Is this really happening?
Well, if my mother could only see me
now.
I'm a blessed man, and I'm a privileged
man, and a grateful man to have been
given this opportunity to share.
I think it's the first of its kind
that I've had this kind of a context
with emphasis on revival, which several churches have
combined.
And maybe I'm becoming respectable and acceptable now.
But thank you, and I appreciate the labors,
Don's labors, and all of the pastors and
those who have come together to arrange these
days.
So, tonight I have an ominous sense in
my heart.
Well, some of us are already aware that
we have reached an hour where messages, per
se, are passe.
That somehow we've run the gamut, and sermons
and homiletics and preaching of that kind somehow,
how whatever purpose it has served for now,
somehow it's no longer appropriate for the hour
and the place where we now stand.
The only kind of preaching now that would
be appropriate is that preaching that constitutes an
event.
The word of God that performs something, that
sets something in motion, that affects something of
consequence, particularly as we face the impending end
of the age.
Do you use the phrase, the last days?
If you don't, you need to employ it,
and not as an artifice, but as a
reality, the sense of impending coming to the
conclusion of an age.
And we know that this age is going
to end in apocalyptic collision, powers of darkness
and light, and a final paroxysm of violent
contending for this creation of who, in fact,
is going to be its Lord.
And that this is going to be such
a time, and the Church plays a remarkable
and pivotal function in this final scenario.
And that the Jews, who have been quiescent,
out of the picture, dormant, apostate, somehow are
coming up again into the consideration of God.
Not only in Israel, in that troubled nation,
but worldwide we're going to see ramifications and
the effect upon Jews as they are uprooted,
moved, and brought to a final time of
sifting before they are brought again into the
place of God's intention.
Now, please get this morning's tape, a remarkable
statement on Romans 11, that I'm just so
grateful, may the Lord do as much tonight,
but that will give you an incisive understanding
of the significance of Israel and the place
of the Church, appointed by God to be
the salvific agent in Israel's restoration after centuries
-long apostasy.
Am I getting too fancy?
Good.
So, Lord, precious God, we were trembling in
that back room, not because we're nervous, but
because we sense something in the air.
There's something tonight that's ominous, that's weighty, that
we're called not just to hear a message,
we're called to some kind of transaction.
There's something that you want wrought that will
affect this community and beyond it that has
to go forth somehow with the word and
the response.
So, Lord, mercy upon us again.
Mercy upon me, Lord.
These people think that I'm some kind of
a pro, and they don't know.
The trembling and the terrible sense of frailty
in these prophets who are the sons of
man, so aware of their humanity, their limitation,
so feeling strange always, never at once ever
comfortable as if, yes, but always, how did
I get into this, and where am I,
and what am I doing, and, Lord, how?
So let it be.
But out of that, my God, may this
people receive your word and even more hear
your voice.
We thank you for this privilege.
Come, my God, bring the conclusion.
You're the great alpha and the omega, and
you've led us on a charted course through
these days, and we've not understood every segment
of it.
Some of it yet remains strange, and we've
not been able to somehow factor it in,
but we trust you for the whole flow
of it, the whole continuum, from the beginning
until the conclusion now tonight.
So we're grateful you're the alpha and the
omega of our faith.
And may your soul be blessed.
May you be gratified.
May you be entirely delighted with the proceeding
of this night because it goes forth by
your word and your spirit.
We're privileged, Lord, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, if you're—anyone's hearing me for the first
time?
Oh, you poor souls.
Culture shock.
See, the others have already been initiated.
So you've got to take the whole thing
in one night.
But then it gives me occasion to say
a little word about my books, all of
which are extraordinary.
What shall I say?
Who knows that better than I?
Because I know how divinely inspired every one
of these books is.
The Holocaust book, we have only three copies
left.
You'll have to contend and fight for it
over at the table.
But we want to reserve it for those
who have a particular passion and burden for
Israel and for the Jew, and have always
pondered how it is that God has allowed
his covenant people to suffer such a tragedy
as the Holocaust indeed was.
But more than that, need to know that
I believe that there's another one yet coming
that will eclipse the former and for which
the Jewish community has no anticipation at all.
But the Church needs to know, needs to
anticipate, needs to prepare.
And so it's in this book.
And other of the books serve purposes of
their own.
The Spirit of Truth, the title speaks for
itself.
The Church is the ground and pillar of
truth.
If we're not jealous for the truth, if
we are not the truth itself in fact,
if we ourselves become actors and performers and
lose integrity, what can be hoped for in
the world?
So we need to love the truth.
And, of course, the truth is painful before
it's glorious.
You need to love it or you'll not
welcome it.
