This is an excerpt of a previously published sermon. Did Jesus come right down into the pit with us? Some say He only reached down with His hand. This doctrine is under attack today by some ministries. How important is it? Can we be saved without understanding it?

Jesus Came into the Pit with us

In 1888 there was need of a revival. Do we need that now? Right here we need it and it must be rekindled right now. Do you need to know when you have fallen again and again? You see yourself in a true condition of depraved lukewarmness and you try to do it and you can’t recover yourself from it. What do you need to see? Especially when Satan whispers; See, how many times you’ve tried? See how absolutely hopeless you are? You’ve tried countless times and you’ve fallen flat on your face again. Your case is hopeless. He whispers that. Because the voice of Satan whispers that and the Lord shows me my sins, we confuse the voice of Satan with the voice of God.

We think God is an enemy, Jacobs’s trouble. We need to see Jesus when we are down there. Where do you see Jesus? Up there or where I am in the pit? If you see Jesus up there, you will say I’m never going to make it. He will try to reach his hand to you and you won’t be able to take hold of it. You need to see your totally depraved condition. This was the message of 1888. God doesn’t just start talking, He says listen to me.

Isaiah 51:1 Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock [whence] ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit [whence] ye are digged. 2 Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah [that] bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him. 3 For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.

Here is this pit of an experience and what are we called upon to do? Look to the pit where thou wast hewed. You are in the pit again; look to where you came from in the first place. How did you get out of there? Look to the rock whence you are hewn. Who is our rock? Jesus. The pit and the rock, does that ring a bell? Where did our rock come to? Into the very pit didn’t He? Psalms 40, 69, and 22 were dwelt upon in 1888.

When I first read them and I wanted to raise them up before the ministry, it was as if they hadn’t heard those texts before and I was bamboozled. I said, you claim to be the people of 1888 and you don’t know these texts? I was shaking my head wondering what was going on. The 1888 revival must be revived among us today.

Psalm 40:1 I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. 2 He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, [and] established my goings.

Who is speaking? David? When I asked that question to a minister of the company I was with, he said David. What did Jesus do when He was speaking to the people on the road to Emmaus? What did He speak of himself? From the Psalms and the prophets. The anathema mentality is in these people that don’t want to hear and believe this is. He cried to Him that saved Him from death. Where is that written?

Hebrews 5:7 Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; 8 Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; 9 And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;

To Him that could save Him from death; what? He needed a Saviour? An anathema. I have received flak in proclaiming that Jesus came and placed himself where He cried to be saved. I was told, no, He is our saviour, He didn’t need salvation. That is the mentality of a fallen ministry. He brought me up also out of a horrible pit. Why is this important for you to see and understand?

Look to the Pit from Which You Are Dug, Look to the Rock

This is what it means:

Psalm 88:4 I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man [that hath] no strength:

Is that Laodicea? No strength, I’m sleeping I can’t get my head into action.

Psalm 88:5 Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more: and they are cut off from thy hand. 6 Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. 7 Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted [me] with all thy waves.

Who is speaking? Jesus. Why do you need to know that? Do you feel like you are in the pits? As you are in the pits, what do you need to know? That Jesus was counted among you. Jesus was in the pit with you. And not just was, but is. When you know in the pit your experience is in this time in the period of the judgment, when you discover the depravity of your condition, you must see the depravity of Jesus Christ with you because if you don’t, you will never get out of the pit. This is the appeal of Jesus to us. Look at the plaintive cry of our high priest.

Lamentations 1:12 [Is it] nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted [me] in the day of his fierce anger.

Plaintively crying, is it nothing to you? Look what I’ve done for you.

Lamentations 1:13 From above hath he sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them: he hath spread a net for my feet, he hath turned me back: he hath made me desolate [and] faint all the day. 14 The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, [and] come up upon my neck: he hath made my strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into [their] hands, [from whom] I am not able to rise up.

Today you understand the word wreathed very well don’t you. The sins are wreathed. What is a gene? A wreath correct? That spiral with all my genetic makeup, that is what the Father placed into the genetic makeup of the man Christ Jesus and stirred it up. They came up upon my neck. A person who’s heart is playing up has panic. It is a revelation of a heart condition when the throat is strangled, Jesus experienced that.

Lamentations 1:15 The Lord hath trodden under foot all my mighty [men] in the midst of me: he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men: the Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, [as] in a winepress.

Remember the story by John Bunyan ‘The Holy War’ of Mansoul? All the mighty men in him, he trod them.

Lamentations 1:16 For these [things] I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.

Who is speaking? My Lord and Saviour. He is describing your and my experience in the pit. Look to the pit from where you are digged. The rock, who fell down in the pit with me. He himself needed to be placed on the rock. It says in Psalm 40 that more than the hairs of my head are my sins which the Lord wreathed. It perplexes me when I quote scripture in simple language it can’t be understood but when I read it out in simple language the ministers still persecute me.

How few have any conception of the anguish which rent the heart of the Son of God during His thirty years of life upon earth. The path from the manger to Calvary was shadowed by sorrow and grief. He was the Man of Sorrows, and endured such heartache as no human language can portray. {TMK 66.2}

If you go through heartache you can’t tell anyone, He went through worse.

