Blessing in our days in your nation, which
are rapidly coming to a conclusion.
Saturday we depart, and this is the last
public meeting.
In case I don't speak for the theme
that has been central in these days about
the mystery of Israel and the church, of
course everything touches that theme.
You consult with Inspirational Tape Library.
The last thing I did in driving up
Tepuke here was to stop by and leave
them about 12 choice, juicy, dynamite tapes.
The whole nation, the church in the nation
needs to hear them, and we even have
some videotapes that were made in Palmerston North.
If someone is interested in that, they can
see me afterwards and I have the name
of the chap who did that work.
But there have been some extraordinary statements made
in these days of a kind that even
take me by surprise, how far God is
going and what he's saying and the utterness
of these statements, thunderclap statements that need to
be heard and weighed and contemplated and meditated
upon and a real deposit, I think, for
the church right to its foundation.
I can speak lavishly like that because anyone
who has ears to hear knows that I'm
boasting upon the Alpha and the Omega of
the faith and that without him everything is
totally and patently impossible.
Are there people in the hallway?
Why don't you come in?
There's some floor space here and lean against,
there's some space here.
Last time that we had something like this,
the night before at ORU, Oral Roberts University,
an underground meeting, I wasn't invited by the
powers that be but by a little student
group.
I bent over to pick up a box
of books and the next thing I heard
was whoosh.
My pants were ripped from seam to seam
and there was no time for any alteration,
but I praise God that the audience was
modest enough that night that I stood before
them because the next night they were all
around the back.
Everybody knows how weighted every occasion is.
How do we dare miss the mind of
God on once and for all occasions like
this, not only for those who are here
at the hearing of the word but those
who are here through the tape, that the
time is short, everything is so imperative that
it's not enough really to bring a good
thing or the last thing that so blessed
people before coming here but only the thing
that God has appointed for this night.
So I just ask you to join your
hearts with me.
I have a faint pre-sentiment, if you'll
excuse the language and other language like that
you'll be hearing tonight, a sense of what
God is wanting but willing to be corrected
and adjusted right to the final moment even
to sit down and to shut up if
God has some other way and means to
fulfill the desire of his heart tonight.
So just join with me in looking to
him, sensing the brevity of the time and
how important our days are for the night
will come shortly, soon enough when no man
can work.
And we need to be so impacted by
the Lord and to hear from the throne,
to be fitted and prepared for all the
eventualities that are coming upon the earth and
upon the church, that remnant people of God
who are really appointed to take him seriously.
Precious God, Lord Jesus, you're surprising us, my
God, by stirring all these saints to come
tonight.
And we're jealous for this night, Lord, and
for those who are not physically here will
be hearing this tape and receiving the benefit
of your speaking.
And Lord, we even ask in this final
moment, if I'm entertaining contemplating something that is
not your deepest heart of desire, please adjust
me.
So possess this vessel, Lord, that these children
might hear your voice.
Yes, we're asking largely.
And if there's anyone here who has some
romantic notion that thinks that true ministry has
to do with a man, his ability or
anything like that, my God, and does not
understand the Alpha and the Omega, the true
author of every good and perfect work that
comes down from above, let tonight be not
just a speaking about but a demonstration of
that remarkable phenomenon to which we are all
called as witnesses, my God, in these last
days.
Bring us, Lord, to a transcendent place tonight,
both by speaking and by demonstration.
We invite you even to ruin us, to
break through our categories and to break every
kind of brittle notion, messianic, charismatic, Pentecostal, whatever
brittle thing that somehow your grace has allowed
us to suffer till now.
We're willing that you should sweep all that
debris and clutter out and bring in, my
God, the pure prophetic and apostolic character of
our calling in such a way as to
inflame our hearts and to devastate us for
anything less.
Come, my God, pull out the stops, get
reckless, abandon that we might be a people
like that for you.
Thank you and give you the praise for
the precious work of your spirit and your
word which we ask liberally, my God, to
be given from the throne tonight, a tremendous
unction both for speaking and for hearing and
for sitting.
Thank you and give you the praise for
the night that you have appointed.
Come, my God, and fulfill and delight your
own soul in it.
We already give you praise, acknowledgement, every gratitude,
my God, for being the God you are
living in through, the God who speaks, the
God who calls, the God who performs.
In Jesus' name we pray.
God's people say.
Well, I have to confess
that I am really enamored of the subject
of Israel or the Jew, but I don't
think it has anything really to do with
the fact that I'm Jewish.
It may be just entirely coincidental.
All the more when I know that this
present preoccupation of that subject has not been
true of all my believing life.
In fact, it's only the last three, four,
or five years that God has stirred me
to this central point of his whole apostolic
concern.
And I'm so grateful for it because I'll
tell you what it's done for me.
It's been a catalyst that has brought together
all of the disparate and separate elements of
the faith that I have loved and luxuriated
in for my quarter of a century as
a believer.
The issues of discipleship, of faith itself, of
worship, of the principalities and powers of the
things of the spirit, all of the things
that constitute the faith, I have jealously guarded
and cherished every aspect of it that the
Lord has given and that has blessed you
from tapes on those subjects that have come
forth in times past.
But in the last few years, after a
certain season of death and preparation, which I'll
not take the time to describe, the Lord
was pleased to lift the veil from my
own understanding about the subject of Israel, but
not as it is presently held even by
those who are occupied with it.
Not from the evangelical or the messianic view,
but a perspective that I like to call
apostolic because it does not treat the Jew
in a sentimental way and does not appeal
to the church to take up the burden
for them because we're under obligation and I
guess we've got to because look what we
owe them.
I think that those are soulish perspectives and
only that which is born of the spirit
can avail.
So I don't know to what degree the
Lord will allow me to share this tonight
because I seem to have a different direction,
although it's all related, but if I don't
speak to it in the way that you
would like to hear, please consult Inspirational Tape
Library for the most recent page that I
have left with them, but for now let's
turn to the book of Acts.
If there's any way to get a glass
of water, I would really appreciate it.
