It's strange because I'm a New Yorker, I
was born in New York City and raised
on Long Island and we spent our first
30-something years, Nancy and I, in the
New York and Long Island area and then
I've been back so much through the years
but now just called to be back on
a regular basis and to also have a
base in the coming days for Jewish ministry
there that, you know, most of the people
that walk around and look up at the
buildings are the visitors and the foreigners but
I'm just so blessed to be there.
You know, each week I just walk the
streets and thank God I hear the late
at night the horns honking and all the
sounds of the street and it's just music
to my ears and we figured out that
the equivalent in the city here that, you
know, if you can go out like Saturday
night at midnight, Broadway or Times Square area,
I mean the roads are packed in the
city and there, you know, traffic everywhere and
commotion everywhere and we did discover that there's
an equivalent place to that here, which is
Wal-Mart, but it's just neat to see
as God's joined hearts together from so many
backgrounds and so many places with a common
purpose and we're glad to be in it
together and we're going to take our New
York crew tomorrow, we had some discussion and
our student body is to good cultural places
to take them to get them to know
the area here and to get a real
feel for the South and some of the
special things that you have here that you
don't have in New York, so tomorrow we'll
be having dinner at Lambert's, so anyway, bless
the Lord for his goodness and grace.
If you're visiting here and wondering if God
may be calling you into the school of
ministry, you've got to be at least 18,
you've got to be serious, committed, living a
holy life, it's not a rehab place, it's
not a place just to try to find
God while you struggle on the journey of
your life, it's a place for those who
sense God's calling and hand on their lives
for his purposes in this generation, you may
not know exactly which direction it's supposed to
take, but you know that there's a sense
of calling on you and you're a serious
committed believer at least 18 with a high
school degree of the equivalent, we invite you
to pray about being part of the school
and because we've just started a new trimester
system actually the next potential enrollment time is
in December, so there's still time to enroll
for the next trimester and I guess since
we've just been making the announcement little by
little we might as well make it, we
have instituted an intensive and accelerated three year
program, we're in the process of fully putting
that in place, but we're starting it, all
incoming students and those that have been part
of the program can be part of it,
but in and of themselves degrees are not
significant, we don't exalt them, they're simply tools,
they can open certain doors, they can be
useful in our calling and in our service
of God both in America and other parts
of the world, but we've just recently been
approved with our new three year accelerated program
that after the three year program our graduates
will receive a bachelor's degree and we know
that in many ways that's going to help
further the cause of what Jesus has given
us to do, so we wanted to share
that and one neat thing I was waiting
to mention until we had everyone here that
I could say it with, when God spoke
to us to start the school in New
York City, there was one extra neat little
thing he did, we felt as a leadership
team here that one of our grads who's
part of our ministry faculty here, Charles Seepield,
Charles and Jenny, really felt were called to
New York to lead our music and worship
department there and they really felt that same
calling and so Charles began to go off
with us as we were planning, and then
I got contacted from a friend that I'd
known in the days when we preached a
lot at David Wilkerson's church in the early
to mid 90's, Charles Simpson, I had to
call New York, I had to lay the
calling on his heart, he's been planning churches
and pastoring in New York for years and
he felt the calling to join with us
in this new school and we felt this
is God, this is a hand-picked person
of like heart, so our first two full
-time people that were going to be living
there working in the city were two Charles's,
Charles Seepield and Charles Simpson and anyway, why
don't you guys just stand up for a
second so everyone knows who you are, Charles
and Charles, so Charles Seepield is sharing his
testimony with me, parts of it I hadn't
heard, it was real significant for him coming
back into New York because 12 years earlier
when he was in New York as a
songwriter, as a young man trying to get
his songs published and get in the music
industry, he had to look around at things
and just feel, you know, he didn't like
what he saw in the industry and he
was walking in that area, Times Square area
one time and there was a young guy
preaching the gospel, it was in the winter,
he was wearing a green coat and it
was something different about what he was saying
and the way he was saying it so
it got the attention of Charles Seepield and
before he walked away this guy offered him
a little Bible, a little Gideon's Bible so
he took it and read the words of
Jesus and just poured through them in the
months that were after that and that was
the turning point in him coming to the
Lord so he was sharing this with me
and then began to share it as introducing
to Charles Simpson because they were going to
be working together, began to share it with
Charles Simpson who began to ask questions about
where he was and what time and so
on and so forth and it turns out
that the man in the green coat preaching
that day on the street corner was Charles
Simpson so it's just quite a wonderful thing
to see how God brought that together, one
of these amazing things and you see the
lasting fruit in what God does and how
his hand is just orchestrating things, amen?
