From US history, remember?
Something out of the American Revolution, one of
the first encounters between the colonialists and the
British.
Don't fire until you see the whites over
their eyes.
I haven't said that or remembered that in
over 30 years till now.
What does that mean?
What?
I didn't hear that.
I love to give sudden quizzes.
Well, praise the Lord.
The prophetic man is always asking, what does
that mean?
We had a birth in our community that
came early, unexpectedly, where Simon and Naomi,
one of our couples, began to have strange
disturbance about the time of our summer prophetical
school and convocation.
And then she was rushed from one hospital
to another and has just now had the
birth of a child they thought would have
to be, what's the word?
C-section.
C-section and prematurely encouraged.
But they waited and she had a natural
birth, a five and some pounds, some ounce
baby, and with the largest placenta they had
ever seen.
So we're asking, what does this birth mean?
The unusual circumstances of this birth, coming right
at the time of our 25th anniversary and
brought forth to no small extent by the
intercession and the travail of the Ben Israel
community itself for the birthing of a baby
boy whose name is Micah.
So we see him as a prophetic event.
The birthing of a prophetic entity through travail,
struggle, premature, great expense and the attendance of
God is more than just a circumstantial thing.
We're always looking, what's the meaning?
What is God wanting to say?
Which is not a bad disposition.
I wish that the church would have it
and not so readily dismiss its circumstances as
just being circumstantial.
Okay, well I'm happy for a Saturday morning
with you guys.
Isn't that a precious way to spend a
Shabbat morning?
So we thank you Lord, my Lord.
What a privilege.
Close us in with yourself.
Cut us off at the pass.
Quiz us.
Bring up, my God, things that are upon
your heart and have a full abandon to
yourself.
Enjoy yourself, my God, and romp and do
what you will, where you will and we
just thank you for the privilege.
We'll follow so well as we can wherever
you lead us, my God.
And we thank you for the privileged use
of a Shabbat morning.
Even the Rosh Hashanah morning, my God, when
Jews are going into their synagogues that we
are here, my God, by your ordination.
So come and guide us and take your
full liberty, we pray.
Receive our acknowledgement of how privileged we are
to be closed in together with you and
a sent servant.
Thank you, Lord.
We bless your name.
Have your perfect way.
First word to the last.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Well, I want to look into this Psalm
102 this morning but before we get there,
I want to glean a little bit more
from Hosea of last night's text that was
so inadequately addressed.
I looked at it again this morning and
it came from my devotional reading and somehow
a lot of things were quickened this morning
that I was not in a position to
either see or attend yesterday but it would
be a pity to rush on and to
miss it.
So we're looking at a text in Hosea
chapter 13, verse 15 kind of an ominous
note about Jewish history.
Although he may flourish among rushes, the east
wind shall come, a blast from the Lord,
rising from the wilderness, and his fountain shall
dry up, his spring shall be parched, it
shall strip his treasure of every precious thing.
We just have to take a deep breath
and a pause because the scriptures themselves are
so unique, such another kind of literature.
The Psalms are unique within that uniqueness and
prophetic proclamation is equally unique.
So much so, such a weight of things,
so compressed and so terse a statement that
it requires a very special attention and we
have not been schooled to give to the
scripture that kind of attention.
We have been schooled by Gone with the
Wind, by novels, by glib casual reading.
We don't know how to invest ourselves in
the word and the danger is we would
just read through something like this and gain
nothing.
So let's just ponder this first to say
again, this is such an echo, a statement
that has resounded through the whole of Jewish
history.
Though we may have prospered for a season
and what would be more a statement of
that than German Jews.
I wish that you could have been with
me at the most recent visit to Berlin
and the ruins of their reform synagogue, an
elaborate piece of architecture even in its ruins
and then the exhibits that go back and
show, there was one photograph showing the stately
congregation, somehow the building probably so vast as
it was, was not adequately heated.
They were sitting with their winter overcoats on
but such overcoats with fur collars, with their
fedoras, with their top hats, with their nice
dark collars and ties and the women resplendently
dressed.
If ever you saw a picture of affluence,
security, comfort, assurance, stateliness, it was this Jewish
congregation.
But you're seeing it in the ruins of
their synagogue, devastated by the bombing of the
World War II and probably also by Kristallnacht.
You know that night in October was it,
when every synagogue or many of them were
set afire.
Kristall is the German word for glass, the
shattering glass.
That came out of these synagogues as the
Nazis rampaged through and then right on the
heels of that was the setting in motion
of the whole process of Jewish annihilation.
So wherever we Jews have had opportunity to
prosper, it's only for a season.
And surely, sooner or later, the bottom falls
out.
If any Jewish community ever thought itself secure,
it was the German Jewish community.
Reform Judaism was born in Germany.
That is a secular adaptation of Judaism that
is acceptable to a mind that is offended
by the supernatural.
Can you guys follow me?
How did they come to a mentality like
this?
Because they were German Jews.
Because rationalism is a German mentality of that
generation and they wanted to be accommodated to
that civilization.
Do you know that this generation of Jews
was opposed to the reestablishment of a Jewish
community in Palestine.
They wanted to be integrated into their diasporic
exile homes.
They wanted to show the German nation that
they were first and foremost German Jews, that
they were first German citizens, that their first
loyalty was to Germany and only secondarily as
a cultural and historic response to their Jewishness.
That's why Reform Judaism had its birth in
Germany.
And yet, however accommodating that community was, it
was obliterated.
And that's exactly what God is saying through
Hosea.
And it ought to be a somber warning
for American Jews.
What?
You're comfortable here?
You're secure here?
You're respected here?
Take note that wherever you have enjoyed that
kind of security in the world, it has
only been temporary.
And there's a moment in which the axe
falls and you find yourself again thrust out
and suffering.
So although he may flourish among rushes, you
know what rushes are?
Those reeds that grow by riverbanks.
I don't know why this kind of metaphor
is being used by the prophet.
