I've really been looking to the Lord for
the perfect choice concluding word, and He's not
given it to me with a ringing certitude,
and kept me suspended in the evening hours
as I looked to Him for this, but
I think this is it.
I was just musing as I was sitting
in a chair, My Lord, I thank You,
Lord, for speaking anything through this ignorant man.
I just marveled at my ignorance and my
ineptitude.
You would be stunned if you ever really
knew the extent of it.
Great, glaring gaps in my theological understanding.
I don't think I could put two doctrines
together.
I was a lot more clever as an
atheist than I am as a believer.
God has controverted the whole character of my
life.
Would never dream ever to have entered a
high school classroom without being prepared to the
teeth.
Charts, diagrams, questions, preparations yea long.
A real student, a real scholar, a real
studier, a real preparer, and now everything has
just been turned topsy-turvy.
Of the moment, in weakness, in ineptness, in
ignorance, believe in God.
I hope you're not tired of that, and
I hope you're not thinking that this is
just my little pat way of beginning a
message.
But you've got to be persuaded and convinced
about the resurrection of Christ, that we might
all come with one voice to say with
our brother Paul, For me to live is
Christ.
And if we compliment him one more time,
and think that it was his Jewish ingenuity,
his natural courage, his endowments of brilliance, or
any such thing that accounts for half the
New Testament, or the establishing of the church
in the ancient world, or countering Jews in
the synagogues, we have wholly missed the glory
of God.
He was a man who eminently counted all
things as dung.
He meant all things.
He meant every natural endowment.
He meant his brilliance, his intelligence, his rabbinical
upbringing, his all.
I want you to turn with me to
John the 11th chapter, a little episode which
I have not begun to understand till now.
I think God is reserving some of these
episodes till now.
John the 11th chapter, reading from the Amplified.
Now a certain man named Lazarus was ill.
He was of Bethany, the village where Mary
and her sister Martha lived.
This Mary was the one who anointed the
Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with
her hair.
It was her brother Lazarus who was now
sick.
So the sister sent to him, saying, Lord,
he whom you love so well is sick.
When Jesus received the message, he said, This
sickness is not to end in death, but
on the contrary, it is to honor God
and to promote his glory, that the Son
of God may be glorified through it.
Hallelujah.
When we sang tonight, To God be the
glory, I could barely contain myself.
This sickness is not to end in death,
but on the contrary, it is to honor
God and to promote his glory, that the
Son of God may be glorified through it.
Let's pray together.
Precious Holy God, this weakness, this ineptness, and
this ignorance, precious Lord, this zero, null, nothing,
may it be to promote the glory of
God and to honor the Son.
May everything, precious God, that comes out of
our mouths and from our hands and bodies
and lives be only to promote the honor
and the glory of God.
Bless, precious God, now the breaking of this
word.
Be yourself the expositor, precious God.
And by your great spirit, teach us the
eternal, powerful, central truth of resurrection, that we
might live by it to promote the glory
of God.
Seal now this final speaking according to your
own pleasure and will.
To God be the glory.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and
Lazarus.
They were his dear friends and he held
them in loving esteem.
Therefore, even when he heard that Lazarus was
sick, he still stayed two days longer in
the same place where he was.
To steal a phrase from my wife, how
do you like them apples?
How many of us facing the same situation,
a dearly beloved friend, sick unto death?
Therefore, because he is dearly beloved, we would
remain two days longer where we are.
I'll tell you, children, that it contradicts every
evangelical rule.
It staggers the mind even of unbelieving mankind.
It has not a shred of anything that
resembles normal kindness and humane consideration.
It contradicts, it boggles the mind of the
world and it must have astounded also the
disciples of Christ.
Therefore, he stayed two days longer where he
was because he loved her.
I wonder how many of us would have
been Johnny on the spot.
Aren't we always?
There's a need, bang, we're there to meet
it.
Ready to lay on hands, ready to pray,
a storm.
We will not tolerate sickness for a moment.
We know our kingdom rights, right?
Right.
I told your brother Bob that he doesn't
have much tolerance for mystery.
He's precious, sound, absolutely fundamental and right on.
I've never heard a thing from his mouth
that could ever be questioned.
I approve of this life entirely.
In fact, I just might as well interject
so long as I'm on the subject that
God has really done something in my heart
in this short time here, in this trip.
I really feel an enormous bond, a real
welding together.
I think it's more than the kind of
thing that an occasional speaker feels passing through.
You've learned to accept my peculiarity and I've
learned to love and admire, deeply esteem what
God is working in you.
And I think that we need each other
in the wisdom of God and somehow I
think he's going to use us together for
purposes that lie ahead.
Hallelujah.
But I'm the one who has a real
love for mystery.
I love the word, mmm, yummy.
This guy's all nuts and bolts, right on.
Hallelujah, we need it.
But I'll tell you there are times and
there shall be increasingly such times in the
days ahead when God may surprise us all.
He just may pull a little something that
is not in the evangelical rule book.
It just may seem even to contradict his
word and his way but of course nothing
ultimately contradicts it.
