I'm in pretty bad shape tonight, I guess,
favorite preacher.
I'd like to read just one verse, you
don't need to look for it, you don't
want to take the time.
You all know it.
The Redeemer shall come to Zion, six little
words, the Redeemer shall come to Zion, thinking
as we sang that hymn tonight, though the
darkness hides me, so much darkness in this
world.
As I said before here, the Arabs have
a saying, that there are some people that
know and there are some people that don't
know, and there are some people that don't
know that they don't know.
The worst situation to be in is to
not know that you don't know.
But I think it's true of all of
us when we come to the things of
God.
The Apostle says, we know in part, we
prophesy in part, we perceive in part, and
we participate in part.
We know in part, we prophesy in part.
Everything is partial in this side of eternity,
we don't quite know how to say it.
One famous Scottish preacher, Alexander White, used to
say to his people, he said, we read
the book of Psalms, we think we understand
it, but we don't know anything about it.
We don't know anything about the depth, the
height, the breadth that the psalm is talking
about.
I think it's true, but I think he
could have made it a little bit more
extensive in its scope and applied it to
the whole Bible.
We read, I'm conscious, years pass by, and
many times I read a verse and it
seems like the first time I read it,
I may do that at goodness knows how
many times, it didn't mean anything until that
time, relatively.
I think one thing that God wants to
give to his people, and this is not
really a message, I mean, maybe it's a
message, it's not a sermon, it's just some
thought.
One thing that God wants to give to
his people is vision, understanding.
Proverbs says, where there is no vision, the
people perish.
There is no middle ground, there's no alternative,
it's one thing or the other.
This verse has been on my mind this
last couple of weeks, the Redeemer shall come
to Zion.
Zion is the place of the presence of
God.
Zion is the place to which the people
of God gather.
I think in that sense we understand it
in this verse.
God is coming to his people, God is
coming to those who are gathering unto him,
and he's coming as a Redeemer.
Like I say, we read the Bible many
times, we just read chapters at a time.
The verses pass by, we don't really stop
to think, we don't really stop to let
the light of God shine upon it, but
God is not haphazard, he's not careless in
his expression, uses the word Redeemer, he could
have used any one of twenty, thirty, fifty
other names of God in the Bible, yet
he uses this word.
Not Redeemer, I think, in the sense which
we think of it, redemption, salvation from hell,
forgiveness.
We tend to think of the Redeemer as
the lamb that was slain, the meek one
who was led to the slaughter.
The word that's used here, I understand, has
a sense of aggressiveness in it.
The Redeemer who violently retakes that which belongs
to him, the Redeemer who is the mighty
in battle, the Redeemer who is the Lord
with his garment stained in the battle, this
is the Redeemer.
This is the one that's coming to Zion.
Not the Redeemer in a passive sense, but
the Redeemer in an active sense.
Once again, redemption, far greater than what we
usually think of it.
There's a restoration that God wants to bring
to his church, which is very much ahead,
very much removed from my present experience as
a church.
There's light, understanding, grace, participation of fullness that
he wants to bring to us.
He wants to reclaim that which is his
own.
Maybe I'll get off on a sidetrack here,
but I think there's a lot of teaching
nowadays in the Church where we want to
reclaim that which we would like to have.
In other words, man is seeking to claim
something.
You lay your claims in God, and you
get your position in God, and you form
your personality in God, and you get rid
of your hang-ups, and you get rid
of your hurts, a great word which has
entered into the Church.
It's a self-human centered process.
Man is in the middle, and all God
wants to do is put Band-Aids on
all over until I'm totally covered with Band
-Aids, all my hurts, and then teach me
that I'm worth something.
We get the wrong end of it.
We've got to start the other end of
things.
We're not worth anything, neither before nor after,
in ourselves.
We need grace.
We need life.
I think when he told his disciples to
pray, give us this day our daily bread,
it's not just something natural, it's something spiritual.
We need a daily participation, a daily reception
of that life.
We can never see the positive until we
see the negative.
