Glorious Way Church

Double Portion | Pastor John Greiner

• Pastor John Greiner

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This message explores the biblical principle of receiving a double portion of God’s blessing and anointing. Drawing from the story of Elisha and Elijah, it illustrates how hunger for more of God, faithfulness in service, and boldness in asking lead to an overflow of spiritual empowerment. Listeners are invited to believe for increase — not only for themselves, but so they can pour into others with multiplied impact.

SPEAKER_00:

Let's lift our Bibles up. If you want to stand up, you're welcome to, but you don't have to. And let's wave our Bibles around, make Jesus glad and the devil mad. Say this together. Say, Heavenly Father, I come on Sunday night because I'm extra hungry and extra thirsty for all your fullness. I can't just uh come when it's convenient. I stirred myself up to come tonight. And I'm ready to receive revelation that will change my life, that will inform my perspective on how you look at things. It's not how I look at things, it's how you look at things. And I thank you for the revelation of the Word of God in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's turn in our Bibles to 2 Kings chapter 2. Recently, we're teaching on Joseph's generation, the Joseph Church, basically teaching on the subject of the apostolic because this is an apostolic house. One prophet said an apostolic vine with a prophetic river. I think that pretty well tells you a little bit about what this church is about. It takes an apostolic anointing to accomplish the things that we're doing right now. God's opening doors, as I mentioned this morning. If you weren't here this morning, be sure and get the media. Persisting and resisting. It's something we need right now to put in our arsenal. But let's look at 2 Kings chapter 2. And it's a lot of reading, a lot of 15 verses, and these verses are kind of long, so it's going to take a long, it's going to take a while to read this, but it's important. I'm teaching on the double portion tonight. Everybody say the double portion. You probably heard that term, the double portion. We'll get into that tonight, how it impacts you, how it impacts this church, how it's impacted this ministry. Chapter 2, verse 1. It came to pass when the Lord would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal. And Elijah said unto Elisha, Tarry here, I pray thee, for the Lord hath sent me to Bethel. And Elisha said unto him, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they went down to Bethel. And the sons of the prophets that were at Bethel came forth to Elisha and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head today? And he said, Yea, I know it. Hold ye your peace, mind your own business. It has nothing to do with you. Rockhead. See, some people know things, and it, you know, they know it by the Spirit, but that doesn't mean they have any part in it. And Elijah said unto him, Elisha, tarry here, I pray thee, for the Lord has sent me to Jericho. And he said, As the Lord liveth and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they came to Jericho. And the sons of the prophets, that were Jericho, came to Elijah and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head today? Yea, he answered, Yeah, I know it. Hold ye your peace. And Elijah said unto him, Tarry, I pray thee, here, for the Lord has sent me to Jordan. And he said, As the Lord liveth and a soul liveth, I will not leave thee. And they two went on. Fifty men of the sons of the prophets went and stood to view afar off. They're the Amen corner. They're watching, they knew what was going to go down, and they wanted to see the fireworks. And stood to view afar off, and they two, that is Elijah and Elisha, stood by Jordan. And Elijah took his mantle and wrapped it together and smote the waters. And they were divided hither and thither. That's the reason I read the King James, because I like hiters and thithers. You can read whatever Bible you want, but I like the King James. I prefer the hiters and the thithers. So the waters divided hither and thither. And uh and the two went over on muddy ground. Dry ground. Doesn't that sound familiar? Red Sea, passing the Jericho, you know, with Joshua, and now here you go again. And uh it came to pass when they were gone over that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. Everybody say the double portion. So he's asking for something. And he was invited to ask. Ask what you want, I want the double portion. And he said, You have asked a hard thing. Nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee, but if not, it shall not be so. And it came to pass, as they still went on and talked, that behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and a horse, horses of fire, and parted them both asunder. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven, and Elisha saw it and cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof, and he saw him no more, and he took hold of his own clothes and rent them in two pieces. He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back and stood by the bank of Jordan. And he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, Where is the Lord God of Elijah? And when he had also smitten the waters, they parted hither and thither, and Elisha went over. And when the sons of the prophets, which were to view at Jericho, saw him, they said, The spirit of Elijah doth rest upon Elisha. And they came to meet him and bowed themselves to the ground before him. So, in teaching on this, the double portion, the key word that you need to see in this account is father. Elijah was a father to Elisha. Elisha knew the season of his father's departure. He knew the season of his father's departure. And Elisha's faithfulness was tested right unto the end. I mean, look what look how hard Elijah tried to leave him behind. Well, stay here now. I pray thee, I ask you. He didn't command him. Now he asked him. He gave him, he, you know, he didn't command him to stay. He he, I pray thee. And I said, oh no. As the Lord liveth, as thy soul liveth, I'm not going to leave you. I mean, he had three, three occasions, three times he could have left and missed the fireworks. He could have missed the whole thing. If he'd have stayed at Gilgal, if he'd have stayed at Jericho, if he'd have stayed, you know, Bethel, he would have missed it. But he didn't miss it. And he became eligible for the firstborn's inheritance. We're going to get into that in just a little bit. Everybody say the firstborn's inheritance. So let's back up here. You can hold your place there maybe and go back a few pages to 1 Kings 19. And let's go back to when it all started between Elijah and Elisha. 