What happens now when the acts of God
become only a memory?
Fear of Him disappears.
Fear of Him disappears from our society.
If there's one thing that's lacking in the
body, and there is one thing, there are
many things, but if there's one thing pronounced
that's lacking, and something we'll talk about over
and over, is the lack of fear of
God.
The lack of a recognition of the awesome
holiness and reality of God.
When I talked about major characteristics of revival,
I had said that one quality was its
overwhelming revelation of the holiness of God and
the sinfulness of man.
You could say, man, we don't have it.
Why?
Because we've heard about what God's done, but
His in-breaking power hasn't been there.
Now let me say this.
I have gotten testimonies from people of miraculous
healings that I've personally prayed for, and I
use myself as an example because there is
not some extraordinarily powerful gift of healing that
God's anointed me with.
And yet, I could tell you of a
woman who prayed for with a cancerous tumor
in her stomach, and prayed for, felt something
jump on the inside, went for surgery, and
the thing had disappeared.
I could tell you about someone with a
severe and curable disease for 20 odd years,
and prayed for, and delivered, goes to the
hospital, the thing's fine.
And someone healed of this, and someone healed
of this, and someone delivered of this, and
someone delivered of that.
And a lot of supernatural prophetic experiences and
words.
I'm not downplaying or downgrading what God did.
I believe if I talked about the things
that I've seen in the last five years,
and talked about one after another, after another,
after another, because it has been real workings
of the Spirit that we can almost get
drunk in the reality of what He's done.
Having said that, it's still 100% proper
to say that Bible days are not here
again.
And because of that, the biblical fear of
God isn't here with us.
Recently I heard someone's teaching that God is
going to use Jewish believers in particular to
emphasize the holiness of God.
I'll have more to say about that later.
And it would certainly be in keeping with
God using the weak things of the world
to confound the strong, and the foolish to
confound the wise.
And I say that only because in terms
of Jewish believers worldwide, well, basically we're a
very small remnant, and more the child than
the father so far.
But anyway, the point is, and I say
that as a Jewish believer, not pointing a
finger, but as someone right in the midst
of this who's sunken my life into it.
But why would it be that God would
use Jewish believers to restore an aspect of
the holiness of God, and with that, the
fear of God to the body?
Well, because one thing we do that a
lot of other people don't do is take
the whole Bible seriously.
And we really have our beginnings as a
nation hearing from God, as a people hearing
from God, standing by Mount Sinai with the
whole mountain on fire and shaking.
According to one tradition in the Talmud, or
in some of the early rabbinic literature, it
says that what happened was that God lifted
up Mount Sinai and hung it over the
people's heads and said, Will you listen?
Will you do what I say?
If everything you say, we'll do it, we'll
obey.
You got a deal.
And then you get over to Hebrews, written
again to Jewish believers, and what does it
say in the end of the 12th chapter?
Hey, that was nothing.
That was nothing.
What do you think is going to happen
if we refuse to hear from heaven?
Well, you see, there's that experience of God's
reality, and if we have it in an
ongoing way in our own lives, experience His
awesome power and His might and His majesty,
then based on that, we can convey that
holiness to others.
But if it's just a story, if it's
just part of our religious tradition, if the
movings of God and the workings of God
are just part of our past religious background
or tradition or the stories we've been told,
then all fear of God disappears.
Turn over to Ezekiel, the 8th chapter.
As you're turning there, let me emphasize that
when the fear of God disappears, I don't
care how much you say you love the
Lord, I don't care how much you say
that the people in your congregation are committed
to the Lord, I don't care how much
you say Yeshua is Lord of my life,
when the fear of God disappears, spiritual and
moral decline set in.
People do not live right.
It would be wonderful that I could say
that when there's no fear of God in
the hearts of believers, they still live just
as holy lives because they love Him.