We're going to glimpse things, children, that are
going to stagger us and I'll pray that
in the body God will have sown here
and there those who have a reverence and
a hush and a certain kind of peculiar
affinity for the mysteries of God, the peculiar,
unusual, unconventional dealings.
I think that the greatest glories are going
to come from that.
We certainly need deeply to be grounded in
the basic truths of God, know and appreciate
and stand upon our kingdom rights.
But I'll tell you that there shall be
certain sicknesses coming that are not to be
prayed for that shall promote the glory of
God.
I hope Bob won't be around when they
surface.
He would have been the first to rush
and lay on hands and demand.
Children, you know what we're describing here?
In this high priest, above all high priests,
what perfect and impeccable obedience to God the
Father means.
How would you like to know that within
a stone's throw, within reach, is one lying
on a sick bed, saturating the sheets with
his sweat, his moans and groans permeate the
air, his face has a pallor nigh unto
death.
To be sick is a wretched condition.
It is utterly and totally discouraging.
It's a form of very death itself and
if it is carried to its ultimate logic,
it is death.
We know what it means to have a
sick headache.
You're dying!
What would you say then if you knew
that there was a friend languishing in this
condition and he was within access and reach,
barely crossed the river and you did not
go to help him.
You remained yet two days longer where you
are and you allowed your friend to languish
unto death.
Some friend, huh?
The scripture doesn't say it but I have
a little sneaky suspicion of the kinds of
thoughts that must have coursed through the minds
of Jesus' disciples.
Maybe there were a few murmurs and whispers
and a few looks, one to the other,
that they could read.
Hey, if the master goes now to Bethany,
he's had it.
Man, he came within inches of getting stoned
the last time and if he goes this
time, he's a dead duck.
No wonder he's remaining two days longer where
he is.
Chicken.
Moral coward.
Preserving his own skin and allowing his friend
to die.
You know what priesthood means, children, in the
last analysis?
Impeccable and unswerving obedience to God.
Not only when the world shall not understand
you but even God's people.
And not God's people only, general rank and
file, but the most intimate, close, trusted, dear
and esteemed friends.
Except there's a man who'll stand at the
Lord's side and put his sword on his
side and go in and out of the
camp and slay everyone, his neighbor and his
friend and his brother.
He's not yet God's consecrated priest.
Jesus had to run the risk of wholly
offending, if not alienating, men in whom he
had invested three and a half years of
his life.
They may have been totally disappointed in what
seemed to them the moral cowardice of their
master but he didn't offer them a shred
of explanation and he didn't give it to
Lazarus either.
I can just see when Mary and Martha
came into that sick room to look at
this man writhing in his discomfort, hot and
cold spells, the stamp of death already on
his person, looking up at them with expectancy,
have the master come?
Making their little excuses and under their breath
and snorting and trying somehow to pacify him.
Well, we've told him that the message has
gone out.
He'll be here momentarily hanging on to a
thin thread of hope as death approaches.
Expiring, gasping, sucking for air and the master
never arrived.
Jesus allowed him to die without an explanation.
He was a friend of Lazarus and he
loved him dearly.
You know what I suspect?
That it worked both ways and Lazarus was
a friend of Jesus and he loved him
dearly.
And what do the scriptures say about a
friend?
What love is willing to lay down your
life for a friend?
I wonder if Lazarus died in a terribly
agitated condition.
I wonder if he groaned and moaned and
excruciated and beat his chest and cried out
to a God who had forsaken him and
a friend who had forsaken him.
I wonder if he died at rest.
Interesting when they finally left and went in
the direction of Bethany after that interval in
the perfect timing of God.
Perfect.
I wonder if they understood what Jesus meant
when he said in the 11th verse, Our
friend Lazarus is at rest and sleeping but
I am going there that I may awaken
him out of his sleep.
I guess a friend of Jesus in the
last analysis is one who can die without
explanation.
I'll tell you that God is doing less
and less explaining for me.
More and more inexplicable dealings of God.
Half the time this afternoon spent with Bob
was a discussion of why we are in
Minnesota, what we're doing there.
It seems illogical and unrelated to my calling
and try as I could, I don't know
how well I communicated what I thought God's
purposes were.
And I'll tell you it's only recently that
I have first begun to glimmer what are
the purposes of God in our being there
and it is now almost a year.
My wife has bucked like a bronco leaving
her 17-room house in New Jersey.
Her bric-a-brac and all the things
that she loves and are dear to her
feminine heart.
Those in the ministries to the Jews have
given us dirty looks and there's a little
underground murmur going around that Katz has copped
out and has left from where the action
is and playing Boy Scout games in the
sticks and God has not given me explanation.
And I'll tell you what children, I'm expecting
in the end times that we should not
expect explanation.
I can't think of a condition where devoutly
to be desired so to love Jesus, so
to be his friend that we could languish
and be sick and be tried unto death
without an explanation and still be at rest
sleeping.
Jesus said, for your sake I'm glad that
I was not there in the 15th verse.
