—MOJuly 19, 1976DFO NO.544

—"For he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of His eye!" (Zech.2:8.)

1. REMEMBER WHEN THE APOSTLE PAUL BEGAN TO GET UNDER VERY GREAT CONVICTION and the Holy Spirit was really prodding him? The picture God gives is when Jesus met him on the way to Damascus and He says, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks!" (Acts 9:4,5.)

2. NOW MAYBE I BETTER EXPLAIN WHAT THOSE PRICKS ARE, because the word used there in the Greek is a word used for an ox goad, a stick with a sharp point that farmers used on a stubborn ox, an ox that refused to pull the plow. They pulled plows in those days with oxen, and if the ox was very stubborn and wouldn't pull, the farmer would use this sharp stick and prod the ox in the rear.

3. IF THE OX WAS STILL VERY STUBBORN THE OX WOULD EVEN KICK AGAINST THE PRICKS and still refuse to go and kick at the farmer and kick at the stick. Oxen can be very stubborn. We used to have cattle in Texas, and we had Old Red, they called her. I think she was as demon-possessed as you can get, she was mean and demon-possessed! We'd get her in the stall, you know, even with her head in the yoke in the stalls there to milk her‚ and she would try to kick the person that was trying to milk her! So what Jesus said to Saul on the way to Damascus is,

4. "YOU ARE A STUBBORN OLD OX REFUSING TO DO MY WORK, and even though I am prodding you with the sharp stick of the Holy spirit, you still won't go! You not only won't go, you won't work! You even kick back against Me!" Do you remember what Saul was doing? See‚ the more Saul got under conviction the harder he fought it, so he even began to persecute the Christians.

5. HE WAS KICKING HARD AGAINST THE PRICKS OF CONVICTION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. Apparently he had heard enough already and he knew it was the truth, but he was fighting it. Saul, who was later to become the Apostle Paul, was fighting it. He'd heard the truth, obviously, because he was kicking against it.

6. IT WASN'T ENOUGH JUST TO SPEAK AGAINST THE CHRISTIAN, NOW HE HAD TO GO OUT AND ACTIVELY PERSECUTE THEM! So he was on his way to Damascus with letters from the High Priest to persecute the Christians in Damascus, think of it! He even tried to imprison them and had them killed, he was fighting so hard. Think of that! He got under such conviction he fought back.

7. AT LEAST OUR LOCAL ENEMIES HAVEN'T GOTTEN THAT BAD YET, THANK THE LORD! I mean that would be as though local people would turn around and become our enemies. Some are in danger of becoming our enemies‚ because if they fight against God, fight against conviction of the Truth, fight against the Holy spirit, fight against the love of the Lord and our love, it means they could turn and they could go the other way.

8. THAT'S WHAT THE BIBLE CALLS BACKSLIDING, TURNING AROUND AND GOING THE OTHER WAY. Apparently the Rabbi Saul got so angry he not only turned against the Christians, he even fought them so that God had to actually supernaturally miraculously stop him! On his way to Damascus he was riding on a horse with some soldiers to go and arrest the Christians, like a policeman, and took some other policemen with him to go arrest them.

9. GOD SMOTE HIM‚ STRUCK HIM OFF HIS HORSE just like lightning, and knocked him to the ground and blinded him so he couldn't even see! His eyes‚ his pupils, were actually burned by the light just like mine were by that gas heater explosion when I was a boy! When the Lord healed my eyes two scales fell off both pupils just like they did off Saul's! That's another story I'll have to tell you some other time, a miracle God did.

10. THE LIGHT WAS SO BRIGHT IT BURNED SAUL'S EYES and he was blinded, struck like lightning, knocked off his horse to the ground! He was so stubborn God had to actually knock him flat‚ knock him down! He was fighting God so hard, God hit back! Whammy!

11. YOU FIGHT GOD TOO HARD AND GOD'LL FIGHT YOU! He gives you a little time to repent, maybe just a little spanking to encourage you to repent, and if you don't repent He gives you a harder spanking. But if you still don't repent‚ if you fight even harder, then He starts fighting you—Boom! He knocked him right off his high horse, knocked him to the ground and blinded him! And the Lord said to him, Jesus appeared to him—think of it! and said, "Saul, Saul why persecutest thou Me?"

12. WHO WAS HE PERSECUTING WHEN HE WAS PERSECUTING CHRISTIANS? HE WAS PERSECUTING JESUS! When they fight us and they persecute us and they accuse us, who are they doing it to?—Jesus! So who is going to fight for you? Who is going to fight for us? It's not us, it's Jesus they're fighting! So who's going to fight them back?

