.
That’s right. Well, bless God, if we come packaged up in such perfection, what do we want to go home for sicker than dogs? It just doesn’t make sense.
In the Old Testament a fellow by the name of Jacob, I think it was, decided that he’d had enough of this old life. His old buddies were gone. You know, the fellows you grow up with. It all disappeared and he decided, well, I've had enough I think. Seen enough of life. Enjoyed it. Might as well await the Lord’s return.
So he got his whole family together, all 13…12 or 13 kids. The whole group. He called them all in. He sat down and he said, now, Reuben, I want you to do this. Issachar, I want you to do this. Joseph, I want you to do this,” and so on and so forth. Finally, after he’d given them full instructions, it says he pulled up his knees and fell asleep. That’s all. He just laid down his life. He just gave it up.
There wasn’t one feeble knee among them.
Now, I may not always manifest the greatness of God’s Word, but I sure believe God’s Word is great. And I’m appropriating as much of it as I can, and I am walking as great as I can and as great as my believing.
And this is why The Way ministry is exciting. This is why it’s the time in our lives when we could really walk together to try to again show to the world what a Christian believer really ought to be.
Well, let me read you this from Exodus. Listen.
Exodus 12:7:
And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses,…
Exodus 12:8:
And they shall eat the flesh in that night,…
Then he says in chapter 12, verse 11 this tremendous truth.
Exodus 12:11:
… it is the LORD'S passover.
As they believed and acted upon God’s Word, they brought to themselves complete deliverance. Nobody could kill those Israelites as long as they believed. Oh, Pharaoh had the greatest armament, he had the finest army, air force, FBI and everything else, and he couldn’t touch them. That’s right. He got a little too much water himself when he tried. He drowned. That was the Baptist side of the pharaohs, I guess. Oh, no.
These people acted upon God’s Word as it was spoken by a man called Moses.
Now, the blood of Jesus Christ was shed for our sin, like the blood of the lamb was the covering for the sins of the children of Israel. The body of Christ was offered for the consequences of sin; sickness, disease, want, misery, frustration, everything else; like the eating of the flesh of the lamb was the healing for the physical needs of the children of Israel.
This is why in the Gospel of Matthew it declares of Jesus Christ that he himself took our sicknesses and bear our infirmities.
Matthew 8:17:
… Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.
In 1 Corinthians in the 5th chapter, it declares that Jesus Christ is our Passover.
In the Old Testament, the lamb represented the Passover. The blood represented the covering for sin, the flesh represented the healing of the body. In Corinthians it says as plain as day that Christ is our Passover. Then, in Christ, we have what they had under the law in the land.
Furthermore, it says in the Word of God that Jesus Christ was the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the Word.
And if you traced it all through, you will see that what was accomplished in Christ has to be more than what was available even in the lamb for the Passover. And this year when Jesus Christ died, he being the Passover, died at the very hour, at the very time, that the Passover lamb was being slain in Jerusalem. The people in Jerusalem didn’t know that the Lamb of God was really being slain. At the very time that they were slaying the lamb in Jerusalem that year, the Lamb of God cried from the cross, “My God, My God, for this was I spared.” And then he said, “It is finished.” And it was three o’clock of the afternoon, our time, the very time of the Passover lamb was being slain by the rest of the unbelievers in Jerusalem. He literally was The Lamb. And by his stripes we are healed, 1 Peter declares.
1 Peter 2:24:
… by whose stripes ye were healed.
Everything culminated in Christ. When they broke his body, in the breaking of his body we have the healing of everybody. In the shed blood, we have the remission and the forgiveness of our sins. And the Lord Jesus Christ said exactly that. And the record in Corinthians is exactly that. For the bread Jesus took, he broke it and he said, this is my what? Body.
I Corinthians 11:24:
And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
So whatever the body of the lamb represents is whatever Christ represented, for Christ was the Lamb of God.
Then he said the cup is the new covenant of my blood, or in my blood, it’s of his blood, unto the remission of sins. What the blood was in the lamb, the blood of the Lamb of God Jesus Christ is for God’s people.