We can only see the positive, we can
only see the world of God in the
measure in which we've seen the negative, and
the measure which we've seen our own worthlessness,
the measure which we've seen our own need,
the measure which we've really seen our own
hurts, but not hurt in a superficial sense,
hurt in the sense that I'm totally destroyed
within, that all my thoughts, all my understandings,
all my capacities are no good when it
comes to the things of God.
I have a letter a short time ago
from a young boy in Argentina, an exceptional
person in the church, a real call of
God, a real grace of God, a real
consecration in his life, and he wanted to
come and help us in Paraguay.
He went back to Argentina, at this time
Argentina was in the midst of a revival
move, and in this revival spirit the Lord
started talking to him, and he said, I
don't want you in Paraguay.
He said, Lord, I want to give you
my youth, I want to give you my
strength, I want to give you everything I
can do, I want to give you this
personality, I want to give you all my
capacity.
He has a lot of it.
And the Lord said, I'm not interested in
your youth, I'm not interested in your strength,
I'm not interested in your personality, I'm not
interested in any of it.
It's kind of like, Lord, then, what do
I do?
I've got nothing else.
I want to give up.
I have another boy in Argentina, in Paraguay,
came down from the States to help us
for a while.
He started seeing the same thing, and he
comes from a real good school, a real
good church, and he said, you know, and
it surprised me that he'd say it, coming
from where he came, he said, you know,
up there in the States, they build us
up so much, they build us up so
much.
Going back to where we started, God wants
to give us a vision of himself, the
Redeemer.
He is the beginning, he is the ending.
Must be on an individual basis, if he's
not, everything is in vain.
Not just missing a certain percentage in vain,
one hundred percent in vain.
This is a Redeemer that comes to his
own with violence.
The God who Moses says is a jealous
God, will not let any man touch his
glory, will not let any man touch his
work.
He's coming to a people that wait for
him.
Maybe a hundred and fifty years ago now,
almost a hundred and fifty years ago, in
the south of Argentina, seven missionaries starved to
death.
They'd gone out to evangelize the southern tip
of South American land, which was at that
time in the Indian Territory, very degraded, backward
people.
They went out there, didn't find a reception
among the Indians.
The ship that was supposed to have brought
supplies to them, disobeyed orders, didn't go.
Another ship, disobeyed orders, didn't go.
They starved to death.
One by one they passed away until the
captain of the ship and one other was
left.
They had a little boat there on the
seashore, a little cave by the boat.
One was in the cave in the last
days, and one was by the boat.
In order that his friend in the cave
be found, the captain had painted on a
rock there an arrow pointing to the cave,
and together with the arrow he put a
scripture reference, Psalm 62, verses 5 and 8.
I think it's symbolical for us in South
America, marking that arrow, not only pointing to
the cave, but also, as it were, the
scripture reference pointing to the future of the
church in South America.
I think it has application for us in
North America.
Psalm says, My soul, wait thou only upon
God.
It goes on with this thought, verse after
verse.
Wait only upon God.
My salvation is from Him.
The reference was Psalm 62, verses 5 to
8.
My soul, wait thou only upon God, for
my expectation is from Him.
He only is my rock and my salvation.
He is my defense, I shall not be
moved.
And God is my salvation, my glory, the
rock of my strength and my refuge, and
God trusts in Him at all times, ye
people.
Pour out your heart before Him, God is
a refuge for us.
His last words, His last testament, God is
a refuge for us.
Pour out your soul before Him.
God's coming to a people that wait for
Him.
I think He never comes to any other
kind of people.
He comes to a people who wait for
Him.
I'm out of touch with church life in
the United States.
But let's take it this way, let's go
back.
I don't know if we realize how much
alone we are without God.
Don't know if we realize what it means
to be alone.
You've heard it said that if God would
withdraw the Holy Spirit from the church, that
most of the church activity would go on
as it always goes on.
I'm sure that's true.
Yet at the same time, I think there's
a degree of separation in all of our
lives.
God wants to bring us into a new
thing as a church.