But the fact is, if there was not
a penalty for sin, the fact is, if
there was not the potential of a hell,
the fact is that if we didn't know
that we could destroy our lives forever by
messing up, we would not live the holy
lives that we're called to.
Unless there is that ongoing supernatural experience of
God, in which case, we will fear Him.
Remember when the angels of God surround God
in heaven.
According to Isaiah 6, according to the book
of Revelation, they don't say, love, love, love,
love.
Or loving and kind and merciful and compassionate.
They say, well, God is love.
Well, there are a number of things the
Bible says God is.
Not just love.
The fact is though, what do they cry
out?
Holy, holy, holy.
They're around Him continually.
I don't believe God made them like that
and programmed it into them and they're just
like tape recorders and they keep saying it.
I believe every time they look at Him,
all they can say is, holy, holy, He's
a holy God.
Oh my, He's a holy God.
Remember when Isaiah saw the Lord, he was
overwhelmed by God's holiness.
Without God speaking to him, he was overwhelmed
by the holiness of God.
Just by seeing Him.
Do you understand how holy He is?
No, none of us do.
I don't, you don't.
But when He comes and reveals Himself, as
Finney said, God is one pent-up revival.
Then you see Him as a holy God
and it changes your life.
So when fear of God disappears, then moral
and spiritual decline set in.
Ezekiel 8.
God shows the prophet in a vision.
Verse 12.
Son of man, have you seen what the
elders of the house of Israel are doing
in the darkness?
Each at the shrine of his own idol.
They say, the Lord does not see us.
The Lord has forsaken the land.
Again, he said, you will see them doing
things that are even more detestable.
Why were they doing it?
Because they said the Lord doesn't see us
and the Lord has forsaken the land.
Why did they say it?
Just move down a few more books to
Malachi.
In your English Bibles, it's the last book
of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Malachi, chapter 3.
How could someone say the Lord doesn't see
us?
How could someone say the Lord's forsaken the
land?
Because they did whatever in the world they
wanted to do and nothing happened to them.
November 12th of 1971, when I prayed and
asked Jesus into my heart, I had a
problem.
Because I just did it to make my
friends and the people in this little Italian
Pentecostal church happy and I didn't believe it
myself.
And as I went up and prayed, God
opened my heart and I believed that he
was for real, that this was true.
Now I had a problem.
I believed that it was true, but I
wasn't willing to repent.
Being Jewish, I never believed it, never even
considered the possibility of it.
Now, something happened, I knew it was true,
but I wasn't willing to repent yet.
Now, haven't you been in situations where over
and over and over again, you know what's
right, you know what you should do, you
know what God wants you to do, but
you don't care about what He says enough
to stop you from doing the wrong thing.
I mean, we all know.
You may know, for example, in disciplining the
flesh in a certain area, you know that
God has spoken to you to do it.
And you can say, Lord, I know what
you want, but right now, I'd rather have
that pie.
Or right now, I'd rather watch this show.
Or right now, I'd rather not pray, I'd
rather go to sleep.
Now, we may not even vocalize it, sometimes
we may.
That's the state I was in as a
brand new believer.
And I had just started doing cocaine at
that point, and I said, Lord, you know
when I go home I'm going to do
it.
You know it.
I'm not willing to repent yet.
The whole thing was just brand new to
me.
I'm not excusing it, but it was just
brand new.
And I said, if you don't want me
to do it, when I get home and
shoot a spoon of cocaine, don't let it
have any effect on me.
And I went home and shot it, and
nothing happened.
Well, that makes you think.
Even as an idiotic sixteen and a half
year old kid, that makes you think, that
makes you wonder, that makes you know something
is up here.
Well, what's the deal?
The deal is that God began to deal
with me and break in and began to
show me, by His power, little by little,
just began to show me His reality.
And then all that stuff, December 17th of
71, when I really experienced His love, I
said, that's it, never again, I won't touch
it, it won't happen.
Well, when you say, hey, He doesn't see.
I shot that thing and nothing happened.