I've already used the word apostolic somewhere tonight
in my introduction or my prayer and I
can't say enough of what that word means
to me.
It is at the heart of everything.
Pity that somehow in certain places it's the
name of a denomination or a religious movement,
but I think that that word needs to
be restored to the heart of God's people
as something to be jealously guarded where the
church is built upon the foundation of the
apostles and the prophets.
If we let go of this and our
jealousy for that word and for its meaning,
which by the way cannot be glibly defined
or given, it needs to be apprehended, intuited.
We need not only to apprehend the word,
the word needs to apprehend us.
All is lost.
If we let go of that, if we're
not jealous for it, we don't seek for
it, we're not willing for the sacrifice of
what that word means to actually obtain it
and the quality and the character of our
own faith together, all is lost.
We will have fallen short of the glory
of God.
And the issue of God's glory is the
whole nexus, the whole center point of what
apostolic is about.
The primary distinctive of the thing that has
to do with that which is apostolic and
prophetic is the abiding jealousy for the glory
of God.
Which word to us is almost an abstraction.
We nod our head at it and we
understand the rightness about it, but we hardly
have sensed its meaning and have not really
the faith to believe for the phenomena itself.
But in significant places in the apostolic scriptures,
in the writings of Paul, that word percolates
and punctuates the whole tenor of the wisdom
and the statements of God's apostolic men.
For example, the conclusion of Ephesians chapter 3,
unto him be glory in the church, not
church growth, not power evangelism, glory in the
church, world without end, throughout all ages, by
Christ Jesus, amen.
That's the whole point of it, saints.
We are a remarkable phenomenon in God, not
only for this age, but for the ages
to come, world without end, an eternal masterpiece
of God.
And God forbid we should be something shabbier
or less.
And the greatest danger to the apostolic glory
of the church is ourselves and our preoccupation
with lesser things than the issue of God's
glory, including Israel and the Jew.
Did you hear that?
This man is a maze of contradictions and
paradoxes, begins by telling us that the issue
of Israel and the Jew is the centerpiece
of God's apostolic consciousness, and then tells us
to beware lest the preoccupation with the Jew
and with Israel keep us from the apostolic
glory.
It'll take more than one night to straighten
out that, but it's true.
So maybe as we go along tonight, in
this text in Acts 13, the Lord will
give us an understanding of what seems now
to be a contradiction.
How many people up till now have noticed
that the faith is often studded with contradictions,
even paradoxes, of a perplexing kind?
But have you noticed that if you wait
long enough and bear the agony of that
contradiction long enough, that when the Lord resolves
it, usually through revelation of the Spirit, something
transcendent issues?
Have you got the patience of the faith
to bear seeming contradiction?
Or are you some manby-pandy that's got
to have everything explained right now because you
can't live with tension of things that are
unfulfilled and unexplained?
You have no disposition for mystery.
You're human, all too human, or New Zealandish,
all too New Zealandish, too practical.
Oh, I told you if I could wave
a wand over the church of this nation,
what I would inculcate, a love for the
mysteries of God, and a respect for the
revelation alone by which the understanding of them
come, and that when the understanding is given,
it's not that we should be a coffee
table billetons who are able to expound it,
but a people who are the agents to
fulfill it.
And I can tell you there's no mystery
more requiring and demanding of us than the
mystery of Israel and the church.
With all due respect to the four spiritual
laws, and the five spiritual laws, they've added
one more for us, I don't believe that
my Jewish people, whom Paul accurately describes in
Romans 11 as the enemies of the gospel,
are going to be by and large affected
by evangelical well-meaning intention.
Maybe some peripheral Jew, like myself, who didn't
even need five spiritual laws or four, but
just the supernatural work of God brought me
out of the darkest atheism and vicious anti
-Christ opposition to the church, to be not
only a believer, but a mouthpiece of God
to the church.
What I'm trying to say, and I've been
saying it throughout your nation in the weeks
that we've been here, the issue of the
Jew to the church is the issue.
It's the ultimate issue, it's the issue that
requires all, and we have wisely avoided it.
That is to say, we have intuited that
this is so ultimately demanding a requirement that
we're not equal to the task, and you're
right in that.
Only a church that has come to a
full apostolic and prophetic constituency, the makeup of
God, the character, the weight, the heft, the
integrity, the quality, the truth, the ground and
pillar of truth, beyond all culture, beyond all
nationality, beyond all selfishness, beyond all peevishness, beyond
all pettiness, to be the integral people of
God, a community, a remnant people of God,
can be the fulfillment of that mystery and
nothing less.
And what I'm also saying is, we'll never
be that, so long as we're satisfied to
continue from a lesser place, and think that
if we put on a yarmulke, or a
Star of David, or tzitzit, or some other
kind of synagogue accoutrement, that somehow that will
make us the more relevant witness.
You who don't know what those words mean,
you know, the Jewish, Jewishly recognized artifacts that
identify with synagogue and rabbinical Judaism.
That may have some effect, God, praise God,
to whatever degree, but my heart yearns for
the real thing, if I can put it
that way.
Something of such a power, such a quality,
that the word that issues from such a
people cannot be gainsaid.
And maybe we ought to look at that
first, leave your finger in Acts 13, and
look at Romans 10, in the very familiar
verses, around verse 12, there's no difference between
the Jew and the Greek, for the same
Lord over all is rich unto all that
call upon him.
And those of you who have ever heard
my testimony, or read it in the book
of Israel, know that when that point came
for me, can you hear in the back?
My wife was saying she can't hear.
Can you hear?
How many people are having difficulty hearing?
Oh, good, dear saints.
What shall we do?
Can I move closer?
Get louder?
There's no, this, these microphones are only for
the recording and not for amplification.
I don't know what to say.
Huh?
Okay, I'll try.
We just read the verse in Romans 10,
verse 12, that the same Lord over all
is rich unto all that call upon him,
for whosoever shall call upon the name of
the Lord shall be saved.
