Verse 16, the last words of Jesus here
in Matthew.
Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee,
into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them.
When they saw him, they worshipped him, but
some doubted.
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying,
All power is given unto me in heaven
and in earth.
Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I
have commanded you, and lo, I am with
you always, even unto the end of the
world.
I spoke a little bit last night about
what God seeks for in a man.
The factors that produce a spiritual response.
I want to talk a little bit today
about God's purpose.
This was his purpose for the eleven, all
the eleven.
None of them were excluded.
This is his purpose for all who would
hear the word of God through the eleven,
down through the ages, out through the nations.
Once again, it's Jesus' last words.
The last expression, the condensation of all his
teaching, all his purpose, all his desire.
He doesn't have all the time in the
world.
He doesn't have three more years to teach
them.
He's trying to leave them with the essence
of the burden which is on the heart
of God.
As I said before, it's so easy to
read the Bible, and because we've read it
so many times, we think we know it.
The letter killeth.
Just yesterday, Brother Ryan was saying, you know,
it's not just the Bible.
I notice there's a deceit within the churches,
that because the letter has to do with
the Spirit, because the letter is descriptive of
the Spirit, because the letter is interpreting the
mood of the Spirit, we think that the
letter gives life.
You know, it can be the letter about
the Spirit.
Well, let's say it in a simple way.
It can be teaching on the Holy Spirit.
It can be teaching about faith, and yet
not produce faith, and not produce the moving,
not produce the operation, not produce the brooding
of the Spirit of God.
And it comes from the heart.
It doesn't come from any other place.
You know, many times we think miracles will
convince people.
If an angel would come, it would convince
people.
Some of the greatest movings of God, as
far as outward signs are concerned, and I'm
not saying there is no place for them.
There is a place.
There's a vital place for those things.
But some of the greatest moves of God,
as far as outward signs are concerned, have
produced the worst apostasy, the worst indifference, the
worst insensitivity and rejection, not of the outward,
but of that inward essence which God is
designed to produce.
We notice here as the passage starts, they
saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted.
Think many times of that verse, when the
Lord cometh, will he find faith on the
earth?
You know, we say, well, here, sure.
I don't know.
I don't know if we really know, if
we really understand what faith is.
Will he find faith?
That faith which produces all that is involved
in a harmony within our own lives with
the will and the purpose and the operation
of the Spirit of God.
Will that faith cause me to leave things?
Will that faith cause me to embrace new
things?
Will that faith direct my path?
Will there be faith?
Not a mental convincing.
Toza used to talk about those people that
speak on faith.
And, you know, it's real common.
And once again, it's those things that we
accept because we're here.
You've heard this teaching that we've all got
faith, right?
You've got faith because you get on a
bus and you've got faith that that guy's
not going to go someplace he shouldn't go.
He's going to take you to your destination
so you have faith and you pay the
passage.
You've got faith when you sit on a
chair because you're going to, you know, commit
your weight to it and know that it
will hold you up.
That's faith.
Well, he says that's not faith.
That's just the fruit of our experience.
We've sat on so many hundreds and thousands
of chairs.
They're just looking at that thing, looking at
that bench over there.
I know it's not going to let me
down.
And so that's not faith.
That's just experience put in practice.
But faith, faith is the gift of God.
It's not me saying, you know what, I
do this and I do this and then
God will do that because I'm convinced that
here it's something different.
And once again, we can be in the
presence of God and out.
Just how long?
A year ago.
My wife was down in Argentina.
The Lord was moving, is still moving down
there, a revival move.
A man that God has raised up, taken
him out of his business.
He had a nut and bolt factory.
Metalworking shop, maybe we should say.
Okay, anyway, the Lord called him out of
this.
He left the nuts and the bolts and
he started preaching.
Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people.
I was there about, how long ago, let
me think, a year ago.
I guess it's less than a year ago
my wife was down there.
Anyway, I was there a year ago.
He was having up to 30, 40,000
people on a night standing out in a
wide open space that they just cleared off
with a bulldozer beside the highway.
Put in a bunch of lights and a
speaker system and a platform so he'd be
up among the crowd and there he was
preaching.
Tremendous miracles, tremendous operation in the spirit of
God.
Around about June or July last year my
wife went down there.
And while she was in Argentina she went
to visit one of the meetings.
And she'd flown down, didn't have a car.
The meeting was a ways away and she
went out on the train and came back
on the train.
As she was coming back on the train
she noticed a young man there.
He had a little badge on.
He was one of the counselors or ushers
or something there at the meeting.
And so she was interested in hearing more
about this operation of God.
And the young fellow was kind of sitting
there.
It was late at night.
The meeting was going until real late.
It was late at night and he was
sitting there and she thought, I'm going to
talk to this guy.
So he starts talking and he's kind of,
well, you know, and how about this move
of God and these tremendous miracles.
You know what he said?
He said, well, you know, I don't know.
We young people, he said, have got so
much doubt inside.
Here he was in the midst of a
tremendous move of God that was shaking all
around.
He was right in the midst of it.
He was helping in the revival and he
was doubting.
He was doubting.
And I mean they've had tremendous healings.
One of the, I don't know, maybe it'll
take a little time, but anyway it's interesting.
One of the interesting things down there, a
lot of people have had their teeth healed.
Now, you know, we ask why.
And whenever the Lord moves, when he really
moves, the Bible talks about signs and miracles.
There are miracles and there are signs.
The Bible says tongues is a sign.
The day of Pentecost, the rushing mighty wind,
what, you know, in a sense, what good
was it?
It was a sign.
And all through there have been people falling
prostrate under the power of God in the
old revivals of Wesley and Whitefield and so
on.
What is it?
It's a sign.
Early Pentecostal movement have their signs.
Prayer meetings where fire would descend on the
roof.
What does it do to anybody?
It doesn't do anything.
It's just a sign.
It shows that something's happening which is way
out beyond the laws of nature.