I'm generalizing from what I see on the
mission field, I'm generalizing from the people that
I see come down to the mission field
from the countries which send missionaries.
But I imagine if the ones who go
to the mission field are the way they
are, then those who are left at home
must be similar.
I see a tremendous lack of awareness of
the reality of spiritual things.
We talk about God, but it finally ends
up, Lord bless me and guide me and
show me the way and I've got it
all mapped out.
I know where I'm going to go and
I know what I'm going to do, and
I know how far I'm going to go
in this direction, I know when I'm going
to turn around and when I'm going to
go in the other direction.
I've got my life planned.
I said to somebody the other day, whenever
God moves in revival, the percentages change within
the church.
Whereas in a normal church group, maybe one
percent of the people are called to preach
or called to the mission field, 99 percent
of the young people go into jobs, marriage
and whatever, whenever the Spirit of God comes
upon a place, whenever the veil is drawn
aside in the spiritual world, then the percentages
change.
Then all of a sudden we find that
there's not one out of a hundred that's
God's calling, there's many, many, many, many, many,
many more.
I don't know what the percentage would be,
but it's many more, and I think even
to a degree almost all of them are
caught up in that.
I have a friend down there in South
America who was born again in a tremendous
revival years ago in the north of Argentina.
He told me at that time, he said,
you know, we go to the church, he
said, on Saturdays we'd go to the meeting,
he said, Sundays we'd go out into the
country, we'd go out and preach, we'd go
out and testify, he said, then the people
would invite us to their homes and we'd
go and we'd eat, and by that time
he said there was no bus home, and
he said sometimes we'd come walking home through
the night and we'd get to the church,
goodness knows what hour of the night, and
then he said, well let's pray, and they'd
all pray, and then he said we'd get
up and then we'd go and change and
we'd eat our breakfast and go to work,
and he said we wouldn't think a thing
of it.
All day and all night he said we
wouldn't think a thing of it.
He said you're just caught up in the
move of the Spirit of God, and it's
not one in a hundred.
Maybe the percentage is reversed, one in a
hundred who doesn't enter into this.
And the rest of the church is caught
up in something.
God wants to catch up his people, he
wants to catch up his church, like I
said at the beginning, where there's no vision,
the people perish.
We cannot know, going back to our Arab
proverb, we cannot know that we don't know
unless God shows us.
It's, I think, maybe part of the curse,
or part of the results of sin, that
since the day man disobeyed and took of
the fruit, he always thinks he knows.
There's not a person on earth that doesn't
think that he knows, as long as I'm
here let me underline it.
I'm visiting the States, I've lived down in
South America, but for me it's striking that
the United States has such a tremendous appreciation
of individualism.
Maybe it comes from the time that the
individuals took their decision over there in Europe
to leave everything they knew and everything they
owned and come to a new country for
the freedom of their conscience.
Maybe it was strengthened as they went out
and took over the new land, pioneered.
And we today value the pioneer, we value
the individualist, the person who's not bound by
convention, the person that does his own thing,
the person that doesn't care what people think,
what society says.
Not only is there a tremendous amount of
that coming over into the church, maybe I
shouldn't be telling you this because you're not
going to see it from where you're sitting,
but when you're on a mission field you
do see it.
You talk to, where we are, a South
American young person, and you say, Mary, I
feel God wants this and this and this
in your life, and if a pastor or
somebody that they respect as a servant of
God comes to them and says that, it
rocks them back on their heels.
They say, I'd better find out if God
is saying this or isn't saying that, and
everything stops until you find out.
You know, we get young people down from
the state, and they're out of touch with
the culture and out of touch with the
language, and maybe somewhere along the line they
say, listen John, I want to tell you
something, and it's like, OK, and they put
together what you tell them together with what
they've read in a book and together with
what somebody said in a seminar and together
with what they learned at last day's, and
together with, or wherever it is, nothing wrong
with last day's, but you know what I
mean?
And they got all this input, and then
there's a whole big area which is my
personal outlook, and by the time you get
through telling them what God wants, it's kind
of like one little thing less.
Well, thank you.