It will help you to believe, to trust
and rely on me.
However, let us go to him.
And as they came in the 21st verse,
Martha said to Jesus as he approached the
town of Bethany, she came running, if you
had been here my brother would not have
died and even now I know that whatever
you ask from God he will grant it
to you.
And Jesus said, your brother shall rise again
and Martha replied, I know that he will
rise again at the resurrection on the last
day.
Jesus said to her, I am myself the
resurrection and the life.
Whoever believes and adheres to and trusts and
relies on me, although he may die, yet
shall he live.
And whoever continues to live and believes, has
faith in and cleaves to and relies on
me, shall never actually die at all.
Do you believe this?
It might be a question that the same
Lord should also address to us because so
many of us are like Martha's.
We don't even wait for him to come,
we're running to meet him halfway.
And the first words out of our mouth,
although it seems a question, is really an
accusation and an insinuation.
If you had been here, my brother would
not have died.
Don't you believe in the resurrection?
Sure I believe in the resurrection on the
last day.
Pert, right, correct, full of right on doctrine.
But I tell you children, that there's believing
and believing.
There may come a moment in our lives
that parallels something that saints like Richard Wurmbrandt
and others have experienced.
Prison camps, solitary confinement, torture, psychological and physical,
where a man who was once a theologian
and had written books on doctrine, in the
midst of his duress, could not remember a
single doctrine, couldn't quote a single scripture, forgot
every hymn that had ever been sung, and
clung to his sanity by the thinnest strand
of connection to the living God.
You believe that man could be brought to
such a condition?
I can't think of anything that has been
made a greater mock than faith itself.
Every great word has suffered abuse in our
generation, none more so than faith itself.
Can you think of a more cruel phrase
than the three great faiths?
What a bunch of hokum.
What a bunch of nonsense.
Three great religious establishments, maybe, but it hasn't
got a cotton-picking thing to do with
real faith.
And even the word in the minds of
most believers has got to do with giving
assent to certain doctrines.
But is there a faith that will enable
us never to die?
You read the conclusion of every gospel in
the scriptures and you'll see the staggering condition
of the unbelief of the disciples themselves about
the resurrection of Christ.
They locked themselves in behind closed doors, they
were affrighted and they were terrified when they
saw him, and thought that they had seen
a ghost.
And they would not believe the women who
had seen him when he arose from the
dead and thought that they were hearing old
wives' tales.
And it says in another gospel that when
he came, they saw him, but they believed
yet not unto joy.
There's believing and believing.
Our belief has never really been tested in
the resurrection.
We have given assent to it, as have
thousands and millions before us, generation for generation.
But I'll tell you that our generation shall
be sorely tested on this point.
Do you believe this, that if you cleave
to me and trust, you shall never see
death?
I don't know about you children, but I
have no intention of ever seeing death.
I'm not making any provision for it.
I'm not expecting to grow old gracefully.
I'm not expecting to diminish in activity.
I'll tell you what, 12 years ago, life
came into me that is both abundant and
eternal.
I am never expecting to see death or
to make any provision for it.
He's the life of my life.
And what could be more pitiable than us
who believe and cast ourselves upon him, believing
that in moments, excruciating and fearful moments, beyond
our wisdom, beyond our strength, beyond our expertise,
beyond our knowledge, beyond our experience, that if
he not be the resurrected Christ, in whom
is the fullness of God, the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge, we perish.
Would you believe that?
Yes, I believe that there's a resurrection on
the last day.
You want to know something, children?
There's not another chapter in the Bible that
contains the verse, Jesus wept.
Aside from the description of Gethsemane, there's not
another place in the New Testament accounts that
describe the anguish of spirit of Jesus as
in this chapter.
Look at the 33rd verse.
When Jesus saw her sobbing, and the Jews
who came with her also sobbing, he was
deeply moved in spirit and troubled.
He chafed in spirit and sighed and was
disturbed.
And he said, Where have you laid him?
And they said to him, Lord, come and
see.
Jesus wept.
And the Jews said, See how tenderly he
loved him.
But some of them said, Could not he
who opened the blind man's eyes have prevented
this man from dying?
And Jesus again, sighing repeatedly and deeply disquieted,
approached the tomb.
I have never before understood this.
And I think I'm only at the beginning
of understandings.
And I want to study and understand and
have revelation of any scriptures that have to
do with the Lord of glory, the Holy
One of Israel, being deeply disquieted and being
chafed in his spirit and weeping.
I'll tell you children, it breaks my heart.
I can't stand to consider it.
And if there's anything that's keeping me straight
and on the straight and narrow with the
Lord, it's the fear that I might ever
offend his precious heart and cause him sorrow.
And there's a fellowship on earth so deeply
impressed with this sense.
It's the same one that I described the
other day.
The Sisters of Mary in Germany.
You know they have a peculiar notion that
Jesus sorrows still.
They have a peculiar notion that he grieves
still.
They have a foolish understanding that he weeps
still.
That when he looks down upon his people
and he's in the midst of them, he
is still chafed in the spirit and disquieted.