I think that a lot of hotshots, and
bikers, and other kinds of characters who are
to constitute a subculture in our civilization, who
are arrogant and hoarding toward God, and who
think that in some last moment, they will
be able to make this call, will be
eternally sobered to find that it's not anything
that any man can do at his own
volition at the moment of his choosing.
The call on the name of the Lord
is a divine prerogative given by grace to
those whom he will, for he will have
mercy upon whom he will have mercy.
And perhaps I know this better than you,
for when that moment came in Jerusalem in
1964, for me to pray my first prayer,
to call upon the name of the Lord
who had been revealing himself through months of
the most intensive and revelational experiences that can
be given a Jewish atheist, of being encountered
at the side of the road, of being
picked up by born-again believers of a
radiant kind, of a revelation that came in
the first reading of the New Testament, of
staggering into a bookstore in Jerusalem to find
that it was operated by a congregation of
Pentecostal Jews, and to hear the voice of
God calling me by name and commanding me
to remain, and staying four days and nights
receiving the illumination of the saints about the
gospel, and still not being able to understand
by the power of my intellect, and in
the final night, the Lord, by his Spirit,
putting an understanding directly in my heart and
bypassing my mind altogether, waking up believing, waking
up in peace, and being invited by this
precious Jewish woman who had never led anyone
to the Lord before, nor since, to call
upon the name of the Lord, and to
find what an agonizing request that was for
a Jew who had been steeped in the
historic prejudices of my people against the name
Jesus Christ, fanned by Satan through the activity
of unregenerate men in the Crusades, in the
Inquisition, in the pogroms of Eastern Europe, and
every other kind of so-called Christian activity,
including the Holocaust, that has powerfully poisoned us
against that one name, and the only name
given, under heaven and in the earth, whereby
a man may be saved.
Do you know what I found out in
that last moment?
That these prejudices were so deep, that the
name of Jesus was so long a blasphemy
in my mouth, I was incapable of calling
upon that name with any respect.
I could not get the name of Jesus
out of my mouth.
It took a grace from God, finally, in
the last moment of such a struggle in
the soul, and in the inner man, to
call upon the name.
And however chokin', broken, and spluttered, and gasping
that cry was, I wouldn't even dignify it
by calling it prayer, God answered in that
moment, I was born again of the Spirit
of God, and saved, because the Lord over
all is rich unto all that call upon
him.
For whosoever shall call upon the name of
the Lord shall be saved.
That's the long and the short of it,
and it works.
Every time where the call is authentically given
by the grace of God, but how then
shall they call on him whom they have
not believed, and how shall they believe in
him of whom they've not heard, and how
shall they hear without a preacher, and how
shall they preach except they be sent.
I want to submit tonight and suggest that
there's a Jewish people in the world who
are completely ignorant of these scriptures, and are
unwittingly waiting for their fulfillment.
That there's a certain quality and kind of
preaching that has yet been rare in their
experience that waits upon us, and not an
organization.
I have great respects for the organizations like
Jews for Jesus, and mission organizations as an
interim provision for God while he waits for
the real thing.
It's a stopgap thing.
It's not God's ultimate intention.
You are, but not as you are presently
constituted in your islands of individualism and separation
in your privatistic lifestyles from which you emerge
on Sunday morning and soon enough return when
the service concludes.
God is waiting for an apostolic body in
Auckland, New Zealand, and throughout the nation, and
the nations of the earth, out of which
he can call forth men who are sent.
For those who are sent bring a word
of another quality and kind that is more
than inspiration or information.
Their word actually creates the faith to believe
in those whose minds and souls and spirits
have been profoundly done in by the satanic
activity of the enemy through history, through prejudice,
the name of Jesus for Jewish consideration.
It's apostolic preaching.
By men who are sent, for the root
word apostolic from the Greek apostolos means sent
one, but they don't grow on trees.
They don't get generated out of the air.
They are sent from apostolic bodies because we
read of the early church that great grace
was upon them all and with power gave
the apostles testimony of the resurrection of Jesus
Christ.
Not just in the speaking about the resurrection,
but in everything that they said and did
was in the glory of that power.
Not because it was contained in themselves as
virtuoso gifted men, but because there was a
linkage, an organic connection between those who were
sent and those who sent them.
Great grace was upon them all and with
power gave the apostles testimony.
That power would not have been there if
there was not great grace upon all.
And it's a grace that we have not
experienced in our generation.
We have lived so long beneath the level
of God's glory.
We have been so conditioned by denominational mentalities
or now the more recent innovations of things
messianic or charismatic that we don't know to
what degree.
We have lost and need to find again
what was the key for the power and
the glory of that first church.
These are they that turned the world upside
down and I'd love to see that Jewish
world today turn upside down.
Because the Jewish world is in fact the
world itself.
Its wisdom, its values, its way of seeing.
You can't understand to what degree we Jews
have so affected modern civilization and given it
its contour and its content.
That's the world I would like to see
turned upside down and will again when the
Holy Ghost can call and separate Himself out
of an apostolic body meant to be sent.
In whose preaching a word comes that those
that hear it might believe and in believing
called upon that name above every name and
be saved.
And it's for that reason I'm directing us
tonight to the first record in scripture of
an apostolic assembly in Acts 13.
It does not take place in the church
of Jerusalem.
It does not take place in a church
that is entirely Jewish which you would have
panted to join because you love to pick
the cheek of these Jews and you love
that mystique that is associated with them and
hope that something is going to rub off
Jewishly speaking.
But I want to tell you dear saints
as a Jewish believer there's something greater and
that the church of Antioch in its diversity,
in the differences of the men that made
it up in the ethnic, racial, composition of
that church that that was a greater glory
than the church that was birthed out of
Pentecost that was exclusively Jewish in Jerusalem.
And out of it comes the first sending
and out of it will come the final
sendings at the conclusion of this age.
And I don't know another nation perhaps Australia
or my own that has more the potential
for being the final Antiochs of the end
times than yourself.
And those who have been chafing about the
problems that come because of the Maori this
and that and don't realize that what seems
to men to be problem and difficulty, tension,
irritation and potential conflict is the very same
formula for glory.
