In the sermon titled 'A Testimony Pleasing Unto God,' Bro. Peter Halliman emphasizes the importance of faith as outlined in Hebrews chapter 11, known as the 'faith chapter' of the Bible. The speaker underscores the concept of faith as the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, highlighting that true faith involves complete trust and reliance on God without question. Bro. Halliman uses the biblical figure Enoch as a prime example of someone whose life was a testimony pleasing to God, illustrating that Enoch pleased God through his unwavering faith, consistent walk with God, and his speech. The sermon stresses the danger of living for the approval of others and the importance of focusing on pleasing God alone. It challenges believers to reflect on their own testimonies and whether they are pleasing to God, urging them to live by faith, not by sight, and to maintain a strong relationship with God despite worldly distractions. Bro. Halliman also discusses the concept of approval, the influence of faith in challenging times, and the necessity of walking in step with God. The sermon concludes by posing reflective questions about the nature of personal testimonies and their alignment with God's will.

Good evening. Good evening. You have one of these, put it on airplane mode or switch it off. I will not compete preaching God's word in America. I will not compete with the electronics that people are involved in.

Yes. God's house has no place with the communications of the world. I made the announcement at a meeting that I was conducting in California And prior to the meeting I made the announcement unless you are active military and active police or medical on duty switch it off or put it on airplane mode, the airplanes will not allow it while in the Lord's churches. One person in the assembly, a matured man, did not take me seriously. I said, if I hear a phone ring, I will close my Bible and tell the pastor, I'll see you tomorrow.

That's how serious I am about God's word. With that said, the recordings here, if you want to get it later, you can do that. I usually have a habit of recording my own for various reasons. If you have your Bibles, open your Bibles to the book of Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11, certain chapters in the Bible or portions are known by topical titles that help us remember.

Titles that help us remember. Chapter 11 would be the faith chapter of the Bible. Not that it doesn't teach it elsewhere, it does. But there is a hall of fame, as though it were, of great men in the Bible with their great faith. Let's pick it up in verse 1.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Clear your desk, take a piece of paper and write in your own words the meaning of faith. What would it mean? How would you explain faith to a heathen? How would you do that?

What vernacular would you choose to write down verbatim, faith is, and you write it out. Words mean things. God did not just chop the pages of his Word in order to write some meaning of things and we quickly go over it and rush on. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. There has to be an evidence.

What is evidence? Faith is standing upon, leaning against or leaning on. Does the Lord not say that we are to lean under his understanding and not to our own. Faith is standing on the foundation of who God Faith is believing without question. If you have a question in the faith, it's no longer faith.

Now you need to get that. The very idea of having faith is to believe 100% in something or someone. That you totally rely upon that one, in the case of a person, you lead against them not in easy times, though that is also there, but in times of great unstableness. Yes. I took some helicopter training.

When you're at 10, 000 feet elevation and the instructor pilot switches off the turbines, says Mr. Hellerman, land the helicopter. No engines. What do you do? What do you do when God switches off the engines?

You see where it's going? Faith is that substance that we lean upon, we stand upon, we are grounded upon, faith becomes that substance that encases all of who we are and what we are. For by it, for by faith, the elders obtained a good report. Do you have a good report? What kind of report is told about you?

I'm going to get into some of that in a moment. Everyone wants a good report told about them. None of us like lies made up. I've never met anyone yet that likes lies made up about them. Verse 3, Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

What did God use to make the world? What did God use to make everything that was in the world? There are three kingdoms in the world. There are plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and the people kingdom. What did God use to make all this?

What did God use to make the solar system and hang every star in the sky in the heavens? And they've recently found out that beyond the hemisphere as we know it to be, there is another galaxy with billions and billions and billions of not only stars but galaxies. And the Bible says that God has hung every star and called them by name. What an amazing statement. Faith, we believe that God took nothing out of nothing, God took nothing out of nothing and created everything.

Verse 4, By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous. God testified of his gifts, and by it he being dead yet speaketh. Verse 5, by faith Enoch was translated that he should not see dead and was not found because God had translated him before his translation. He had this testimony that he pleased God. Turn over with me to the Old Testament, to the book of Genesis.