An apostolic conversion, a little Holy Ghost gem,
the verbatim transcript of a message given in
despair with a congregation in California that seemed
to have it all together but somehow had
silently contracted with God this far, no further.
And God wanted to go further.
And this is the word he put before
them that brought them down on their faces.
I've seen people go down on their faces
but have not seen them dig into the
woodwork, into the floor.
They did that that night and they've been
changed ever since.
So we have this.
All of these books are in several languages.
And I have not lifted a finger to
promote any of it.
So I have to assume that God himself,
by seeing through their foreign additions, recognizes the
word as something appropriate for the church of
the nations.
This is the most recent.
It's a classic already.
We're getting such response from apostolic foundations, a
kind of cosmic overview of the faith.
The word apostolic, like the word prophetic, needs
to be jealously guarded and cherished because they
are the foundation of the church.
And if we lose sight of that or
the word prophetic comes to mean something in
our generation, less or other than God's intention,
we're on the way to deception.
Likewise, the word apostolic.
So the book contains chapters on apostolic character,
apostolic perception, apostolic proclamation, the principalities and powers
of the air about which few know anything,
the subject of eternity which few take into
their consideration.
This is a gem.
In fact, I'm appreciating it so much as
I'm talking about it.
I think we'll double the price.
So this is the last opportunity to get
these books, none of which are available in
bookstores.
Okay.
You want to turn to Joshua, Chapter 3.
Does this light bother anyone?
Is it too glaring?
It is?
Yeah.
Okay.
Better.
You don't mind if I take my jacket
off because I'm going to be working.
I can't think of a more propitious text
than Joshua 3, because we stand tonight as
the church in a place appropriate or equivalent
to where Israel stood as it waited before
the Jordan before crossing over.
Do you have that sense that we're at
a threshold, that everything till now has been
preparation and that we're being fitted for something?
And before we can embark to the fulfillment
of that something, which is altogether awesome and
will cost much for many of us and
for some of us, even our lives.
I'm not dismissing martyrdom in the last days,
not in remote China, but, I mean, right
here, Canada, the United States, Western countries, that
the issues are going to be so fierce
that the requirement of the sacrifice of life
in the hostility that will come upon us
will not be an unusual factor.
The fact of the matter is that the
church, to be the church, needs to see
itself as a martyr church.
Whether or not the life is required, we
have long ago resolved that should it be
required, yes, we're already living as martyrs.
Martyrdom is not a mode of dying.
Martyrdom is a mode of living.
And what we perform and what we express
in a final moment is the sum of
all the moments that preceded it.
Martyrdom is a mode of being, an attitude
that your life is not your own.
That you don't hold it dear as unto
yourself.
It's purchased, it's bought with a price for
God, for his glory, for his honor, whatever
the requirement upon ourselves.
Have you come to that?
Well, that's why you have to wait three
days at the banks of the Jordan before
crossing over.
You need to ponder what crossing is going
to mean.
This isn't some kind of mindless logistic of
getting the people over on the right side
so they can then take the land.
Wait three days, assemble yourself, wait there at
the banks.
That's the same number of days that Jesus
was himself in the grave.
There's something about three that has a symbolism,
a significance, that we need to consider that
we are not able to articulate.
So let's look at this text.
Early in the morning, Joshua rose and set
out from Shittim with all the Israelites, and
they came to the Jordan.
They camped there before crossing over.
At the end of three days, the officers
went through the camp and commanded the people,
when you see the Ark of the Covenant
of the Lord your God being lifted or
carried by the Levitical priests, then you shall
set out from your place, follow it, so
that you may know the way you should
go, for you have not passed this way
heretofore.
Yet there shall be a space between you
and it, a distance of about 2,000
cubits.
Do not come any nearer to it.
Then Joshua said to the people, Sanctify yourselves
for tomorrow.
The Lord will do wonders among you.
To the priest Joshua said, Take up the
Ark of the Covenant and pass on in
front of the people.
So they took up the Ark of the
Covenant and went in front of the people.
The Lord said to Joshua, This day I
will begin to exalt you in the sight
of all Israel so that they may know
that I will be with you as I
was with Moses.
You are the one who shall command the
priests who bear the Ark of the Covenant.
When you come to the edge of the
waters of the Jordan, you shall stand still
in the Jordan.
Joshua then said to the Israelites, Draw near.
Hear the words of the Lord your God.
Joshua said, By this you shall know that
among you is the living God who without
fail will drive out from before you the
Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the
Girgashites, the Amorites, the Jebusites.
The Ark of the Covenant of the Lord
of all the earth is going to pass
before you into the Jordan.
So now select twelve men from the tribes
of Israel, one from each tribe.
When the soles of the feet of the
priests who bear the Ark of the Lord,
the Lord of all the earth, rest in
the waters of the Jordan, the waters of
the Jordan flowing from above shall be cut
off.