He could have said in truth, “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow” (Lamentations 1:12). His suffering was the deepest anguish of the soul; and what man could have sympathy with the soul anguish of the Son of the infinite God? {TMK 66.2}

He was alone. You think you are alone? In all reality Jesus was alone because you can never enter into the enormity of His anguish when He was in that situation but you can know He knows your anguish because He had yours.

Hating sin with a perfect hatred, He yet gathered to His soul the sins of the whole world, as He trod the path to Calvary, suffering the penalty of the transgressor. Guiltless, He bore the punishment of the guilty; innocent, yet offering Himself to bear the penalty of the transgression of the law of God. The punishment of the sins of every soul was borne by the Son of the infinite God. The guilt of every sin pressed its weight upon the divine soul of the world’s Redeemer. He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. In assuming the nature of man, He placed Himself where He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, that by His stripes we might be healed. {TMK 66.2}

When you are in a depraved sense in the time of judgement, in a time of extreme sinfulness in yourself, He did exactly that so you could be healed by His stripes.

In His humanity Christ was tried with as much greater temptation, with as much more persevering energy than man is tried by the evil one, as His nature was greater than man’s. This is a deep mysterious truth, that Christ is bound to humanity by the most sensitive sympathies. The evil works, the evil thoughts, the evil words of every son and daughter of Adam press upon His divine soul. The sins of men called for retribution upon Himself, for He had become man’s substitute, and took upon Him the sins of the world. He bore the sins of every sinner, for all transgressions were imputed unto Him. . . . “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” (Hebrews 2:3). {TMK 66.3}

How can we survive through the experiences of the judgement that reveals to us the depravity of our condition if we reject the reality of Jesus as we have contemplated?

This is the revival of the 1888 message. This was the core of what they represented. People say I keep highlighting this subject all the time, it is a mystery, you shouldn’t do that. You and I together with Jesus is the essential knowledge to survive through the time of Jacobs’s trouble. What does He invite me to do after we see what He has done after He suffered in his flesh? What has He invited us to do? He who is this wonderful saviour and God, what we are studying was all in the mind of God before any creation. The I Am knew it then.  Here is His invitation to the people who are sleeping.

The Sleepy Woman

This is from the woman in Song of Solomon. She is in her sleepy condition. I sleep and I can hear Him knocking and His finger poking through the hole and He is trying to open the latch. Laodicea, the woman that can’t get up.

Revelation 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. 21 To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.

What’s He pointing to? He is pointing to His experience in the pit. He says I supped with you, will you sup with me? He ate and drank of the bitter cup of the discovery of sinfulness in the internal soul and as He experienced that, He says; will you let me in when you go through your bitter experience? I want to sup with you. How feeble we have picked this up. We can sit at the table together, no, the people don’t want Him. We will not have this man rule over us. We don’t that message that He became sin for us. We want to feel our Pharisaic pride left alone. But to experience that my sin was what He suffered under is an anathema but that is what will be the destruction when the rock strikes. We will see that vividly.

When we have fallen and our sins are revealed to us by the fall, behold Jesus. He is right there with you, listen to Him speaking. He is the great I am to whom the past, present and future is all present tense. What He experienced in Gethsemane, that experience is still present with Him now. Remember the tears, they were flowing like a bucket. He was suffering and tearing and weeping.

Through all our trials we have a never-failing Helper. He does not leave us alone to struggle with temptation, to battle with evil, and be finally crushed with burdens and sorrow. Though now He is hidden from mortal sight, the ear of faith can hear His voice saying, Fear not; I am with you. {DA 483.1}

Do you have the ear of faith that when you feel you are so depraved and hopeless that it’s burning through your bones? Do you have the faith that what He is saying is true?

“I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forevermore.” Revelation 1:18. I have endured your sorrows, experienced your struggles, encountered your temptations. I know your tears; I also have wept. The griefs that lie too deep to be breathed into any human ear, I know. Think not that you are desolate and forsaken. {DA 483.1}

When you are pounded with the awareness of your sin, you feel desolate and forsaken. Jacob you are not desolate and forsaken, battle on.

Though your pain touch no responsive chord in any heart on earth, look unto Me, and live. ” {DA 483.1}

What is He saying? You think you are the only one going through it, look unto me. This is necessary to survive. When you fall and you fall again and you are in a depraved condition under the experiences of the judgement look to Micah 7. This is the continual requirement in the day of the judgement as the sins that I don’t know will be brought to my attention systematically to cleanse me form every defilement.

Micah 7:8 Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD [shall be] a light unto me. 9 I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him, until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me: he will bring me forth to the light, [and] I shall behold his righteousness.

These are the living truths of 1888 which were presented to revive a church that had become the sleepy woman behind the door. He has partaken with you and now partake of with Him to raise you as He was raised by faith. How many times do we fall? If you are a wise person in this time of judgement and you are going through an experience in this time, Psalm 37 is relevant to the people just now.

Psalm 37:23 The steps of a [good] man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. 24 Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth [him with] his hand.

How many times will you fall? This good man is called a just man. Why is He just? Because God has justified Him.

Proverbs 24:16 For a just [man] falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief.

This is the everlasting covenant, the sure mercies of David. Do you feel a revival of hope inside of you? That is what God brought. He brought this to the church that was Laodicean in experience. The book Steps to Christ was written after 1888 because of the message and its poor reception.

Continued….