Genesis Genesis 5. In the long genealogy and history of people who lived back then, there is a recording in God's Word that there were six men who lived over the age 900 before flying. One man in particular I'm interested in in the message for this evening. Verse 24, and Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him. You might hold your place in Genesis for we will go back and forth, but fast forwarding again to the book of Hebrews chapter 11, again verse 5, again, by faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death and was not found because God had translated him for before his translation he had this testimony that he pleased God.

Testimony that he pleased God. What does your testimony say? If God were to put your book and my book out here to read, what would people read? Would they read? Would people read that, well, Peter had a testimony that was pleasing to God.

What about your testimony? How would it read? People love to read the books of other people. And people love to tell the stories about other people, good or bad. And people get caught up in a lot of vernacular about someone else's life, but they get very quiet when it comes to their life.

Yeah. And like I tell people, You can talk about me, we can talk about my life, that's great, let's talk about it. You're going to find a lot of baggage. But the story's not over until we talk about your life. How does that work out for you?

Oh, well, that's all right, Brother Peter. What kind of testimony do God's people have today? And so the title of the message is a testimony pleasing unto God. That's the message. Who said this about Enoch?

God said, didn't he? God is the one who pronounced that Enoch had a testimony. It was not his father. It was not his mother. It was not his kinsmen.

It was not his people. It was not his family. Family covers for one another. You know that, don't you? Church members will cover for their pastor, pastor will cover for their church members, and families will cover for one another.

But if you really want to know what someone's testimony is, ask the heathen. They just tell it like it is. No hidden agendas. I've made it a practice over the years on the mission field when there is a pastor who is going to be ordained, I go around in the villages and the local people unbespoken and unbeknown to him and I ask the people, the common people, the heathen, the unsaved people. What kind of testimony does the man have?

Oh, he's got three wives. Would that be three living wives? Yes, that would be three living wives. Are they with him now? Yes, they're with him now.

Mr. Preacher, I can't ordain you because you're not ordainable material. Amen. You see where that goes? Lost people just tell it.

They have no hidden agendas. So if we go around the community and we start asking people in the community about the testimony of so-and-so, such-and-such, What do you know about such a preacher? Can you tell me? There's been a long list of allegations and stories and a long list of rumors and lies attached. You know the problem with a rumor?

They take a little truth and wrap it full of lies. And so the truth is undisturbed from the lies. That's the damage of a rumor. And most people never outlive the rumor. Gossip.

When you've been attacked long enough, hard enough, and when most of your support has dropped, And when most people will avoid you like you have leprosy, you get to the point where you depend on God, not man, which is where we need to be anyway. Amen. Amen. Amen. And when it comes time to go around and really get the testimony, I'd like to hear the testimony of some of these saint people who've been attacking me for 38 years.

Do you have a good testimony before God? God said this about Enoch. This same God is the same God who said about his own son, Matthew 3.17, and lo, a voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. The same God who was well pleased with Christ is the same God who said he was well pleased with Enoch. What a statement!

What a statement! Pleasing God in approximately six verses, the Bible outlines the life of Enoch. Wonderful and thrilling in an outstanding character. He was a man who pleased God. People are worried and concerned.

They're trying to live two and they're trying to live four and they're trying to conduct their lives for others. Pressure. People behave a certain way because they want others to think about them. What if you lived in a world where no one could think anything but good about you? That's all they could think.

Would you live any different? Or what if you lived in a world that everyone thought badly about you and there was nowhere to escape from that? How would you behave? How would you live? How would you conduct yourself?

Who would you talk to? How would you react? And so you see there is an element about us human people, us people, us humans. There is an element how people live to satisfy other people. If you can find a way to extract yourself from that thinking, I want to hear it.

People are always worried about getting the approval of someone else. From the time we are children growing up in the home, we combat it with our siblings. We get involved in it with our parents. We go to school and the idea, our schoolmates, do we have their approval? We do not pay with our schoolmates.

How are we doing with our teachers? And so this idea of approval is woven into the very fabric of humanity from the time you're born into the time you die. And most people never learn how to get over that. It is experienced in churches. It's experienced in conferences.

It's experienced in the Bible studies, the fellowship meetings, every Christian circle, this is experienced over and over and over. Someone goes to a meeting because someone else is there. Someone doesn't go to a meeting because someone is there. Someone goes to hear so-and-so preach because they love to hear them preach. They don't stay because they don't like this preacher.