Anyway, in this healing move, and don't ask
me why, they asked the preacher that God
had called from his nut and bolt factory
why, and he said it's a sign.
So that's good enough for me.
I believe that's right.
Lots of people have their teeth healed.
Some kind of silver substance that fills their
teeth, and many times in the form of
a dove or the form of a cross.
Why does it have to be in the
form of a dove?
Why does it have to be?
I don't know, but I mean I don't
know how many, I suppose hundreds and maybe
thousands of people have had this experience.
And as my wife was walking to the
bus, she was talking with a group of
people that were coming from the meeting, and
the girl said, Well, I've had my teeth
healed, you know, so Irene's not going to
miss this.
And they come to a streetlight and said,
Let me look.
Open your mouth.
You're right.
And there it is.
What I'm saying is that this young person,
if he doesn't want to believe anything else,
I mean you can't deny.
You can't deny something like that.
And just tremendous things, and yet in the
midst of it all he says, I don't
know.
You know, unless God gives it, we never
get it.
They doubted, but Jesus goes on with his
purpose.
Gives a basis here in verse 18.
All power.
Let's change the order there.
All power is given to me on earth.
All power is given to me in heaven.
As the years go by, I'm convinced that
we are not convinced of the power of
God.
That we do not know in a reality
which is translated into life situations the power
of God.
That all power.
I've seen people go to the mission field,
convinced they were called of God, and get
wiped out and had to go home.
I see people in the church.
So many fears.
So many insecurities.
So much way there in the depths where
they don't want to let anybody in, not
even their wife or their husband.
Way in the depths, uncertainties.
The foundations are not sure they're moving.
There's no convincing.
There's no conviction.
I don't think it was just, just happened
that there at the end of the revelation
when God gave a revelation, not now of
the nations, not of the judgment, not of
the end of all things, but when he
gave a revelation of himself to John, when
he showed him there three aspects of the
character of God, the first name, the first
revelation was faithful and true.
And I saw one and his name was
faithful and true.
Because once again, there's so much unbelief.
There's so much unbelief right here.
And I don't realize that what I know
here is not what I know here.
There's a difference.
There's an abyss.
There's a division there.
And I can't get from here to here.
Only God can bring me from here to
here.
That faith which is of the heart must
come from above.
Never can spring from below.
Never, ever.
This earth produces death.
Everything which is born.
Some years ago they discovered there on the
mountains out in California the oldest trees in
the world.
Way up at the top of the trees
in that thin air, in that cold climate.
Twisted, stunted trees which haven't developed as they
would in a tropical land or a hot
land or a land where they have that
bitter soil.
Those trees have been living there for thousands
and thousands of years.
The oldest living trees, I don't remember how
many thousands of years all those trees were.
And yet everything in this earth is born
to die.
Maybe we have some little insects that just
live a few hours.
Some little plants that bloom for a night
and pass away.
Or maybe trees that last for many generations
of human life.
And yet at the end, everything is born
to die.
And so it is in the church.
Everything which comes from below.
Everything which comes from man is born to
die.
And Jesus is trying to give them the
base upon which all their future is established.
He's not talking about salvation.
He's not talking about forgiveness.
Now he's talking about power.
He's talking about authority.
Absolute, total, unconditional authority.
All power.
Given unto me on heaven and in earth.
I've said before here, I think when he
taught his disciples to pray to pray, Thy
will be done on earth as it is
in heaven.
Not in a more limited way.
Not twisted and colored through human personality.
That we get to the place where our
faith can reach out and say, God, I
want you to come on earth and break
our scheme of things.
Some years ago, the Lord sent a revival
in New Guinea.
There were Presbyterian ministers there.
And they taught the people, you know, this
is the word of God, this is true.
Of course, they had their own reservations about
certain parts of the Scripture and certain things
which were only for the apostles and so
on and so forth.
But they taught these poor natives out there
that these things were true.
And so, they were cutting a tree one
day.
This tree got out of control and fell
on top of one of them.
He got hurt.
The way I remember, he broke his leg.
And they'd been reading the Bible and so
they gathered around and said, well, listen, let's
pray for this guy that God would heal
him.
God healed him.
And the way I remember the thing, then
sometime later, somebody, somehow or other, was passed
away, died.
And they said, well, God even raised the
dead in the Scripture.
Let's pray for this person.
They prayed and God raised the dead.
And then they go and tell a missionary,
and the missionary, well, really, that doesn't happen.
You know, a friend of ours always says,
someday somebody's going to read this book and
believe it.
We're all going to be ashamed, right?
He's not going to have anything to preach
about tonight.
Anyway, you know, we need to pray, and
it was expressed there, I forget where, in
one of the songs, take the dimness from
my soul away.
We need to pray, Lord, cause me to
see.
When Jesus was baptized there in Jordan, baptized
with the Spirit of God, He said the
heavens were open.
Not just something symbolic.
Not just, you know, it's kind of like,
oh, how neat.
The heavens were open because He's going to
need that.
And as He ministers, He says, those things
which I see, not which I have seen,
those things which I see the Father do.
Why did He go into a multitude and
heal this one and no one else?
Why did He go to the pool of
Bethesda and call that one and no one
else?
I've seen people that God has blessed with
tremendous faith.
One of the problems that people like that
many times have is that they get out
ahead of God.
There was a pastor who went to a
meeting and the Lord showed him he was
going to heal six people.
And he was under the anointing of God
and he prays for one, he prays for
two, and he prayed for about twenty.
And the power of God was operating.
Then he feels terrible.
God, what am I doing?
Am I doing Your will or am I
just trying to use Your power?
You can get twenty healed.
You know, one of the hardest things with
power is to hold back.
That's why God doesn't give it us.
You know, if God had given us all
the power to fill all this church, to
extend, to revolutionize the whole countryside, you know,
would anybody be able to live with us?
Would anybody be able to bear us?