13. WHO WILL FIGHT THEM BACK?— JESUS WILL FIGHT BACK! "Stand back", the Lord said in the Scripture, "and see Me fight! This is not thy battle but Mine! Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, saith the Lord! For he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of Mine eye. Touch not the Lord's anointed!" (Ex.14:14; 2Ch.20:17; Ro.12:19; Zech.2:8; Ps.105:15.) Hallelujah! (Tongues:)

14. "HEAR YE THE WORDS OF THY FATHER DAVID AND KNOW WHAT I SHALL DO UNTO THEM THAT FIGHT AGAINST THEE!" Hallelujah! Thank You Jesus! Praise You Lord! Amen! Thank You Jesus! Why should we ever worry about what they might do to us? He says,

15. "TOUCH NOT THE LORD'S ANOINTED AND DO MY PROPHETS NO HARM, FOR HE THAT TOUCHETH YOU TOUCHETH THE APPLE OF MINE EYE!" In other words, anybody that tries to do you or me harm is sticking their finger in God's eye! You know how that feels! That's about the most sensitive place you can touch anybody! What's the most sensitive place in your whole body, the one place you cannot stand to be touched?—Your eye!

16. SO WHEN THEY TOUCH YOU, THE LORD'S ANOINTED, HIS PROPHETS, THEY ARE TOUCHING THE MOST SENSITIVE PART OF GOD'S BODY‚ HIS EYES! I never thought of that before!—His prophets are His eyes!—The eyes of His Body, the prophets are the eyes of His Body, the church!

17. WE PROPHETS ARE THE EYES OF HIS BODY, THE CHURCH. Think of that, isn't that something? We see the vision! For "without a vision the people perish!" (Pr.29:18) How about that? Isn't that something? Thank You Lord, hallelujah! No wonder!

18. WHAT SIGNIFICANCE THAT VERSE HAS THEN! "Touch not the Lord's anointed and do His prophets no harm, for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of mine eye!"

19. IF THEY TOUCH HIS PROPHETS, IF THEY LAY ONE FINGER ON ME OR YOU, THEY'VE POKED GOD RIGHT IN THE EYE!— And what happens when somebody touches your eye? You involuntarily react without even thinking about it! If you're walking along here and a branch sticks you in the eye you sort of bat it away like this, without even stopping to think about it you'll hit it away, right?—Or jerk it away. How about that? It's amazing how you never see these things unless the Lord shows them to you!

20. WE'RE GOD'S BODY, RIGHT?—AND HIS PROPHETS ARE THE EYES OF HIS BODY! Isn't that beautiful? Why didn't they ever tell us that in church? That's such a beautiful picture! The prophets are the eyes of His Body!—Think of that! Hallelujah! Thank You Lord! We are the spiritual eyes of the spiritual body, amen?

21. SO THEY'D BETTER WATCH OUT IF THEY ARE THINKING ABOUT PUTTING A FINGER ON US! They are touching the eyes of the Lord, and God will not let them get away with it! They're sticking their finger in God's eye, His most sensitive part, His most important part of His Body, His new young church.

22. WHY DID THE LORD MAKE YOUR EYES SO SENSITIVE? Why did the Lord make that the most sensitive touchy part of your whole body that you cannot stand to have touched? For one thing, it's one of the most delicate parts of the body and it is one of the most easily damaged and can be scratched or hurt very easily. And another thing, it's so important‚ your eyes are so important.

23. OF ALL FIVE SENSES, YOUR EYES ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT. It's more important to be able to see than anything else. I would say hearing is next. The prophets see visions, but all of us should hear from the Lord.

24. SO SEEING AND HEARING FROM THE LORD ARE VERY IMPORTANT. What else? I'd say taste would come next perhaps, because that way you can tell whether you're eating something good and fresh or rotten and spoiled or even poisonous.

25. TASTE WOULD PROBABLY BE THIRD in importance, as you have taste so you can tell what you're eating. Smell is very important too, because by smell you can tell whether something is good or bad.

26. ALL OF THESE SENSES ARE LIKE THE SPIRITUAL SENSES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. I'd say smell is almost like discernment, you know? Eyes are like prophetic vision. Ears are like hearing the voice of the Lord. Taste is like—what do we eat spiritually? We eat spiritually words, whether they be good or bad words, whether they be truth or lies.

27. WORDS ARE OUR SPIRITUAL FOOD, AND OUR SPIRITUAL SENSE OF TASTE OR DISCERNMENT CAN TELL THE DIFFERENCE between that which is good and that which is bad, what we actually eat as our food.