If we can but transcend and rise above
the very same elements that will soon bring
to a boil the things that will have
men at one another's throats and the blood
flowing in the streets even in your peaceful
cities of today.
We're on a collision course to see who
gets there first.
The church in some transcendent glory with the
same elements of diversity or society lacking the
grace of God and exercised by the differences
and the fears and the suspicions and the
history of violence that cannot be overcome will
erupt again in a final cataclysmic violence of
nation against nation which the Lord himself predicted
would be that one of the factors of
the last days.
So in chapter 13 of the book of
Acts, now there were in the church that
was an Antioch certain prophets and teachers as
Barnabas and Simeon that was called Nigel, Lucius
and Cyrene, Manaen which had been brought up
with Herod the Tetrarch and Saul.
As they ministered to the Lord and fasted
the Holy Ghost said separate up to me
Barnabas and Saul for the work unto I
have called them and when they had fasted
and prayed and laid their hands on them
they sent them away so they being sent
forth by the Holy Ghost departed unto Seleucia
from thence they sailed to Cyprus and when
they were at Salamis they preached the word
of God in the synagogue of the Jews
and they had also John as their minister.
I suppose that, are you hearing okay back
there?
That you're as impressed as I am with
how sparse the word of God is in
description.
This is a phenomenal first and historic first
and something of more than historical curiosity.
It's a prototype, it's a pattern, it's something
as it was given at the first because
almost invariably the things that are given at
the first are given for us as a
pattern of things to the end that the
church is going to end I believe with
the same burst of apostolic glory and character
as was true at the first.
So we need to read this not just
as historians with a curiosity for what is
antique but to see that this is a
pattern that God wants us to behold and
to find our way to again.
The first thing that we need to say
is now that we're in the church of
Antioch, not at the church.
The church of Antioch if it was anything
was not a congregation of the casual, it
was a congregation of the profoundly committed.
More than those who are regular in their
attendance but people who believe that the first
purpose for their life, their being, and their
salvation was not the betterment that comes to
them that they might live more comfortably but
to fulfill purposes of God that can only
be fulfilled through the church and the church
of a certain kind and the first and
necessary condition which if it is not met
we can forget all the rest is that
they were in the church and not at
it.
The church was more than a place of
something that ministered to their need.
It was a community of God's people.
It was their life and purpose for being.
It's an attitude so removed from us that
only God by the work of his spirit
can even birth in us an understanding and
desire to find our way back to that
quality and character of relationship.
Those who believe were together.
I said somewhere today in a private conversation
if I had the authority I would remove
that word together out of the contemporary English
usage lest we think that that together means
together as we presently use it.
How many people think we're together tonight?
Well we're alongside each other.
There's a physical proximity but the together that
characterized the first church was an existential qualitative
condition of a kind that has yet that
yet remains unknown to our experience but I
can tell you what it's inconvenient to obtain.
It's costly and sacrificial to seek.
Our present church situation and the way that
it's constituted in terms of its services the
arrangements of its pews the conduct of its
ministers is altogether in my opinion not conducive
to finding our way back to the apostolic
reality that the church knew at the first.
Our church today by whatever name is predicated
upon convenience and the true church of Jesus
Christ is profoundly inconvenient even unto death.
It's a church of martyrs not just in
their final disposition but in all of their
days.
It's sacrificial from the word go.
It's a suffering before it's a glory.
It's a being found out.
It's a humiliation and I can't fill this
and take my word for it who has
lived for almost 15 years in community with
precious dedicated and consecrated saints at sacrifice and
the giving up of homes and jobs and
security and careers to live in remote region
of North America on a daily basis together
and then to find out how deep the
carnality the rebellion the self-will not only
on their part but on my part which
would never have been uncovered and revealed except
that we had come to the intensity of
life together which true fellowship and church is.
We're not together long enough intensely enough and
honestly enough to come to the ground alone
by which the Holy Ghost can call us
because what is he sending?
What is he going to send?
Some knockabouts who are charred shot through with
defect who if they're looked at crosswise they
pout whose feelings are so easily offended who
need a fix and if they don't get
it they go haywire whether it's chocolate or
Chinese food or a McDonald's hamburger.
They don't know what self-denial is.
They've never been disciplined, never been confronted.
People in that condition need not think they'll
ever hear the call of the Holy Ghost.
True church at its inception is an experience
in disillusionment and one that we profoundly need
because an illusion is a lie and we
need to see the truth of our own
condition before we're able to minister to anyone
else's and the text that God has been
using virtually everywhere in this nation and that
I'm not speaking from tonight is Ezekiel 37
in the Valley of Dry Bones.
It's a tremendous word sense.
You've got to get the tape and I
received no commission at all for that but
here's the here's the nub of it.
What is going to raise Israel from its
grave and God is presently moving Israel to
that condition?
Don't you understand that?
The calamity of the in the occupied territories,
the uprising of the Palestinians, the drawing away
of former allies, the predicament that comes even
by the tens of thousands of Russian Jews
that are now coming is a factor for
the escalation of war by Arab nations that
don't want to see the demographic balance affected
and at the same time cause problems of
employment and housing and water shortage and there's
never been a people more perplexed and stretched
to breaking and it's only the beginning.
You can pray your little hearts out it's
not going to get better because God does
not intend that it should.
You manby pamby softies who want to make
nice and don't understand that of necessity this
people who live by chutzpah and prowess and
ability cannot be the Israel of God that
is going to bless all the families of
the earth in that condition but there's got
to be a brokenness of a devastating kind
and a mercy that comes to them that
is totally undeserved when they have seen the
patent and total failure even of their own
ability and they themselves will say we are
cut off, we are without hope, we are
as dry bones.
I've been around 61 year saints and I
know my Jewish people intimately I've yet to
hear them acknowledge that we are such inveterate
optimists.