One little thing more.
Thank you.
I'll think about it.
And they file it in the garbage can,
practically speaking.
I don't know how to talk about awareness.
I think it's something we need to find
before God, I think it's a sensitivity which
God wants to bring us.
Going back to our verse, the Redeemer shall
come to Zion.
Down there in South America, we're so conscious
of what it is when a land is
alone, alone before its enemies, alone before the
forces of destruction.
To dwell in a land which, as the
Scripture says, devours its inhabitants, where evil is
rampant, uncontrolled, where man is helpless against it,
where the church is weak and just hanging
on to life.
Yet down there, looking to God for his
intervention in this last time, it seems that
somehow this verse that is echoing in my
mind, heaven proclaimed it, the prophet repeated it,
somehow it seems to me a couple of
weeks ago down there, as though there comes
a time when even nature itself becomes aware.
Maybe this doesn't fit in with the Doctor's
theology here, but anyway.
Nature becomes aware of God's time drawing near,
that nature which the Apostle says groans and
prevails, somehow starts to hear the announcement of
heaven.
I don't know how to transmit it, I
don't know how to say it, but it
seems to me that there is a time
when there starts to be an announcement, as
it were, floating in the air, the winds
are carrying it, as though one leaf on
a tree is saying it to the other
leaf.
One flower is repeating it to another flower,
the Redeemer is coming, the Redeemer is coming.
To a land which has dwelt in a
spiritual vacuum for generations, to a place where
darkness has taken its captives and destroyed them,
where the enemy has come to kill and
to destroy and he has done it time
after time after time, there starts to be
a change in the atmosphere, starts to be
a different sound in the air.
God starts to click in the heart, the
Redeemer is coming, the Redeemer is coming.
The prophets in the Old Testament were called
seers, the man who could see beyond the
physical, the man who could see beyond the
natural, the man who had a vision beyond.
I feel this is what God wants to
bring us into, cause us to see, unless
there is a vision beyond, this world is
all we've got, unless there is a voice
beyond, this mind is all I've got.
And yet God has promised it out there.
God has promised vision.
He is the light.
God has promised through his own that they
will not walk in darkness.
You can look at a couple of verses
ahead, it says, "...arise, shine, for thy light
has come, the glory of the Lord is
risen upon thee.
So behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and
gross darkness the people, but the Lord shall
arise upon thee, his glory shall be seen
upon thee."
The Lord will give light.
When we see a promise, it's not enough.
We need to reach out and take it.
We need to fight until that becomes our
possession.
We tend to want to telescope the processes
of God.
We tend to want to see the promise,
I believe that, that's mine, great, that's my
life, that's my position, that's my circumstance, I've
got it all.
But there's something very different when we really
possess within us that which satisfies, when all
the emptiness is taken away.
When we start to see, when we start
to hear, when we start to know, the
Redeemer is coming to reclaim his own.
He's not coming to make me a nice
personality, he's not coming to take away my
hangups, he's not coming to change my defects
of inheritance and my weaknesses, he's not coming
to make me physically better looking or anything
of that nature.
He's coming to do his work.
He's coming to make me into that which
he wants me to be.
He's coming to shed himself out through me,
pour himself out through me.
He's coming to raise up a people who
will be like, come out as a yearning,
with pain, with hurt, a yearning on God's
part, not only this earth groans and travails,
the Spirit of God groans and travails, there's
a yearning on his part that our understanding
be complete, that our fighting not be a
fighting in the air, that it not be
a self-centered thing, that it not be
going through the mind, through the act, that
spiritual reality take on substance.
Thy kingdom come on us, that's the hardest
thing, I think very, very few of us
ever get there, thy kingdom come on us,
that the God who has all power, all
might, all dominion in heaven project onto the
earth some of that power, some of that
might, some of that dominion.
We didn't sing it.
Somebody asked for the hymn, There's Power in
the Blood, in the revival that I talked
about in the north of Argentina years ago,
that was a hymn they'd sing time after
time after time, and at that time it
had meaning.