And I think it is for essentially the
same reasons.
People were having a good old winging of
a slobbery mash over the death, the premature
death of a young man.
A whole crowd of Jews were there sobbing
and watching Mary and Martha and following them
to the tomb for the great finale.
There's something about human nature that loves a
good cry.
There was no TV in those days, no
amusement.
And what could be richer and schmaltzier than
coming to the funeral of a young man
taken prematurely.
Oh, they were waiting for the emotional climax.
Maybe the two sisters would break down and
sob and cast themselves upon the stone that
covered his tomb.
They were making a whole lament about death.
Couldn't this man who opened the blind man's
eyes have prevented this one from dying?
Jesus wept.
Let me ask you, what in heaven's name
is so calamitous about dying anyway?
What's the whole shmear about?
What's all this wailing and bemoaning and beating
one's breast and clutching hair if you had
been here?
Lord, if you had been here.
But let me ask you a question.
If he is Lord, what cotton-picking difference
does it make where he was?
No wonder Jesus said about a Gentile man
who said, Master, my servant lies sick, but
I'm not worthy that you should come under
my roof.
Merely speak the word and it shall be
sufficient.
And Jesus turned to the Jews who were
about him and said, I have not found
so great a faith in all Israel.
How many of you have felt abandoned, sick
unto death, where is the Lord?
The clock is ticking away and he doesn't
come like Sir Galahad to your rescue.
He allows you to die.
But this is for the glory of God.
Would you do it?
Would you trust him?
Would you rest and be at peace and
sleep?
Or would you rather murmur and say, if
you had been here, how come you allowed
me to suffer this with my wife?
How come this breakdown in our marriage?
How come this excruciating condition?
How come this thing in my body?
How come this inexplicable sickness?
How come the loss of my fortune?
How come you made me look like an
ass and a failure and a nincompoop before
your people and I choked and stammered and
had not a clever word to speak and
there was no anointing and no unction?
How come when we went to City College
in New York and 85% Jewish in
that first gospel outreach, which you yourself had
called us to months before when the Spirit
of God came down and we wept like
babies when we met with the InterVarsity kids
and knew that God was calling us to
the first penetration of the Jewish mainstream, how
come when that day came after months of
prayer and fasting and every sacrifice and every
preparation, when we came into that crowded room
that crackled with resentment and bitterness and anger
by Jews with their yarmulkes on their heads
and their Van Dyck beards looking and shooting
daggers at us with their eyes, how come
when you allowed us to come with expectancy
that you were going to speak with unction
and power as you did at Harvard University
and stunned men who came to jeer and
make sport and left them silent in their
seats, how come you didn't do it before
your own Jewish kinsmen to whom you had
called us?
How come when we opened our mouths the
most lame, inept, pathetic dribble fell to the
ground?
How come there wasn't a smidgen of unction
on it whatsoever?
How come I knew I was a dead
duck from the moment I opened my mouth
and that there was no remedy for it
and I had only to press on and
persevere and suffer it?
How come?
If you had been here, how come you
allowed me to experience that unspeakable mortification and
shame when the moment that I finished my
pathetic and lame remarks that Jewish rabbi got
up and tore me to shreds and made
me to look like an ignoramus and a
jackass coming with a King James Bible, a
Gentile Bible and try to persuade Jews of
medieval myths and old wives' tales that have
cost them in bloodshed and smashed children's skulls
in European ghettos for all these centuries?
How come?
How come when that rabbi stormed out and
slammed the door in the room, shook with
the power of that man's personality that you
allowed other Jews to get up and continue
where he left off, that raked the flesh
right off my bones?
How come?
And how come, Lord, that when it was
all over, the most agonizing afternoon of my
life, suffering the abuse of my own people
who told me that I was worse than
Hitler because Hitler only wanted their bodies and
I was seeking to steal their souls?
Who looked at me with venomous anger and
bitterness and hatred in their faces?
How come, Lord, that the worst and the
most cruel blow of all, the most cutting
and killing, was to have to look in
the faces of my Christian colleagues and see
their terrible disappointment?
How come, Lord, that I could read so
clearly what their faces said?
Cats, we thought you were an anointed vessel.
Cats, we had heard about Harvard.
We thought you were going to really speak
to this people, your own people.
What's the matter, buddy?
Don't you know how to pray?
Got secret sin in your life?
Couldn't you fast?
How come, Lord, I had to see their
faces and feel the spikes driven into my
spiritual life and I could not answer them
a word?
How come, Lord, you let me lay like
a dead dog for three weeks in my
house in New York and not able to
lift my head and lick my wounds like
a cur?
How come that you didn't speak from heaven
and say, this is my beloved son in
whom I'm well pleased?
How come you didn't give me a little
pat on the head and say, well done,
faithful servant?
If you had been there, Lord, I would
not have died.
And you know what I know now, children?
He was there all the while.
Always is.
He'll never leave us nor forsake us.
Our dear brother got up earlier this morning
after the morning session and gave you a
word of explanation, lest you be disquieted and
chafed in your spirit.