And they go to this church because they've got these functions and they've got all these social programs and so on and on the story goes. I think you get the point. Are you living in your family and are you worried about the approval of your family? If not, why not? And if so, why so?

Does it matter what your husband thinks of you or what your wife thinks of you getting their approval? Well you say, well of course it does, Brother Habermann. Well let me take a step further. Why not be worried about what God wants? Amen.

Why not be worried about what God approves? Amen. And if you start from the top And if God's approval of you is here, everything under that doesn't matter. That's right. It just doesn't matter.

Everyone else is going to fall in line. Amen. And so people, families and relatives and workmates and schoolmates and preachers and so on and so on, they're always trying to fit into a clan. What group do you fit into? Or what group of fellowship do you fit into?

Where someone becomes a pope of that group. If you don't believe this or believe that, if you don't preach this doctrine or that doctrine, meaning if you don't preach it exactly like I preach it, If you don't cross your T's at the top where I do and dot your I's, if you don't do this and don't do that, and if you don't dress up in a suit and a tie, listen, on the mission field, I preach. You're going to see it tomorrow if you come. I've got two class three ballistic vests on Jimmy preaching. And people say, well Brother Hellman, what do you think you are, paramilitary?

I'll tell you what, you buy your ticket and come with me. Buy it. Buy your one-way ticket and come with me. And let's go preach where I preach. And I'll put my two-class three-vest on and you stand up with nothing.

And come back to America. It's like, well, if you're not in our group, oh really? Well, I wonder whose approval do I need? I want my testimony, regardless of people, I want my testimony to be well pleasing under God. Enoch was more concerned about pleasing God than he was family.

He was more concerned about pleasing God than his relatives, and He was more concerned about pleasing God than his relatives and he was more concerned about pleasing God than he was other Christians. Enoch was not a man pleaser. He was a God pleaser. This is very, very important in this message. Are you a God-pleaser?

How did God please, how did Enoch please God? He pleased God in three ways. Firstly, he pleased God with his faith. He had bulletproof faith. Enoch pleased God secondly with his walk.

Thirdly, Enoch pleased God in what he said. We'll look at the first point. The question before all of us, there are good questions in life and there are bad questions in life. But every question must be answered. And so the question before us, are we a people who pleases God?

Are we? Jesus is our example in all things and in everything. And Jesus said in the book of John chapter 8, verse 28, 29, And he that sent me is with me. The Father hath not left me alone, for I always, not sometimes, I always do those things that please Him. Can we say that?

Can I say that? Can you say that? Are we a people that please God? We read in the early chapters of the Bible, We read of two Enochs. Don't confuse the Enoch in Genesis chapter 4, who was Cain's son, the third generation from Adam.

Don't confuse that Enoch with the Enoch I'm preaching about. God knows his people. God knows his sheep. God knows all about our lives. People will say, well, I know my own heart, I wouldn't do that.

You don't know what you would do. Really? The Bible tells me the heart is desperately wicked and who can know it? I don't even know my own heart. You don't know your own heart.

People say, I would never say that. I would never go there. I would never do that. You don't know what you were doing until you were in that situation. And even at the time of the situation, you still don't know what you would do.

You just do it. It's God who knows us. He knows what we are. He knows how frail we are. He knows our strengths.

He knows our weakness. He knows our faults. He's the one who made us and fashioned us. He put us here on earth and he ordained these things to be. Do we have a testimony which pleases God?

Enoch's testimony pleased God. Enoch walked by faith. We don't call walking taken a step or two, it's sitting down. That's not walking. You can go to these places of rehab where people are going through rehabilitation for the muscles and the ligaments and the bones that have been operated on in theater and so you've got the therapist, physiotherapist working with the people and you see them and they'll take a step here or there, a couple steps, three and they'll sit down.

That's not walking folks. Walking is a continual movement in a forward direction. That's walking. And so Enoch walked with God. He lived by faith.

He faced the problems and the issues of his lifetime. He faced them through faith. Enoch demonstrated his faith. He lived it out. I have a question.

On the way to church, what roadblock did you drive into? Who was shooting at you with high-powered weapons on the way to church? Did your vehicle sustain some bullet holes? After church is over, you know you've got to travel back home, wherever that home is, and you've got to travel through those roadblocks again. Would you come to church?

Well, Brother Peter, you wouldn't expect us. Oh yes, I would expect you. I do. We're not supposed to tempt God. Is it tempting God or living your faith?