I did this and nothing happened.
There was no consequence to my sin.
I guess God doesn't see, or I guess
He doesn't care.
I mean, listen.
Nancy and I went into a particular monastery
of a particular religious group in the land
of Israel.
She saw the men in their particular religious
outfits.
It was a so-called Christian denomination.
She saw the men in their particular religious
outfits and called them little demons.
No, no, no, no, no.
These are very holy men.
These are men separated.
These are men consecrated.
These are men set aside.
These are men who devote their whole lives
to the faith, to religion.
I came out and I said to Ari
Sorkaron, who was with us, I said, man,
I said, unless I don't know God, 90
% of those guys are gay.
Well, I know God, put it that way,
okay?
In other words, they got a problem in
there.
Well, that's just the way things are done.
You know, it's just the...
What would happen if the first time somebody
fell into homosexuality, a lightning bolt came in
through the window and killed them?
Killed one, left the other alive to go
tell everybody that God was really there.
Do you think things would be different?
Now, I'm going to give you a verse
to that effect in a minute.
But when nothing happens, when people sin, there's
no fear of God.
All the stories we heard, they're just nice
religious truths.
They're creedal things.
They're things to raise our children up.
There's no reality to it.
It changed my life.
No fear of God.
Moral, spiritual decline.
Malachi, the third chapter, beginning in verse 13.
You have said harsh things against me, says
the Lord.
And this book is in particular directed to
the priests and Levites who are supposed to
be those that taught the children of Israel
to distinguish between the holy and the unholy
and the clean and the unclean.
Who are supposed to be set apart to
the Lord's service.
And Malachi himself was probably a Levite or
a priest.
Probably.
Can't say for sure.
But based on the book and his message,
it would make sense.
You have said harsh things against me, says
the Lord.
Yet you ask, what have we said against
you?
You have said it is futile to serve
God.
What did we gain by carrying out his
requirements and going about like mourners before the
Lord Almighty?
What good did it do us?
We fasted.
We prayed.
We went through the Scriptures.
We performed the religious rites just the way
he told us.
You can't sacrifice this animal.
It's got a little blemish on the nose.
I didn't write the book.
He did.
Sorry.
You can't take the meat from there.
That meat's got to go on.
But I'm hungry.
No, that meat goes all the way up
in the offering.
What good did it do us to deny
ourselves?
Where is the blessing?
What good?
I mean, look at us.
Look at us here back in the land.
I mean, we're nobodies.
We're nothing.
What good is it doing us?
But now we call the arrogant blessed.
See, there's the total turnaround.
The total cynicism enters in.
And that's why liberal religious people are your
worst enemies.
You have some man on the street, some
guy on the street who's a hardened sinner.
And that person will give you less problems
than some liberal religious leader.
Because they've absolutely turned the whole thing around.
And you'll find out many of them at
one time in their lives either had an
experience with the Lord or were raised in
a strict fundamentalist type of environment where it
was all teaching, teaching, precept upon precept, live
like this, do this, all in outward religious
form with no experience of God.
They threw the whole thing off and went
to the exact opposite extreme and became cynical
and said, now we call the arrogant blessed.
Now we enjoy our lesbian choirs.
Now we enjoy our gay services.
Now we enjoy fighting for abortion and burning
the flag and whatever else as anti-patriotic
and anti-moral and anti-God.
Certainly the evildoers prosper.
And even those who challenge God escape.
What line?
You tell me the Word of God isn't
relevant.
The people of God, when the fear of
God disappears, the people of God become just
like the world even though they claim to
be religious.
This one rabbi that I dealt with for
years after a number of years said to
me, Mike, I found out something from you.
He said, I understand now that not everyone
who calls himself a Christian is a Christian.
And when some of our students from Christ
for the Nations went over to visit him,
the dean of students on Long Island called
me and said, Mike, do you know any
rabbis in the area that we could bring
our students to?
We've got a comparative religion class.