1 Kings 19, and let's pick it up here. You know, Elijah is on the run. Just give you a quick rundown. He had killed the 400 prophets of Baal. That's Jezebel's personal arsenal of false prophets and people that encourage all kinds of wickedness. She was not Jewish. Ahab was Jewish. She was Sidonian. They're the wicked. They're wicked people. They make their children walk through the fire. All the sins that Israel wound up adopting and all the false gods they wound up worshiping. They came from people like the Sidonians and the Amalachites and the Arabs and all of them. And so he killed the 400 prophets of Baal, and then Jezebel said, I'm going to kill you. And he ran. What in the world? He's a mean motor scooter. I don't know how one man kills 400 men, but he did it. He's not a weak knee guy. He's not a softy, okay? And yet he runs from Jezebel. He's on the run and he's just, he's feeling so down, and I'm the only one left. What are you doing? I'm just the only one left. You know, all the prophets have gone. And did God get God getting God didn't give up on him. And so let's pick it up now. He's on the move. He's kind of hiding, and he's and God starts talking to him. Verse 15, the Lord said unto him, Go return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus, and when you come, anoint Hazel to be king over Syria. And Yahu, the son of Nimshe, shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel. And Elisha, the son of Shaphat of Abelamola, Abelmehola, there you go, shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room or in thy place. Anoint the next prophet that's going to take your place. And it shall come to pass that him that escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Yehu slay, and him that escapeth from the sword of Yehu shall Elisha slay. Yet I have left me 7,000 in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him. So see, he had to correct him. He thought he was the only one left, and he said, Oh no, I got 7,000. Sometimes we think we're the only ones, but God's got lots and lots and lots of powerful men and women of God. And we're discovering more of them every day out there doing what we're doing. Out there waking up the church. It's amazing how many, how many men and women of God we've ran into where God visited them and said, Hey, I want you to wake up the church. And we're all doing it. The church is waking. How many of you know the church is waking up? So God here had already selected Elisha to be prophet in Elijah's room or his office, and that's the call. And so if we keep reading here in 1 Kings 19, so he departed thence, Elijah, found Elisha, the son of Shaphet, and was plowing with 12 yokes of oxen before him. And he with the 12th. Just think about 12 yokes of oxen. Each yoke of oxen is probably a pair. You don't usually one oxen, you have a pair of oxen yoked together. So that's 24 oxen. That's a lot of money. I mean, that's a combine harvester. That's a lot of agricultural power there. I mean, he's no poor guy. Twelve yolks of oxen. He's plowing with one yoke. He comes up to him and he passed by him and he cast his mantle upon him. And he left the oxen and he ran after Elijah and said, Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee. And he said unto him, Go back again. What have I had to do with thee? I don't care what you're doing. I don't care whether you come or go. It doesn't matter to me. He had no investment in Elisha. He had no, he's just obeying God. He had no, you know, he didn't care. And so Elisha turned back from him and took a yoke of oxen and slew them and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen and gave them unto the people, and they did eat. And then he arose and he went after Elijah and ministered unto him. He burned his bridges. He turned one whole yoke of oxen into fajitas and had a meal to say goodbye to everybody. And left the other eleven with the people behind. I mean, he depart, I mean, he didn't, he didn't have, he didn't cash out. He didn't go to the bank and and sell the other eleven yokes so he'd have some spending money. He answered the call. Everybody say the call. And it says that he ministered unto Elijah. He attended, he waited on, and he served Elijah. And it implies yieldedness, servanthood, and obedience. Everybody say yieldedness, servanthood, obedience. Now see, he's called to be a prophet. He's not a prophet. The prophet's still alive. The room is still occupied by the man who threw his mantle on him. So he does what? Well, he has to serve him, he has to minister to him, he has to yield to him and his wishes, learn what he likes and doesn't like, obedience, do what he's told. Are you with me now? We were talking this morning about, you know, how to persist in resisting the devil, and part of that is submitting yourself to God and God's order, God's divine authority, divine order. I mean, get involved in the church. And uh in a minute, in a little bit, I'm gonna lift up the my I Can Help forms, and everybody, I want everybody to take one and