And it was a good word, solid, needful.
What was the issue I've forgotten now?
Remind me, what was it?
Mental illness and we have victory in Jesus
and we have a sound mind, right?
And that's true.
Hard to believe that God would ever allow
vexation in the life of a believer.
Disquiet, chafed spirit to such a degree that
a woman would almost seem to have lost
her marbles and suffer the unspeakable reproach of
having to be brought to the office of
a worldly psychiatrist.
And there while the spittle was forming at
the corners of her mouth and she could
not even give a coherent statement, something broke
and the whole thing lifted.
And she was perfectly sound and witnessed to
that doctor the marvel that was performed right
before his eyes.
How come, Lord?
How come, Lord, that night in Monroe, Louisiana,
the last of three nights of meetings, those
fierce speakings in which I prophesied that the
audience would decline night by night and grow
smaller and that was fulfilled.
How come that last day, Lord, I started
to feel sad in the afternoon and as
it came later toward the evening I was
sadder and sadder still?
How come I chafed in my spirit and
was disquieted and I had no explanation?
How come that when I came to the
meeting and the worship was already taking place
and people were happy and having a great
time in the Lord, how come that I
was going down, down, down rather than up,
up, up?
How come that when I came to the
platform to begin to speak that I was
practically doubled over as if I had been
punched in the solar plexus and gasping and
sucking for air, choked and spluttering?
And how come that man leaped up and
gave that prophetic word that you had something
to speak that night that was not pleasant
to hear let alone to deliver and that
that word just crushed me and I just
poured out like water wondering if I would
ever collect myself together sufficiently to speak?
And how come, Lord, that when that heavy
word finally went forth and the invitation came
that that dwindling audience lifted up quietly their
little theater seats and went down on their
knees on the concrete floor in a commitment
unto death that the sadness broke and lifted
and there was joy unspeakable?
How come?
This sickness is not unto death.
This is to promote the glory of God.
And we saw just how much sacrifice earlier
today, how much shedding of blood, how much
copious flowing of life, how much hat to
pieces sacrifice, how much blood and gore stupefied
priests were required, how much excruciating waiting before
the glory of God fell.
Children, you want to see the glory of
God at the end of the age?
It's going to require inexplicable things from us
in which He will not explain, in which
you're going to feel abandoned of the Lord.
If you had been here, I pray in
that day, we'll not be like Mary and
Martha, calling Him Lord and not understanding the
fullness of that word, upbraiding Him and reprimanding
Him for failing to be there because He
did not act in accordance with our anticipation
and left us to inexplicably suffer and die.
In the 40th verse, Jesus said to her,
Did I not tell you and promise you
that if you will believe and rely on
Me, you should see the glory of God?
In the previous verse, He said, Take away
the stone.
And Martha, the sister of the dead man,
exclaimed, But Lord, by this time He is
decaying and throws off an offensive odor for
He has been dead four days.
He stinketh, I think it says in King
James.
Someone who knows something about physiology said to
me that up to three days, by the
use of chemicals and expertise, a body can
be essentially preserved.
But on the fourth day, no matter what
the chemicals, no matter what the technique, the
processes of dissolution and corruption set in.
The body becomes absolutely corrupt and is on
the verge of dissolving.
He stinketh.
You know what, children?
The Father only required from Jesus three days
in death.
But somehow something was required from Lazarus that
was extra.
And I looked up what the name Lazarus
means.
You'll never believe it in Hebrew.
It means helpless.
You very rarely find a Jewish man like
that.
We're a bunch of big knockers, I'll have
you know.
We've been around and we've got the university
degrees and diplomas and certificates from B'nai
B'rith to prove it.
You'll very rarely ever find a helpless Jew.
And you know what I think?
It was a man willing to be helpless
in sickness unto death to promote the glory
of God.
You know what I was saying to the
Lord as I sat there tonight?
I said, for crying out loud, something like
that, couldn't I just finish these few days
with a little vim and vigor?
Couldn't I just give it a little razzmatazz
and just delight the cockles of Bob's heart?
End on a positive note.
Why must I feel so weary and enervated
and emptied and blah and uninspired and inept
and stupid and ignorant?
Because I've called you to be helpless.
It promotes my glory.
That's why.
But Lord, I was a big knocker as
an atheist.
Man, I used to be slapped on the
back and chaired through the marketplace.
I had it all together.
That was the way of the world.
This is the way of the kingdom.
By now he stinketh.
Can you see Lazarus in that tomb?
He died without explanation and he went into
death with consciousness still intact.
But he was a well-informed Jewish man
and he knew that three is the length
of time before resurrection.
And I can just see him in that
last day watching the clock, so to speak.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
Two days and eleven hours and fifty minutes
in the tomb.
Ten more minutes to go and surely he
shall hear that voice.
Deep calling unto deep and he shall be
released from the bonds of death.
Nine minutes to go.
Eight minutes to go.
Seven minutes to go.
Just like a guy I described to you
earlier today waiting to be called on to
speak, clutching his Bible in his hands hoping
by osmosis something would come through the covers.