So we're blessed to see what he's doing,
good to see some old faces we haven't
seen for a while, excuse me, not old
faces, some of you are young, some of
you are much younger than me but they're
faces I haven't seen for a while, not
old faces, not craggy, ancient, worn out, drawn
down but just faces we haven't seen in
a while, it's good to see some of
you again and we're glad that you're here
and the drama really ties right in with
the things that God's laid on my heart
and even though we want to be flexible
with time and schedule I'll do my best
to really get to the heart of this
as quickly as I can because it's the
foundation of the Jesus revolution.
So Father I pray that you'll give us
ears to hear what your spirit is saying,
give us an alertness, give us the ability
oh God not to just mentally affirm, give
us the ability Father not to simply be
hearers of your word and not doers only,
we're in a good habit of doing that,
help us to break that habit and instead
be doers of your word.
May this have true and real and deep
application in every one of our lives, in
Jesus name I pray, amen.
Turn with me to John chapter 21, John
chapter 21.
There's an interesting little part of a verse
that it would be very easy to read
past but it is this truth that lies
at the foundation of God's holy revolution.
Whenever I speak of revolution which is quite
often I immediately and always say that we
are not talking about a carnal or worldly
or earthly revolution.
We are not talking about a revolution of
violence, we are not talking about bombing abortion
clinics and beating up homosexuals, we are not
talking about hatred and anger, we are absolutely
not talking about rebellion but we are talking
about the kingdom of God affecting this world,
the gospel of Jesus and the power of
the spirit, God's people living out what is
written in the New Testament in such a
way that it has a radical and profound
effect on an entire generation.
The great commission of Jesus is a commission
to go and change the world and nothing
less than that.
And that's what we speak of when we
speak of a Jesus revolution.
Radical, dramatic, sweeping change in society, in this
world, in this generation by the power of
the spirit in obedience to the commission of
Jesus.
And I want to just make plain something.
If you were a religious Jew, you would
read the Hebrew Bible, you would read the
Old Testament but you would have a lot
of traditions added on to it that would
ultimately tell you how to read it.
And you would read the Bible based on
those traditions.
If you were a Catholic and you were
reading the scriptures, you would be reading the
Bible yourself but you would also have a
lot of church traditions and ultimately those church
traditions would tell you how to interpret the
scripture.
But if you say that you're a Protestant
or Pentecostal or charismatic, which would be the
great majority of the people here, or simply
a believer in the word, then you would
say we have no church tradition that can
tell us what the scripture means.
Ultimately the word must stand for itself.
There is no new authority.
There is no further authority beyond the word
of God and the Holy Spirit will never
nullify or negate or contradict what is written
in the scripture.
Therefore, if we see plainly that Jesus says
something, we must take him at his word.
If we see plainly that the word of
God has a certain meaning, even if it
goes completely against the grain of what we've
learned, what we're accustomed to, what our church
background might be, what our family tradition might
be, it doesn't matter.
There's no authority beyond the word.
No one can come along later and tell
you that Jesus meant something different or that
the word meant something different.
When we rightly understand what's written, the only
response is, yes, Lord.
So Jesus repeatedly in his teaching, not just
once, but repeatedly over and again in the
Gospels, Matthew 16 and Mark 8 and Luke
9 and Luke 17 and Luke 14 and
John 12 and in Paul and Acts 20
and in Philippians 1, you find a repeated
theme over and over and over again.
And to sum it up, it tells us
that the purpose of our lives is to
glorify God and that to be true disciples,
we must take up our cross and deny
ourselves and follow him.
And if we try to save our lives,
we lose it.
If we try to if we will lose
our lives for the gospel, we'll find it
is a fundamental truth through the Gospels.
And Jesus is speaking here to Peter.
He's given him words of restoration in a
threefold way after Peter had denied Jesus three
times.
Peter is called now to feed his sheep.
And he says in verse 18, Jesus speaking
to Peter after his resurrection, I tell you
the truth.
When you were younger, you dressed yourselves and
dressed yourself and went where you wanted.
But when you are old, you will stretch
out your hands and someone else will dress
you and lead you where you do not
want to go.
And look at this.
Jesus said this to indicate the kind of
death by which Peter would glorify God.
Then he said to him, follow me.
Notice it does not say that he told
this to Peter.
It's speaking about Peter being crucified.
According to tradition, Peter was crucified upside down
because he said, I'm not worthy to be
crucified the same as my master.
Jesus does not say this to Peter to
indicate that he will glorify God by death.