If God had given us all the faith
that we, you know, that we'd sure like
to have, would it do us any good
or wouldn't it?
When a kid starts growing up, you know,
and he wants a Corvette, the father doesn't
buy him a Corvette even if he can't.
Maybe he starts him out with a Volkswagen
or something, or a Civic.
I saw a Civic out there.
You know, because you can't just run wild
with power.
All power is given to Him.
He's got it when we need it.
I think I've said before, we get a
vision.
God will give us that vision.
But He makes sure that we are prepared
to fulfill it.
We got a vision of a move of
God in this dimension, in a city or
in a country.
We start out from here, and this is
the measure of our life, and this is
the measure of our faith.
He takes us through trials.
He takes us through testings.
And He enlarges us.
He tries us again, and He tests us
again, and He enlarges us, and He leads
us on until when we get out here,
having left there, get out here, we're able
to take it.
It won't destroy us.
You see what I mean?
Okay.
So we got to know His power, not
in theory, not in theory.
Not just saying He has it.
You know, it's so easy, it's so easy
to deceive ourselves.
Let me underline this for you a minute,
because it's so easy.
Remember my brother telling me about some ladies
in New Zealand.
They were famous, quote, prayer warriors, the kind
of people that everybody stands in awe of.
And they had this process of prayer whereby
they, what would be the word now in
English?
I think of it in Spanish.
My mind kind of goes that way anymore.
But anyway, they'd go through labor pains, there
we go, through labor pains in prayer.
And they'd pray for some object, and they'd,
so to speak, bring it to birth, you
know, and this is all very mystical and
sublime.
And he gets there, and in this meeting,
these ladies start praying.
And it's an awesome thing because they start
groaning.
It's almost like a literal childbirth, and everybody's
kind of, you know, I'm hearing, oh!
When we come empty before God, and that's
the basis of all prayer.
Talks about it there in Psalm 62, among
other places.
People wait upon Him at all times.
Pour out your heart before Him.
When we pour out our heart before Him,
there comes a time when we've got nothing
left to say.
We don't even have those strong groanings.
We're all groaned out.
We're all prayed out.
We're just waiting, and something's pouring, and it's
not the flesh, it's the Spirit.
We start to know He's got it.
He's got it.
There comes a time He gives it.
Okay, and this is the basis then.
He says to them, go.
Go.
There's a geographical connotation, of course.
Go into all the world.
But once again, we read the Scripture, and
we think we know it.
We think we understand it.
You notice in the New Testament, whenever they
refer to Old Testament Scriptures, whenever they're quoted,
they're quoted in a far more extensive way,
a far more extensive application than what they
were said in the Old Testament.
A little verse that we'd read in the
Old Testament, we think, well, refers to a
specific circumstance.
In the New Testament, they take it, and
they apply it to a whole field of
action.
I said before, in our world, we're like
those people that paint miniature pictures.
You know, we get a postage stamp.
We put a chain of mountains at the
back of the postage stamp.
We paint some snow on the top of
the mountains.
We fill the mountains with forests.
We come down, and in the foreground, we
do a lake.
Behind the lake, we put a city.
And all of this on a postage stamp.
We paint miniatures.
God never does that.
God paints for eternity.
God doesn't deal with miniatures.
One of the hardest things is to get
our minds from thinking in earthly concepts and
get them into the realm of the Spirit
of God.
His thoughts are not our thoughts.
Not just that they're bigger.
It's not that God's got a bigger postage
stamp.
It's that God's different.
Totally different.
And no matter how much I think I
know, if I'm going to go on with
God, there'll come a time when I realize
I don't know anything.
Amy Carmichael, a woman tremendously used of God
in India, talks about new revelation.
She said, when I come to that, all
I know is as nothing.
Is as nothing.
And so Jesus tells them to go.
And I want to believe that this means
far more than geographical.
This means a leaving.
Can you go any place without leaving some
other place?
Now this is too deep for you all,
I know.
If I'm going to go out the door,
I can't stay on the platform, right?
If I'm going to go geographically to another
country, I can't stay in this country.
Let me just...
We'll fix all this with a pastor afterwards.
But let me tell you something.
You can't be a blessing to Oylton unless
you've left Oylton.
You can't be a blessing to this church
unless in your heart you've left this church.
What I'm talking about is an identification with
God.
Not that God bless me that I'm in
this place and Lord, this is mine.
Lord, bless this place.
The Lord said, OK, I'll bless it if
you leave.
No, Lord, never.
You've given me this.
You know, I know a lot of us,
we identify with things, we identify with places.
Lord, you gave me this.
Well, maybe you did.
And He said, now watch.
You remember...
Who was it?
Oh, Moses' mother.
And Pharaoh's daughter said, now you bring up
this child for me.
And there came a time He said, I
brought it up for you.
Now take your child.
And the Lord says, Paul, you go and
start a work for me.
Lord, it started.
Now it's going to be a blessing.
Now, Lord, I'm going to receive some of
the fruits.
And the Lord says, OK, turn around and
start plowing again.
No, Lord, I want to leave.
No, go start plowing.
Lord!
You know, and I cannot be a blessing
there.
Martin Luther had a phrase.
He said, if we fight on all the
field of battle, except that one place that
God has called us to, we are in
defeat.
You know, I want to fight the enemies
of God.
I'm against corruption in the government.
I want to fight that.
And the Lord says, you pay that drunk
through.
No, Lord, forget the drunk.
Let's get the president where he's supposed to
be.
No way.
All the field of battle in that one
little place.
The Lord says, you take care of the
drunk and I'll take care of the president.
No, Lord, I'll take care of the president
and you take care of the drunk.
No, it doesn't work that way.
You know, we think it does, but it
doesn't work that way.
And he says, go.
It's a leaving.
If I could just get this one thing
across.
If there's one thing that God wants is
a people called to the heavenly that have
left in all its thoughts, in all its
ways, even the spiritual, even the spiritual.