Listen, children.
Every act of true service unto God is
unto death or it's not true service.
Real prayer is dying.
Fasting is dying.
Real service is dying.
Real witness is dying.
Are you talking about the cessation of consciousness?
No.
I'm talking about the suffering.
I'm talking about the excruciatingness of it.
I'm talking about languishing.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
Waiting for life to come and it does
not.
One minute to go.
Clutching to the last shred of faith.
Sixty seconds.
Forty-five.
Thirty.
Fifteen.
Ten.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Zero.
Doomed to eternal confinement in the tomb until
that day.
God in his wisdom allowed Lazarus to languish
beyond three days more than was required of
the Lord himself.
You know what somebody said to Richard von
Braun in one of those communist prison camps?
When he was told to be patient and
to endure the sufferings, he said, I have
suffered more than Christ.
Jesus never had to make communion with urine
and human excretion.
Dear children, are you listening to the Spirit
of God?
I tell you that there shall be some
among us in this room that shall face
a day when we shall think ourselves so
abandoned of God.
There shall not be a smidgen of conscious
presence.
There shall not be an encouragement of any
kind.
Things shall be required of us without explanation.
We shall be to the end of the
limits of our faith, our experience, our knowledge
to promote the glory of God.
And I'll tell you that I have a
suspicion that in that day God is going
to remind you of this foolish message.
This is an end-time message which I
have never understood before this.
So they took away the stone and Jesus
lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I
thank you that you have heard me.
Yes, I know you're always here and listen
to me, but I have said this on
account of and for the benefit of the
people standing around so that they may believe
you did send me, that you may believe
me your messenger.
And when he had said this, he cried
with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.
And out walked the man who had been
dead, his hands and feet wrapped in burial
clothes and with a burial napkin bound around
his face.
And Jesus said to them, Free him of
the burial wrappings and let him go.
Upon seeing what Jesus had done, many of
the Jews who had come with Mary believed
on him.
They trusted in him and adhered to him
and relied on him.
I'll bet more Jews were saved that day
by the coming forth of a stinking corpse
than have been saved before or since by
all the ingenuity of Jewish missions, methodologies, techniques,
literature distribution, rallies and every such thing.
He didn't speak a word.
He didn't have a message.
He didn't witness verbally.
He didn't proclaim anything.
He simply went deep cold unto deep out
of the bowels of death, came forth.
He was willing to be buried with his
hands and his feet and his face wrapped
in burial cloths.
Phew!
I can't stand to be confined.
I'm claustrophobic.
I can't stand congestion.
How would you like to be put in
a constricted place?
How would you like your life to be
brought into a winter of decline and contraction?
I had one of the greatest secretaries going.
She still is.
Those who know her will acknowledge.
She was a superb, charismatic saint.
The ultimate in secretaries.
Efficient, mature, deep, tremendous prayer warrior.
She was heads and shoulders just about over
every saint you would know.
But she told me one day, Ott, the
Lord is calling me to leave you.
You're the heart of the operation.
Everything revolves around you, that office, the concern
for the family, your maturity, your strength, your
support, your encouragement.
The Lord called her to Germany to a
German pietistic fellowship that you can't believe.
Talk about discipline.
She's the one who gets up now at
5.30 in the morning and works all
the day long in the laundry.
A girl with exquisite gifts.
Man, if they knew what they had there,
they would get her out of that sweatshop
at once and put her behind a typewriter
or have her write music or play the
guitar or sing or teach every day in
the laundry.
She can't even converse because she's living in
a land whose language she does not know.
She doesn't have a free moment day and
night.
She's under supervision or in relationship with other
women.
And she's a former Catholic and she can't
stand liturgical religion.
She loves that wonderful freedom of charismatic worship.
But three times a day at the prescribed
hour, they have certain kinds of prescribed Lutheran
-type worship.
It's so Catholic, it makes her sick.
God has cut her off at the pass
and there's no place to run.
She said, I can't even get a chocolate
bar.
Talk about the ultimate indignity.
She's a girl who loved to go out
for a Chinese meal or a hamburger even.
You know when the pressure gets tough and
the tensions, you can always go out on
the town for something.
Wholly constricted, she's in the crunch of God.
And when I saw her last, she was
a glory.
You know what I suspect, children?
God is going to be cutting many of
us off at the pass.
You know what she said, Art, for the
first time I realized that that chocolate bar
and the opportunity to go out for a
Chinese meal when I wanted to was a
form of escapism.
And now that my life has been contracted
and bound in with Him, she said, I'm
writhing and screaming.
It's like coming off of drugs.
It's like withdrawal.
I did not realize to what extent I
was attuned to the world and its blandishments
and pleasures.
She didn't have to go there.
She had a choice to go also to
the Sisters of Mary and she loved it
much better.
I told you how beautiful their worship is
and those women are of a much different
kind, much more free, much more spontaneous, much
more evangelical.
The community where she is now is contemplative.