pray over it. Whether you maybe you're already volunteering, that's fine. If you're not volunteering, I want you to consider volunteering. We need you. We need all hands on deck. We need all hands on deck. We need everybody to be an Elisha. Because you have a father that needs serving. Are y'all with me now? I had a father that I served. That's why I'm here. All right. So it implies yieldedness, servanthood, obedience. Like Joseph, we talked about Joseph having the Joseph generation, Joseph Church, and we discovered about Joseph. I mean, he was faithful to serve Potiphar, had no, I mean, Potiphar didn't have to ever be can be concerned about his finances. I mean, Joseph ran a tight ship. He had everything down to the down to the drachma or whatever their money was. You know, they he had everything with a fine point, and he he did a thorough accounting of the money. And and and and Potiphar prospered as long as uh Joseph was involved, but then Potiphar's wife, we know what Potiphar's wife did. She lied. Like a snake, like Kamala. What do snakes do? Glad this isn't on live stream. All right, so that better not be on camera. All right, so and then he served the jailer. I mean, you know, it didn't matter. Okay. Whatever the jailer needed done, he was the doer of it. He was faithful for years. He's in jail for 12, at least 13 years, by my count. And he he was faithful to serve in jail. And there came a day when his word was fulfilled and he came from the from the pit to the palace, right? From the prison to the palace. And uh, and when he did, remember about Joseph. Joseph, Joseph got the, you know, the gold chain, the signet ring, the, you know, the linen garments. I mean, he got he got honored, and he was second only to Pharaoh himself in the kingdom. Everyone had to bow their knee to him. Second only to Pharaoh. Are you with me now? Talking about the double portion. And so David was anointed and called way ahead of time. David was 16 or so when he was called and anointed by Samuel the prophet. Remember the story. I mean, he went to, you know, the house to David's father's house. And uh, you got any sons? Yeah, here they are, and it's just one after another. No, he's not the one. No, he's not the one. We got any more sons? Yeah, well, I got the run out there in the back 40. He's he's a shepherd boy. Well, bring him in here. Surely that's the Lord's anointed. I mean, he was not on anybody's short list to be king. And here he is, a young kid, 16 years old. He poured the whole horn of oil on top of his head, anointed to be king. Was he king? No, the king was still alive. Did he get to be king real soon? No, it was another 12, 13 many years. He's 30 years old before he became king. Same as Joseph. And so here we have the same thing really with Elisha. Elisha is called, he's anointed to be the king years, you know, or uh to be prophet years before he got to just 20 years he served Elijah. They must say 20 years. I mean, God's got a timetable. It's called, you know, you have to be, you a lot of people they they identify the call, but they want to go right into the ministry. They they skip the qualification process. And I can't tell you how long that process is. God knows. And God knows how to qualify you when you're called. Everybody say called, qualified, then commissioned. See, you don't get the commission, you don't get sent out until you're fully qualified. Fully qualified. So Elisha knew the law of the double portion. And he also knew by the Spirit that it applied to his area of ministry. So let's go back to Deuteronomy chapter 21. I want to read it to you. The law of the double portion. I mean, it's in the Bible. Deuteronomy 21, verse 15. The double portion. If a man have two wives, better pray for him because he is in dire. I can't even imagine that.

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Two wives. Two wives.

SPEAKER_00:

If a man have two wives, let him have his head examined. No. If a man have two wives, one beloved and another hated. Isn't that a shame? Wouldn't you be hate to be the second wife that's hated? I mean, that's kind of raw. That's a bad deal. Women are all the devil is always hard on women. He just, you know. He hates women. If a man have two wives, one beloved, another hated, and they have borne him children, both the beloved and the hated, and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated, then it shall be when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he has, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn. See, you can't have favorites. You can't have favorites just because the firstborn is the son of your hated wives. That still blows my mind. But that's in the Bible. But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, how? By giving him a double portion of all that he has. For he is the beginning of his strength. The right of the firstborn is his. Now that has to do with families. It has to do with fathers and sons. Everybody say fathers and sons. So here along, and we don't know. I mean, we know that he's, you know, that Elisha is being qualified by serving Elijah. He's watched Elijah do great works. He's watched Elijah do all kinds of miracles. And uh and so when it when it's his time, close to his time, he had to know what really belonged to him. What if he had asked for the double portion and it wasn't right? He might have walked away from 20 years with nothing. He had to know. He had to know what belonged to him and not be proud and not be, and not misjudge it. He had to know by the Spirit what was his. I think Elijah, I think it kind of blew Elijah's mind. You want twice as much anointing as I've got? Well, you better keep your eyes on me when I'm going up. See, there's a lot of fireworks. What was going on? Well, there's a chariot of fire comes down. Horses on fire. You talk about fireworks. You're talking about the Shekinah presence. You're