Oh, I said yesterday about pastors leaving a
place.
I remember learning that on the mission field
and even going to a new place.
And the Lord said, now I'll give you
all these people.
They're not yours.
Look at them.
Bless them.
Minister them.
Love them.
But don't don't.
How can I say?
Don't get involved personally with them.
Even as I do get involved personally with
them, they might be my friends or everything,
but your spirit is separate.
They're my people.
When the time comes to leave, you've got
to leave.
You've got to leave.
And I've had to do that different times.
I remember a church in Argentina.
The Spirit of God was moving.
We were working with an older pastor.
The Lord had used him in revival down
there.
It came a time he left.
We were left in charge of the church,
crying out to God with all our heart
and soul because they were in the midst
of a revival move.
Lord, keep your spirit on this place.
And he did.
Thank God.
He did.
And then there came a time the Lord
said, now you leave it.
Lord, it's revival.
Well, what happened to, who was it?
Philip.
Huh?
Go down to the desert.
Not the desert, Lord.
If we're going to leave this revival, let's
have a bigger one.
We've had one now in, where was it?
In Samaria.
How about we go to, how about we
go to Greece and really turn the place
upside down?
Now we've learned how to do it.
The Lord said, no, you go down to
the desert.
You know, he can't bless me in Greece
or Samaria unless I'm willing to go to
the desert.
He can't bless me, okay, in Oylton unless
I'm willing to leave Oylton or, forget it,
you see what I mean?
You know, as I stand up here as
a missionary, I'd like to see a lot
of people go to the mission field.
Yet I know it's, it's very hard to
get through.
We never find any couples, I mean, I'm
generalizing now, we never find any couples leaving
everything and going to the mission field.
There's a famous English preacher, Dr. Martin Lloyd
-Jones, who was a medical doctor.
I think he was assistant to the king's
physician, right?
He was right up at the top.
The king's physician and his assistant, Dr. Martin
Lloyd-Jones.
And he left it all.
And they said as he preached he'd always
be going like this.
He was so used to pulling out his
stethoscope.
And he carried over the habit, but he
left it.
He left it.
You know, we don't find people, you know,
especially if I've got a career and if
I've got a profession.
If I've gone through seven years or whatever
it is to be a doctor, maybe I'll
go to the mission field if the Lord's
got a, you know, a need for a
missionary doctor.
Somebody talked about us always looking for a
niche where our talents will fit in, you
know.
It's kind of like we write, we write
to the mission boards to see if somebody
can use a missionary pilot who's got a
little bit of medicine.
There's also a ventriloquist.
You've got a fitting for me where I
can use my talents.
You know, there are very few people that
need missionary pilot doctor ventriloquists.
And so, you know, the Lord had no
opening.
So I stay where I am and develop
myself because God wants us to develop.
He doesn't.
He wants us to die.
He wants us to leave it all.
Maybe some people never more use their medicine,
never more use their skill as a pilot,
never more use their ventriloquism.
Forget it all.
Go.
It's the first commandment and it always means
a cutting off.
There is no going, once again, without moving.
There is no moving without putting out roots.
It's like you take a plant, we've got
a plant that grows down there in South
America called mandioke.
It's a, what is it?
It's a tubular type root thing, not a
potato, but that type thing.
It grows with a stem like this and
then all these roots at the bottom that
are eaten.
And when they, when they harvest that, they
grab it and they move it around.
They shake it loose from the soil and
get it all loose and then they pull
it out.
The whole thing with all these roots and
some of them are great big old things
like this.
They pull it out of the ground.
You know, that's what God does to us.
Go.
Lord, I'm rooted.
You think that the weeds spout roots fast.
You should see people.
You know, the Lord, I've seen this happen.
Somebody that feels I need to find God,
let me go to that place where God
is.
We got some Bible school students, I understand.
They're students from ORU or whatever.
You know, I think for many people, Bible
schools, colleges are cop-outs.
Because we leave adolescence.
We don't take up the burden of being
an adult person.
And we go many times.
I'm not saying it applies to anyone here.
But many people go to a Bible school
and there's a parenthesis in life.
They have no responsibilities basically.
They're still single.
They don't have to do all the things
that maybe they did in high school.
They certainly don't have the disciplines of life.
Watching after their kids and changing their diapers
and running the errands and keeping the house
and the home fires burning.
And they're in this sweet little interlude and
it's great if every moment can be filled
with an increasing knowledge and a preparation for
the future.
But you know what it gets to be?
It gets to be that they spend their
time goofing off.
The boys and the girls have their times
flirting around.
When they got a little spare time, then
they go down to the basement and play
ping pong.
Who's the best ping pong player in, you
know, ABC, Bible College, me.
And you know, that's where we're at.
And then you think those people get out
to the mission field, the mission society.
If they do the best possible job they
can screening all these candidates to see if
the guy's got what it takes to make
it on the mission field, how many, what
percentage is it that return?
Used to be 25%.
I don't know anymore.
After all, they're screening.
You know, they do the best they can
because you take a mission group, they've got
a lot invested.
Some of these people, they buy a house,
they pay for the car, they pay for
the kids' education, they give them a wage,
they fly them down, they take care of
their equipment.
They do all of this.
They've got a lot of money invested.
They do the best job they can.
These people can't make it.
They're not prepared.
They've learned that life does not demand responsibility.
And he says, go.
You know, if we could just have this
somehow engraved in our hearts.
Once again, it's a geographical leaving, but it's
far more than that.
Leave your own thoughts.
Leave your own concepts.
Leave your own desires.
Leave your own laziness.
We could talk a long time on laziness,
too.
You know, the desire to get as much
as possible as possible.
The desire to do...
We've got people on the mission field.
Let's talk of missionary work with the Indians.
Even there, we get false ideas about missionaries
and about the mission field.