She had a choice of two things and
she chose the thing least pleasing to her
own flesh and felt that that was God's
will for her.
And she's been in a virtual tomb all
these months.
How many of us would be willing so
to do?
By now he stinketh it's the fourth day.
Hey, Kat, shouldn't you be in New York
where the action is?
I'll tell you, children, there's a reproach even
in the nostrils of Christians where if you'll
submit yourself to the contraction of God, willing
to be closed in with Him, you'll stink
in the nostrils of many.
How would you like to be bound up
in your hands and your feet and your
head?
Can't go where you want?
Can't do what you want?
Can't speak what you want?
Waiting incessantly, patiently for the calling forth of
that one who is the Lord of all,
that that would promote his glory.
And when that call came and he was
loosed, many Jews believed.
They saw the glory of God.
And I think that this is a key
to the revelation of God's end-time glory
through saints who will be willing to have
their lives contracted crunched, hemmed in, cut off,
silenced, bound, entombed.
It's not for everybody.
It's for those willing to be helpless.
How many of us would be willing to
be Lazarus's helpless friends of the Lord, deserted
in sickness and abandoned in death, bound up,
inactive, unused, and stinking?
I couldn't think of a worse horror for
this fellowship than what I'm now describing.
Could you?
Whoo!
Man, you guys would die if the Lord,
all of a sudden, called, finish.
If he gave you the spurt of a
season of life and you enjoyed it and
saw fruitfulness, all of a sudden, the same
God would bring that precious thing into contraction
and death.
Are you willing to bring your defects and
your vices and your bad moods and your
lusts into the grave?
How would you like to bring the thing
which God himself has given into death?
That death should no longer have any dominion
over it.
Children, I'm speaking like a fool.
I hardly understand myself what I'm saying.
I think it has a prophetic ring to
it.
We're going to see it increasingly.
God has given us a season to exhibit
ourselves and to sport ourselves and to move
by his life and to do for him
and to see fruitfulness.
But I think that before the end comes,
to promote his ultimate glory, he's going to
call us to a discipline and to an
obedience, into a priesthood of impeccable obedience, staying
two days longer where we are, that when
he shall call us forth, though we are
a stink to many, there shall be a
glory.
What's life or death anyway?
It wasn't too long ago I was invited
to a funeral hall.
I'd never been to one.
We Jews closed the casket.
But somehow Christians leave it open and people
come and bask and look at it.
And I sat by the front seat.
It was an unusual thing for me.
And I watched a stream of people coming
up, guts hanging over their belts, burping their
way right from the supper table to the
funeral parlor to the mortuary, excuse me.
You notice how we've coined little euphemisms to
take the sting out of death?
Morticians, mortuaries, used to be undertaker.
And I listened to the little pleasantries that
people would say.
You know what I thought about?
I was looking at a woman immobile in
death, not so much the flutter as an
eyelash, a very precious saint taken prematurely in
her thirties.
At the height of her life, at the
height of her glory, brilliant believer.
Everyone loved her.
Her husband was a lout, an unbelieving clod
who could have such a wife as this
and yet not believe.
And the Lord inexplicably took her life.
You know what those believers thought?
She was going to be resurrected.
And they even had a suspicion that I
was going to be the one that God
was going to use.
I looked at the immobility of that woman.
Isn't that what death is?
Utter stillness, utter silence, not a move, not
a flutter of an eyelash, not an emanation
of breath.
And as I saw these big adults bending
over and making their obsequious remarks to the
husband of the deceased, you know what I
thought to myself?
Hey, just who's more dead or alive anyway?
What is their life?
How many meals have they ingested?
10,000, 20,000, 50,000 in 30,
40, 50 years?
How many times have their clothes needed to
be washed?
How many times in and out of the
dry cleaners?
How much space have they occupied, air consumed,
watered, drunk?
What is life anyway, I thought.
Certainly it's not in this physical, biological, physiological
activity coming and going, doing and spending, having
and getting.
Certainly it's not the noise, the commotion, the
clutter, the debris that we've accumulated after so
many years.
Life is this only, children.
Are you ready?
That which promotes the glory of God.
That's it.
It has not to do with waving our
arms or leaping or jumping or shouting or
filling the air or breaking the silence except
that that sound, that jump, that leap, that
activity promotes the glory of God.
And if it shall please God that His
glory shall be promoted through your silence, through
your immobility, through your helplessness, will you allow
it?
There's a precious theme here.
I'm not sure that I have grasped it
but I'm drooling over it because it seems
to me so deeply to be the way
of very God Himself.
The Father did not think it too much
to require of His Son that that which
was born sinless and pure be brought into
death that there might be a greater revelation.
How willing would we be to take that
which was born from above in us and
bring it into contraction and death to promote
the glory of God.
The 12th chapter of the 11th verse says
because on account of Him, Lazarus, many of
the Jews were going away, were withdrawing and
leaving the Judeans and believing in and adhering
to Jesus.
Many were saved out of death by one
who submitted to it.
It's death which worketh in us and life
in them.