We brought them to a Buddhist temple in
the city.
We brought them to speak with Muslims and
Hindus.
And we want to bring them to a
synagogue and get a tour and interact with
someone.
Do you know anybody?
And I said, well, call this friend of
mine.
He's a good guy and I'm sure he's
willing to accommodate you.
And the students that went said, man, he
understood the Gospel.
I mean, he could explain it better than
most because he saw.
And when I spoke in his congregation, he
invited me years ago to debate him publicly.
He was teaching on Jewish believers in Jesus.
He invited some local pastor and he blew
the guy out of the water.
And he said, Mike, could you come?
He said, you could do a much better
job than any of them to defend where
you're coming from.
He said, I want to give them, you
know, a good articulate presentation.
So we went back and forth each week.
In the final week, he said to me,
Mike, he said, feel free and missionize.
This is congregation.
He said, Mike, feel free and missionize.
He said, I have far more respect for
you than any of those people.
Because even though he disagreed with me, he
knew that I had laid down my life
as much as I understood at that point
in time to follow God.
And one night, when we were in the
middle of our debate, the microphone started beaming
in the bingo next door.
And then I pulled up.
I said, man, what a turnout.
This is incredible.
I mean, he had 1,300 families in
his congregation.
It was some huge number.
You know, if they all came, the place
would be absolutely overflowing.
Maybe he could fit 1,500 people total
in there.
But you know, he had all these people
just come to high holidays and special times
of the year just on the rolls so
they could have the religious rites for their
kids.
And I pull up one night.
Wow, what a crowd.
This is incredible.
He said, it was the bingo?
No, it wasn't the bingo.
It was ladies aerobics.
He said, Mike, feel free to missionize.
I have far more respect for you than
these people.
This religion, it's nothing.
It's nothing.
We call the arrogant blessed, and surely the
evildoers will prosper.
But look at what it says over in
Isaiah, the 26th chapter.
Isaiah chapter 26, verse 9.
Frank Bartleman, in his book, Another Wave of
Revival, applies this verse to when in San
Francisco, after much preaching and mourning, there was
a tremendous earthquake at the beginning of the
century.
Hundreds of people were killed in it.
And what happened was within a few days,
he distributed, or a few weeks, 75,000
tracts at his own expense somehow distributed them
throughout San Francisco and went into taverns and
just preached and all this other stuff.
And he said, thereafter, there was a rage
of preaching to try and prove that God
was not in earthquake.
He said everybody, the sinners on the street,
knew in their hearts that it was a
judgment of God.
And they were being told to wake up.
And then all these pulpits start flaming all
over the place.
No, no, no.
God doesn't do this.
Nothing to fear.
So look at Isaiah 26, verse 9.
My soul yearns for you in the night,
in the morning my spirit longs for you.
And now the second half of the verse.
For when your judgments are in the earth,
the people of the world learn righteousness.
When your judgments are in the earth, the
people of the world learn righteousness.
You know, there can be a lot of
rhetoric, a lot of talk that sounds very
big.
A lot of pro-communist type of talk
among certain leaders in our government.
And I'm not saying that capitalism is right
and the United States is right and that
this is God's ordained way.
I'm not making black and white distinctions like
that.
But you can hear a lot of rhetoric
about all this stuff.
One fellow who had been in Vietnam and
is basically the equivalent of a Green Beret
said, I wonder what all these flaming liberals
will think when the communists come and invade
their home and take their possession and kill
their wives.
He said, you know, when people are starving
to death, all the talk in the world
doesn't mean anything.
It doesn't do any good.
And he was talking about Libya and all
this other stuff.
This is before we had bombed Libya.
And again, I'm not justifying warfare or saying
this is right or that's right.
Just hear my point, okay?
In case you disagree with me on any
of these minor things, hear the overall point.
He said, man, all their talk and all
their threats.
He said, just go into their own country
and bomb them there.
Hurt them where they live and they'll shut
up.