We can come out of Auschwitz with a
tattooed number and a torn tattered shirt and
a decade and a generation we're doing terrifically,
prosperously, never again we say and believe that
it'll never be again so long as we
have such an effective fighting force and the
number one air force and nuclear capability blah
blah blah blah blah and you were so
quick to congratulate them for that and celebrate
them for that what a statement it is
of you and your condition because you were
doing the same thing for yourself you loved
your charismatic fellowship and now you knew about
church growth and power evangelism and so what
else do you need you got it all
together you're as quick to compliment yourself while
falling far short of the glory of God
as you were to compliment them because they
were a projection of your own inadequate view
of yourself how do I get on that
oh we need to hear so here's how
I got in that sense only the son
of man is the key to that Israel's
restoration from the dead but Paul said if
the falling away of them be the blessing
of the Gentiles what shall the return be
but life from the dead and he really
means life from the dead but life of
another kind Jesus was not just made alive
again when he was brought forth up out
of the grave he was brought to a
newness of life life of another quality and
character and kind that is glorious and so
also shall they from the very same place
of death and so also shall we if
indeed we will follow on and follow the
Lord through death and resurrection because this son
of man is commanded by the Lord speak
to these bones now that they've said that
they're cut off and they're without hope you
speak to these bones I command you prophesy
and when he prophesied and the word of
the Lord came out his mouth the bones
came together then another command and flesh and
another command and breath and they rose to
be an exceedingly great army everything rested on
the ability of the son of man to
respond to the commandment of the Lord to
speak a prophetic word of such an awesome
and ultimate kind that it was beyond information
and beyond inspiration it was an event the
word itself created life and what if all
of that is a symbolic suggestion of something
toward which we are tending and that God
is wanting in the last days a prophetic
people a son of man company of one
mind one heart one soul who will speak
the same thing at the same time at
the commandment of God and who is speaking
in that kind of unity I'm not talking
about this cheapy ecumenical stuff where you give
somebody a bear hug who's wearing a clerical
collar and we think that we have the
what do you call it the unity of
the body of Christ only if you live
in community do you realize what it takes
to obtain agreement true agreement where two or
three agree together but the whole thing is
this that that prophet that son of man
would have been invalidated if he did not
yield to the holy spirit in the first
verse of that 37th chapter and be brought
down by the spirit into the midst of
a valley and be brought round about and
to see the valley full of dry bones
and have his prophetic face rubbed into the
grist the pain the ugliness of the utterness
of the death of Israel as a fact
for a prophet who will not start from
the place of truth of things as they
in fact are and as God sees them
and would have us to see them cannot
be one out of whose mouth the word
will come that will bring life from that
death and before we can get true about
Israel which we've not been till now we
need to get true about ourselves where the
church is the ground and the pillar of
truth and it's a going down saints before
it's a coming up it's a valley of
depressing acknowledgement of things as they are i'll
tell you what kind of God we have
he is the God who is truth and
in that place in that place only he
will meet us with his grace and bring
us from that depressing place to the place
of glory we're doing all that we can
not to see our condition trying to bring
certain innovations and cutesy novelties and and maybe
some Jewish thing or some charismatic thing or
something they're doing in the states now that
is hot some panacea something that will do
it magically when we've got to come to
a valley of where we in fact are
in our present condition as in the light
of the purposes and calling of God we
are as good as dead we don't see
it because we have not been serious about
the light of the purpose and the calling
of God because it takes apostolic seeing as
for example Ephesians 3 10 that God has
created all things in order that through the
church the manifold wisdom of God might be
demonstrated to the principalities and the powers of
the air and this is the eternal purpose
of God in Christ Jesus I would be
amazed if there's more than one out of
ten or a hundred here tonight who has
any true sense of what that means and
yet it is the ultimate purpose of God
for the church the eternal purpose of God
that can only be fulfilled through the church
and that God did not think it too
extravagant to create all things in order that
the church might demonstrate to the powers of
the air the manifold wisdom of God what
wisdom what demonstration why they who are they
how is it to be performed I'll tell
you another time I'm only saying that now
to show you that we have callings of
such an ultimate kind in the mysteries of
God to the powers of the air which
if we leave that unattended our present evangelism
and all our activity is so much beating
at the air and the mandate to the
jews of Israel which is as patently as
difficult to fulfill except on a transcendent place
beyond what we presently know and to which
the church and Antioch came or the Holy
Ghost would not have said separate unto me
he could say that because he knew that
they were not going to run to establish
a committee to determine who's going to go
here and do that because shouldn't we be
doing something and anything that's born out of
a sense of guilt a sense of obligation
cannot it's it's oh I could share so
much with you so much of this bleeding
hot concern for Israel especially on the part
of gentiles is more symbiotic than you know
and I'm saying that for the tape's sake
so you have time to look in the
dictionary and to know that sin that which
is symbiotic is when you enter into something
ostensibly for another while secretly at the same
time receiving a benefit for yourself and I
want to say that any Christian work or
ministry that is symbiotic is null and void
in terms of the things that are ultimate
and eternal the only thing that would suffice
is that which is priestly and altogether detached
from the gratification or benefit that the minister
himself obtains in the fulfillment of the obedience
to which he's called the son of man
in ezekiel 37 got no kicks at all
in speaking to dry bones the fact of
the matter is he hated it and we
have chosen to have run the other way
when the lord says separate unto me he's
calling for men who have already been separated
from self from ambition from the need to
be gratified uh to to receive the plaudits
of god's people to be seen to be
heard to do how many of us are
free from that how many of us are
separated from that and separated unto god and
not unto a work and not unto a
calling and not unto a people but unto
him that's the profoundest and deepest kind of
separation it's beyond culture it's beyond nationality can
you come to that as a jew the
depth of jewish identification the soulish and inadvertent
pride that rises with that ethnic thing how
many gentile christians have to oh i only
wish i could be a jew can i
touch you i'll tell you that i've been
chewed up and stood out and raked over
and dealt with and broken and left for
dead by the dealings of god to get
that whole stuff out of me while all