That's not what's written.
Peter had already pledged his life, his blood,
his heart, his soul for the gospel.
Jesus had already made it a requirement that
if you followed him, you had to take
up your cross.
He didn't say you have to be willing
to take up your cross.
He said you have to deny yourself, take
up your cross, which means the end of
your life and the beginning of a new
life in him.
It means not only death to sin.
It means death to human will.
It means death to fleshly desires.
It means death to the love of this
world.
And now I live to do the will
of God.
End of subject.
Everything changes.
Our orientation changes.
When Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 517, if
anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.
The old is past.
Everything's become new.
He wasn't just talking about a change of
lifestyle.
He was talking about a change of orientation
that you look at the whole world differently.
So Jesus did not need to tell Peter
that he would glorify him by death.
That was already a given.
He was simply telling Peter by which death
he would glorify.
I've often shared the illustration when our daughters
were younger.
There was a dog we had had.
Kind of the girls grew up with it.
My mom and dad got this dog from
us after Nancy and I got married.
Nancy had the dog and then they got
it.
And our daughters, as long as they were
alive, these little kids growing up, as long
as they can remember, there was this dog,
this Irish setter named Tara.
My dad had passed away and the dog
was just a house companion when my mom
would come in in the day.
And then the dog was getting older and
she got sick.
And finally, we realized we had to put
her to sleep.
It's sad.
You know, you grow up with this dog
and the kids, your daughters, they've grown up
with this dog at grandma's house.
And I told my mom, she went out
with our daughters and I said, tell you
what, I'll just bring Tara in.
I'll just bring the dog in.
You don't worry about it.
So they went out and did something, got
some ice cream or something like that.
And I went and brought the dog in.
It was sad.
You know, we've known this dog for years
and a whole bit.
You get sentimental and all this.
Came back to my mom's and then I
was going to drive the girls home.
Nancy was home doing something else.
I was going to drive home now with
our daughters.
And they were a little sad, but they
were doing OK.
Little kids and they were doing OK.
And I said, now, girls, you know, you're
doing well.
You know, the vet put Tara to sleep,
but you're doing well.
They said, yeah, you know, it's hard, but
we're doing good.
And I said, now you understand what happens.
They said, oh, yeah.
I said, so well, tell me what happens.
I said, well, she was really sick.
I said, OK.
So she went to the vet.
I said, yeah.
And the vet gave her a shot.
I said, yeah.
And then she fell asleep.
I said, and?
They said, and?
I said, well, the vet put her to
sleep.
And?
They said, and?
I said, and she's dead.
She's dead!
Tara's dead!
And tears start streaming down.
Tara's, oh no!
Tara's dead!
What they thought was put to sleep meant
that she'd be at the vet for a
while and sleep.
And then when she was better, she'd come
back.
And it was a little sad that she
had to stay at the vet.
They wouldn't see her for a little while.
You know, it's almost like one day it
dawns on you.
You mean when we say by life or
by death, you actually mean death?
So all this stuff about, you know, we
take up the cross, the cross before me,
the world before me, that the cross is
not just a religious symbol or a word
in a song.
It's, mm-hmm.
See, that fuels every revolution.
That's at the heartbeat of it.
That's a foundational principle that life as it
is, is not worth living, but the cause
is worth dying for.
That's what fuels revolutionary movements in the world
that do not have eternal life, that do
not have Jesus, that do not have intimacy
with God, that do not have heaven and
hell in front of them.
Any of you here that are Americans, remember
the inspirational words of Patrick Henry, give me
liberty or give me death, because life like
this is not worth living.
Because life, in his words, at the cost
of chains and slavery is not worth living.
Give me liberty or give me death.
That's the cry often in the secular realm.
That's the cry often in the world.
But there is a profound spiritual truth here
that we need to take hold of.
And if we take hold of it, then
we really live.
If we take hold of it, then there's
nothing and no one we bow down to
except King Jesus.
He said this to Peter, to indicate by
which death Peter would glorify God.
The kind of death by which he would
glorify him.
You know that it had to be a
question on the mouths of the other disciples.
Well, what about me?
He gets to be crucified.
What about me?
I just want you to hear something.
This is according to tradition.
We don't know for sure.
We're fairly sure that John and probably Matthew
did not die martyrs' deaths.
But here's the rest of the initial apostle.
I don't want to be an apostle.
I really sense the Lord's calling me.
You know, John, I just really felt the
Lord told me that you're an apostle.
I was like so humbled by it.
But I felt, you know, he said, Steve's
an apostle.