talking about all these rainbows of colors. We were talking about the rainbow of colors. We were singing that song. I didn't know we were going to sing that song, but that's what it was like. I mean, we're talking about wheel upon a wheel. We're talking about, I mean, God Shekinah came down out of heaven and picked him up in a whirlwind and took him off. And what did he do? He kept his eyes. He didn't, he wasn't distracted by all of the fireworks. He kept his eye, and he said, What did he say? My father, my father. He kept his eyes on his father. The chariot of Israel and the horses thereof. Here comes the man. He throws it down. Glory to God. It took 20 years to qualify. And he had to know by the Spirit his number one his inheritance, and number two, the timing of the fulfillment. They're both equally important. You've got to know what belongs to you and the timing of its giving. Are y'all with me now? So I just teach in this because Glorious Way Church is rich in blessing, and no small part because of the law of the double portion. In 1990, I was my first business partner after I got back into home building in 88. I had a business partner who had to withdraw from the company, and I was without a partner for a while. And uh I didn't know really what I was gonna do. Uh I had to have a financial partner to continue building. I didn't have the money even after a couple of years of building. Uh and I was building in West University Place, Southside Place. They were the nicest homes I'd ever built in my career, more expensive, and but yet the profits, it's just hard to hard to find money. I mean, you know, I I know now why the government was in charge of uh changing everything and taking everything away from Main Street and giving it to Wall Street. Home builders were basically Main Street. Home builders were basically small businesses owned by, you know, families. And it converted over to massive big home building entities that are on traded on Wall Street. Poolety homes and all these different big builders, could name them all. They get their money totally different than what I came into building. I mean, it's just you're borrowing money one house at a time, you're borrowing it at the savings and loan. They got rid of the savings and loan. And we were forced to go to banks. Well, banks didn't didn't like real estate lending. So it was really hard. But anyway, getting back to my story, uh I still was in that flux of what I still had some time to finish the last house, and he was gonna withdraw, and we were gonna cash that last house out. It hadn't sold yet. And I was gonna give him his share, and then he was gonna have to declare bankruptcy because the government's gonna take everything he owned. I saw the abuse of power all those years ago, 1988. I saw a man taken down for no good reason. They declared what he did to make a living in the 70s illegal after the fact and came after him as a criminal, as if he had committed a crime, and it was legal when he did it. That's what the government can do. We've got to get rid of these people. Hanging's too good for him. Anyway, so anyway, so I I was at Lakewood one Sunday, and and Justin Osteen is Pastor Osteen's oldest son, his firstborn by his first wife. Many people don't know he was married before Doty, and as a Baptist pastor, uh his first wife didn't like being a pastor's wife. She hated it, she hated it every day. So she eventually they had Justin together, but then they divorced, and then he met Doty, and he and Doty had five more children after that. So he's got a six kids, one by his first wife, and that was Justin. And Justin was a brilliant man, is a brilliant man. I haven't talked to him in a couple of years, but he's brilliant, speaks five languages. I think at one time he was working for the State Department as a translator in New York, in the in the uh United Nations building. And uh, but anyway, he came home while I was, Gladys and I were moved to Corpus Christi for a year and a half. When I got back from Corpus Christi, well, Justin had come to work for Brother Ostein as his administrator. He was working in the church, uh handling the you know the administration, taking care of the money and all of that. Brilliant guy. And he came up to me on Sunday morning and says, John, I've got a scholarship for you if you're interested. I'm gonna do a management seminar on Tuesday. Told me where, and he said, you know, it's worth$300. I usually charge$300, but I'll waive it for you if you're interested in coming. I'd, you know, we talk about church finances and everything, and just wondered if you were in. I said, Absolutely. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. And so on Tuesday I took off from my schedule and went over to wherever it was. And uh there's about 75 people there, 70, 80 people there. And I only knew one or two. Most everybody were just, you know, either pastors or their ministers. They just want to know, they want to know what he knows about management and especially managing money for churches. And uh so uh the morning session was real interesting, and we broke for lunch, came back from lunch, sitting in there, and we're getting started, and he's got this big board up, and he starts, he starts drawing on this board, and he said, Now I'm gonna produce an organizational chart, because every every ministry and every church should have an organizational chart so that you understand the flow of authority from the top all the way down through all of the staff and then what their you know what their responsibilities are. You until you know that, you don't really know what you have. You don't know who's doing what. You're gonna have a lot of crosstalk, you're gonna have a whole lot of double work, and and you're gonna have a mess. And so I'm just gonna show you Lakewood. And boy, that was kind of interesting, you know. So he draws a box at the top