the time you're wanting to cultivate and to
nurture god is looking for separated people jesus
was the wonderful case in point who knew
his calling knew his messianic task knew his
identity and didn't know there was such a
remarkable selflessness a detachment an unawareness so to
speak that for no one not to know
a kind of innocence about itself that that
is the deepest statement of the separating sanctifying
work of god i can go on with
that but i think you hear i've got
the idea the question is how is that
to be obtained in the church that is
an antioch and in no other place that's
where the church is the place of suffering
confrontation being found out exhorted rebuke the word
spoken in truth and we allow our pastors
to become phony and their voices to become
shrill and affected and ministerial and we don't
even blow the whistle what we need is
a people who will exhort us while it
is yet today next sunday is in the
lump the affectation is already starting the vanity
rising the heart being lifted up and we
need people who speak to us the truth
and love as i myself have received such
a word today from the brother with whom
i'm traveling and i have a privileged man
that he did not withhold himself to speak
to me a necessary word that i did
not see in full or want to see
painful to consider about something yet lingering in
my own life indeed might even have a
jewish origin and i praise god for the
word spoken that i can give and receive
and repent and pray that we might confess
our faults one to another and be healed
i'll tell you it's going to take turning
the pews around and facing one another face
to face especially when the one face is
a bit more darkly complected than the other
and there's a whole history of bitterness of
violence of bloodshed that neither of us have
ever fully acknowledged nor repented for in our
identification with the sins of our fathers as
our as even as our own the church
is the ground and pillar of truth and
that's some kind of patsy how you're doing
brother and a little bear hug and that's
the the whole of it we need to
see each other daily when we're not at
our best and not with our sunday faces
either but do you want that and you
want to interfere with the rugby game come
on confess up you don't want that enjoyment
interrupted by your saint coming into your house
you got your feet up on the coffee
table and enjoying your sport false idols of
new zealand with a drab and
an unspectacular visit of a saint who has
nothing really much to say just wanted to
drop by daily while it's yet today how
inconsequential to those of us who have been
spoiled and sensual need an excitement need a
diverse diversion need an attractive something or other
and cannot enjoy the saints as they are
for themselves without anything spectacular i'll tell you
they're saints mark my words the hour is
coming and not far off where we if
we have not learned to enjoy the people
of god and the beauty and the truth
of fellowship we're going to be forlorn at
a time when that is soon coming when
persecution and opposition will make us jealous for
the fellowship of the saints when to be
in the presence of a brother just to
be able to pray together or sit quietly
before the lord together will be rare and
cherished separate unto me not unto the work
any group fellowship an organization that has the
basis for its being a cause or a
work or an object other than the lord
himself is already doomed to failure and when
they were separated and were sent forth and
they were at salamis they preached the word
of god in the synagogue of the jews
because god knows his own principles to the
jew first and also to the greek but
god forbid that we should fulfill that by
principle by the numbers by methodology because we
ought to and this is the way it
should be done let there only be an
apostolic sending in truth and the rest follows
and i'll tell you what if an antioch
there'd be no sending at all because how
then shall we be separated from the subtlety
of our own ambitions and interests that corrupt
and and stain the work that would be
performed my jewish people are the ultimate index
they are the ultimate measure of the truth
of the church whatever our condition we know
a phony we're not impressed by anything what
are you going to do to move us
to jealousy and paul says that's why you're
saved had they stumbled they should fall god
forbid but through their false salvation has come
to gentiles so as to move them the
jew to jealousy we are tough critics saints
brother you've got to give us a little
bit more than than hallelujahs and amens we've
got to see something so patently heavenly so
unquestionably divine in the diversity of people as
one that we would know that for very
truth god is with you the thing is
you'll not be able to demonstrate that without
cost isn't remarkable however outstanding a church antioch
was in all of its ethnic and racial
diversity not a word is said about what
it took to bring these men whom god
names barnabas simeon that was called niger what
does that mean he was a black man
an african and lucius of cyrene a mediterranean
and manan which had been brought up with
herod the tetrarch maybe even a roman and
saw a jew and when they ministered to
the lord and fasted the holy ghost city
when they had come to a certain quality
of relationship reflected in their worship to god
when they reached that high water mark in
a selflessness that didn't have to go and
was just as happy as to remain as
to be sent and recognize whether you're worshiping
uh in the congregation or in the act
of service it's the same worship and it
can only be performed together when the things
that would be contrary to that quality of
worship jealousy envy bitterness resentment dislike hatred fear
have been worked through in the spirit of
truth to a place where we can look
each other in the face eye to eye
and complete trust and love and worship god
beyond race beyond nationality beyond history beyond culture
beyond anything we're without father we're without mother
we're without beginning or ending of days and
have been found in the fashion of the
son of man we are a melchizedek priesthood
together let's throw away those yarmulkes and our
maori elements that we yet want to clutch
and are encouraged to retain and even to
bring to a new appreciation and seek for
an identity beyond time beyond culture beyond nationality
beyond english beyond anglo-saxon beyond any of
the kinds of things that limit the holy
one of israel and bring us to that
place to be found worshiping the lord together
this is ultimate separation saints and it can
only take place in the church not at
it in a church that is more than
assembly phenomenon and what it will cost to
go from how we are presently constituted to
that god knows i'll tell you what you're
not going to get off easy tonight you
thought to to enjoy the the curiosity of
the of the jewish fellow passing by it's
going to cost you i'm going to give
an invitation solemn serious and demanding fearful that
if you rise to that or kneel to
that or go prostrate to that which is
more appropriate you're going to seek change you're
going to give god leave to begin to
work in those areas of your life and
sanctifying work that you didn't want exposed or
touched because it's painful that you didn't want
to recognize because you like your privatistic lifestyle
because you want to linger at the tv
set and watch the rugby game undisturbed would
you giving the lord leave to pull the
plug out of all the things that keep
you from that qualitative relationship with the saints
and with him that will be again a
basis in this nation and in this city
for men and women to be sent even
to the jews who are in your midst
and are till now completely unimpressed by a
word and in the hearing of it will