Which is it? I'm going to show you in the message how that Enoch, he lived by faith. And he lived out his life by faith. And I will show you the conditions that Enoch lived under. And by the time we get through the message, maybe, perhaps, God will use the message to encourage you in and under the conditions of your little life, whatever that is.

So Enoch, he pleased God by his faith. Enoch did not try to please others, he did not try to live for others, he did not try to conduct his life in order to be accepted by the family or his friends or the people of the world, rather he lived his life to please God. The true believer walks by faith and not by sight. This is a fundamental Christian basic truth. Look at the book of 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 7.

Paul is teaching, writing to the Corinthian Church. The Corinthian Church had a lot of problems. They were the most gifted church of the New Testament, but they also were the church with the most problems. The church at Corinth was not primarily Jewish, no, it was primarily Gentile. Amongst those Gentiles there were black people, Africans.

There were Jews, there were proselyted Jews, there were Greeks. There were Samaritans, the dirty people. There were people from across the Mediterranean that were in the church at Corinth. And they had a mixture of customs. Now you don't know Greek customs, but we have some Greeks here.

And what may be wrong to You will be right to us. And what may be right to us may be wrong to you. And then we've got some other ethnic group here. Spanish, Mexican, Yes, no. Different customs.

You have your own customs. We have our own customs. By the time you mix a lot of people, ethnic people together, you're going to start running into a lot of problems. And The church of Corinth was just that. And Paul was constantly correcting the church and teaching the church at Corinth.

And he says to the church at Corinth, for we walk by faith, verse 7, chapter 5, not by sight. We don't walk according to what we see. When I see COVID signs, don't walk by the signs. Walk by faith. How many churches across the country, regardless of denomination, I'm talking about Christians across the board.

How many churches folded up and locked the doors. Yet on a good day, they all post about God's sovereignty and believe in a holy God. They all believe that God is able to save them from an eternity of hell punishment of their sins. They believe that for salvation, yet they won't stand for a minute believing, standing, walking by faith, not by sight. You see where it's at?

There's a problem. There's a lot of lip service. People pay lip service to God. That word not by sight or that phrase in the Greek it means not, don't be governed by appearance. Do you understand what a governor is?

It's a mechanical path on a vehicle engine that limits the speed so that the vehicle will operate in safety. The RPMs, the revolutions in that engine do not go too fast above and beyond so that the engine mechanically will work within the perimeter of what it's been engineered, the governor. What does the Greek say here? It says that we are to be not to be a negative, an absolute negative. Don't let your eyes govern your Christian walk.

Yes. That's what it is. Amen. And is that the majority of what Christians are doing? That's exactly what they're doing.

They don't pay attention to the Bible. They don't believe the Bible. Right, true. And we come back to this 11, 1, Hebrews, faith is the substance. It's walking by faith, not by reason, not by sight.

It's walking, being governed by the Lord. Your faith becomes the governor. And your faith will tell you to go, it will tell you where the red light is, it will tell you where the green lights are. If you have faith in God, biblical faith, Bible faith, godly faith, that faith will govern you. That's what Paul is telling the Corinthian church.

Let your faith be the governor, not your eyes. So then what is faith? It becomes the ground on which we stand. It is the foundation that holds things together. Faith is when we lean on the Lord and we lean upon His promises.

It is when we rest upon Him. It is the rope of the wire that binds. It holds fast the ship to the anchor. Don't we have a song like that? Having an anchor in the Lord?

Do we? Is your anchor anchored in the Lord or is it anchored to these others? Maybe That should have been the message. Where's your anchor? This is basic to Christian life.

It is what holds us together in the seas of life, when the storms of life come upon God's people, When things are turbulent and a lot of troubles are flooding your soul in your life, it is that faith that will bind you to the Lord. It will hold you to the rock. That's what faith is. Faith therefore is seen with the spiritual eyes, the unseen eyes, that which has been promised, it has not yet come to pass, but it will come to pass, believing that it will. We believe the Lord will come.

He has not come again, but we believe we have faith. We're standing on the promise. We're standing on the Word of God. We do believe the Lord is coming. Faith.

We believe the Lord has saved us from eternity of sins to be punished in His hell. You know it's God's hell, it's not the devil's hell. You may have heard messages your life and You may have heard preachers say, well, if you don't repent, you're going to go to a devil's hell. He never created it. God did.