He said to the Corinthian church that they were dying prematurely because they had not properly discerned the Lord’s body. And all over our country and all over the world today, people are dying prematurely. Christians. Satan is killing them off prematurely because we as clergymen are not standing up and declaring the greatness of God’s Word in its accuracy; that there are two basic elements in the Holy Communion. One is the broken body, the bread for the healing of our body. The other is the cup for the remission and for the forgiveness of sins.
Ah, you don’t need this bread, you don’t need that cup. As far as being healed, as far as getting remission of sins and forgiveness. I know that. Shoot, nobody knows it any better than I do.
But Jesus Christ said, this do in remembrance. And that’s the only reason we do it at The Way headquarters. Because it’s the only thing that I see left in the church in a material realm that you can manipulate with your hands, and taste and touch. And it’s only in remembrance of what he did.
Now, I know you can remember it in your mind. That’s good. But he said, this do ye in remembrance of me. And since he said it, that settled it for me. If he had said, take a candle in your right hand and throw it on the ground in remembrance of me, then I being a Christian would have to do what he says.
Healing is not in just eating the bread. Healing, and forgiveness or covering remission of sins, is not in just drinking the cup. It’s in the believing. It’s in the believing. When you come – and you’re certainly invited to come with us. Because, people, we pay no attention to people have been or who they are. We’re only concerned about where do you want to go with God? What do you want to do? And you have just as much right to come as I do or anybody else. When you come, and if you eat that bread and you believe that in the eating of that bread God’s going to take care of that physical sickness and you’re going to walk in the deliverance of the wholeness of God, God will heal you tonight.
If you come believing that when you drink this cup, that in the drinking of that cup you have remission of sins and forgiveness of sins, God will not only save you, He will heal you physically and He will put you on the road to heaven that all hell can’t stop you from going.
I tell you, people, we’ve got a savior that is the savior. We have a redeemer who is a redeemer. We have a Christ who is a living reality. And he’s made it so simple and so easy for you and for me, because it cost him his life.
He who knew no sin, the Word of God says, became sin so that you and I might become the righteousness of God in him.
2 Corinthians 5:21:
For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
I’d call that a wonderful savior, wouldn’t you? Someone who loved us so much that God gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Provided you,
Romans 10:9-10:
… confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Why do we continue to let Satan talk us out of all the great things which are available to God’s children? We shouldn’t. For surely, in Christ Jesus we have immensely more than the children of Israel ever had in the lamb; the sheep, the lamb.
But the reason the children of Israel manifested so much more than so many people today manifest is because they believed God’s Word, and they believed more. That’s all it can be.
God is not one iota weaker. God has not changed. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and how long? Today, and? Amen. Because he did the will of God.
This is why you can, if you so desire, come with us tonight when we make it available to you after this. When you eat that bread, just thank God for your complete physical deliverance in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Doing this in remembrance of what he did for you. When you take the cup, thank God for saving you, for giving you both remission of sins and forgiveness of sins, and doing it as a complete savior. And he’ll do that. Just that. It’s the promise in his Word, people.
If you have never studied or never read this little booklet, you ought to take it home with you and work it in the Word. Whether you agree with it is not important. It’s importance is, is it the Word? If it’s the Word, then you and I will have to line up our lives with the Word if we say that we believe God’s Word.
And people, you all know that somebody has to come up with something that is more accurate than what we’ve have for the last 20 or 30 years. Because our God, He cannot be weaker. He has to have available what His Word says. And therefore tonight, people, we again here at The Way Biblical Research Center share with our people, on this one night in the year, for our entire body here, that which the Lord Jesus Christ instituted, and which the apostle Paul in Corinthians by revelation set in the body of the church. And this we are to do in remembrance. Just remember what Christ did for you. Just do it in remembrance of what he accomplished for you.
Shall we pray.
Our Father and our God, I thank you and praise you for your ineffable greatness tonight, and your love. I thank you for your goodness and kindness. And Father, I truly thank you for just your blessing upon every person everywhere. And through your tender mercy and kindness for the outreach of your Word around the world and its accuracy. But especially tonight, Father, for my people who are gathered here. Those who are concerned about bringing to themselves complete delivery; spiritually, mentally, physically, financially, in every other way, Father. For you are a complete savior, and I thank you for it. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
[end: 00:34:32]
[1] Reference is chapter 105. Psalms 105:37: He brought them forth also with silver and gold: and there was not one feeble person among their tribes.