cause the faith to believe unto salvation and
move them to jealousy so after they had
fastened and prayed and laid their hands on
they sent them away so they being sent
forth by the holy ghost when did you
hear that that this is going to be
a typographical error they fastened and prayed and
laid hands on them so they being sent
forth by the holy ghost what a confusion
we just have to you know commiserate with
god make a little allowance he gets carried
away that he equates the sending forth of
the saints by the laying of hands as
being the same as being sent by the
holy ghost either he's too extravagant or we're
too dumb and we don't see as he
sees and cherish and understand what that means
that god equates the laying on of the
hands of saints as being the very same
as being sent by the holy ghost i'll
tell you what i'm very careful about who's
going to lay hands on this head i've
already had enough experience with with the uh
those who itch to get in on the
act and want to lay hands on it
go get a mark but after they have
laid hands on me the fact of the
matter is that i don't get them something
has happened to dull and to quench the
spirit and to bring a certain weariness and
emptying and exhaustion i can't i don't have
a word for it but it's not the
full panoply and power of god because something
has been communicated by those hands that maybe
were an hour ago masturbating or twiddling with
the dials of the tv set or shooting
dice or or god knows what else i
want to know the hands that are laid
on my head saints and i want to
know the life of the hands and i
will not know them except i know them
daily for not to know them daily is
not to know them at all that's the
kind of convenient of christianity that's inconvenient but
it's the kind for which god waits that
the holy ghost might call you have faith
to believe that we who have rushed off
to committees and sat down and plotted and
planned and how we're going to do this
and sponsor that at this activity event can
we wait in the priestly way ministering unto
the lord who knows better than we the
stakes the internal stakes the shortness of the
time the immensity of the task and be
utterly confident that he who is the high
priest and the apostle of our confession who
sends will send when we have met his
condition verse six and when they
had gone through the isle of pathos they
found a certain sorcerer a false prophet a
jew whose name was bar jesus who was
a deputy of the count of the country
sergius paul a secluded man who was with
this deputy who called for barnabas and saul
and desired to hear the word of god
but elemas the sorcerer for so it is
his name by interpretation withstood them seeking to
turn away the deputy from the faith then
saul who is also called paul filled with
the holy ghost set his eyes on him
and said oh full of all subtlety and
all mischief thou child of the devil thou
enemy of all righteousness will thou not cease
to pervert the right ways of the lord
now behold the hand over upon thee thou
shall be blind as not seeing the sun
for a season and immediately there fell on
him a mist and a darkness and he
went about seeking some to lead him by
the hand then the deputy when he saw
what was done believed being astonished at the
doctrine of god i don't know if i've
ever preached this before this is the first
you have to be a scholar to see
what is so evident in the pattern of
things set forth in this chapter to the
jew first but not long after a collision
with the deep dark forces of hell in
the person of a sorcerer who sought to
dissuade and to deflect the word of god
from a critical man in place of rulership
over the nation what is that saying that
we're not sent forth for patsy things and
for cutesy activity that there are foes of
an ultimate kind the powers of occultism and
darkness sorcery witchcraft hellish things palpitating and loose
in society that that can look upon us
tonight and say jesus i know and paul
i know but the congregation who is at
the such and such place hearing our cats
who they're not at all intimidated by us
as we presently are they've had an uncontested
sway over the city of auckland and over
this nation the influence to jerk to bring
their diabolical and fiendish works to bear on
races and nationalities and on the nation because
the one only thing that could have contended
against them and removed them from their orbit
and nullified them and released the captives to
the hearing of the word of god into
salvation is the church of a certain kind
a church from the powers of the air
fear because the only thing that they're required
to fear is that which is authentic as
against that which is only cute and the
moment they see apostolic authenticity they tremble they
saw it in jesus and they saw it
in paul but they do not yet see
it in us and when we'll come to
that constituency we'll find we're engaged in a
new kind of battle where we wrestle not
against flesh and blood but against the principalities
and powers of darkness the world rulers of
this darkness which have waited for a people
who can wrestle gut to gut it's a
sweaty grisly impolite kind of activity beyond polite
prayer it's not for those who concern how
they will appear or look if they get
strung out or stretched out as it's an
activity that can only be conducted by a
week we wrestle not an individual virtual so
we or we wrestle not at all not
an accident that the first expression of this
apostolic team sent out was to the jew
and not an accident that right on the
heels of that the very first thing that
they encounter is a satanic opposition of a
kind that would make many of us chill
and turn about and run the opposite way
but paul being filled with the spirit of
god said and he spoke a word of
judgment which god fulfilled before the sight of
an unbelieving and dubious ruler that when he
saw the power recognized the doctrine he believed
this i think is the picture of the
last days as it was the picture of
the first apostolic assembly and god is waiting
again the spirit of god is brooding even
in this room tonight a room if you
have an apostolic eye to see is circled
about by a cloud of invisible witnesses not
yet made perfect without us such collisions ahead
such cataclysmic clashes of the forces of darkness
and light at the end of the age
how many of us have that apocalyptic expectancy
of this conclusion of the age that will
be saturated with blood of the saints who
cry out for whom to the altar who
have been slain for the for the word
of their testimony for keeping the commandments of
god and know that we are called for
such a collision course and it's just another
corner the anti-christ forces already brewing the
apostasy already working by which those who go
on to this kind of faith will not
just be an irritant but the object of
opposition and persecution by those who are satisfied
with a much lesser kind of christianity and
would have gotten away with it if you
only had not been around with your radiant
faces and by your presence to blow the
witness on the fraud that that kind of
christianity is your saints we've got a calling
that will not be met except we stand
together in apostolic and prophetic fullness that has
ever and always required sacrifice for god's house
is a house of sacrifice i'm going to
invite you to it tonight now for my
jewish people's sake in your nation whom god
has deposited in his great wisdom as your
test they are the enemy of the gospel
for your sake for the nation itself and
unless the transcendent answer of god to the
issue of race and nationality and hatred is
demonstrated by the church the nation will almost
certainly with other nations be plunged into the
bloodbath of nation against nation within the nation
for the mysteries of god that wait to
be fulfilled by a god who's created all