For those people, they'd sing that hymn and
it would carry them along, there is power.
Why?
They were singing it.
I remember this friend of mine praying for
a blind person, and the person's eyes were
open, and it was an earth-shaking thing
for the poor blind man.
There's power.
The next time, it's the next day, he's
in a meeting, how is he going to
sing that song?
You know, there is power, power, or is
there a little bit of something else?
Yesterday he was blind, today he can see,
there is power.
The devil, forget the devil, there's power in
the blood.
I mean, it's reality, it's impact, it's made
a difference, my life's changed, there is power
in the blood.
The Redeemer's coming.
God wants us to live and dwell and
express certainty.
You know, I think a lot of times
we pray and we quote belief, and if
it doesn't happen, did we believe or didn't
we believe?
I think the first thing our belief changes
is, changes inside of us, the power, the
power of God, the redemption.
God reclaiming and starting, first of all, as
I said, to reclaim from within me as
an individual that which is his own, take
out the unbelief, put in faith, take out
the apathy, put in a quickened spirit, start
to make his own, as the Scripture says,
a flame of fire.
Start to take away the natural, reemplace it
with a spiritual, so I'm not so worried
about, you know, like, going back to the
same thing, perfecting my human personality because I
don't need it.
God's given me something better, God's given me
his spirit, God's given me his mind, God's
given me his anointing, God's given me his
power, I don't need to, you know, run
around worrying about myself.
I just move into God, move into the
redemption process, let him reclaim with violence, let
him stand up in my life and rebuke
the enemy, take back area after area, bring
it all into a perfecting.
It's all the difference.
The Spirit of God and the life of
God start to flow out.
God's got a world, got a creation, that's
tremendously dark outside, a tremendous amount of hurt.
He's given me more advanced countries, a lot
of it's covered up, in some of the
other countries the squalor, the poverty, the sickness,
the death, the violence is out on the
streets.
Yet it's the same process.
Somebody can die screaming in pain in the
middle of a jungle or die totally sedated
in a hospital in Thailand, and it's the
same process.
Only difference is one is aware and the
other is unaware.
I think one thing the enemy wants to
do is sedate us with our culture, sedate
us with Christianity, sedate us with the songs
and the emphasis on that aspect of God's
work which has to do with, God wants
us to carry his burdens, the Redeemer.
He who reclaims that which belongs to him
is coming.
It's a glorious vision for those who want
his redemption, it's a glorious vision for those
who are looking for him.
If we're looking for earthly things, if we're
looking for natural processes, we won't understand it
at all.
I think even for this whole world, not
only South America, but for this whole world
our time is short.
The Redeemer is coming.
He's going to come.
But he's going to come as he is.
He always comes as he is.
He never comes limited in his power.
He never comes different than his essential nature.
He comes as he is.
He comes as Redeemer.
He comes as the one who will take
care of us.
of unrighteousness.
He comes as the one who is against
all forces of destruction.
He comes as the one whose life cannot
be contained in himself, must flow out, must
reach, must touch, must transform.
As we open our hearts, as we open
our lives, only God can give us awareness,
only God can give us faith.
Only God can give us the physical, material
things of this world.
Participate of the powers of the world to
come.
He wants to do it.
Let's pray.
Argentina is right on the border of Paraguay,
or Paraguay is right on the border of
Argentina.
This last two years, I suppose, there's been
a tremendous quickening of the work of God
in Argentina, principally through a man by the
name of Carlos Anacondia, the owner of a
nut and bolt factory in Buenos Aires, the
capital.
The Lord called him out of the nuts
and bolts, put him in the nuts and
bolts, spiritually speaking.
He's been having campaigns, different places in the
country.
You can hold campaigns.
We've all seen campaigns.
There are campaigns and campaigns.
But in this campaign, Anacondia has been moving
around and God's been backing him up.
Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people have
been attending these meetings in Roman Catholic country.
I've not been in real close touch in
recent months, but the last campaign I was
there passed by one night just when I
was on a trip.
But there were up to 40,000 people
standing out in the open air.
It wasn't a stadium.