For us, the real missionary is the guy
that's paddling down the river, you know, going
to reach the unreached natives and the mosquitoes
are buzzing all around him, millions of mosquitoes.
You can hardly see him under a cloud
of mosquitoes.
They're all, you know, biting him to death
and there he is sweating and toiling and
he's got malaria and the fever's coming and
going and he's staggering on, you know.
You know how many Indians there are in
Argentina right now?
I think there's a total of about 45
,000 out of about 25 million or 28
million people.
In Paraguay, we've got about 20 to 25
,000 missionaries.
I think in all of Brazil, a place
as big as the continental United States with
a population of around about 120 million people,
there are only about 200 to 250,000
natives, Indians.
As far as that goes, we've got, I
believe, two and a half million Indians in
the United States.
We've got far more than all of these
countries put together.
Far, far, far more.
You know, we think, well, who will go
and reach the natives up the Amazon?
Which is fine if God calls you to
it, but what I mean is there's a
romance and there's a lot of people who
respond to that romance and you can get
a lot of candidates.
If I had a mission work at the
top of the Andes and I talked to
you about the crocodiles and, you know, and
the natives and the suffering and John that
was shot in the back by an arrow
and, you know, Mary that was killed by
the headhunters from a neighboring tribe and when
you boil it all down, there's 200 in
this tribe and there's 50 in the other
tribe.
Because that's what stands the way it is.
I mean, I know there are missionary countries,
and there are Indian countries, but there are
a lot of countries that we think of
as being Indian that are not Indian.
And so he says, go.
And maybe it means a city like Buenos
Aires in Argentina, 8 million people, like Chicago,
translated to the Southern Hemisphere, or some of
the large cities of Brazil.
We're not dealing with natives.
We're dealing with sophisticated, cynical, people that are
far sharper, on the average, than people are
up in the states.
Because they live in a more cutthroat society.
Far more prepared as far as conning their
neighbor than what we are.
Believe me, I've had this problem.
Kids come down from the states and they're
too naive.
I can't send them to an office to
do an arrow and they're too naive.
You know, our blessings have become our cursings.
We don't need very much to make our
way through life.
Not at all.
But there you've got to scrabble.
There you've got to fight if you want
your way to the top.
We had a situation in Paraguay that one
of the banks needed somebody to, what do
you call it, a doorkeeper at one of
the banks.
You know they had 33 doctors applied for
that post?
33 people with a doctorate in economy, I
suppose, a doctorate in economy that applied for
the post of doorkeeper.
Why?
Because everybody studies and they want to get
in even if it's a doorkeeper because then
they're going to go scrambling up to the
top.
You know, we think of the mission field
as a bunch of naive natives waiting for
the gospel with arms open.
A lot of missionaries have given us the
wrong idea too.
We've got a lot of stuff that's a
carryover from 200 and 250 years ago when
missions first started.
You've got the whole concept of, you know,
four years down there and one year home
and all that kind of stuff which basically
carries over from the days of sailing ships,
I think, when it took six months to
get to the mission field.
You know now, what is it?
Dad was telling me yesterday, you can fly
from Dallas to London for $100.
You get on the plane at midday, I
suppose by midnight at least, or far before,
you're there.
You know, and that's our world, that's the
world we live in.
We don't have to think and yet things
change so slowly.
We're not very alert, we're not very with
it.
When Jesus speaks, go.
He means, you just be ready.
You look at Whitfield, 17 times I think,
way back then, 17 times he went across
the Atlantic when it took months in a
sailing ship, you know, going up and down
and up and down and up and up
and up and down.
17 times he went across the Atlantic.
People had to go from land to land.
Henry Martin that was in India and started
coming over land to Persia and over land
to Arabia and over land to Turkey.
On horseback and what have you got?
You think of Livingstone.
It is months of journeys.
You know, we live in this age when
we don't even, we shouldn't even use the
word travel.
You know, it's kind of like all it
is to go from one country to another
anymore it's like stepping in an elevator.
You hit the fourth floor and you're there
and you step out and, you know, now
I'm in South America and now I'm in
Africa or whatever it is.
It's not travel anymore.
You know, the only thing we get is
what we call jet lag.
There's no seasickness, there's no hurt.
It's not that as you were going out
to India on the nine month journey your
wife died or gave birth to a baby
that died on the way, which was the
daily bread of those people way back then.
And I think the easier it is, somehow,
the harder it is for us to just
cut loose.
Go.
The Lord says I want you to be
free.
Not like this that's tied on, but like
a ball.
You know, it goes, it bounces, it can
go anywhere.
Once again, I repeat, it's not just the
geographical, it refers to go to every place
geographically right, to every condition.
There are certain things that, once again, that
are attractive, even here in the States.
It's easy to work with, what do we
say, some kind of needy people, it's harder
to work with others.
Personally, I wouldn't care much to work with
homosexuals.
I think it must be an awful thing
to try and work with those people.
But I'm sure God has an interest in
them.
And somebody's called.
There are races who are so enmeshed in
their things you can say, people down in
Mexico say, it's a waste of time to
try and help these guys.
It's a waste of time.
Or it's a waste of time to try
and help the Indians.
Why?
Because all these Indians are this way, these
Mexicans are this way.
Can God save a Mexican?
Maybe he's never done it yet.
Maybe you've never yet seen a transformed, glorified,
spirit-filled, anointed Mexican.
OK, pray one through.
He's going to have a heritage from all
nations.
He's going to have people that will go
there, I suppose even today, back to Germany.
Germany, where the Reformation was born, where the
light first came again upon the face of
the earth.
Germany that had its tremendous men of God.
Speaking about going, one of the first, the
fathers of first, of the first faith missions,
as opposed to the denominational type approach, was
a German man.
The way I remember it, he must have
been, oh, 60, 65 years of age.
And some people from his congregation, a couple
of men came to him and said, we
feel to go to the mission field.