Do you know when the Iranians finally started
talking peace with Iraq?
Is when that jetliner with all the innocent
people or innocent in terms of they had
not done anything provocatory themselves.
The Iranians were shot down by mistake by
the USS warship.
That's when they all of a sudden started
to talk peace because the thing hit them
where they lived.
When they started bringing caskets back into Russia
from Afghanistan, the Russian people with all their
idealism wanted to get out of the nation.
When it's your son or your daughter or
your husband that was just killed, you start
taking action and acting differently.
So all the talk, all the hardness, all
the garbage, all the junk of all the
people all over the place, when the judgment
of God begins to fall, they change their
tune.
You know you're in trouble when the judgments
of God come and people instead of repenting
begin to blaspheme.
You want to see a hardened heart.
Certain people in the homosexual community have gotten
hardened enough that when judgments come, whether it's
simply the fruit of their own sin, that's
a judgment.
God doesn't have to do anything.
You reap what you sow.
You drink like an alcoholic day and night.
You get cirrhosis of the liver.
That's a judgment.
God didn't do anything.
Another form of judgment is when you get
out from under the protection of God because
of your sin and the devil gets you.
Again, God didn't do anything.
You walked out of His covering.
That's another form of judgment.
But there's a third form of judgment which
is when you get out of God's will
and you defy Him to His face and
He Himself strikes you down.
And if you don't believe in a God
like that, you don't believe in the God
of the Bible.
So when His judgments are in the earth,
He doesn't know striking down and smiting His
obedient children.
Of course not.
Satan attacks and kills and maims the innocent.
God only judges the guilty.
But if you don't believe in a God
who judges the guilty that refused forgiveness and
refused His grace, then like I said, you
don't believe in this God of the Bible.
When the judgments of God start to fall,
a lot of big talkers get on their
knees and ask God for mercy and pray.
And come running to you and say, help
me, I don't know what to do.
Well, first thing, the acts of God become
only a memory.
Second thing, fear of Him disappears, producing spiritual
and moral decline.
And then thirdly, the people of God become
enslaved to the world.
That's the state that we're in today.
Not just one, but point one has led
to point two and point two has led
to point three.
That the people of God have become enslaved
to the world.
There's a consistent pattern with the children of
Israel.
The clearest example is when they came into
the promised land.
God said, destroy the Canaanites.
Kill them, slaughter them, butcher them.
Don't let them live.
Israel did not fully do it.
Why?
A couple of reasons.
One, they didn't take God seriously.
And two, they didn't see the sinfulness of
the Canaanites.
So they didn't destroy them totally, which led
to the next step, which was that the
Canaanites then remained as thorns in their sides.
You know, God decisively says, get rid of
this thing in your life.
So you rationalize it, you cut back, but
you don't get rid of it.
Okay?
You know, let's say you keep falling into
alcoholism.
He says, get all wine and beer and
hard liquor out of your house.
And you say, all right, look, I'm going
to stop having it with meals, except for
maybe just once a week, you know, on
Sabbath dinner or something and no hard liquor.
And then one day you get really discouraged
and you drink four bottles of wine, you
get drunk, and now things like this thorn
in your side.
It weakens you.
It condemns you.
It hurts you.
Well, you know what happens after a while,
though?
If you don't act on it quickly enough,
then the next step comes in.
First, you don't totally exterminate.
Second thing, those that remain are like thorns
in your side.
Third thing now comes, well, you know, they're
not really so bad after a while.
What's so bad about getting drunk every so
often?
You start to befriend the enemy.
You start to intermarry with the Canaanites.
You know, really, God told me to get
rid of my television.
What I did is I just stopped watching
all the real garbage and only the shows
that don't offend me too much I still
watch.
And, you know, that I feel God's really
offended.
Look, most people in the world, I mean,
this is like child's play for them.
That's because they've become so polluted.
You know?
Their standards have gone lower.