What happened when you suffered that excruciating agony
and those rabbis cut you to pieces and
you lay like a cur for three weeks
licking your wounds and God did not explain
anything?
Well, I had a phone call.
Did I tell you about this last time?
Three weeks later I had a phone call
with a woman whose voice was so thin
I had a strain to hear it.
Mr. Katchi said, I'm a Jewish woman who
has read your book and I have certain
questions.
Might I come over and speak with you?
I said, dear lady, I'm not able to
help anyone.
I'm helpless, is what I was saying.
But I said, if you have no other
alternative and you want to, you can come.
And so she came.
You never saw a more pathetic wreck in
your life.
So emaciated, so thin, she was almost transparent.
Her veins were popping out everywhere.
Deep, dark rings under her eyes.
She had been battered from pillar to post
by life.
Nervous wreck, compulsive chain smoker.
Sitting on my couch and snubbing out one
cigarette after another asking questions until she snubbed
out the last cigarette and the last question
was, what must I do to be saved?
And I told her, she bowed her flared
little head and clutched me by the hand
with her bony hand.
Word for word like a child followed me
in a prayer that brought her from death
unto life.
You ought to see that woman today.
Talk about evangelist and missionary.
Man, she's up and down the stairs of
an apartment house in Queens.
Literature, New Testament, Ben Israel's.
She's a little dynamo in a Jewish neighborhood
for God.
Saved out of death.
I remember I walked into the door that
night and I took her coat off out
of the closet and I was putting it
over her frail shoulders and I said, by
the way, I said, how is it that
you came to me?
Where did you get the book?
How did you have these questions?
Oh, she said, three weeks ago my son
who was at City College came home with
your book.
He insisted that I read it because he
said that a man came to the school
today and it was unlike anything he had
ever seen, he said.
He was so enormously impressed because that man
just simply stood up, softly spoke his convictions
and when he was finished he was mercilessly
attacked and torn to shreds.
And he said he had never seen such
a demonstration where the man did not answer
back his accusers a word.
I'll tell you children there'll be days when
the glory will be so great in response
for our obedience we'll not be able to
contain it.
We'll see whole pools of men who have
come to jeer and to make sport as
I've seen it in Harvard.
Radicals, filthy orgyists, insurrectionists, Satanists coming to see
the freak who believes in Jesus and is
Jewish.
And you'll come exhausted and you'll lay down
your crumpled corduroy jacket and you'll open your
mouth believing that this is unto death and
whew, there'll be an eruption of life out
of your mouth that shall stun and mesmerize
and fix men in their seats with such
centrifugal force you would think that they were
being pulled off a runway by a powerful
jet.
And when you hear the words pouring out
of your mouth the most profound and biting
and incisive commentary on the human condition that
you've ever heard there'll be no question in
you what the source of it is.
And when you're finished you'll see men stunned,
silent and not one single man who has
the nerve to ask a question or to
be a wise aleck or to jeer because
they know for a fact that God and
you'll say simply Jesus said that my sheep
will hear my voice and I invite as
many of you who have heard it out
of this Brooklyn accent to bow your head
and follow me in prayer.
And you'll expect maybe two, three or five
and you'll be amazed at the chorus of
voices that you'll hear.
It sounds more like hundreds.
And indeed you'll lift your head when the
prayer is finished and the room will be
filled with the manifest presence and the glory
of God.
And you'll look as you'll scan the room
you'll see men weeping, trembling, shaking, stunned clutching
their mouths, holding their chest as the Spirit
of God has just come into them.
And you'll not know what to do you've
not been prepared for such an eventuality and
you'll just say simply let's praise the God
who has saved us.
And you'll see the same men who came
to give you this standing with their hands
over their heads weeping and praising God at
Harvard University the citadel of witchcraft and Satanism.
It'll be a glory!
But there'll be other days when you'll not
see it.
Are you willing to suffer the one as
well as to enjoy the other?
Are you willing to be dense, helpless hid
with Christ in God until His life be
revealed?
Lazarus, come forth!
Will you wait till then?
Even if it's four days and you stink
with reproach?
Will you wait till then though you've been
bound in your mouth and you're a terrific
speaker bound in your hands and your feet
and you want to go, go, go?
Wait for the perfect moment of God that
many might believe on Him when they see
His glory.
I'm going to give you an invitation children
I've not given one, have I?
Got your seatbelts on?
Oh, you precious children.
I'll tell you this without flattering you.
You're probably one of the most impressive audiences
of young believers upon whom I have ever
laid eyes.
I have not heard such a torrent of
choice and holy utterances and prophecy as I've
heard come out of your mouths in these
days.
The quality of worship, the look in your
faces, your evident integrity and hunger for God
and willingness to serve is apparent!
You've got precious things in you that have
come from above holy, sinless and pure.
How many of you would like to take
it and submit it without explanation unto death
if He shall require it that it might
reveal His glory?
I'm going to give you an invitation children
this is not for everyone.
This is not for everyone.
If I suspect anything I think that this
has got to do with the ultimate end
time greatest revelation of the glory of God.