It's set in nature because the blast that
comes is a natural phenomenon known in the
Middle East.
There's a special name for it, maybe somebody
here knows it.
Where this unexpected dry heat comes out with
a wind and a gush unexpectedly and so
blistering away that wherever it passes, it brings
a devastation.
You might have been abounding by the riverside,
by access to water, by the rushes, but
when this heat comes, everything withers.
So God is using a metaphor of nature
as a warning to Jewish communities, don't be
deceived by your present affluence, security and comfort
because that kind of affluence that you're enjoying
is obtained independent of me.
You have an obligation being the Israel of
God to make me known, but your very
lifestyle that is the expression of godlessness, of
only a superficial Saturday accommodation to me, but
that your main purpose and being is your
own success and prosperity is contrary to the
witness for which you are intended.
And therefore though I allow you to enjoy
the benefit of it for a season, there
must come a time in which it will
be judged.
As I read this this morning, I thought
that though this is set in time and
in history, it's actually a warning of an
eternal blast where everything withers, but it is
irrecoverable.
It is a final and ultimate judgment for
which reason God gives preliminary judgments.
I'll have to check, am I okay, am
I coming through?
Do you know the name Baselius Schlenk?
If you don't, you need to.
Talk about 20th century articles.
This is the German founder of the Evangelical
Sisters of Mary in Darmstadt, Germany, who is
a prophetess and has written some remarkable books
on repentance, on Israel.
It's a German movement born out of the
rubble and ruin of World War II where
the firebombing that fell on Darmstadt was so
horrendous, Darmstadt was not a military target.
But it was firebombed just as...
I'm trying to think of these other German
cities.
One was famous for its ceramics, Dresden, China.
You know, it's nice to talk to a
literate audience that knows something about history and
can help a stumbling speaker who can't...
The description in those places was the heat
was so intense in the firebombing people in
flight were caught in the melting asphalt and
trapped and the air was sucked right up
from the city so that tens of thousands
died from asphyxiation before they were burned.
And this movement interpreted that as a judgment
upon Germany for being the diabolical rod of
God's judgment upon Israel.
And so the whole movement was born out
of a repentant attitude toward the Jew.
And indeed they have a home in Israel
for surviving Holocaust victims and they had, I
don't know if they still have it, on
the Mount of Olives a precious little place
where I used to bring groups whenever we
conducted a tour to Israel to visit.
And these are just sweet sisters.
I'll tell you how remarkable an environment they
have or had.
That I'm told that David Wilkerson when he
visited there threw himself on the compost pile.
The sense of holiness was so great, so
hallowed over there at Darmstadt property that, the
story goes and I think it's true he
flung himself upon the compost heap.
I didn't move, I was not so moved
myself but I was profoundly affected.
The moment that I walked through that gate
no longer in Darmstadt, you were in heaven.
It was a hallowed atmosphere.
And there was a time when they dispersed
their women's movement.
See this is outside of our American experience
that there are pious communities of women who
have chosen to be married to the Lord
and have forsaken natural marriage.
They wear wedding bands, they're married to the
Lord.
Very precious dedication.
And when they dispersed and I had an
occasion to visit their representation in Egypt I
thought it's one thing to have a hallowed
atmosphere in Germany but let's see you have
it in Egypt, in Cairo.
The city of 14 or 16 million that
stinks from the dung of camels and oxen
and goats and donkeys where in four lanes
of traffic you have six to seven lanes
of cars who move by sensor, by honking
of horns they feel each other's presence.
It's another environment you can't even begin to
understand it coming from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The congestion, the filth, the air, the spitting,
the nose blowing.
You don't dare shake hands or extend a
left hand to any person.
It's considered an insult because that's the hand
you use in tending to your hygiene after
you have defecated in a land that does
not know what toilet paper is.
That's a luxury only the West can afford.
Can you understand things like that?
So I remember going up the steps of
their apartment in Cairo thinking yeah it's one
thing to maintain this pristine hallowed atmosphere in
Germany.
Let's see you pull it in Cairo.
And the door opened and I was back
again into heaven.
So it's possible to bring heaven to earth
and to maintain a heavenly environment even in
the midst of congestion, traffic, noise, filth, and
all the rest.
Now how did that come in?
What made me turn aside?
About a movement born in repentance toward the
Jew.
So I commend Basilia Schlink, S-C-H
-L-I-M-K, for your consideration.
Her book on repentance, The Secret of the
Joy-Filled Life is an all-time 20th
century classic.
And when I was asked once to recommend
what one book would you recommend ought to
be translated into Russian this was at a
time when there was not much access in
that nation for the church I said this
one book on repentance, The Secret of the
Joy-Filled Life.
Because it came out of the hard school
of judgment.
Because they prophetically interpreted the calamity of the
destruction of World War II on Germany as
a statement of God's judgment for the mistreatment
of Jews.
They were prophetically attuned to interpret their history
prophetically.
And to explain that meaning to the nation
itself.
So would to God that we had a
church in America and in the world that
could explain to the Jewish communities within its
midst the meaning of Jewish history.
And what the pattern of it is that
however successful a season we may enjoy and
rise to places of prosperity, affluence and security
you always need to remember that the pattern
is that there's a day that comes when
the east wind blows and brings a withering
blast and dries up and removes all of
the treasure that you have obtained.
And why is that?
Because the treasure that you have obtained you
have obtained independently of God.
It's through your own striving, your own effort,
your own energy and you have assumed that
God has gone behind to bless and condone
or consecrate but you're living out of your
own independence from God.
And he allows you a season of prosperity
some kind of an acceptance even the thought
that maybe finally we have found a home
where we can have a security, the United
States of America.
Germany, what is the United States next to
what Germany had meant for Jews?