of the grease board, John Osteen. And then little dash off to the side, Dotie. He didn't forget Dotie. Dodie's not his mother. But he put Doty up there. And then he drew a line down from Brother Osteen, and then another horizontal line, and then some short vertical lines. And over here he's got Joel, and over here he's got himself, and over and here he's got Lisa, and over here he's got, you know, different ones all the way across the board, you know. And he's he's just explaining, you know, different ones, what they're doing and what their responsibilities are. And then under them, he he, you know, as it gets crowded when it gets past about the third level, man, you start to get, you know, it gets crowded, then he's in the middle of this crowded park, and from the back of the room, he takes, he takes a break and he turns around just to take a pause, and he's about to say something, and somebody from the back of the room says, Where does John Griner fit on that chart? Man, I whirled around. I must have turned every shade of crimson. I mean, I was so mad, I would have slugged him. Who do you think you are asking that kind of question? That's so rude. I just couldn't believe it. And he could see by the look on my face that I was just floored and embarrassed and angry all at the same time. And he said, Oh, that's easy. And he turned back around and he drew a little line from Brother Osteen, put a box there and said, John Griner. And I almost died. I think my spirit almost left my body. As I I could, I didn't hear another thing the rest of the day. It hit me so hard. A mixture of things. First of all, humility. Just who am I? Number two, the gravity of it. That means none of the family is above me. I don't take orders from Lisa. I don't take orders from Joel. I don't take orders from anybody else except John Osteen. Does that remind you of Joseph? Huh? Because that's what it reminded me of all those years ago. And I began to, I began to think, my I've stumbled into something that is so huge that I can't even, I can't even take it in. I don't, I didn't, I hadn't, I didn't have this in mind. I didn't, I didn't sign up for this. I didn't say, oh, I want to be, I want to be way up there. But he just didn't, oh, that's easy. So anyway, uh I began to realize the the weight of the connection that God had made, and I began to pray, you know, a little bit more faithfully about my role and what I should do and how I could be utilized. And I began to serve Brother Osteen just that much more. I mean, I just, if I could say anything or do anything for him, I would. And he gave me, he gave me permission. He said, You ever got anything, you tell me. I sometimes I'd I'd give him a scripture and he'd preach on it Sunday morning. 6,000 people, and he's preaching on the scripture I gave him 15 minutes before the service started. And I thought, ooh, I better make sure it's God. I better not be flapping my jaws to just just say just anything. One time, it was kind of funny, Lisa came up to me and said, Now, Brother John, we need this announcement. We got a meeting this afternoon. If we and we didn't get it out uh in time, and we've got to have this announcement. As soon as you get the microphone after my dad finishes the altar call, be sure and make this announcement. And I said, Okay, Lisa. And so I had this announcement about this meeting. You know, I had it in my hand. I'm standing up there, having an altar call. Every service had an altar call. I'm standing up there, I'm watching all these people come up to get saved and get whatever reason they came up for. And then he got through and he said, All right, well, it's time to go. Brother John, I want you to come and let's all bow our heads. Brother John, do the closing prayer. Well, Brother John was not going to make any announcement. Brother John is gonna pray the closing prayer. Because he didn't leave me any other. That's the only time he ever did that. It was so weird. He never did that. But that morning, I had that announcement in my hand to make, and I couldn't make the announcement. Oh, woo! I mean, Lisa was hot. I've never seen her mad, but she was mad. Brother John, I needed that announcement. Why didn't you, why didn't you tell? Why didn't you announce it? I said, he didn't leave me way to do that. Lisa, I've got to do what he says. He said, everybody bow your head. And Brother John's gonna pray the closing prayer. Pray. And he handed, you know, he handed off the service to me to pray. He didn't tell me to make an announcement. I couldn't make the announcement. She says, she blinked a couple of times and said, Oh yeah, that's that's right. I said, I'd suggest if you ever got anything like that again, be sure and tell him so that I can do what you need me to do. And she just sort of, you know, it kind of see, it helped me to know that I didn't answer to her. Not that I'm too proud. I mean, I would do anything they asked me, but it's just in this case. Are y'all getting this? Well, you know, years later, eight years later, uh, in October of 98, well, actually back up to June of 98, we had a uh father and son's meeting at Lakewood. It was the third such meeting, the first one Gladys and I were honored to get to be at, to kind of just be there to greet people. And uh that was uh about 300 ministers who counted Brother Ostein as their father in the faith. And it was just a small little meeting in the chapel, the wedding chapel. It held everybody. It would seat 300, and Gladys and I were, now I was so honored to be there. That was probably 1988. And then out of that, people wanted more and said, Brother Osteen, I know preachers that think you're, you know, they call you, you're their daddy. They listen to you all the time. Can we have another meeting and expand to have a bigger one? So the next one was a thousand. And we, of course, by then we we were there for sure. And then the next