We're going to be apostles.
Jesus called us.
Hey, high five, man, this is cool.
We'll call it Apostles' Anonymous Ministry.
Wow, we get to be apostles.
Maybe one day in movies they'll have like
Peter.
So I wonder who'll play Mike and who'll
play Steve.
Won't this be wonderful?
Hey, they're the twelve apostles.
That's us.
Just walking with Jesus, you know.
It's all about him.
We're the twelve apostles.
When Jesus isn't looking, you know, writing down
autographs, you know, Peter, John.
I know I'm exaggerating, but I'm trying to
make a point.
It's exciting.
Called by God.
Anointed by God.
Lord, will you pick me?
No, just this one, this one, this one.
Okay, you're apostles.
All right, Lord, what do you have?
All right, let's see.
Peter, you'll be crucified upside down.
Andrew, Peter's brother, you'll be crucified on an
X-shaped cross.
Jacob, James, son of Zebedee, beheaded.
Philip, crucified upside down.
Bartholomew, drowned here.
Let's just make it that these are the
names here.
Drowned in a sack.
Thomas, speared to death or shot with arrows.
James, Jacob, son of Alphaeus, stoned to death
or crucified.
Thaddeus, shot with arrows.
Simon the Zealot, crucified.
Somehow, when they made this pledge, and when
they said, we will follow you, and when
they took up their cross and denied themselves,
you didn't have to ask them for an
interpretation on what it actually meant.
Peter, what do you think Jesus meant when
he was talking about by which kind of
death you'll glorify him?
I mean, what do you think he actually
meant?
You didn't have to ask Peter as he
was being crucified what the Lord meant.
And you didn't have to ask Paul what
he meant when he said, I eagerly expected
hope that I will in no way be
ashamed, but will have sufficient courage that now,
as always, Christ will be exalted in my
body, whether by life or by death, for
to me to live is Christ and to
die is gain.
And then, boom, his head is chopped off.
Do I expect that most of us here
will die martyrs' deaths?
I doubt we'll have the privilege to.
Is that my point, to say, walk around
morbid, walk around joyless, walk around planning out
your funerals?
Are we going to, as soon as this
meeting's over, are we going to have a
fundraiser by selling funeral plots for everybody here?
Think ahead.
No, I'm talking about something very powerful and
very life-giving and very life-transforming.
But I'm trying to speak in such a
way of reality that it jars us, that
something concrete takes hold of us, that we
get beyond the euphoria, that we get beyond
the excitement, that we get beyond the, oh,
praise the Lord, revival.
Oh, glory to God, Jesus, revolution.
Oh, hallelujah, the new thing.
And we look at this thing soberly and
understand what Jesus is really talking about, what
the Word of God really means when it
tells us, if we save our lives, we'll
lose them.
If we lose our lives for the gospel,
we'll find them.
What's Jesus talking about?
I want you to understand something, because this
is what holds us captive almost all our
lives, because this is what robs us, because
this is what stops us from doing something
effective for the King.
This is what gets us, at most sometimes,
half or three-quarters effective if we really
go for it.
It's somehow that we have the save our
life mentality.
It's somehow that we do not understand this
fundamental gospel principle, which is really the true
principle of revolution.
I've often quoted from a black leader that
was part of a violent civil rights movement,
the Black Panthers, that fought violence with violence.
But Elaine Brown articulated the feeling of many
of her fellow citizens at that time, when
she said this.
She talked about being a Black Panther.
She said it was invigorating.
Made life bigger than you, she said.
And then she said these words, even the
notion of dying for something bigger than you
was far more powerful than living out a
life of quiet desperation.
There was a certain line that was crossed.
There was something that happened in the thought
process of this woman and her contemporaries.
The means they used were destructive, ugly, wrong
means.
And most of what the world tries to
achieve, it achieves through rebellion and anger and
violence, and it replaces one bad system with
the worst system.
The way of Jesus is totally contrary to
that.
But you see, there was a certain breaking
point, a certain point that she came to
and others came to when they said we'd
rather die fighting for freedom and fighting for
what we believe in and fighting to bring
about change than to lead a life that's
not really life.
So therefore, they were willing to step over
certain lines.
They were willing to lose reputations.
They were willing to be outcasts.
Why?
Because at least they were standing up for
a purpose.
That was their mentality.
Unfortunately, Jesus was not at the center of
it, and the thing just brought about more
violence.