And of course, back then, unless you were
ordained and gone through all your university studies,
you did not minister.
And he said, this cannot be.
No, he said.
They said, Pastor, we got this burden, at
least pray with us.
And he prayed.
And as he prayed, God got hold of
him.
He was willing to go.
He was free.
Lord, you don't use people that are not
ordained.
You don't use people that haven't gone through
all their theological studies.
And the Lord said, child, I want these
men out on the mission field.
And he started at that age.
And he prayed out from his little church.
It was called Hermannsburg, which in German means
Oylton Town.
He prayed out from his little Kemsley Church,
three to, I forget the exact number, three
to four hundred missionaries in the next, what
was it, 20 years.
He started when he was old enough to
retire, practically.
And he prayed those people out.
He prayed them out.
He prayed in their support and everything they
needed.
And he had them scattered around the world.
His church had more members out on the
mission field than what it did at home,
with the converts of those that had gone
out.
He was 65 when he started.
You know, I'm not 65 yet.
My dad is almost 65.
But I know as we get older, it's
harder to let loose.
You know, it's harder to get into a
new departure.
You know, I've built something up.
Now let's hold on to it.
Let's consolidate.
We got to the crest of the hill.
Now we can start, you know, coasting.
There's no coasting in God.
Go.
Believe me, it's got to be written over
everything we do, over every day of our
lives.
We go, and he'll take us from what
we think we can do to something that
we know we can't do.
Even in the middle of our lives.
And he said, leave that and do this.
Lord, I know how to do that.
Lord, I've learned faith in that area.
Lord, I've learned how to operate in that
area.
And he says, go there.
Lord, I can't go there.
Remember Dave Wilkerson, a country boy, going from
a country church to work with the drug
addicts in New York.
Lord, what am I doing here?
I remember when we went to Paraguay from
Argentina.
Like I said, we've been in this church
with the spirit of the Lord really moving
in our midst.
And we go into Paraguay in a country
dark and closed.
And I said, Lord, what am I doing
here?
He says, I've got a purpose here.
He said, don't say four months in this
country.
Now is the time.
They say, Lord, what?
This is only going to be speaking life
into the dead in this situation.
Back there we've got people that are alive
and we can help them out and here
they're dead.
He said, you leave all of that.
You know.
But Lord, I've been, what was it, ten
years or so in Argentina already.
Lord, I know that.
I don't know these people.
Their temperament is totally different.
Their race is totally different.
Leave it all.
You know, once again, I get frustrated.
I don't know how much we're really understanding.
We get, I remember a girl in Argentina.
And she, the Lord touched her graciously.
She had a boyfriend.
The Lord called her, give up her boyfriend.
I don't know all the circumstances but the
bare bones of the matter is this.
Give up her boyfriend, you know.
And about a couple of weeks later, she's
in the church.
Well, how are you doing?
Fine.
And my boyfriend and I, you know, we're
planning on getting, your what?
My boyfriend.
Well, didn't you yield your boyfriend?
Yeah, but the Lord gave him back.
What Lord?
The Lord gave, you know, we get this
idea, Abram and Isaac.
And God always brings us to that point
and gives us Isaac back.
Well, you know, Abram and Isaac happen once.
Once, once, once, once, once in the Bible.
And all the rest of those guys, hmm?
All the rest of those people, you know,
we make a norm out of something which
is not the norm.
And I know what happens.
We yield, we really do yield and then
we feel good and we feel relaxed.
And all the burden and all the pressure
and all the conviction is gone.
And so we're feeling so good, we pick
it up again, whatever it is.
We pick it up again.
Lord, I yielded it and, and, and I
get carried away with this soft feeling and
I pick it up again.
I think it's God.
I think it's God and it's not God.
And the Lord spoke once and He said,
He said, lay it down.
And I picked it up.
He never told me to pick it up.
I pick it up but He doesn't speak
again.
He doesn't speak again.
My brother's got a, a friend who years
ago started this ministry, I suppose you'd call
it, of getting Christian books in all the
supermarkets all over the states.
You know, they didn't used to have those.
And he got these book racks and they
always have now a Christian section, Christian books
in all the, and this guy started this
thing, circulating.
And he was looking for distributors and he
told my brother one time, he said, you
know, as I go from church to church,
as I go from area to area, place
to place, and talk and present this and
look for people who will represent our work.
He said, you know, it's surprising how many
older people will come to me and say,
you know, and I think all of this
had some kind of missions connection, maybe the
money for missions or something.
How many people would come and say, you
know, years ago when I was young I
felt the Lord had talked to me about
missions and then I got married or then
I did this or then I did that
and I never made it.
And they're frustrated and they're wanting somehow to
try and pay off a little bit their
debt with God.
There's so many people that God have called.
Whenever there's a revival in an area, there
are far more people called than what we
would normally think of as being called.
I remember reading of a revival among young
people in an orphanage in China.
Tremendous moving of the Spirit of God.
And he said that the desire that those
kids had to preach and when they stood
up, the word was with authority.
The word was with power.
God was speaking through them.
It's all of one meaning.
A young person speaking, it said it seemed
impossible that anybody could resist the words.
But in the normal run of things, how
many people are going to go into the
ministry from an orphanage?
Maybe one.
Maybe none.
Maybe two.
Or from an average church.
But what happened to this brother's church over
there in Germany?
Somehow they got a vision.
And all of a sudden one said, Lord,
you know, there's one thing I'm convinced.
Talking about, you know, and you can argue
with my exegesis of the thing, but anyway.
Talking of Scripture having a wider application.
For us too, there are things which if
we do not do them, not that we're
prepared to do them, but if we do
not do them, God's going to have to
cause the rocks to do them for us.
Just as the rocks would have cried out
that day in Jerusalem.
If these that hold their peace.
Now this is not Solomon's temple choir.
This is not the restoration of the tabernacle
of David and all that that we hear
about nowadays.