one was in uh June of 1998, and it was 6,500. Everybody, anybody that was anybody was in that crowd. Now they were all there. And it was an amazing meeting. And uh, but that's in June, and so then in October, Rodney Howard Brown was in town. He was over Brother Ben Priest Church and Umble. And so I'd gone over there to a morning meeting, and Brother Osteen showed up. And uh somebody had brought him, and he came in the door. I went over to greet him and embrace him, and I was shocked. I mean, he was so frail and so pale. Actually, uh back up. That was that was November. In October, we had a prayer meeting for him because he was in ill health, and he called the sons and wanted the sons to lay hands on him at a prayer meeting at Lakewood, and we did that. And so this is the next month after that. Hadn't seen him since that prayer meeting, and he didn't look that good in October. Boy, but by November he he was so pale and so frail, and I was very sad. I felt so bad. And uh that was so I went home, and uh in November I was at home and I got a phone call from a staff member and said, you know, brother, I just wanted you to know, brother Osteen's got kidney failure, he's having to go to dialysis. And I, you know, I just I just, you know, you just, well, my my pastor's gonna live and not die and declare the works of the Lord. I'm just I'm just gonna stand with him. So later that morning I was at home praying and getting all my stuff. I hadn't gone to the office yet. And uh walking through my house from the kitchen over, I have to go through the through through a little hallway that goes, one right over here is the is the utility room. Ahead of me is the dining room, cut through the dining room, across the entry hall, go to my study. So I was headed from the kitchen to the study. And all of a sudden I came in this little hallway by the by the utility room, and I didn't know it was a trance. I just I just fell into this vision. Later I found out it was a trance. I didn't know it was a trance. I'd never had a trance. A trance is a dream, an open-eyed dream, a vision. My eyes were opened, I was somewhere else. And I was in this dark paneled room. It looked, I and I somehow I knew it was a it was a lawyer's office. It was this big table, mahogany table, all the books on the wall. I didn't see any people. I knew people were there, and I heard a voice say, and to John Griner, I bequeath, and it was the last will and testament of John Osteen. And to John Griner, I bequeathed. I didn't hear what it was that I was bequeathed, but I felt the emotion of it. It was awe and wonder, and kind of a similar emotion that I had when I found out that I was on the square up there reporting directly to John Osteen. Kind of the same feeling of awe, wonder, uh, amazement. And I said out loud, you mean he left me that? I mean, I'm not even his blood. And then I came out of this trance, and I said, devil, get out of here. That vain imagination, my pastor's gonna live and not die, and declare the word. I didn't recognize that it was the Holy Ghost. I didn't recognize it. I just felt guilty that I'd drifted off of my faith to believe in his healing. So I went on, you know, and finished my work that morning, went to the office, kind of forgot about it, really, to be honest. Didn't think give much thought to it. I'm still just believing for his healing until the 23rd of January, 1999, just a couple of months later, uh two o'clock in the morning, the same staff member called me and told me that Brother Ostinia collapsed. They'd hauled him to the emergency room. And so I told Gladys what I heard. Gladys bolted out of bed. She started walking up and down, screaming at the devil, praying in other tongues. And I mean, she was giving the devil what for. And at the same time she was doing that, I heard in my spirit, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now, therefore rise. Everywhere the soles of your foot have walked, that have I given thee. As I was with Moses. As I was with Moses, so will also I be with thee. I said, honey, honey, he's gone. And at that moment, I had the strangest experience. It was like I was on the nose cone of a rocket ship going through outer space. It's like all I could see was space, and I'm right, my nose is on the nose cone, and I'm shwuw, you know, like that, hurtling through outer space, outer darkness, I guess. And I came to this place where it felt narrow. And when I did, I accelerated like great acceleration, went through this narrow place. And somebody said, told me one time when I was sharing this, well, you went through the birth canal. Well, it's possible. That sounds about right. When a baby comes through the birth canal, they they accelerate, thank God. The mothers say, Thank God they accelerate and get out of there fast. But anyway, I come squirting out the other side at a great rate of speed. And then the Lord replayed my experience two months before in my home where, and to John Griner I bequeathed. And I knew that I had received my inheritance, not a mantle. I'm gonna make that clear. I do I didn't get his mantle, but I got my inheritance. I got a double portion of what I should have gotten. Why? Because I was faithful as a son to a father. Are y'all with me now? Come on, lift your hand right now. Lord, we thank you for the double portion. And really, when I look back on it, this church succeeds where others fail. The devil's tried to end this ministry, I don't know how many times. He's done things that have been so despicable and so people have done the craziest things that don't even make any sense. And I tell you, here we are 30, almost 31 years and we're still going strong. We're doing more with less people. I mean, we I kept thinking that we're going to be a big old massive church. You know, we're I it doesn't matter how many people we got. What we need is the agreement. All we need is a glove plus