But hear me, there is a spiritual truth
that we must grasp, and especially here in
North America, with our material riches, with the
exaltation of sports and entertainment, with everything being
so big and so wonderful and so beautiful,
for the most part, we fall for the
deception, we fall for the illusion that this
world as we know it is really everything
and it's really wonderful.
That this world as we know it is
really what we should be living for.
That somehow, even though we know the Scriptures
tell us, don't love the world and the
things that are in the world.
And if anyone loves the world, the love
of the Father is not in them.
For everything in the world, the lust of
the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the
pride of life, it's not of the Father,
it's of the world.
And the world and its lust pass away,
but He who does the will of the
Father, the will of God abides forever.
We say that.
We can quote it.
We can affirm it.
We can try to stay away from certain
bad sins, but it's talking about more than
that.
It's talking about the paralyzing, destructive influence of
the love of this world.
What's God talking about?
What is it that dominates us?
What is it that stops us from really
going for it?
What is it that holds us back?
So many here, you're desperate, you cry out,
you want your life to count, you seek
the face of God with tears, and yet
there's something that stops us.
I'm not talking about if you just do
this, all of a sudden all kinds of
miracles will happen.
If you'll just take this step, all of
a sudden the heavens will break open over
you.
No, I'm talking about your own life coming
out of captivity into freedom.
What is it that holds us back?
It's a desire to save our lives.
What do I mean?
What was Jesus talking about?
There's an example I put in the Revolution
book.
It came from a book about one specific
chapter in the Holocaust.
Concentration camp called Treblinka.
I remember I was preaching one time and
was away on the road and came across
this book and started reading it.
Couldn't put the thing down.
Could not put the book down.
I lent it to a friend and he
started reading it, couldn't put it down.
Scott got hold of it.
You just start reading, you get absorbed by
the story of it.
This was another concentration camp where hundreds of
thousands of Jews were slaughtered.
But when they came into the camp, the
train station where they came in, it actually
looked lovely.
Painted nicely.
There was even a clock painted.
Nobody noticed that the hands weren't moving.
But it wanted to give them the sense,
the illusion that everything would be okay.
Just like this world.
Everything will be alright.
Don't panic.
Because there were enough of them, if they
just panicked and fought, they could have done
something.
They'd heard rumors, they'd heard reports and different
things.
Concentration camps and gas chambers and things.
But you think, not me, it can't be,
it's too impossible.
And then, sometimes they'd only be there a
few weeks, a few months, they'd be exterminated.
Why did they fight?
Why did they start a revolt?
It's all about human nature.
The question is, if you know you're going
to die, why not do something about it?
And this was the thought process.
Well, if we fight, if we try to
bring about change, if we take a stand,
then for sure we will die.
But if we can save our lives, if
we don't fight, if we don't resist, perhaps
things will change and perhaps we can live
long enough and perhaps somehow there'll be an
end to the concentration camps and we'll be
liberated and we can live.
And in point of fact, by not resisting,
they guaranteed one thing, that every single one
of them would die.
And there was one group that had the
specific job of taking the bodies of fellow
Jews out of the concentration camps, dragging them
out and throwing them in the crematorium to
be burned.
That was their job.
Think of what they're doing.
They know that there was a group doing
this before them and that group is not
there anymore.
And they know they're dragging the bodies of
their fellow Jews out of the gas chambers,
dead, to be burned in the crematorium.
But they needed to be kept in better
shape, fed a little bit better, given some
extra privileges.
Why?
Because they needed to be stronger for the
job.
And they needed to be kept alive a
little longer.
You think, well, they of all people should
have revolted.
But somehow the same thing got on them.
We're alive today.
We had a meal today.
We're doing better than the others today.
If we fight, we die.
Maybe if we stay alive, we can preserve
life.
But all they were doing was guaranteeing their
death sentence.
And then one Jew escaped from the camp.
When he got out in the surrounding villages,
as soon as it was found out he
was a Jew, he had to flee and
he went to another area.
As soon as it was found out he
was a Jew, he had to flee, he
had to flee, he had to flee.
So he allowed himself to be captured to
get back into the camp to tell the
guys, it's over.
Do you understand?
It's over.
This is happening with the full knowledge and
complicity of the surrounding communities.
They're all against us.
We're all going to die.
We need to have a revolt.
But how do you have a revolt?
And we can't even get a stick, let
alone a gun.
And some of us are only here a
few weeks or a few months and then
we're dead.
And we can't communicate.
And if we fight, we'll die.
And what do we do?
So the talk went on that there was
this paralyzing fear.
It's going to make sense to you in
a moment.
There was one Jewish man as he was
being brought in, in the cattle cars, squeezed
in there.