These are not the people that are the
genetic line of Levi.
These are just the fishermen and the housewives
and the kids that are hanging out on
the street.
And he says if these should hold their
peace it's necessary that God would find human
voices to proclaim him as he comes into
Jerusalem as king riding upon his donkey.
And these are the ones that are there
and these are the ones that got to
do it.
And if they would not do it, he
said, it's necessary that the stones would cry
out.
Amy Carmichael talked about when she was in
India and started this work.
She had a tremendous ability as a speaker.
Doors were opening up to her.
Invitations were starting to come in from different
parts of India for ministry.
And the Lord called her from it all
to work with the children that were dedicated
to idols.
The girls which would become the prostitutes in
the temple to rescue those people to form
a community where they could live.
And they criticized her.
A single girl they said, what do you
know about this?
God's got people that know how to do
this kind of work.
You don't know how to do this work.
Who are you?
And she said, one day, all unbidden without
even thinking that that verse came to her
mind.
If these should hold their peace then the
rocks.
And she said, Lord, you know, maybe I'm
just one step removed from a rock as
far as any ability is concerned.
As far as any capacity to do the
work is concerned.
But God will step to the rock and
He'll take me if I say yes.
And that's what the goal means.
It means to say, Lord, here I am.
You know, unless we pass that point we
never really do get far with God.
We can get a long way in the
Mickey Mouse of Christianity.
The Christian society that we talked about yesterday.
We can become, you know, a Christian teacher
or Christian singer or whatever you got.
Think of a man that I knew years
ago.
He had tremendous ability as a preacher.
He could illustrate.
He could get the people with him.
He was very simpatico as we'd say in
Spanish.
Very attractive in his personality.
And he could do it all.
You know one thing?
He had very little light.
Very little light of the Spirit of God.
It was all coming from here and it
was all coming from his emotions.
And people thought, oh, isn't so-and-so
a great preacher?
He doesn't know a thing about it.
The essence is a spiritual essence.
Those that minister must minister in the Spirit.
God, not man, God makes His own ministers
flames of fire.
And so He says to them, go, teach
all nations baptizing them in the name of
the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
There are many different interpretations and much teaching
on what baptism means.
I just want to take one thing.
Baptism means identification.
They're baptized into the name of the Father,
Son and Holy Ghost.
It's a separation, once again, from and a
separation to.
There's something that's left behind.
There's something which is embraced.
Jesus says here, baptize them into the
heavenly kingdom.
As we have identified with the earthly, as
we have identified with the hurt, as we
have identified with the sin, as we have
identified with the confusion, as we have identified
with the unbelief, as we have identified with
human ambitions and human social schemes, as we
have identified with all that the human personality
represents, all man's thoughts and ways and motives,
we've got to leave it all behind.
We've got to identify instead of with death,
with life.
Instead of with darkness, with light.
Instead of with disobedience, with obedience, total, absolute
obedience.
Instead of us staying in this world and
fighting off the enemies and building a place
of security, as we talked about last night.
To get out there where I'm totally insecure
and only God is with me.
You think Abram was defenseless with only a
piece of tent between him and the world?
And Isaac and Jacob?
They didn't have any castles.
They didn't have any place that was fortified.
There they were, pegged into the earth.
A few little pegs in the tent.
And I said, yes, it's not just, it
didn't just happen that the first three that
God called walked that way.
He's pointing out something.
What he's saying is that spiritually, all my
people should be free.
All my people should be pilgrims.
All my people should be citizens of the
heavenly and not of the earthly.
As they've identified with this, they've got to
identify.
And it's beyond the words and it's beyond
the Christian phraseology.
As I said yesterday, those things that, as
I come up to the stage, I don't
know what to say to my kids because
it makes them sick.
They come up and say, God, what's all
this?
You know, what are we doing?
What's that guy talking about in his message?
What's that guy doing with his song service?
What's that Christian teacher trying to teach me?
They're just trying to shove a bunch of
ideas down my throat.
Get me to conform to something.
Get me to, you know, do the right
thing at the right time.
You know, now you clap, now you do
this, now you do the other.
And, in Christian, our Christian environment, we, you
know, move with the right music and the
right rhythm.
And it's not that, it's life.
It's life.
To identify with the spirit of God.
To identify with the freedom of God.
You realize how free Jesus was.
He walked through this earth.
He didn't care for their conventions.
He didn't care for their ideas.
He didn't care for their strictures and their
rules and their rights and forms and their
interpretation of the law.
He believed that all of this was made
for man and not man for all of
this.
Please.
You know, in the church today, the church
is made for man, not man for the
church.
We got the whole thing turned upside down.
You're in the church, okay, now you do
this, you do that, you do that.
God help us.
The church is abounded.
You know, the word religion, and I don't
know, somebody told me this, and I don't
know what language they're referring to, but anyway,
the word religion, the word that we use,
religion, comes originally from a root word which
means bondage.
It means bondage.
Why?
Because religion closes doors.
And it's true.
We don't have time to get into it,
although in a sense you can't very well
leave because it would be rude to leave.
But, you know, when Jesus came in the
New Testament, His rules are totally different than
the Old Testament.
In the Old Testament, man sinned and he
stepped into death.
And so to speak, God said, I'm going
to close the doors to death.
I'm going to put rules round about mankind
so we will not die.
And He said, thou shalt not do this,
and thou shalt not do this, and thou
shalt not do this, and not do this.
And He gave the Ten Commandments.
He gave a lot of other commandments and
how to come near to God and the
forms of religion, the temple, and the tabernacle
of Moses and all those things.
And He put there those doors to limit
man, to close him in, to save him
from his self and his own inclinations.
You know, but Jesus came with something else
and He said, repent for the kingdom of
heaven is at hand.
When He starts talking about the kingdom of
heaven, He gives the rules of the kingdom
of heaven there in Matthew 5.
He says, blessed are the poor in spirit.