The land of Goethe, G-O-E-T
-H-E Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer great philosophers,
Kant, K-A-N-T ethical philosophy, the
ideals the land of reformation, the land of
culture, the land of history that such a
nation can one day fail to provide the
kinds of amenity of civilization that its culture
suggests and that within a decade that whole
thing can come tottering down and that nation
that is most esteemed for its civilization can
become the most brutal, the most vile that
the death, it was not just a systematic
death but the cruelty of that death the
stripping of their identity as human beings the
giving of a number, not even a name
and the whole relentless persecution of Jews right
through to ashes was out of the land
of Goethe, Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Wagner Mendelssohn,
all of the great names of music, philosophy
culture, poetry, literature, art and if that could
happen within a decade in a nation of
that history what could happen then in America?
what kind of assurance and security can Jews
have here?
where our civilization is only skin deep and
if Jews are enjoying any sense of assurance
or security how much confidence can they have
and how much would it take to bring
the whole thing down and that's what we're
being warned of in the scripture although he
may flourish among rushes the east wind shall
come notice the prevalence of the word shall
shall come a blasphemy of the Lord rising
from the wilderness and his fountain shall dry
up his spring shall be parched it shall
strip his treasure of every precious thing this
shall is irrevocable finality it's unassailable certainty shall,
it's inevitable, must come God is speaking, it
shall there's no if or maybe or I
guess or it shall come whatever you're enjoying
now there's a moment that shall come a
blast out of the wilderness even the image
out of the wilderness like German civilization turned
to a wilderness civility turned to brutality something
coming unexpectedly will take all of your prosperity
all that you've enjoyed and bring a blight
and make it to be parched and strip
this treasure of every precious thing it's a
fearful statement and what in fact is hell
but this this is a statement of what
could happen in historical time but it is
also a statement of what will happen eternally
and it's for that reason that God allows
preliminary judgments where you're stripped of your treasure
in this life that you might recognize the
hand of God in it because it says
the Lord, a blast from the Lord not
from Hitler not from Nebuchadnezzar a blast from
the Lord, not from Arafat from the Lord
it's a judgment from the Lord in historical
time in order that you might be awakened
to the fact that you're under double jeopardy
as Jews you have a double indictment you
have a double obligation you're the only singular
covenantal nation I have not spoken to any
other nation as I have spoken to you
I have not called any other nation to
the kind of relationship to which I've called
you to the Jew first blessing but also
curse you have a double obligation and you
suffer a double consequence so if I allow
these things to befall you in time and
in history it's a warning of what will
be a final and irrevocable judgment that will
be eternal where you'll be stripped of every
treasured thing what does it mean to be
prophetic?
it is to understand history and contemporary events
as a statement of that which points to
what is eternal Baselius Schlinck speaks of the
judgments in time as being preliminary judgments because
what is the ultimate judgment?
hell itself eternally in which there's no recovery
no second chance there's a finality and if
this is not at the foundation of our
perspective we have no ground to see ourselves
as being a prophetic church if we do
not understand the issues of time as seen
in the context of eternity we do not
see and this is the character of our
American Christianity it is not set in the
context of eternity there's no solemn sense that
these things are coming from God as forewarning
of a time in which there will be
a final and irrecoverable judgment that this is
a preliminary to save you from that well
that's so remarkable a way to understand time
and history and circumstance that's so unusual that
is prophetic that's God's own seeing that's the
way God sees and that's the way he
would communicate and commend reality to men what
is the church?
it's God's agent in the earth to communicate
to an unseeing and a world that is
unwary, unsuspecting the truth and the meaning of
its own history, life and eternal future because
it can't be expected to see as you
see it has not your advantage it has
not the spirit of God it has not
the scriptures they're secular, they're lost, they're blind
they think that this life is everything they're
caught up in material things and success and
they're living a fool's paradise they don't know
that there's going to be a blast coming
out of the wilderness that will strip their
treasure of everything and that the author of
that blast is not accident but God himself,
the Lord in judgment that there's a sword
of Damocles over their head that can fall
at any moment there needs to be a
warning proclaimed it's a fool's paradise to think
that your treasure is secure whether you're a
Jew or a Gentile or a prosperous nation
the blast of God can come at any
moment of his choosing and deserves to come
and it's not because he's malicious but because
he's just and merciful that that blast comes
now while we have yet to understand it
and bring us to a place of repentance
because the treasure that we have accumulated we
have accumulated independent of him and have made
it our idolatrous substitute for him and so
he allows the blast to come that we
might recognize this is the hand of God
and repent and be saved from an eternal
blast where we're stripped of all treasure eternally
this is prophetic seeing this is definitive reality
this is the way in which the church
and every nation should understand its own history
and circumstance and be able to relate to
the nation this understanding for it is God's
and it is intended for their repentance the
drought in the southwest when I flew over
Midland, Odessa my God was it barren why?
all of the freaky weather circumstances inundation with
so much rain and flood in one place
and absolutely out in another reversal patterns all
kinds of adversities and crises are preliminary judgments
are you saying every single thing?
well, why not?
isn't God sovereign over every single thing?
and if there are exceptions in which it
is caprice in which it is an accident
and not the deliberated judgment of God at
least from our point of view as believers
our first consideration is that it is from
the hand of God as judgment and if
it proves not to be that then we're
free to consider other speculation and other thought
but our first disposition always ought to be
to see things coming as from God which
is not itself a cruelty but a grace
to save us from a greater judgment that
is eternal and irrecoverable I'm giving you the
broadest parameter of how reality itself is to
be understood prophetically for to understand it in
that way is to understand it in God's
way that's our calling as church and to
understand it so that we might proclaim it
to those who are completely naive and unsuspecting
and lost what does lost mean?
you're in a darkness of misconception and deception
about the meaning of your own life and
existence you're not interpreting it rightly you're living
a fool's paradise you think this is going
to go on forever and you'll enjoy this
kind of lavish lifestyle that is itself morally
an offense but the day will come that
there's a blast that will come out of
the wilderness and it will strip your treasure
of everything if God gives us that to
understand he gives it to us that we
might proclaim it to the unsuspecting but how
shall we proclaim it with prophetic credibility if
we ourselves are living in that fool's paradise
see what I mean?
we're robbed of credibility if we ourselves are
enjoying that prosperity and living that lavish lifestyle
in a way that is hardly to be
distinguished from the world itself we can only
speak prophetically as one coming out of the
wilderness with a loincloth you understand?
as being separated from that world that is
having a ball at the expense of God
without any acknowledgement of him but if we
ourselves are playing their game we're robbed of
any testimony of any credibility we cannot pronounce
a warning and therefore their blood will be
upon our hands church is not a picnic
it's a responsibility it's a profound calling the
church has as its intrinsic call this prophetic
function what, are we to be all Atatzis?
all Elijahs?
no but as a corporate entity, yes we
have a function in the corporate life as
the prophetic presence of God in the community
and nation in which we're placed and this
is how we need to perceive reality because
we have the privilege of the scripture to
instruct us but you see how that has
to be read?