Amen. It's his hell. Yes. Faith is believing that God will save you from that if you put your trust standing upon, leaning upon, believing in the foundation, the ground, the post, the pillar, Jesus Christ upon the cross, dying for your sin, taking your place, but hold on, that's not all that happened. When Christ went to Calvary, He took all of my sins.

Hold on to this. I've got a question. I've questioned preachers. What sin am I did Jesus not pay for? If, if, well put your name there.

If you're a Christian, if you're a believer, if you're in the family of God, if the Holy Spirit has birthed your spirit, If you've been made a new creature, if that is you, if that description fits you, you believed in who or what to get that position. Well, I believed in Jesus. What did Jesus do for you? Well, he went to Calvary. What did he do at Calvary?

Well, he died for me. Now, I don't know about anyone else in the world. He died for me. What happened when he died for me? He took all my sins upon him at a place called Calvary.

That's what he did. When he took all my sins, did he leave one sin unatoned for? If he did, then I'm still in my sins and I'm most miserable of all men. And it means I'm still on my road to hell. And it means I'm lost.

How many sins did it take for Adam and Eve to get kicked out of the Garden of Eden? One. How many sins, unrepented, will take you to God's hell? One. So if Christ did not cover all my sins, pay for all my sins, wash all my sins, die for all of my sins, then I'm still in my sins.

And if he did do that, which he did, then that means all of my sins have been paid for. Past sins of mine that you never knew anything about, but God knew. Present sins that you know nothing, but God knew. And my future sins that I've not yet committed will commit, knowingly or unknowingly, he still died for those which ones did he not atone for. Now maybe as a Christian, maybe you've got a blackboard, not me.

I've got a whiteboard. Get it straight. There's a whole lot going around even in Baptist churches that need to be set straight those Christians and there are preachers talking about the sins of people or so and so or so and so. You did this. You said that.

This was enacted. Hold on. How is it that you can remember what God forgot? I thought the Bible told me in Jeremiah that God has remembered my sins no more. And if God does not remember them no more, how do you remember them?

You see the problem? We have a problem. What then is faith? Faith is to be convinced or persuaded, believing something as it has been told. Faith therefore is seen with the spiritual eyes and believing, having confidence in God, that God will do all that He says He's going to do and will do.

That's believing. The true believer walks what? By faith. Not by sight. We don't walk by reason and we don't walk by logic.

People say, well, I just can't understand why so and so did this or said that. It's not by logic. Well, it doesn't make sense what they said. It doesn't have to make sense. Well, I just don't get it.

You don't have to get it. God got it. God understands. He's the one who sets the regulation. He's the one who clears the guilty through his son.

The true believer is governed by faith. Faith is being sure of what you hope for. Are you sure of what you hope for? Really, really sure? Let me tell you how sure this needs to be.

You go into church to worship the Lord and you pray before you go asking the Lord to give you safety and you run into a roadblock with angry men who are armed with AK-47s, Uzi's, and M16s and Reshetas. They block your vehicle forward and rearward and you can't get out. And they put guns to your head, the most reliable carbine in the world, an AK-47. And put that to your head and pull the trigger, and you hear the firing pin. Mr.

Halleman, are you sure of what you preach? Oh, I'm sure. I'm very sure. I'm sure of the hope that I have in here. You can't threaten me with heaven.

That's where I'm going. Now you might threaten me with something else, but not heaven. Are we sure? Are we confident in our hope? Is God's people today, are they confident?

Faith in God, it is a gift. We do not get faith from religion, we don't get faith from song books, we don't get faith from church Sunday school or the preacher. I don't give it to you. Your parents don't give it to you. The Christian home doesn't give it to you.

The Christian meetings don't give it to you. God's people all over the world don't give faith to you. God is the one who gives faith. We don't ask for faith from the deacons or the elders or godly people. No, no, no.

Rather we ask God for faith. He is the owner of faith. True faith is in God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. True faith is, believe His Word as it is given to us. We are to set our affection on things above, not on things in the world.

We are to set our affection. Here's a question. Where and what is your affection set on? Do you not remember Jesus said that where your treasure is, there your heart is also? Where is your affection?

What did Enoch, how did his testimony please God? Enoch walked in the light, as God is in the light. We do not walk in darkness. It is not possible to walk in darkness and walk in light at the same time. It's not possible to do that.