Why?
Because if they're not, they're going to hell.
No!
He's not closing in.
It's not a closing in thing.
He's opening a door.
He's not closing the doors to hell.
He's opening the doors to heaven.
Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven.
You know, He's leading us out with a
positive, not pushing us with a negative, not
closing us in, opening us up.
He wants us to be free and we're
not.
We're not.
The church is not free.
The church has got it all the other
way.
A Christian does this and does this and
if he doesn't do it, brother, he's not
a Christian when he is.
Because Christianity is not what you don't do.
Christianity is what you live, what you do
do.
It's what comes from within which responds to
heaven which takes hold and brings down heaven
to earth.
Thy kingdom come on earth.
How do I relate to that?
How do I measure up to that?
He says, baptize them.
Get them identified.
If you go into all the nations, there's
no excuse.
There's no person, there's no man that's not
included in this baptism.
There's no person that doesn't need to be
separated from earth.
There's no person that doesn't need to be
transformed and brought into the heavenly.
Baptize them.
Put them there out of their world, out
of their element.
Put them under the water in a new
world where they die and then bring them
out symbolically in resurrection.
They've died to all of that.
They're not messing around.
They're not goofing off.
They've not lost their vision.
They're not out out of contact with life.
They're the children of God walking on earth
and knowing the Father.
They've got light.
They've got power.
They've got authority.
Baptize the man in the name of the
Father.
The Father represents God in heaven.
Let's just take two things He wants us
to have.
One, communion with the heavenly world.
I'm talking about two-way dialogue.
Communion with the heavenly world.
Once again, let our religion be not just
earthbound.
Let it not be just what man teaches
us.
Let it not be just what we read
in a book and what we hear in
somebody's seminar.
Let that we have revelation.
Don't let that we have two things.
Communion and revelation.
That's why baptize them that they might know
the Father.
What did he say?
This is life that they might know thee.
And it only comes about through this baptism.
I'm not talking about the water baptism.
I'm not talking about spiritual baptism.
He shall baptize you in what?
In the Holy Ghost and fire.
He shall baptize you into the kingdom of
God.
So baptize them in the name of the
Father.
May they know that that kingdom is above
every kingdom.
That that authority is above every authority.
Baptize them into the authority of that kingdom
into all its laws and principles.
How many people try to do the will
of the Lord?
How many people try to do the work
of the church?
I'm not in the principles of God.
Using human gimmicks.
Psychological approaches.
I think it was Jimmy Swagger who was
preached about it a week ago about Christian
psychologists.
You know, you can have a Christian.
You can have a psychologist.
But he said, I doubt that you can
have a Christian psychologist.
I think he's right.
And yet, there's so much emphasis.
There's, I think, a university or, you know,
what do you call it?
Christian college that doesn't have this psychological counseling
course.
We try them mentally and tie knots which
are spiritual.
You can't do it.
You know, I spend an hour talking to
this guy getting his mind straightened out.
He goes through the door and somebody looks
at him wrong and the knot's tied again
because it was not a spiritual release.
His mind was out and his mind comes
back in.
If we go to the nations, I said
yesterday, the nations are bound spiritually.
As light produces liberation, so darkness.
Isaiah there talks about gross darkness.
That's the little boy in England.
There they use the gross, you know, a
dozen, a score, a gross, 144, right?
He said, what does gross darkness mean?
It means 144 darknesses.
Hmm?
It's not far off.
Because one generation has its darkness.
The children are born to a heritage of
darkness.
They have their own darkness.
And just as God works from glory to
glory, so the enemy works from damnation to
damnation.
You think we don't need baptizing into a
new world?
You don't think our minds, our spirits, our
souls need release?
The one thing I desire, the day that
I step over the threshold and go into
heaven, it won't be a strange place to
me.
I won't get up there and all of
a sudden, God, help me.
I never saw it, I never knew it,
I never understood.
I go into the liberty, I go into
the tremendous glory and light and absolute power
of that place and the principles of purity
and life and holiness.
And I say, God.
William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army,
had a dream when one day he went
into heaven.
The longer he was there and the more
people passed in front of him, the worse
he felt.
He felt terrible.
Finally the Lord came and he said, Lord,
send me back here in heaven.
Send me back, Lord, because I come in
and I don't belong here.
He was a Christian, he was born again.
I've had that happen to me when the
Spirit of the Lord has been moving in
a meeting.
The meeting will go out beyond me, out
beyond my faith, out beyond my knowledge and
I'm there, Lord, this is you, it's beautiful
and I can't participate.
I can't join in it, I don't have
that faith, I don't see that glory.
The cross doesn't mean that fullness to me.
Baptize them to all that that heavenly world
represents.
Baptize them to He who has ordained from
the beginning, from before the foundation of the
world the works of salvation, the movings of
His Spirit, the demonstrations of His power.
Baptize them into Him that they might know
that.
Then He says, baptize them into the name
of the Son.
The Father represents God in heaven, the Son
represents God on earth.
You know, a lot of people whose religion
is spiritual, it doesn't mean an earthly thing.
They've got these feelings and they've got this
little place where they go and pray and
pump up more of these feelings.
You know, but on earth it doesn't mean
anything.
It doesn't bind the wounds and visit the
sick and raise the dead and heal the
lepers and all those other things.
It doesn't visit the afflicted.
It doesn't do those things.
It's not going to visit somebody in the
hospital or whatever you've got.
You know, it's a spiritual exercise.
This word comes down from the mystics.
A spiritual exercise.
We go and we get down and we
pray and we get up.
Oh, brother, I had a beautiful time in
prayer today.
Oh, that's beautiful.
You know, we float.
Yeah, we float around.
You know, without the sound effects.
We float around in these...
Am I turned on?
Am I okay?
Yeah, okay.
We float around in this spiritual thing.
And we can do that if we only
see the heavenly.
He said, all power is given unto me
in heaven and on earth.