unity equals miracles. That's all we need. I mean, I think the I think the whole mega church thing is dead anyway. Too hard to manage. It's hard, it's hard like herding cats. We've got the right group. I'm not saying we don't need to grow. We need to have more people than this in here on a Sunday night. Are y'all with me now? I don't know, this isn't real current, but I want to give it to you anyway. I haven't looked it up lately. I'm praying that it's better news than what Barna had back when I took this down. But a number of years ago, I want to say this is probably 10 years old. 1,800 pastors leave the ministry every month. Forty percent will not be in the ministry in ten years. Sixty-five percent would leave their position for a similar pay outside the ministry. Four thousand churches close. One thousand open. Now let's look at Malachi chapter four, because I believe that those numbers are the symptom of a lack of fathers. You know, not every pastor is a father. Not everybody that calls themselves a pastor is a pastor. Not everybody has that runs a church, not every church that is on the corner has someone in there that has been qualified. They call themselves or somebody else sent them out, or they're a church plant, somebody decided, we need to plant a church over here on this corner, and let's let's give them$100,000 to get started. All of that mess. You know, you don't know what you've got. This church, I'm describing how it started. Nobody but God did it. Malachi chapter 4. You getting anything out of this? Kind of gone longer than I thought I would. Oh well, what else have we got to do? Has anybody got some pressing business you need to leave early? Malachi chapter 4, verse 5. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet. Now think about Elijah. He's up in heaven, body and soul. He's just like you and me. He has not been transformed. He has a heartbeat. He has blood pressure. He has a brain. He has skin. I don't know how he lives in heaven with no oxygen. I don't know how that works. But he's there. And so is Enoch. So Enoch and Elijah are the only two people that are up there like that. Everybody else is a spirit. He's not a spirit. Are y'all with me now? And it says here, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. Now that's not before the rapture, because that's not known as the great and dreadful day of the Lord. The great and deadful day of the Lord is the final judgment. You know, the coming of the Lord is in two parts his coming for the saints and his coming with the saints. So this is referring to, and this is Old Testament, by the way, and they all believed in the resurrection. So this is the end of the end. This is when the devil is judged. This is when the Antichrist gets. And you know, Malachi didn't know about the Antichrist. But the great and dreadful day of the Lord is mentioned really in the book of Revelation, chapter 11, it talks about the two witnesses. Some people say they believe it's Moses. And I don't believe it could be Moses, because Moses is, he died. And his spirit's up there. He's not, he, his body's not up there. I believe it's going to be Enoch, the two witnesses that are going to come to earth and they're going to preach in Jerusalem for three days, and they're going to be martyred. And that's going to be Enoch and Elijah. But I don't believe that this is what this verse means. Let me just tell you what I believe it means. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. So the spirit of Elijah is the spirit of fatherhood. Elijah was a father, was he not? Elisha said, My father, my father. The chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof. That's the key to the whole double portion is the relationship to the Father and to qualify for what? The double portion. This is a double portion church. I said, this is a double portion church. I mean, you can be blessed in any church, but this church, we expect you to be double blessed. Everybody say I'm double blessed. Glory to God. You know. In December of 2003. God spoke to me right out there on that slab before we had finished the building. We didn't finish the building and move in until uh May of 04. So we were still erecting the buildings and stuff. I was standing out there and the Lord came, spoke to this heart to me. He said, There's a dearth of the word. I said, Okay, Lord, a dearth of the word. How is that? How can that be? There's more churches than ever before. I mean, church on every corner. I mean, I know they're not all like our church. I know they don't all preach the word, but a lot of them do. How can there be a famine? How can there be a dearth of the word? He said, your children don't know what you know. Well, at first I began to think, well, you know, we need to make sure our children's church is up to speed. So, you know, I had a meeting with children's church. I had heard, you know, we had three guys that were kind of competing with each other, teaching our kids, and one of them would bring a bicycle, and the other one would bring a big old bunch of pizza, and another one would bring a bunch of donuts. I mean, you know, it it it oh I like Mr. So-and-so. He brings the donuts. Oh, I like Mr. And I just didn't like the hero worship that I heard. They weren't teaching the Bible, they weren't teaching our kids like they're taught now. These kids are taught the word of God. I mean, they're taught in their, they're taught on their level. They pray. You you your ears would tingle if you heard these little kids pray. Now that wasn't the way it was back then. And I said, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna you're gonna get a curriculum. You're all gonna be teaching out of the same curriculum. We're not gonna have this one teach this thing one Sunday and this guy shine over here and teach something easy to teach over here the next Sunday. We're gonna all get on the same