Either you're in darkness or you're in light. Faith means that we are to walk in a conscious walking forward movement. We are to redeem the time because what? The days are evil. That's what we are to do.

The Lord knows, the Lord is watching our walk. He listens to our conversations. He knows our movement. He knows where we go in public and in private. He is ever mindful of our walk.

Whether our walk is there in the home, whether it's in the park, whether it's down the road, whether it's at the shopping mall, in restaurants, coming to church, leaving church, going to other places, the Lord watches our walk. True faith means that we ought to walk in the Spirit. And I don't mean in the charismatic way either. Rather this is a nor-Christian walk to walk in the Spirit. When is the last that you heard about holiness living?

When is the last message you heard about Holy Living and not grieving the Holy Spirit. When's the last time you heard a message? It means we are to keep in step with God. That's what Adam did in the Garden of Eden. He was in step with God.

You know what it means to walk in step? Watch a military parade. You'll see every soldier in unison. There'll not be one leg out of step. Walking in step with God means just that.

It doesn't mean you run ahead of God. It doesn't mean you fall back behind God. Walking with God means walking in step. Keeping in time with God. That's what it means.

Outside of true faith one cannot please God. Those who are unredeemed and still dead in their sins, they cannot please God. It's only God's people, the redeemed, those who have been birthed by the Holy Spirit, those who are spiritually alive, those who have been made into a new creature, Only they can please God. Unregenerate man cannot please God. It's a very serious matter when someone cannot please God.

And how do we please God? We please God through faith, don't we? We please God when we are born again, we become a new creature, when we are in Christ, then we can please God. Enoch had this kind of faith. He pleased God.

He walked with God. He had fellowship with God. He was in step with God. He was in tune with God. You know what it means to be in tune.

Maybe the younger people don't know. Some of us older people know. You're going down the road, the old radio station. You're trying to tune into a station. The signal's not coming in strong, so you're trying to tune this way, tune that way, trying to tune out the static, got your favorite music song on, or maybe you want to hear the news and You're turning this back and forth.

You're trying to tune out the static. What's the problem with most people's hearing? I learned something about people who need hearing aids. I went to go visit one of the physicians about it. I wanted to learn more.

And I found out that it's not so much that they're so hard of hearing. That's really not it. And you can check this out, see if I'm wrong. I'm not wrong. People who are hard of hearing, they lose out the ability with the inner ear to tune out the background noise.

And so the ear is flooded with all different distractions of noise and some people say, well, you're just hard of hearing. Well, you're way too get my age. So and so may say. You know why we're hard of hearing with the Lord's Word? We're too distracted with all the background noise in the world.

Enoch was not distracted. He tuned in to God's Word. He tuned in to God. And by tuning in to God, he tuned out the Word. And that's why he walked with God.

He was in step. He was in timing. He was in tune with God. Enoch had this kind of faith. If we have not this kind of faith that Enoch had, then we are not the real men and women of real faith with God.

Then we have to ask ourselves the question, what kind of faith do I have? Enid, please God, in his walk, didn't he? He walked with God. Do we walk with God? Look at what the book of Micah chapter 6 verse 8 says, He has shown the man what is good and what does the Lord require of the.

What does the Lord require of us? But to do justly and to love mercy and to what? Walk humbly with thy God. That's what God requires. God requires us to walk with him.

To walk humbly with God, this is how we are to walk. Have you ever, I'm sure you have, we all at one point in time growing up, been corrected. Some of us more than others. Some of us more sternly than others. Some of us know what a switch means and we know what it means when the Bible speaks about the rod.

We understand that meaning. We understand the correction of that rod. And there is a time in the life of young people, I know it was with me, that I would rather have taken a beaten from my father, then disappoint him." That was the worst thing in the Bible. To not get his smile. Do you understand what that means?

What about God? Does God smile on your life? Or does God not smile? What would be worse, to be chastised by our Lord or Him not to smile upon our lives? Which would be worse?

I know what would be worse for me. I want His smile. If God's smiling on my life, then that means God is pleased with my life. And that's what I want. Walking with God, it means that you must be in union.

Amos chapter 3, verse 3, it says, How can two walk together except they be what? Agreed. How can you be agreed if you're not in union? How can you be in union if you're not together? You see, it all goes the same direction.