We've dropped with them.
So, you know, what used to be, you
know, wouldn't nearly get to a theater under
any circumstances is now PG.
Or even G.
I brought home a G-rated video that
I'd seen as a kid and asked, she
said, was that really G?
I said, yeah.
She said, I don't believe it.
And my standards are not what God's standards
are.
His are much higher.
Much higher.
Well, anyway, you know, it's really not so
bad.
I didn't get rid of that television yet.
You know, I stumbled a few times.
Yeah, I watched that late night show that
had a lot of, you know, immorality in
it and all these other things.
You know, I used to feel terrible about
it, but I'm going too far.
I'm really going too far.
I mean, it's not so bad.
Look, God still loves me.
His Spirit's still here with me.
It's not so bad.
And you start to intermarry with the Canaanites.
And the next thing, you wake up and
find out that they are your masters.
Like one man said about smoking cigarettes, you
know, he held a cigarette out and he
said, little master, and pointed to the human
being, big slave.
You become enslaved to the world.
Enslaved to the world.
When I asked the Lord some months ago
what was the number one pollutant in the
lives of believers, He instantly said to me,
television.
And when I said to Nancy, what do
you think the Lord said to me?
She instantly said, television.
So I'm real honest with people.
Maybe you're much stronger in the Lord than
I am.
Maybe you're much more devoted to God than
I am.
Maybe you have a much greater ability to
walk in holiness than I do.
Maybe that's why you can have a television
than I can't.
I don't judge you.
But all I know is, I know very
few believers.
In fact, I don't know any that I
can say guaranteed sure have it in their
home that are not polluted by.
But I couldn't live without it.
Then, by all means, go home tonight, get
to the highest bridge you can find, look
both ways, make sure there's nothing passing in
the water and throw it over for good.
If somebody is a gift, keep it quiet.
Get rid of it anyway.
I once gave away a television and got
two given back in return.
One pastor said, Mike, that was certainly not
casting your bread on the water.
No, it wasn't.
I mean, there are ways around.
You see, there's some good videos.
You can get a screen.
You can just get a screen, by the
way.
You say, why am I saying this?
Because I'm not just dealing with revival and
the history of revival and future revival and
potential revival.
I'm dealing with where we live today and
the Lord just laid it on my heart
when something like this comes up, just to
go with the Spirit and speak the truth
in love.
I'm not judging you and you don't have
to give account to me and I will
not come to your house and look, if
you invite me over for dinner, don't hide
the thing with a sheet.
So the first thing you walk in, what
in the world is that sheet doing, you
know, hung by a nail in the middle
of your wall there?
What's the most conspicuous, what's behind that sheet?
I wouldn't judge you if you had the
thing.
Maybe it doesn't work.
Maybe you've never fallen with it.
I don't judge you.
Okay?
All I'm saying is, let's grow up and
be realistic.
Let's ask the question, how many of us
really have that much time to waste in
front of that thing anyhow?
I mean, if that's the number one pollutant
in God's spoken to me to help try
and clean us up, to clean me up
and to share with you things that will
help clean us up, I might as well
speak the truth and deliver my soul.
Amen?
Plus, if you're listening to this on tape,
you already bought the tape and if you're
sitting here in class, you already paid for
the classroom, I'll see you next week.
Amen?
But just to recap this, what I said,
revival presupposes declension.
I gave you three steps.
One, the acts of God become only a
memory, producing skepticism, hardened belief, rationalistic doctrine in
mere religious form or else a cheapening of
the real thing.
And then second, fear of God disappears, producing
spiritual and moral decline.
The people of God become like the world.
And then thirdly, the people of God become
enslaved to the world.
And I'd say all of us with eyes
to see have to know and understand that
is the exact state today of the American
body.
Therefore, we can gladly say, God, we is
ripe for one large revival.
So when we take up again, we're going
to discuss when can a revival be expected?
When can a revival be expected?
God bless you.