28. BUT OUR SENSE OF SMELL‚ MAYBE THAT'S EVEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN TASTE, because that can give you advance warning even before you taste it! You can smell if it's gone bad. Maybe smell's really the third most important, because you smell something even before you taste it.—Right? That's the next warning.

29. FIRST YOU LOOK AT IT and you can tell even by looking at it sometimes whether it's bad or not, whether it's gotten rotten or gone bad.

30. THEN YOU SMELL IT‚ and you can by that almost always tell if something's wrong. But even if that doesn't do it we taste it. Like the orange juice I drink in the morning: Sometimes it looks perfectly all right and even smells okay, but I wait till I taste a little bit to see if it's spoiled. That's really sure when I taste it.

31. VISION, THE SENSE OF SIGHT, IS LIKE PROPHETIC VISIONS. Hearing is like hearing the direct voice of the Lord, right? Smell is like the gift of discernment—sometimes I just have feelings about people, something's wrong, something's bad, or I have good feelings.

32. WHEN YOU TASTE IT YOU REALLY PUT IT TO THE FINAL TEST! The taste of the pudding—the proof is in the tasting of the pudding. It says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good" (Ps.34:8). Try Him! That's the real proof of the pudding when you finally taste it.

33. FEELING IS REALLY THE LEAST OF ALL OUR SENSES and the least sensitive in a way and almost the least reliable—how you feel about a thing. But it's an important sense, and you can feel good or feel bad and so on. But you can't always tell by the feeling of a substance whether it's rotten or not.

34. YOU CAN'T TELL BY FEELING THE ORANGE JUICE. If I'd touch it with my fingers I couldn't tell whether it was spoiled or not. It's really the least sensitive of all your senses.

35. BUT THINK WHAT A WONDERFUL GIFT SIGHT IS! I can turn these lenses around and I can look over there and I can see that big hotel way on top of that mountain! I can almost like reach out and touch the distant mountain with the rays of my eyes! It's almost like I am reaching out and spiritually touching those things just by looking at them.

36. EYES ARE EFFECTIVE EVEN AT A GREAT DISTANCE. EARS ARE EFFECTIVE AT A SHORTER DISTANCE. Now that's important too: The prophet can see further even than you can hear the Word of the Lord! You can only hear a very short distance when someone's calling you. But when they get far enough away like that town up there, you can hear very little.

37. I FIGURED HOW FAR AWAY THAT TOWN IS BY SOUND the other night. It's exactly 12 seconds away by sound! Because when they shot up those rockets I could first see the puff of smoke and I would immediately start counting—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11‚ 12—and boom!—I'd hear the explosion! That meant the town is about two miles away‚ because sound only travels 1100 feet per second, and there are 5280 feet to the mile.

38. THAT'S HOW YOU CAN TELL HOW FAR AWAY LIGHTNING IS TOO. You figure in seconds from the time you see the flash‚ which you see almost instantly, to the time that you hear the sound of the thunder bolt or crack, and multiply the seconds by 1100 feet to get the distance.

39. LIGHT TRAVELS MUCH FASTER THAN SOUND: 186,000 MILES PER SECOND! How far away is the moon? The sun's 93 million miles away, the moon is only about a quarter-of-a-million miles away, yet their light reaches us in only a few seconds!

40. BUT SOUND ONLY TRAVELS 1100 FEET PER SECOND! Think how slow sound is by comparison. Do you see the difference? In one second sound will only go 1100 feet whereas light will go 186,000 miles!

41. LIGHT ALSO DOES NOT SEEM TO NEED ANY KIND OF MATERIAL THING FOR TRANSMISSION. It only needs the light source and a sensitive receiver, although it travels in waves. It doesn't seem to need any kind of material or anything that we would consider a solid substance of my kind in order to be transmitted from one point to another.

42. BUT SOUND REQUIRES SOME SPECIFIC SUBSTANCE OR MATERIAL TO TRANSMIT IT. Right now as you hear my voice it's actually being carried to you by sound waves, but the sound waves are carried by the air‚ because of the vibrations of the air. That's why you can barely hear underwater, for sound travels even slower through water.

43. THROUGH AIR SOUND TRAVELS 1100 FEET A SECOND. So from the time you see the lightning flash to to the time you hear the sound of the thunder you can tell how far away it is. So twelve times 1100 feet is what?—13,200. Okay now, if you want to figure it out in miles you divide that by 5280 feet to the mile. So it's a little over two miles to that village as a crow flies!

44. SOUND IS SO SLOW! but you can hear some sounds quite a ways away. When they were exploding those rockets I could hear them. If it's loud enough it will carry a long ways, but it's still much weaker and slower than sight. So hearing is very important, but it's not as important as sight.