I'm almost embarrassed for last night and the
feebleness in which this scripture was introduced but
this morning we're hoping to do it a
little bit more justice and in this to
give you an example of how the scripture
itself needs to be understood needs to be
searched that we cannot bring our gone with
the wind reading mentality to the word of
God and brrrr I show my mother something
in the Psalms I said, mom, read Psalm
whatever it was current at that time 118,
I forgot so she read, right through 118
right through 125 in about 15 minutes yes,
she read it she mechanically read it she
gained nothing I said, what?
you read all through that in so short
a time?
yeah, but my mother checks out eight books
a month in the library large print edition
of every piece of romantic pap that you
can imagine full of erotic detail for a
95 year old woman she's ruined by the
reading pattern of a lifetime in which she
reads through the books retains nothing it's an
amusement and a moment's distraction and brings this
reading habit to the scripture gains zero because
she does not know how to dwell how
to ponder how to ruminate word for word
that this is not gone with the wind
this is wholly writ this is the word
of God to teach us how to understand
and how to live rightly and not only
to avoid judgment but to save others from
it who are totally naive and unwary and
are on a collision course not only in
time but in eternity although
he may flourish the east wind shall come
see what I've done here?
every shall is yellow marked I want it
to leap off at me from the page
shall, no if and or but it's not
a speculation it's a possibility that maybe it's
an inevitability shall come it's irrevocable you can't
fight against it be warned by the word
it shall come live now in anticipation of
that shall do now what will save you
from that blast because the word of God
says shall do you read it that way?
this is high seriousness that this is making
this the measure of all things this is
taking God's word to heart because he's not
a man that he should lie he doesn't
play with words we do words and communication
are cheap trivial but when God says something
we need to heed it and if we'll
heed God in his speaking then how much
more will we be tempered in our own
how much more will we be saved from
triviality from cheap unctuous how you doing brother
blah blah blah our words will be measured
sane significant it will be a blessing it
will be a sacrament to hear a word
coming from a saint because we know that
it will be well chosen and well spoken
because the saint by his training will avoid
anything that is trite it's a grace to
hear the word from a saint in conversation
because we have been schooled and raised up
by the Lord about the significance of speaking
words by him who is the word and
it affects everything phew well what I would
give Lord to be speaking this to a
congregation of my own people on the Shabbat
morning in their synagogue where we're blocked out
and the rabbis hold full sway who endorse
the lifestyles of their congregants because they receive
the benefit Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur is a
fashion show go into your local synagogue you
should be there and see what they come
like we in our Easter finery they in
their Yom Kippur best and all nicely what's
the word sanctimoniously endorsed as appropriate lifestyle by
the paid flunkies who give them a little
seasonal encouragement until next year so long as
they pay their dues it's a system of
lie and deception to reinforce men in their
mode of life that they have chosen independent
of God and slightly sanctified by a casual
allusion to him on high holy day occasions
where there is no solemn searching of one's
soul or being contrite before God in failure
because they have no knowledge and just to
suggest that you need to examine your lifestyle
and that is being lived independently of God
and your good deeds and your charities are
only throwing a bone to the most high
that man would be out the next day
and his $150,000 a year income with
him and whatever other benefits which by the
way bears a remarkable comparison with our own
Christianity we have flunkies of our own who
are well paid and handsomely rewarded so long
as they don't raise the questions about the
truth of our life it's a stink before
God the whole filthy system of it but
where is the cry?
where is the cry coming up out of
the earth?
where is the prophetic anguished cry of God
about this?
where is the blowing of the whistle and
the whole fraudulence of it?
that it's a mock that it's against God
and that there will be an eternal comeuppance
that there's a blast that will be coming
out of the wilderness that will be an
eternal blast and all treasure will be lost
and men will rue and lament for eternity
their misshaped misbegotten mislived lives too late to
remedy anything where's the cry?
it's a blast from the Lord oh dear
saints if we will not see in the
adverse circumstances that come to us that come
to the nation that come to the world
that come to Israel as coming from the
Lord we don't see if we don't see
God in judgment we don't see and if
we don't see God in judgment we don't
know God we have created a fiction of
our own and put the label Jesus upon
it that satisfies our own carnal hearts and
in no way is the truth of himself
unless we understand that the blast comes from
God this is the deepest respect for God
in judgment to allow that to be dismissed
as accident or the aberration of history a
Hitler who comes to power or an Arafat
or whatever as somehow not coming from God
is to do the gravest injustice to God
himself it's to say that he's not sovereign
it's to say that it's accident and caprice
that rules in life and God is somewhere
obscure he has set the thing in motion
it's ticking away but he's no way involved
or intervening or present in the history of
what takes place in his creation and with
mankind and with Israel what a slight, what
an offense to discount God as God while
seeming to pay him an honorable respect and
yet not to see him as a viable
presence in his own creation and moving it
toward his own end so if you don't
bring this perspective to the Jews of Tulsa
who will?
they surely don't have it if you don't
bring it to the church at large who
will?
