Paul, addressing the Corinthian church said, “Stop boasting in how spiritual you are and get that sin out of here”; amen?  Does it remind you of Joshua?  When they were going in to take the city, they found out that there was sin in the camp, and the people were praying, and He said, “This is no time to pray.  Rise up and purify yourselves.”  I want to remind us of the hour that we’re in and, beloved, this is the time for each and every one of us to continually search our own hearts and ask ourselves, “How pure are we, really?  How pure are our motives?  How pure are the actions, the behavior?”  You’ll notice that on numerous occasions when God was getting ready to do great things to overcome an enemy, to take them into the new land, He would tell them to first sanctify themselves and purify themselves; amen?  “Because I’m going to visit you.”  Ah, beloved, I believe that if we’ll sanctify ourselves, if we’ll purify ourselves, if we’ll stop loving this world, God will visit us.  And let’s make sure that we’re comparing ourselves with this Word and not others.  “Well, I’m doing as good as so-and-so.  We’re doing better than those folks.”  Just the fact that we would think that shows we’re not thinking right.  Amen?  The fact is we’re no better than anybody else; we’ve just partaken of more grace.  Hallelujah.  It’s all a gift of God.  It’s all the mercy of God.

So, the Corinthians were involved in all of these different areas of strife.  They were caught up, of course, as we know, in all of the vice of that city, the great temple—and those of you that have traveled with us and been over there into Corinth—and we know the temple that was used for the temple prostitutes and the worship that took forth in that particular time.  And it was interesting when we were there that a couple of the guides tried to say, “Well, that really, you know, wasn’t the case.  Things weren’t as bad as history records it.”  It wasn’t unique to Corinth; every pagan religion was involved in some form of worship that involved all of the vices that appeal to mankind.  Not only were the prostitutes there, not only were there orgies, we understand that these people would come together also, and there were those that were gluttonous, and they would have all of these particular—the feasts that would take place, and people would come and just gorge themselves with food and with drink.  Isn’t it interesting the conclusion—that if Jesus be not risen from the dead, eat, drink, and be merry?  Amen?  And that’s where most of the people live that don’t know and believe that Jesus is risen from the dead—the satisfying of this flesh and the lust.

The prophecy that Dave Wilkerson gave, people turned on him.  They mocked him.  They said he had gone too far.  People would say of him that he lived on the edge.  Prophets are a strange group at times.  They live in another realm.  They hear and see before others what God is speaking and therefore appear to be out of step.  And as he wrote that book The Vision, one of the things he prophesied was there would come a day when ministries would be destroyed because their pastors would sit before their televisions that have this little black box on it and that it would actually be piping pornography into people’s homes.  And everybody’s like, “That’s crazy.  That’s stupid.  There’s no possible…”  Well, you know, when you only have three networks, rabbit ears…  When something was really important and you had to see it, one of the kids usually got elected to go off in the corner and stand on one foot and hold the thing and lean, “Okay, that’s it.  Don’t move.  We got the picture.”  Most of you young people don’t even know what I’m talking about.  Well, I’ll tell you, that little black box is still bringing a bunch of people down.  It’s still keeping sin in our midst.  It’s no longer taboo; it’s accepted.  Listen, just because something is tolerated in our culture doesn’t mean it has to be absorbed into the church.