They shall stand in a single heap.
When the people set out from their tents
to cross over the Jordan, the priests bearing
the Ark of the Covenant were in front
of the people.
Now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout
the time of harvest.
So when those who bore the Ark had
come to the Jordan and the feet of
the priests bearing the Ark were dipped in
the edge of the water, the waters flowing
from above stood still, rising up in a
single heap far off at Adam, the city
that is beside Zarathon, while those flowing toward
the sea of the Arabah, the Dead Sea,
were wholly cut off.
Then the people crossed over opposite Jericho.
While all the priests were crossing over on
dry ground, the priests who bore the Ark
of the Covenant of the Lord stood still
on dry ground in the middle of the
Jordan until the entire nation finished crossing over
the Jordan.
Well, this is written for our instruction upon
whom the ends of the age have come.
This is accurate history, but it's also a
paradigm.
It's also a pattern, a model of some
way in which God and his wisdom apportions
a significant crossing prior to the taking of
the land.
Israel has been milling about for 40 years
in the wilderness, and many of the carcasses
of the unbelieving and the faithless have been
falling away.
A whole generation has been raised up who
never came up out of Egypt but were
born in the wilderness.
They had never passed through the Red Sea.
But before they could come into the land,
this is the requisite thing.
There's a crossing over of the Jordan.
I don't know if you know what the
word Jordan means.
It means a descent unto death, a going
down into death.
And there's no coming into the land, and
there's no taking the land without first passing
through this.
But what is the order of God?
The priests have to bear the Ark and
go in front of the people.
When they see the Ark being lifted, they
are to follow after.
So I don't know how to translate this,
but I know I'm intuiting.
My spirit is telling me that this is
the paradigm for this last day's preparation for
the people of God who have been too
long in the wilderness, too long on the
wrong side, to now prepare to cross over.
And you stay there for three days and
look at that Jordan.
Usually it's a very modest river, but this
is the harvest season, and the waters now
overflow their banks.
Now what is ordinarily tranquil is menacing.
God doesn't call you to cross when it's
convenient.
He calls you to cross when it's perilous.
But there's an order of God, the priests
first.
And I think we're going to find out
who, in fact, they are.
It may not be the ordained ministry, the
clergy.
I pray God that it will be.
But it may well be that there are
those who have not that kind of training
or formal background who are appointed by God
to be in front of the people and
be the bearers of the Ark of God.
The Ark of God, what shall we say,
is symbolic of the Lord himself.
It's something contained, the presence, the righteousness, the
holiness, the tablets of the law, the rod
that butted, the pot of manna encased in
gold.
It's a central, pivotal place of Israel's worship.
It's very God, his presence.
To have the Ark is to have the
Lord.
And he goes in before us.
Hasn't he already done that?
He's already gone down and into the place
of death, and he's opened a way for
us that's dry.
Death, where is thy terror?
Death, where is thy sting?
And grave, where is thy terror?
The Lord has gone before.
The Ark of God has gone into the
Jordan and into the place of death.
But the question is, have we followed after?
Which side are you on tonight, and which
side do you prefer to be on?
To cross over now through these perilous waters,
trusting that they will stay in banks that
permit your passage and will not collapse and
inundate you and wash you into the Dead
Sea, is itself a tremulous faith.
And the one who needs to have it
most is the one who goes in first
and comes out last.
No priest, no entry, no parting of the
waters.
We can't make it until those who bear
the Ark go before us.
And when you see them lift the Ark,
when you see them rise above their conventional
religious performance and move out into realms in
which we are aware of a conspicuous sense
of God with them, their word, their presence,
there's an aura, there's something of a priestly
kind.
God is with them.
They're bearing the Ark.
They're lifting it up.
It's visible to us who these priests are.
They must precede us, and they must have
a faith to put their feet in those
waters, perilous now as they are at flood
stage, because until they will, the waters will
not part.
And so in first with the Ark, right
into the midst of that place now made
dry and waiting for all Israel to pass
through, and how slow and cumbersome the people
of God are.
What an agony to wait as you see
this palpitating mass of water ready to break
its confines and inundate and flood and sweep
into death those who are taking the risk
of crossing over the dry ground if it
will remain dry.
But if you have not the faith for
this, have you the faith for the parasites
and the Girgashites and the Amorites and all
the host of Canaanite demonic hordes that have
always opposed the people of God and need
now to be finally routed?
Because the issue of the taking of the
land is not just a comfortable place for
us to settle, but to establish for the
king his place of sanctuary and dwelling at
Zion.