for the church doesn't have it the world
is secularized it's devoid of God it's full
of its own ruminations and speculations but God
is not a consideration it's a horrendous denial
to the God who is creator and coming
king it
shall unassailable certainty from the Lord unquestionable source
humankind here's the commentary of Eugene Peterson praying
with the prophets humankind cannot hope to salvage
anything from its sin God will wipe out
both the sin and its so-called benefits
in much the same way as the dread
east wind comes out of the desert and
dries up everything in its path he says
humankind and I wrote over it that's what
Jewry is that's what Israel is why is
Israel the object in the textbook of God's
instruction for us all because it is the
summation of mankind it is the personification of
man this is man in his independent self
-will and rebellion it's an instruction for all
nations in God's dealing with that nation God
will wipe out both the sin and its
so-called benefits this is the blast from
the Lord because God is the supreme causative
agent in history believest thou this God I
wrote this in the supreme causative agent in
history not only in nations but in your
history you see God as the supreme causative
agent unless we see God like that we
do not give him the respect and acknowledgement
that is his what then is our praise
what then is our prayer what is our
so-called worship if we have not seen
God in this way it's hollow it needs
to be aided and abetted by overhead projectors
and sound equipment the praise of Israel that
knew God did not need any electronic assistance
it bellowed up it gushed it was a
testimony they knew that they knew that they
knew this is before the advent of modernity
in ancient times before there was such a
thing as evolution they knew that they knew
God is the causative agent why did God
bring Abraham from Ur of the Chaldeans to
a land of promise follow me in the
land that I will show you what was
Ur, what was Chaldea what was the whole
Mesopotamian civilization the fertile crescent fertile for what
reason rivers the mighty Euphrates and the Tigris
along which Ur was located you know those
rivers moved their banks over the course of
time so much as 10 miles those civilizations
fail he called Abraham from a land that
looked down to rivers as the source of
their economy their traffic, their commerce their civilization
to a land where there was only one
river hardly worth talking about the Jordan no
more than a glorified stream the Jabbok where
Jacob wrestled with the angel these are not
major tributaries they are only significant spiritual waterways
but you don't derive your economy from them
you don't look down for your Nile to
overflow its banks and to bring its sediment
and its riches you look up to the
heaven hence cometh your early rain and your
latter rain if you are indeed being blessed
by the God who issues it in your
covenantal faithfulness to his way you see the
radical shift for Abraham from looking down to
looking up to see God as the causative
agent for these early and latter rains are
not geophysical phenomena they are a blessing that
comes down by a God who sees a
people living in the consciousness of him and
are faithful in their covenant responsibility we've lost
that sense we've lost it we're seeding clouds
with airplanes and creating rain or trying to
assuage the lack of rain we don't see
God as causative agent this is the age
of science, modernity, man this ancient view needs
to be restored for this is very truth
and you're going to do it in your
occupation, in your field of endeavor with your
sophisticated colleagues where you'll be an anachronism you'll
stick out like the proverbial sore thumb you'll
be looked upon as freaky they'll be whispering
about you behind the water cooler he's gone
strange, he used to be a nice guy
he was a Christian but he was a
nice guy now he's so suffused with God
everything is God, God, God he sees God
in everything come on, give us a break
you become strange and indeed that's what we're
called to be strangers, pilgrims, and sojourners in
the earth if we're not strange and we're
acceptable we are out of the faith Christianity
has only become a commonplace that they can
well afford to tolerate, and even give us
tax benefit and deductions because it threatens nothing
but validates a whole system that is anti
-God and we're just a little little something
to ordain the opening of sessions of Congress
and for the candidates to say that they
believe God or that they're born again to
take this view of God as causative agent
and that he's already bringing preliminary judgments into
the earth as a forewarning of a soon
coming and final irremediable judgment that is called
Hell and that is eternal and unchanging and
fixed is to mock you as queer you're
strange, you're out of it that's why they
took believers and brought them to mental institutions
in Russia under its communist rule and gave
them shock treatments and put them in straitjackets
because they had this strange devotion to an
invisible deity didn't you know that?
it's a kind of insanity that society needs
to cure by drugs and shock treatments because
here's this stupid people in deference to an
invisible deity and living as if he's true
and as if he has spoken and has
called us to another way in opposition to
the way that is demarcated by the secular
political authorities who are in the know and
have all the marbles these people trust this
invisible God they hope in him that their
physical condition and their own well-being is
not the issue of the state but the
issue of a God that's insanity or its
highest sanity, one or the other and it's
a sanity of a kind that will save
a nation from looking to man by a
people who not only affirm that as truth
but live it as so and if it's
not so, they're willing to perish they would
rather perish in a failed God than succeed
according to a system that's been a witness
unto me oh...
Doug wasn't with me on this trip to
Russia you know what I found out?
I'm a celebrity people were falling on my
neck on the streets who have read reality
apostolic foundations, spirit of truth it changed their
lives I was telling Doug and Laurie this
morning I addressed them as a deep-souled
people it's a wood to God that your
history and your tradition as a deep-souled
people you know, when you go down into
the underground in the metro, in Moscow, in
St. Petersburg the subways are not like New
York there's no stink, there's no mess, there's
no graffiti they are places of marble and
tiles, and art, and decor, and cleanliness and
people hanging on their straps in the car
are reading hard-bound books I'm not talking
about the sport page or a little sneaky
pornography they're reading Tolstoy, Turgenev, Gogol they have
a literature, and they read it they're readers,
they're deep-souled people no wonder they responded
to my books as they did I've never
seen that kind of response in the French
edition, in the English edition but the Russian
edition they are the hope of their nation
so, you
know that line from Shakespeare from Hamlet where
the returning prince is watching the grave digger
preparing the place for Ophelia Hamlet's girlfriend, unbeknownst
to him she had committed suicide and he
comes and he sits by the graveside while
this man is digging up and they're having
one of their beautiful philosophical conversations and he
strikes a skull and it's the skull of
the old court jester Yorick, Y-O-R
-I-C-K and Hamlet holds the skull
because he had one time been bandied on
the knee of this court jester and Shakespeare
puts into his mouth this great line where
be your jibes and your gambles now where
are your jokes now where are those things
that were once so entertaining that you set
the whole court to with ripples of laughter
now it's a vapor, it's gone and here
you are, skull where are your jibes and
gambles now that's what we need to be
saying to Jews where's your prosperity now Steven
Spielberg and your dream factory and your multi
-million billion dollar corporations you're not just millionaires,
you're billionaires you're rolling in it but where
will it be one day when the blast
comes out from the wilderness in the heat
of God to bring your treasure to ruin
and you'll lose everything may God give me
the personal privilege of having Steven Spielberg come
up our muddy road in northern Minnesota in
flight from southern California and up into Canada
and down through us that I might personally
consult him and explain to him the meaning
of his present misfortune it's going to happen
saints and if it doesn't happen I'll be
surprised but we ought to live as if
we expect it to happen because that is
living that is serious living and that is
speaking the warning that's proclaiming an alert that's
setting before men the things that they need
to understand whether or not it takes place
in their generation we have every reason to
believe it will take place because this is
the end of the age are you living
like that?