page, we're gonna have a curriculum, and all three of those guys left the church. And Claire had to clean up the mess. She did a lot of sweeping. I didn't say sleeping, I said sweeping. But that's not really what he was telling me. He was telling me about the generation. He was telling me about we have this generation that's unacquainted with what we know. We know things our kids don't know. We have not been able to communicate. And it's not all on the parents, it's a lot of it's on the kids. The kids have been polluted in school. They've been polluted on social media, they've been polluted and they've been influenced and they've been brainwashed. That's what makes it so powerful what Charlie Kirk did. I would never have given him a, I'm sorry, I wouldn't have given him a plug nickel to succeed in what he started doing. And look what happened. I mean, he's basically lit on fire all of these young college students. There's a revival going on all across the world, not just here, all across the globe. I think people have gotten so fed up with this garbage they know on the inside this can't be life. This can't be true. All this wokeism. I believe the spirit of Elijah has returned to redeem us from this curse that was headed here. We we lived that curse for quite a while. We've lived that curse with the wrong kind of people in office, voting, the church not voting or else voting for the wrong people, the church not acting like the church, the church acting like the world, talking like the world. You vote for a uh what you call a uh a Christian candidate. He gets up there and votes along with the Democrats and shakes hands with the devil and makes deals with the devil to go. I mean, we called one time to our representative who goes to Champion Forest Baptist and he didn't want to get involved in in our issue because he was trying to uh pass uh uh making it an outlaw for having fireworks pass midnight. Well, who gives a flip? I don't care if they have fireworks 24 hours a day. That's not anything worthy of of a guy that's up there in Austin. I don't care about that. I want this stopped. I chewed out, I mean I didn't get to chew him out. I chewed out his chief of staff. I said, that's not why he's there. Tell him he's gonna get primaried, and he was. He lasted one time and he was gone. There's gonna be more of that, too. Are y'all with me now? Let's look at Luke. Jesus is speaking and he's talking about faithfulness. Verse 10. Jesus, it's all in red, Jesus said it. He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much. And he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If therefore you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon money, who will commit to you your trust the true riches? Everybody say the money test. I mentioned this this morning, but I want to talk about it again tonight. We're gonna have every Wednesday night in October roadmap to kingdom wealth. And, you know, you need what we're gonna share with you so that you can pass the money test, so that God can trust you with more because he wants to trust this church with great riches for the benefit of the kingdom of God. We've got to have more money, and it's not necessarily having more people. What if he tripled everybody's income in here? Then your tithe would be triple, then your offerings would be triple. I mean, you know, we could do a whole lot with, we wouldn't need a whole lot of people if you've got a whole lot of wealth. Oh, you're working to be wealthy. No, I'm giving you the roadmap. He said you've got to pass the money test. If you're unjust in the least thing, if you're unjust in your money, if you spend money that ought to be going to the to the church, if you're spending money that ought to be God's, it's all God's money. So you've got to you've got to be accountable for what you're doing with your money. We're gonna talk about a lot of this stuff. It's it's you need to hear it. And you need to employ what you hear. Because I really believe that this church is gonna go. The wealth of the wicked's been laid up for the just, and we is the just. But we've got to pass the money test. And then he says, verse 12. And if you have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? And I just submit to you that I was faithful in what belonged to Brother Osteen and his family. I was faithful to that every day, and uh, that I was allowed to do what I did. It was an amazing journey. And it laid the foundation for Glorious Way Church. It laid the foundation for what we're involved with now. It's all connected. I had to prove myself. Elijah had to prove himself. He had to stay faithful when the man of God says, Oh no, you don't have to go, just stay here. No, no, I am not leaving you. I'm not leaving you, not for a minute. He stayed prayed up, he stayed in knowledge of the timing he was in. He he rightly divided the gravity of his service to this man of God, and he knew that he had sown to the double portion, and that's what he asked for, and that's what he got. And so, really, you know, types and shadows, Elijah is the type of Jesus. Jesus did works. But Jesus said, I'm going to heaven, and the works that I do shall you do also in greater works than ye send you do, because I'm going to the Father. So then Elisha is the type of the church. Jesus did works, the church does greater works. You see that? And so that's the principle of the double portion. I mean, you know, the father gives of the beginning of his strength, he gives twice as much to the firstborn son. And he doesn't leave everybody out. Everybody's got an inheritance. But the firstborn gets double. Everybody say, I'm eligible for the double. Because I'm going to pass the money test. I'm going to be faithful over what belongs to someone else. Amen. Praise God. We're reaping the benefits of the double portion. Hallelujah. Come on, let's praise God. Thank you, Lord, for the word.