45. SIGHT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, AND YOU ARE THE EYES OF GOD! The prophets of God are the eyes of the Lord. Anybody who tries to touch you is touching the eye of the Lord, the most sensitive part of His whole body! Do you think He's going to do anything about it if they stick their finger in His eye? Huh?

46. WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN SOMEBODY STICKS THEIR FINGER IN YOUR EYE? Well, if it's accidental you forgive them. But if they keep trying to stick their finger in your eye on purpose, you're probably going to really hit back! You're certainly not going to let them!

47. SO IF THEY TRY TO TOUCH HIS PROPHETS, BROTHER, THEY'RE TOUCHING THE MOST SENSITIVE PART OF GOD'S BODY, and He's not going to allow it! He'll hit back! Thank You Lord! I guess that lesson was for my encouragement this morning because I've been a little bit worried about our enemies. They might try to touch our skin or nose or tongue or ears or some other member of His Body.

48. BUT IF THEY TRY TO STICK THEIR FINGER IN GOD'S EYE, do you think He's going to let them do that? Do you think God's going to let our enemies stick their fingers in His eye? No! If they even just try to touch God's prophets, God's not going to stand for it! So they better look out!

49. SAUL WAS ON HIS WAY TO TOUCH THE PROPHETS OF GOD AND GOD SLAPPED HIM DOWN!—Slapped him right off his horse right onto the ground! That was a pretty hard spanking, huh?—And burned both of his eyes too! That's significant‚ isn't it? That's just like giving him an illustration of how blind he was spiritually.

50. HE WAS ABOUT TO TOUCH GOD'S EYES, SO GOD BLINDED HIM and burned both of his, think of that! Trying to show him how blind he was spiritually, God burned his eyes.

51. HE WAS TRYING TO TOUCH GOD'S EYES, SO GOD SMOTE HIS EYES! How about that? So they had to lead him by the hand on to Damascus, think of that! And he had to go to one of these eyes of God, one of God's prophets, a leader of those Christians he had come to kill to ask for him to come and pray for him!

52. HE HAD TO WAIT FOR ONE OF GOD'S EYES, GOD'S PROPHETS, TO COME AND PRAY FOR HIM TO HEAL HIS EYES! Thank God He not only healed him physically, but he also healed his spiritual eyes‚ and he was filled with the Holy spirit, praise God! So God gave him new eyes both ways—new physical eyes and new spiritual eyes—so that he became one of the greatest of all God's prophets, God's eyes, praise the Lord!

53. HE HIMSELF TURNED INTO A PRIVATE EYE FOR GOD!—God's eyes! That's interesting, isn't it? They call detectives private eyes or spies. So in a way God's eyes are spies for Him. God's prophets are His spies.—They look both ways: They look to God for information and direction, and then they look at the world to detect and tell them what's wrong, right?

54. THE PROPHETS OF GOD LOOK AT THE WORLD TO SPY OUT WHAT'S WRONG WITH THEM. So we're God's eyes in more ways than one, amen? Well, Praise the Lord! So, as the lawyer told the Sanhedrin, "Beware lest thou be found to fight against God!" (Acts 5:39.) When the Sanhedrin, the religious parliament of the Jews, was discussing how to fight the Christians, Gamaliel got up and said,

55. "IF THIS THING BE OF GOD, NO MAN CAN STAND AGAINST IT! But if it be of man‚ it will come to nought. Beware lest ye be found to fight against God!" So these local officials, religionists or citizens, whoever they are that are complaining about us, had better watch their step!

56. THEY'RE NOT JUST DEALING WITH US—THEY'RE FIGHTING AGAINST GOD HIMSELF! Do you think God will defend Himself? God doesn't even need you to defend Him, He'll defend Himself! He says, "Stand back and watch Me fight! I don't need you to protect me, I don't need you to defend Me or fight for Me. All I need you for is to tell them the truth!"

57. YOU CAN'T DEFEND YOURSELF—GOD HAS TO DEFEND YOU, amen? So we've told them the truth, and obviously some of them have rejected it and are fighting against it. Are we supposed to fight back with the same weapons, their same ways? No! Our only weapon is the truth, the Word of God, right?

58. OUR ONLY WEAPONS ARE GOD'S TRUTH AND GOD'S LOVE! If they fight against these, God will fight back‚ amen? Hallelujah! Thank You Lord! Praise the Lord! Thank you Jesus! Praise God! Thank You Lord! Amen! Thank You Lord! Thank You Jesus! Isn't that an encouragement? "Beware lest you be found to fight against God!" Hallelujah! Thank You Lord! Thank You Lord! Thank You Lord! Thank You Jesus! Praise the Lord! God will bless and keep all you eyes of God! Hallelujah!