do you believe this is the end?
and does your lifestyle and manner of living
express that belief?
when people are confronted by you or come
in touch with you is there something implied
by the way you conduct yourself that this
life is coming to its conclusion this age
is running down it's irrecoverable morally it's degenerate
it's becoming a Sodom and Gomorrah but I'm
looking up for my redemption the Lord is
at hand the judge is at the door
we're coming to the conclusion of the ages
and it's marked with a final apocalyptic judgment
and burning and a great heaving of nations
in a final last gasp before the new
and everlasting and enduring kingdom comes and this
is the predicate of my life this is
the foundation of all my understanding I'm only
a transient resident here I'm a pilgrim, stranger
and sojourner in this earth I'm looking for
a city whose maker and builder is God
I'm not giving you a new gospel this
is definitive faith why haven't we had it
Art?
because we haven't had prophetic men to proclaim
it to restore it to speak of these
verities that are unchanging that we might ourselves
proclaim it to the unsuspecting and the unwary
who will soon have to face this God
in a terrifying moment when he comes and
at the throne of his judgment so
I write little notes do you do that?
whenever I come to another country and there's
an interpreter and he opens his bible and
it's unmarked my heart sinks what?
an unmarked bible?
what kind of interpreter can he be?
he's never marked his bible there's never anything
that has caught his attention that he wants
to put in brackets with an asterisk and
an arrow how can you read without a
pen in your hand?
and write marginal notes like this so should
the church see and see in order to
proclaim and make known the perspective of God
to the unsuspecting and unwary Tulsa, Oklahoma 7am,
8am September 30th, year 2000 are you writing
notes?
are you commenting your margins?
are you in the scriptures on the morning
of September 30th, 2000?
do you have a morning devotional time?
when you get up early, inconveniently and look
at the scriptures for that day you're reading
the psalm for that day the chapter of
the book of Proverbs your devotional readings I've
got four devotional readings that I go through
every morning not the least of which is
Oswald Chambers, my utmost for his highest how
many people in this room have never read
Oswald Chambers, my utmost for his highest?
come on only two?
everybody else?
three get thee to a bookstore today and
demand a copy Oswald Chambers, my utmost for
his highest there is a selection every day
and what a selection I don't know of
another writer with greater depth of insight into
the subtlety and intricacies of the spiritual life
than he every morning you should be reading
what the Lord has spoken through this man
whose life was taken when he was 36
or 38 but his wife kept fastidious notes
of all his utterance it's so precious and
here's Eugene Peterson who's not dead either God
will wipe out both the sin and its
so-called benefits in much the same way
as the dread east wind comes out of
the desert and dries up everything in its
path where be your jibes and gambles then?
where's your stock market result then?
where's your hope for retirement then?
and all of the other things that have
invested a false confidence and have celebrated idols
where will it be then when that east
wind blast when that comes?
your so-called benefits are only ephemeral e
-p-h-e-m-e-r-a-l
which means momentary and subsiding everything in this
world will turn to dust or rust but
your treasure that is in heaven hey these
are not quaint little spiritual aspersions this is
truth and we ought to live as if
we believe that the things that are eternal
are the things that are abiding and that
which that you can handle and see will
be corrupted in passing Paul said I how
does he say it in first Corinthians beholding
that which is invisible and eternal makes my
present affliction both momentary and light in view
of the eternal weight of glory whew my
lord if that doesn't leave us hanging limp
on the ropes what kind of a distorted
perception of reality is that that the thing
that is invisible is eternal and that he
beholds it in such a way that it
makes his present affliction momentary and light that
he sees something with so acute an appropriation
that it affects his present condition he does
not feel pain like others it's light and
how much pain has he had to bear
much in every way because of his apostolic
suffering but he doesn't feel it it's like
Stephen the stones bounced off of him he
was hardly aware all he saw was the
heaven opened and Jesus standing by the glory
of God the father this is either madness
or this is definitive sanity that's not for
us in a final moment of martyrdom but
all our moments oh saints, saints, saints and
that's not a casual seeing that's the result
of an intention of an intense and personal
kind that looks, that puts aside the things
that are visible does not give them the
kind of credence that they think that they
command it's a false reality and you just
give it a passing acknowledgement only to the
measure that it's required but your real attention
is focused on the thing that is invisible
and eternal that's what you see and that
seeing is definitive it's a choice that needs
to be continually maintained because have we ever
lived in a civilization, in a society that
has made more of a demand upon our
natural seeing and feeling and sensibility than this
generation listen, how many people share my age
how many can remember the depression years the
little corner grocery store before the advent of
the supermarket and corridors with goods and merchandise
and foods stacked up with boxes in the
most appealing colour and attraction which men have
psychologically determined even the level of at which
level your eye is going to fall upon
it don't you understand
there's a psychology of merchandise there are men
who give their lives to studying the principles
by which human beings can be drawn to
buy, to purchase to have, to possess and
unless you're consciously aware of that and are
resisting it and touching it only in a
minimal way you're going to be sucked into
that and that will be the predicate of
your reality you will be made unable to
contemplate the things that are invisible and eternal
they'll have no meaning for you the word
eternity itself will have only a shallow faint
kind of ring if it has anything at
all it will be one of the most
idle words that can be spoken eternity?