things in order that through the church church
of an ultimate kind the manifold wisdom of
god might be demonstrated to the principalities and
powers of the earth for this is the
eternal purpose of going to christianity come on
let's confess up are we occupied with the
eternal purposes of god tonight how can you
do that and get up early to watch
the of the rugby match with france no
way and we can give ourselves to the
one and still in any way have a
jealousy for the eternal purposes of god dear
saints we've got to pull out the plug
from the tv set as it were we've
got to steep our eyeballs into the apostolic
scriptures and make this the very predicate of
our reality contrary to every appearance that new
zealand wants to offer that seems idyllic pleasant
the best of all possible worlds this is
our reality and will soon come to be
in fact clash of kingdoms opposition persecution suffering
monogamy we need to see as god sees
and live out of that city you precious
gray heads and older ones the glory of
your latter and last years will be greater
than the former if you can take hold
of god is wanting and groan and travail
before god convulsive gasps and sobs of groanings
that cannot be honored for a church of
this kind in this city of this nation
every power and hell in the post i
want to pray for that church now and
i want to invite to that quality of
life and being as many as will freely
give themselves and say to the lord whatever
it takes lord whatever it takes i'm soft
i'm pampered i'm indulgent i'm undisciplined i'm overweight
i'm saturated with sports my i'm excited by
the things that are carnal and completely dead
or dull for the things that are eternal
and that pertain to your glory help me
and undertake from tonight will fit me in
with others of right mind and heart whatever
the cost that you might have a people
in the earth whose word is of such
a kind and it creates faith and more
than that when spoken at your command will
bring a people out of their grave whose
return will be nothing less than life from
the dead for all the nations let's bow
before the lord thank you precious may
we sense my god your hovering presence just
now in the stillness of these final moments
before we break because some of us even
imagine that this is an eternal once and
for all moment that will not be given
again and we're coming to a final hour
when to hear the word of god at
a time when there's a famine for the
word of the lord is becoming an expensive
experience as well it should for your word
requires and lord i ask you to require
now and those of us who have coasted
drifted have been casual and get by because
we have measured ourselves by ourselves and have
been satisfied not at all considering the issue
of your glory and lord i ask you
to draw up the hearts of those whom
you to give the grace to respond to
a call to monitor to a call to
absolute consecration to an utterness toward god by
which our life will not be upon and
not just a final hour of dying but
a continual binding of embarrassment of humiliation of
disillusionment of all the things that must necessarily
be our experience if we go from the
normative timid institutional christianity which now pervades to
find our way back to the anti-occult
glory and at once was that you might
again speak by your spirit to call at
the same time if there's someone in this
room who will freely give themselves to this
whatever the cost will you stand or kneel
or go down do something faith is an
act a statement don't do it lightly this
is not a gimmick it's not an american
conclusion to a service it's god calling calling
us first to repentance for having been so
long satisfied with that which does not satisfy
and thinking that if we added a little
wrinkle a little innovation a little cultural novelty
that somehow it would be the better the
richer and still fall short of the glory
precious god come lord call men and women
of all ages of all races of all
national and ethnic origins my god you've got
the raw material here we're loaded with the
potential to be an anti-occult people in
this nation come my god and bring us
into that quality relationship that's true and loving
purifying our souls in obedience by the spirit
to love one another with a pure heart
fervently not some mock and feign how you
do it come my god have a people
a true people and my people your kinsmen
can hear a word preached by those sent
in the hearing of which they might believe
on him and have life seal by name
my god every soul is going down before
you that stands before you let not the
enemy steal one from you to say that
they're just a housewife or a widow or
elderly or or ungifted or uneducated or any
such thing there's a calling for the body
the richness of the spirit that when we
come together each one has a tongue and
interpretation of prophecy and revelation for him take
us off our seats my god in the
passivity in which we have been inculcated to
be an audience to look up as some
sweaty minister and bring us into the vital
faith as participants whatever the cost amen may
more be done tonight to affect the jewish
community of this nation and the mystery and
the restoration of israel itself than all of
the things that have preceded it in the
name of israel and the jews may the
powers of hell tonight tremble for the authenticity
of this response to the word that has
been sent by the holy ghost as events
that threatens their unchecked and uncontested sway and
influence till this hour even over this very
city may they tremble for what is potentially
being expressed here tonight yes lord and we
thank you lord my god these people heard
the terms of what that standing means come
now you're free to do what you will
yes lord bring us to unemployment to flat
tires to new aches and pains to sickness
to difficulties in marriage to uh flarings up
with the boss to whatever the factors and
things that you will use my god may
we recognize them as coming exclusively from your
hand for our good to discipline to chastise
to shape and to form men and women
and the apostolic and the prophetic we give
you less my god we would so much
as regret the loss of any day lived
in our life that was not lived to
your glory and we should learn on the
day of eternity to our eternal sorrow and
chagrin that we had lived beneath the high
calling of god in christ jesus come my
god settle something tonight have a sign up
on the dotted line and remind us of
what we are saying yes young and old
every nationality jew and gentile work or work
lord right to the foundations that shall not
be moving raise up intercessors groaning women who
groan my god for me working out of
this yes thank you my god that your
word has gone forth and it shall not
go forth send us home my god with
a new solemnity a new seriousness a new
soberness something different than our face our eyes
our voice our stature that was not there
before that people who have known us will
sense something has happened there's been a transaction
with god we're not the same and unfold
our high calling together bless the ministers that
are in this room show them my god
how to walk this out to lead their
people from the present sunday arrangement if we
have to move to get closer to each
other my god move us if it takes
the loss of job and security to bring
us to be dependent upon one another and
for one another do it have for yourself
a community of god's people living by faith
for the just shall live by their faith
god forbid we should be dependent on society's
provision bless this people as the true people
of god in this nation this great city
may we align ourselves with it henceforth and
evermore the glory of god and no other
consideration we thank you and give you the
praise the honor for such love that will
not let us go jealous love you thank
you