Richard Roberts

And I said, “Well, Lord, I’ve been a tither ever since I’ve been saved, and You’ve never given me blessings enough that I couldn’t contain them. In fact, Lord, I’ve tithed at times I wished I hadn’t. I’ve given in churches that I felt like they used a stomach pump on me in order to take the offering. I mean, I wished I hadn’t given.”

And you know how you and the Lord talk, because there’s nobody around and you can say what you want to and He doesn’t tell it on you. And said, “You listen to what I’m saying. You prove me now if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing where there’s not room enough to contain it.”

He said, “You tell the people that cars don’t come out of heaven. Houses don’t come out of heaven. Furniture don’t come out of heaven. Money does not come out of heaven because all the silver and gold on the earth, I already own. You tell the people nothing of a material nature comes out of heaven.”

He says, “Here’s what I mean. I’ll pour you out a blessing where there’s not room enough to contain it. It’s ICI.” I said, “What is ICI?” He said, “It’s ideas, concepts, and insights.” Ideas, say it, concepts, insights. Ideas, concepts, insights. One more time. Ideas, concepts, insights. Say, ICI. Say it three more times. (Response) And what does it mean? (Ideas, concepts, and insights.)

He said, “Everything comes from an idea. You came from one,” He told me. “Everything that exists comes from an idea, even the idea I had of creation. Everything comes from an idea. And I will pour you out ideas from heaven.” Now who would like to have a batch from heaven? I’m talking about ideas out of heaven where they’re pure and undiluted. Glory to God! Can’t you feel that? He said, “I’ll pour you out ideas, concepts, and insights more than you can contain.”

Now I began to say to myself, “Now He’s talking! Now I’m understanding what He’s talking about, because I’ve never received anything from heaven but my salvation and answers to prayers, never received a new car, a new house, an old house, clothes, never received anything of material nature dropped out of heaven on a parachute or anything else.

But I’ve had ideas. This university was an idea. My healing ministry was an idea. My wife was an idea. My children were ideas. Of course, that had to be followed through. (Laughter) And I did have an interest in the process. Well, you all are talking plain to me. I can tell it. I can feel it. You’re very plain with me. Especially Joyce. She’s plainer than anybody I ever heard. I’m learning. I’m learning every day to be more plain.

But you know what God is showing me what’s happening? We’re beginning—I didn’t put eggs in here just so you and I could party up here, Billye.

Now I want you to do something for me with just this piece right there.

BILLYE: Oh, boy!

LR: Oh, holy cow, we’re all cookie dough.

BILLYE: Wonderful.

LR: Isn’t that wonderful? You see, when you begin to stir it up, all the gifts are in place. But there’s a little piece over here, and then God gives you a little piece in a vision over here. And He gives you a little bit of anointing in this area. And then He tells you, Billy Joe, go build a school, and then out of the school do this in the church. And all of it looks ridiculous, until you begin to stir it up. And you stir it up and you stir it up.

And, you know, the one thing about stirring it up is, it takes an enormous amount of work. It takes effort. It takes work. It takes effort. It takes work. But, boy, you start stirring it—you want another one? I do. And when you start stirring it up, suddenly you don’t notice the salt by itself, and you don’t notice the flour by itself—except that on your face—and you don’t notice the baking soda by itself.

Suddenly it all starts coming together, because it all went into the right container. Sometimes we separate our gifts, and sometimes we separate our anointing. And God is saying, “Would you in the body of Christ stop it and get into one container, in one accord, and start stirring up the gifts together.” And when you do, we’re going to see the Lord of the harvest.

Thank you, my dear. Do you want to take the bowl? We’ll save it. We’ll have a party after-wards.

Now here’s what I want to do. I want to think about what Oral said about the Lord of the harv-est. Now I know you’re tired, I’m tired. It’s late. I’m hot. I really want a Starbucks, and I really want that chocolate chip cookie dough.

But just before we get there, I would like you to take your corporate and individual gifts and begin to stir them up in this room, because there’s people in here that need a harvest. There’s people in here that if they don’t get an answer by morning—when I went to Margaret Idahosa, I had one thing and one thing on my mind and that was stay in Nigeria and dying there.

CHARLES GREEN: Oh, my, my, my, my. If I were about seven feet tall, I would have more to comment on that.

How many of you have read, I think it might be the last book that he’s written, I don’t know, but it’s among the last, the book by Oral Roberts, the subject of Giving and Receipting? If you’ve read that book, raise your hand, raise your hand.

All right, I want to tell you a little bit about that book. About two and a half years ago, I guess it was, Barbara and I were out in California. And Oral had had a procedure at the hospital, and then he had come home, and we were there at the house.