I'll think about that when I die or
will you be thinking too late the church
that is the church takes eternity into its
profoundest consideration and it affects every consideration well
I'm so reluctant to let this text go
I want to wring it out every drop
God forbid we should miss any iota of
God's intended meaning because this is not just
a little piece of policy, this is out
of the blood sweat and tears of a
nation this is out of the tragedy of
a failed apostate Israel again and again and
again in its history whether it's 586 B
.C. and the destruction of Jerusalem where the
blood was up to the bridles of the
horses over a million were slain the whole
nation was cast into exile the loss of
the temple the holy city one of the
greatest tragedies of Jewish history or 70 A
.D. under Rome or the recent holocaust even
the article of this Romanian Jewish playwright and
what was happening in Romania in the World
War II time to Jews again and again
and again that blast has come out of
the East and will come yet again one
final time even in America wherever Jews have
enjoyed their prosperity there will be the time
of Jacob's trouble because they have not lived
as Israel they have lived as Jacob schemers
and manipulators who have not yet met God
and wrestled with him in a final night
a Jacob's trouble must come who's warning them?
who's preparing them?
who's inviting them even now to come into
the arc of safety in the Messiah who
awaits them with open arms even in the
Yom Kippur season because the making of mitzvot
the good deeds in the day of fasting
avails nothing who's pleading with them to understand
that?
and what will your reward be for your
effort?
scorn and rejection anger even hatred you're willing
to suffer that?
to suffer the misunderstanding of men?
because you can't remain silent and it's not
the issue whether you're going to succeed or
not but the issue is that you cannot
remain silent and still maintain an integrity before
God the eternal destiny compels you to play
the fool with your Jewish neighbor or acquaintance
or business associate or whosoever and if you
don't have them all the more shame on
you how is it you don't have them?
why have you not a Jewish contact?
why have you not sought it?
why have you not visited their synagogue or
their cultural institutions and prayed Lord bring me
contact you know how Richard Wurmbrand was saved?
you know who Richard Wurmbrand is?
13 years in solitary confinement the most Christ
-like figure I have ever seen in my
36 years of believing I was reminiscing the
other day I was only saved months and
back again in Oakland California back into the
teaching profession and invited to a local meeting
through a Jewish missionary I came into the
room and I panned the room and there
was my eye stopped at a man sitting
on the piano bench I couldn't go beyond
that I looked at that man I was
riveted I said that's if ever I would
see Christ this is what he's got to
look like it was Richard you know how
he got saved?
a shoemaker with a minimal education barely literate
himself a tradesman in a Transylvanian village in
Romania had one prayer before the Lord all
his believing life long Lord give me one
Jew let me be your instrument and agent
in salvation to one Jew and the Lord
brings this atheist Richard Wurmbrand to this shoemaker
and the man speaks to him about the
Lord and brings him into the reading of
the New Testament for the first time and
Richard is zapped he takes the New Testament
to a rabbi and the rabbi reads it
for the first time and he says in
Yiddish Wie schön, wie schön how beautiful, how
beautiful because of a shoemaker I've got one
photograph in my study and it's not my
natural father or any other figure like that
it's a man whom I've never met a
German man and I got the one of
two pictures from his daughter who's the historian
of the village in which this German man
lived who was kicked out of his own
state Lutheran church because of the radicalness of
his testimony and in the Hitler time Jews
used to come at night the village was
65% Jewish there's a cemetery to this
day that still exists and the daughter knows
every address of which Jew lived in what
house where the synagogue was, where the mikveh
was now occupied by Germans and when they
forbade Jews to buy anything from stores they
would come at night and he would give
them food he was himself a shoemaker but
he had a garden, he had an animal
he had milk, I don't know what he
had and he warned them to get out
while the getting is good as many as
heeded him fled and their lives were saved
as many as disregarded him perished you ought
to see this portrait of this man talk
about a visible saint how many times was
he interrogated by the Gestapo as Basilea Schlinck
herself was and they never laid a hand
on him it's the one picture that I
have in that room of the man so
God can use a shoemaker and in fact
that's the reason for your existence as the
church you shall be a witness unto me
you shall move them to jealousy by your
mercy they may extend mercy it's the mystery
of God to raise up a church of
an essential gentile kind to be to them
the testimony of their God that in seeing
you they would be moved to jealousy and
realize what they have forfeited by their ersatz,
synthetic and artificial rabbinical religion or secular pursuit
because they see in you the reality of
their God that's all I got saved since
you never had a more rabid anti-christian
than this guy was you would have avoided
me at a hundred yards angry because I
saw the holocaust as being a christian crime
but the Lord put them in my path
precious, transparent guileless saints girls high school graduates
with no credential of an intellectual kind that
would be of interest to me that I
should have turned on my heel and walked
away in contempt but I could not there
was something magnetic something I couldn't identify that
came through this transparency this guilelessness, this innocence
the willingness even to walk with me with
a pack on my back hitchhiking through Europe
34 years old looking for philosophical answers and
I meet this little girl on vacation in
Switzerland who had graduated from the midwest some
place a wasp, white anglo-saxon protestant the
deadliest kind that a jew could ever encounter
but something about that girl and she's walking
with me and I'm probing her motives hey,
what are you doing this?
aren't you afraid of me?
no, she said it's the love of God
how come you're being kind?
it's the love of God every question is
the love of God, the love of God
what are you trying to do, drive me
up a tree?
I can't stand this God talk it's cheap
so this kid mentions God one more time
she's had it she engaged Christians in debate
and wiped them out and sure enough she
mentions God again how could she not?