Enoch walked with God for 300 years. Quite a statement, isn't it? God took him at age 365, But he didn't start walking with God until he was 65, and then for 300 years longer, he walked with God. Quite a statement. Quite a statement.

He continued to walk with God in his generation, and what kind of generation was he living in? People say, well, it probably was a lot easier for those people to live in those days walking with God because the world was not as corrupt then as it is now and sin was not matured. You haven't read the Bible without your statement. The fact of the matter is that these people who were living in those days, Something else that the Lord showed me in this message. Here it is.

Adam, they were all living. Adam lived 930 years and he died. Verse 8 of chapter 5, and all the days of Seth were 912 years and he died. He lived 912 years. Verse 11, And all the days of Enos were nine hundred and five years, and he died.

And verse 14, And all the days of Canaan were nine hundred and ten years, and he died. Verse 20, in all the days in Jerod were 960 and two years, then he died. Verse 27, in all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died, the oldest living man in world history, Bible history, in all the world as we know it to be, the oldest living man and he died and he lived and he died and he lived and He died. Can you see the paddle? I want you to grasp something coming back up to Enoch.

Can you imagine? Let me take your thoughts back to Adam in this lone genealogy before you get to the flood. By the way, don't think that it was the lineage of Seth. Don't think it was Adam, Seth, and his lineage only that were living up to 900 years and over. Cain's lineage was living 900 years and over too.

People don't think that. And God was preserving the seed by giving them longevity to populate the godly seed. In order that the godly seed would preserve the world. Now I don't mean by bringing in the second coming of the Lord, that's not what I mean. But I'm going to ask you a question, what does salt do?

Does it preserve? Maybe some of you older people, I do it, I still do it. I was taught by my father how to preserve meat with salt. Are God's people not the salt of the world? We are.

What was God doing? And he lived 930 and he died. And he lived 905 and he died. He lived 950 and he died. He lived 969 and he died.

What is God doing with the generation? He's allowing the longevity of the godly line to live upon the earth because the longer. I want you to think with me for a moment. Put that on the table. Put it in your generation.

Put it in your generation. Put it in mom's generation. All of the old creatures. Brother Powell. He's gone.

Fred Halleman. He's gone. World War II generation. Oscar Mink, he's gone. Bob, Jim Hobbs, he's gone.

James Hobbs. I keep going down the line with all these preachers. Joe Wilson. And it goes on to go, what about before then? Let me take your mind back.

When did the corruption start? Don't think it started in World War I and World War II of the Vietnam era. Corruption started with King. It started before him. It started when Satan came and deceived Adam and Eve, and it started before them because God found iniquity in Satan in heaven.

That's where it started. How long has the corruptness been developing in the world since the beginning that God found iniquity in Satan and kicked him out of heaven? That's when it started. Now I want you to think about all these godly men. You remember all these courts you do, all these godly men, past generations, the older men, and even your father and their father and their father, and you go back four or five generations, how was the principles and the morals of the country then?

It's no big deal for people to talk about being shacked up today. Oh, so-and-so is living together. They talk about it as though it's common. Well, to them, it is common. But that's because the morals and the standards of humanity has dropped so low that they don't even know how to differentiate any longer between what is right and what is wrong.

But if you go back four or five generations, what is being accepted today was never, never accepted back then. Most church members of Baptist churches today would be excluded. Couldn't be a member of a Baptist church. Most of them today couldn't be a member. When's the last time you heard of an exclusion?

Well, the churches of popular gets still exclude. They won't put up with foolishness. And so here's my point. With all these godly people living, there's the influence of godliness. You get it?

Even the lost will hush their tongue they will do those things in secret when there's enough godliness when there's enough godly people and when there's enough preaching and godly influence, when there is enough Christians living a holy living, even the lost will do those things that they do shamelessly but do them in secret. They are not doing them in secret any longer. Why do you think so? Would you agree with me that the salt has lost its saltiness? And I got to thinking about this and here was Adam, the only man before the flood that had walked with God.

And putting this message together, and I'm reading this long analogy, genealogy, And Adam lived and he died in 930 years and he died. Can you imagine the world that would have flopped to his wake? Can you imagine the people, the grandkids and the grand great-great, great-great-great, great-great, how many greats do you go? How many generations of people do you go back from Adam? And him, he lived, and they lived, and his sons, and they married, and their sons, and their children, and their children, and these people are living in their 900s.