And we talked for a while, and I said, “Well, we’d better be going, Oral. You’re going to be tired.”

And Evelyn said to us, she said, “Oral is writing again.”

And I said to him, “You really are?”

He said, “Yeah.”

I said, “What are you writing about?”

He said, “Would you like to hear the first chapter?”

And I said, “Absolutely I would.”

So Evelyn goes and gets the first chapter of Giving and Receipting, and she sits there and reads the chapter for Barbara and me.

Now I want to ask you something. How much better can it get than that, you know? The guy that wrote it is there, and here’s the great woman of God reading it to us.

But there’s a story in there that’s worth so much money that I want to get that book to you. I just asked Richard, “Do we have any of these books?”

He said, “They’re not here tonight, but they’re in the warehouse.”

I said, “Do you have plenty of them?”

He said, “Yes.”

And what I’m going to ask you to do, I’m going to ask you to give ORU a very special offering tonight. I’m going to tell you the amount in just a moment. And if it’s cash, put your name to the money, okay? If it’s a check, down below, put Giving and Receipting. They’re going to send you that book.

And I’m going to guarantee you that if you will read that book and get the one dramatic story that a banker president, a bank president in Tulsa, Oklahoma told Oral Roberts, if you will just read that one story and let it begin to work in you, that story and just the beginning of that book will be worth thousands and thousands of dollars to you.

Then if you jump to Hebrews 1:3, it says, “Christ is the very image of God’s substance.”

You know, when you think about the word substance, you think about something that is tangible and is touchable. But unfortunately, according to Hebrews, it’s something that’s tangible and touchable, but you can’t see it.

So when it’s something that you can’t see but it’s touchable, what in the wide world is it?

Well, here is a dictionary, as well as the scriptural, definitions of the word substance. Divine essence of God, giving tangible divine substance too. Faith is—now we took all the different words for substance of this translation, and this is what it actually translates: Faith is the tangi-ble, divine confidence and assurance and the essence of God himself for the thing that you have hoped for, even though you do not yet have evidence of seeing it. What does that mean? It means that there is a tangible, touchable essence that is not you.

The one thing that Oral kept trying to tell me about the word substance is that you’ve got to go from the natural and see where it originally came from, and that’s the spiritual, the supernatur-al.

Anything that you see on this earth, God first spoke it into existence. He said that He made every good and perfect gift, that it came from God. He said He put all the gold and silver into the earth, and He told us to subdue it, or take control of it.

He said that He looked at this earth, and when He wanted to create it, He simply spoke it into existence. You know, we have that little song that says, “Let there be light.” No, that’s not what it says. God spoke, “Light be,” and light was.

There is something within the essence and power of God that when He speaks it out of His su-pernatural, it comes to pass in the flesh. He even told us that that’s how we are to live and that’s how we are to exist, that we call things that be not as though it already was.

Do you spend more money on Disney movies than you put in the offering? And do you tolerate that in your church because if you preached on that they’d think you were ugly? 1951 Oral Roberts wrote a book called The Fourth Man, and in one chapter he wrote a couple of pages. Now out of the whole book it only took two pages to write this, so basically people didn’t get it. We missed it. He preached it. We liked it. He yelled it. He shouted it. He had a lot of exuberance. And so we loved it, and we shouted hallelujah, but we didn’t live it one day. Oh, what he preaches that Fourth Man, when he swings his coat and he whips that old microphone around and his hair starts to hanging in the middle of his face, oh, does he look good! And we get excited, and we get exuberant, and we think, “Preach it, baby!” and he does, and we don’t listen.

So I wrote it down. He said, “Who is this Fourth Man? Who is the Fourth Man in the middle of the fiery furnace that delivered the children of Israel, that delivered the Hebrew children, that delivered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that delivers you, that delivers me, that goes all the way back to when he literally sat at the hand of the Father.” And God said, “They’re not getting it. Get down there, buddy.”

Who is the Fourth Man that jumped in the middle of the fiery furnace? Is He anybody we know? Is He anybody we fellowship with? Do we talk more on our cell phone than we talk to the Fourth Man? Have you paid more to AT&T than you paid in your tithe? Who is the Fourth Man?

Listen to the words, just listen to the words, because if these words are not enough to get you saved and healed and delivered and set free, then quit the ministry. He said, “In Genesis He’s the seed of the woman. In Exodus He’s the Passover Lamb. In Leviticus He’s the high priest. In Numbers He’s a pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night. In Deuteronomy He’s the prophet like unto Moses. In Joshua He’s the captain of our salvation.” Whoo, that’s enough right there! But I’m only getting started.