I said, ok kid, look you sweet girl
that I can't stand this God talk answer
me the one question that no Christian has
ever been able successfully to answer you're talking
about God how do you know that he
is?
got her now what is she going to
tell me?
some little thing that she's learned in Sunday
school?
I've got my steam engine rolled up no
hesitation this little snub-nosed, freckled-faced, sandy
-haired thing she said Archie said I know
that God is he lives in me and
down went the ox boom, one blow that
one statement and I was crunched lives in
me and I thought I don't know how
long it took me to recover what hit
me it wasn't even theological let alone intellectual
anyone can say I know God, he lives
in me what's the power?
the power was, it was true and she
had the face to prove it and when
we Jews see that in a snub-nosed,
freckled, sandy-haired gentile face we're finished it's
unarguable it's the ultimate testimony of the reality
of that our God lives because look so
here I am, 36 years later because of
that little girl and many have benefited in
Africa, Indonesia, in Singapore in Egypt, in Israel
all over the world, Scandinavia you name it
and I've been there in behalf of the
Lord who saved me through a gentile face
so Lord, precious God on high may
the Jews coming out of their synagogues today
who think that they have done you service
have filled the religious requirement once a year
who have a solemn and religious piety for
the moment on their faces see a face
of another kind bring them somewhere my God
in collision with a saint who knows you
and can make you known not because they're
sophisticated because they have all answers but because
they are what they are by the grace
of God because they've made you first and
foremost because you've heard their prayer Lord give
me a Jew mercy precious God Lord how
many Yom Kippur's have we left before the
bottom falls out before that east wind blows
how long will it take before their treasure
is dried up and that suddenly and no
one has pronounced a warning no one spoke
of judgments to come that are the very
grace of God grant
us grace my God to be a prophetic
church a statement in our community of how
to read reality how to understand history how
to see the scripture as just a little
bit more than a Sunday adornment the flippant
thing that we can go through in a
moment how to get into it and how
for it to get into us to change
us to see as you see so that
we might proclaim as you would proclaim to
those who would otherwise perish unwary and unsuspecting
victims when the east wind when the blast
comes not knowing what hit them and not
even any expectation that that very storm is
brewing now oh
precious God Lord thank you Lord help us
break us up in our deeps my God
show us how defunct we have been how
time serving and convenient our present Christianity is
how content we were to go along and
enjoy our services and not to in any
way constitute a threat to the status quo
because we are not threatened so I pray
for my brother at the water cooler in
the office in the place of business or
profession wherever these children are placed strategically by
you in the neighborhood where there is life
and death issues to be propounded that they
will not withhold that they will be willing
to be Christ's fool willing to be misunderstood
willing to bear reproach willing to be looked
upon as strange even to the point where
it threatens their own security because the time
is short and they're living as if they
believe that and if they should lose their
present position and security because of this radical
obedience to you they'll learn by faith that
that doesn't preclude a source of another kind
and they're willing to have their lifestyle altered
so we bless you Lord we're privileged people
you don't talk like this to everybody we
even prayed this morning that you would address
us as sons and daughters that you would
give us your deepest heart on this Rosh
Hashanah Yom Kippur season that we would hear
from your heart what where your heart is
what is your present ache and we thank
you for the privilege of it Lord God
forbid we should dab at our eyes and
go back to life as usual afterwards but
that being a proper people who have been
addressed by the Lord and given the privilege
of hearing his heart would say what would
you have for me to do how might
I factor this in how is this to
be understood in my daily life what now
Lord how do I go from what do
I do with this if you can use
a shoemaker how will you use me I
want to be used I don't want to
be embarrassed in the day of eternity that
I live beneath the high privilege of God
in Christ and have not much to show
for my days I've never led anybody to
the Lord I've never challenged anybody to ask
me what's with you I've been a nice
guy I'm one of the boys I've had
all this and Christianity too help us to
live our present life in the light of
eternity that we need not fear your coming
as retribution and as judgment for a failed
Christian life but a joyous anticipation that when
you come you bring your rewards with you
and give to each man according to his
labors let there be labors by God issued
and released because of this morning because of
this time of visitation that would not have
taken place if you had not taken the
initiative to shake us and to call us
to reality in the light of eternity thank
you Lord put a seal on this let
it be fruitful this is a small congregation
this morning let others be affected break the
heart of your church my God your church
in Oklahoma your self-satisfied church that counts
its blessings its little institution its nomenclature its
particular pet perspective and theory and doctrine whatsoever
that they think is their distinction come my
God let your voice be heard in the
earth your testimony go forth through a people
thank you my God break our hearts for
the Israel in our midst whom we have
allowed to languish in their ignorance and patted
them on the back and paid them compliments
of a deceptive kind and have not told
them the truth of their condition that there
is no man good no not one we've
been cowards we've been afraid my God of
their reproach but we have not been afraid
to disappoint you so before these days are
out even these very days Lord let something
go forth to the Jewish community in Tulsa
that would not otherwise have taken place if
you had not spoken let something happen at
the campus there at the State University of
Oklahoma at Stillwater before Jewish intellectuals and faculty
members and orthodox Jews and unsuspecting secular kids
because somewhere in Tulsa in those days a
travail of birth was taking place among believers
who were willing for the inconvenience and the
pain of it because they knew eternity is
at stake that art is not going in
his little ability as if he's got a
handle on something he's being borne up by
the prayers of the saints that know he's
on a headlong collision with powers of darkness
that if they could they would chew him
up and spit him out that there's a
struggle a conflict of an ultimate kind between
kingdoms that the university campus is itself a
worldly stronghold powerful in pride intellectual pride that
needs to be penetrated by the poles of
our generation in Mars Hill encounter because they're
sent and buoyed and sustained by the prayers
of saints who know thank you Lord we
bless you for this morning you're taking us
by surprise we don't know how to go
further maybe we should not go further we
just call upon you even ourselves repentantly for
our failed Christianity for our shortcomings thank
you Lord