It wasn't anything.
It was just a couple of, well, one
or two, yeah, one or two square blocks
there that they bulldozed off beside a highway.
They set up lights and some loudspeakers and
there were thousands and thousands and thousands of
people.
And basically what the ministry that this brother
has is a ministry of healing.
There have been some tremendous healings, and yet
the emphasis is not on the healing and
the whole thing is in a very low
key, very much controlled because you get that
many people and it could be a riot.
But rather than trying to get everybody in,
he explains very well what salvation is.
He explains that those who came forward yesterday
do not come forward today.
He takes their names and they apparently follow
them up in a whole process.
But there's a beautiful atmosphere in the meetings,
an atmosphere of respect, an atmosphere of just
the presence of God.
And it's made big changes in Argentina.
The Roman Catholic Church is very much tied
in with the government, still is, and that
whole structure has started to yield.
It used to be very hard for the
Protestants to get on radio programs or television.
They'd give you a bad time slot.
They weren't interested.
They couldn't do it, I suppose, because of
the pressure of the Roman Catholic Church.
Now the television is open.
A pastor friend of mine is on television
down there in the middle of Argentina.
Another friend that's been invited by one of
the television stations in Buenos Aires, the capital,
to go on TV.
There was a project or some talk about
changing the national constitution to allow a Protestant
to become president, which for a country like
Argentina is an earth-shaking thing.
These things are not so important in themselves
that they are important in that they show
the penetration of awareness in the minds of
the people and in the government.
Things are wide open.
I talked to a friend, oh, 500 miles
from the capital, right in the center, north
central part of the country, a little while
before I left from Paraguay.
He said things are just moving.
There's a conference.
Some other people I know went up to
the north of Argentina.
They had a bus that they'd just overhauled
the motor and they wanted to go and
run the motor in the diesel bus.
So they decided, well, when we're up there,
let's have a few meetings.
They called the pastor up north and they
said, well, have a few meetings.
He rented a great big place and he
called back to tell them.
They said, well, what are you doing?
We've never had a third of that number
in any of our meetings there.
He said, well, I don't know.
He said, but we'll do this.
They had a far bigger crowd than they'd
ever had.
Many, many people.
And not only the number, but the thing
that impressed them was the measure of God's
moving and the depth of the move of
the Spirit of God, the response from these
people in the north who are traditionally very
hard.
And as I said, all over, different cities,
different areas, different people, different churches, different visions.
And yet God is moving.
There's a quickening.
There's a responsiveness.
The sense in which, in the words of
our verse tonight, the Lord has come, the
Lord is visiting Argentina.
I think it's the answer to many prayers,
many years of prayers on the part of
many people.
A lot of sacrifice, a lot of suffering,
a lot of long road that the church
has walked.
Now the Lord is meeting them.
I feel in Paraguay and maybe other countries
too in South America, the Lord is going
to start that same work.
Bring that same awareness.
Bring that same quickening.
Bring that same breaking of the Spirit of
God.
The revival move is not everything.
As I said, it's a healing move.
There are other aspects of the work of
God.
There's a more complete work God wants to
do in the church, but it's the beginning
of something.
And with it all is, as it were,
a breaking of the spiritual clouds, the sunlight
shining through, the churches rejoicing, the people are
reaching out in faith.
Some young people I know that have been
moving along for years on a certain level
are now stepping out.
There's one pastor who, how can I say,
the little I know of him, very sweet,
but very almost ignorant you could say, personally
fell to the Lord and he rented a
great big, for him, a great big hall.
I don't know how many people.
He had 50 or something and he rented
this hall for about 300.
And the people that were working with him
told him, no, don't do that.
We're getting out way beyond ourselves.
What's needed in the Lord is sending in
the people.
And I think for many it's not only
what the Lord is doing out there in
the streets and in the unsaved, but also
within the church.
The people are starting, the pastors are starting
to believe.
They're starting to reach out.
And as they step on the water like
Peter, they're starting to find that it's solid
and the Lord is holding them up.
So it's a great time in Argentina.