And then they hear Adam die. People from all over the world would have went to see Adam to hear the story of the Garden of Eden. He was the only one besides Eve who would have known about the Garden of Eden. None of them had been there but them two. They would have went to Adam to hear the great preacher of the God-leadeth.

Adam, how was it? They would have went to listen to the stories about how he walked with God. And then Adam dies. People from all over the world were afloat to the wake of Adam. And it goes on down through here.

We come to Enoch. Enoch is pleasing God in his walk. He walked with God. He pleased God with his faith. He was humble.

He was walking with God for 300 years. He continued to walk with God. He did not allow the world to deter him. He did not allow family or anyone else. He walked with God.

He did not do like, what does it say in 2 Timothy 4.10? There was someone who walked with God for a while, for a while, 2 Timothy 4.10, for Demas, for Demas hath forsaken me, having loved his present world and has departed unto Thessalonica. At one time Demas walked with God, but he just couldn't take it. I know a lot of professing Christians who were there. Is that DIP service?

Oh, Enoch wasn't that way. Enoch walked with God. He started his walk, he continued his walk, and so many Christians today start, I call them gate starters. As soon as the gates open, off they go. Everyone's running.

Everyone goes to the church service, prayer meeting, conferences and so on and so on, but wait until you come down the back stretch. Let's see how many Christians are still running. So many today are trying to live according to the pleasures of the world, the entertainment of the world, the social life of the world, the fashions of the world, the habits of the world, the entertainment of the world. What is the most corrupt aspect of any society? What is it?

It's the social life. That's the most corrupting of anything. The world and all of its filth did not hinder Enoch. The rubbish of society did not pull Enoch down. In fact, it caused Enoch to walk stronger.

The world, in all that it had to offer, it did not pull Enoch downward, but he continued his walk with the Lord. It was a confirmation of his testimony. It was a profound witness. And then we read that he was not found. His wife and his children would have seen him that morning.

Perhaps they had breakfast together or Bible study. They would have slept in the same house the night before. They would have risen that morning and they would have seen one another and out Enoch goes for another walk that day. As he's walking, the Lord comes to find Enoch and takes him unaware, unannounced to anyone and everyone, and everyone is looking for a missing person. His name is Enoch.

Have you seen my daddy? Have you seen my husband? Where did he go? Has anyone seen Enoch? A search party perhaps was sent out.

Everyone would have been looking for Enoch, but they could not find him. Unanswered questions. No closing, no funeral, no burial for Enoch. There was no body to be found, no body to bury. He was gone and gone forever.

Mr. Preacher, do you have a word? Oh yes, I've got a word. Walk with the Lord and the Lord will take you. Walk with the world and the world will take you.

Are you ready to be taken? Do you have all things set in order? Are you ready for the Lord's coming? Are you ready to be translated? Are you ready to pass from mortality to immortality?

Are you ready to go into the next world? Is your life in order? Enoch pleased the Lord. He pleased the Lord with his speech. He pleased the Lord with his faith.

He pleased the Lord with his walk. And lastly, everyone will stand before God. Kings and queens and prime ministers will stand. The governors will stand. The military commanders will stand.

Presidents will stand. Professors will stand. The ignorant will stand. The wicked will stand. Rich and poor will stand before God, the unlearned will stand, the Baptist preacher will stand, the atheist will stand, the agnostic will stand, the scoffers, they will stand, the believers will stand, church members will stand.

Missionaries will stand, all will stand, no exceptions, no hiding, no running away, no excuses. Will your testimony stand? That's the point. Enoch's testimony pleased God. Does yours?

Does mine? Does your faith please God? And does your walk please God? What can we say about Enich's testimony? He had a bulletproof testimony.

In order to have a testimony, there must be a tester. You have to be living to have a testimony. Unborn babies will never have a testimony. To have a testimony must be a tester first. And what kind of testimony do you have?

Forget about the world and forget about people. I want you to zero in tonight, tomorrow, and the next days. I want you to zero in on this point. Is God pleased with my testimony? And if God's pleased with it, I really don't care what you think of me.

It doesn't matter. And everyone here in this room can say the same thing. It doesn't matter what others think of you. It matters everything what God thinks. And so three waves in it please God.

His testimony, His faith and His walk. May the Lord add His blessings to these words, Brother David, you come.