The ultimate end of the taking of the
land is a place for God, who is
the creator of the heavens and the earth,
to have for himself a tabernacle and a
sanctuary out of which the law of the
law shall go forth to the nations and
the word of the Lord out of a
Jerusalem and out of a Zion that has
been taken from the Girgashites and regained from
the powers of darkness by a people of
faith who have crossed over.
Something happens in the crossing.
Something happens when you descend into death.
It's not just coming up onto the underside.
You're not the same one who entered the
banks that comes up at the other edge.
You've passed through death and therefore you have
entered into life.
Resurrection life, for that is the requisite enablement
for the taking of the land.
Religious well-meaning intentions will never suffice.
It's enough to have you bumble around in
the wilderness, but it's not a provision for
the taking of the land.
Can you understand that?
How am I doing in trying to spell
out, trying to feel my way in what
is the spiritual application of the text that
the Lord has quickened for me upon arrival
in Dunville?
Do you have a heart for this?
You priests, first one in, last one out.
And not only in, but stand still and
rest in the center of that Jordan.
And if we're nervous about tonight's meeting, how
will we do then?
Rest is a statement of assurance in God.
Rest is more than, what shall I say?
It's an ultimate kind of spiritual condition that
you don't come to automatically.
It's a consequence of a life lived in
God that has obtained a knowledge of Him
and a trust that no matter how things
are unknown and fearful and yet undescribed and
what will await us on the other side,
we yet can rest in Him who bids
us cross over.
If there's agitation, if there's restlessness, impatience, fearful
timidity, I think the waters will close in
upon us.
So who's been fitted for this?
Who's been through trials?
Who has had to meet God in crisis
conditions where if God be not God, we've
had it.
Where if there's no resurrection, we of all
men are most to be pitied.
The priests are the tested servants.
The priests have a history.
The priests know their God and He has
given them a word and a strange word
and that's all He needs to give them.
They don't need further explanation.
They can rest in that word.
You shall stand still in death.
You shall stand still in the midst of
death.
Everything around you is fearful, full of trepidation,
waters ready to break their banks, dangerous enemies
awaiting you in the land that exceed you
in stature, who are fierce, who are opposed
to God.
Nevertheless, you stand still.
We don't know what crossing will mean, but
we don't have to know.
There's a God who is with us, the
Ark of God, being born by the priest
of God, and that suffices for everything.
You see how we're in this together?
No individual virtuosos who are going to swim
across the Jordan or take their own route.
It's the people of God acting in concert
according to the requirement of God and the
pattern of God and the wisdom of God.
First priests, then the people.
And that's, in fact, the way that Jericho
itself is going to be taken.
This same ark is going to be toted
around that city whose walls were double thick
and, what's the word, invincible, impenetrable, and the
jeering and the howling of those pagans on
these stupid Israelites walking around and kicking dust
into each other's teeth every day in the
heat of it, blowing trumpets, the priests with
their trumpets, with the carrying of the ark
and the people following behind.
What a motley crew.
What an unimpressive people.
And seven times on the seventh day?
And don't shout until you hear the trumpet.
Everything requires a discipline, an order, a stateliness,
a procession, the priests, the people, the soldiers,
the trumpets, the ark.
So the means by which the Jordan was
crossed is the means by which the Jericho
is taken.
I don't think we're ready for this.
We're too individualistic.
We don't even know what place in the
line we ought to be walking.
Are we content to follow these priests?
Because, after all, we've seen them in their
humanity, and we're not altogether impressed.
And what if they're mistaken?
What if they're wrong?
This is the way we are.
And that's why the land is not taken.
That's why we're still bumbling around in the
wilderness.
That's why we're on the religious side rather
than on the resurrection side.
And that's why the Canaanites and all of
these, the host of powerful demon entities and
principalities and powers are thumbing their nose at
us.
They're ensconced.
They're in power.
They're in the place that God must have
if he's going to rule over his creation
from Zion.
But who's going to displace them?
Only the ordered people of God, in the
discipline of God, moving in the time of
God, according to the requirement of God.
Having waited three days by these banks and
thinking all these thoughts, what is it going
to cost me?
What happens when we cross?
What will happen at Jericho?
What about these other fierce peoples?
How shall we overcome them?
Maybe it's a mistake.
Maybe we can settle on the wilderness side
and have some kind of church services and
other kinds of things.
And we don't want to give up this
manna because when we cross over, the manna
ceases.
Manna is not the statement of our spirituality.
Manna is the statement of our immaturity.
Manna is the provision of God for those
who have not yet the faith to live
from the land.
It's going to cease the day we cross.
And what happens on the day of crossing?
Circumcision.
Wow, how we have been trying to put
that off.
Is that really necessary?
It's painful and humiliating.
And it's at the nexus of our sexuality
and our power and our manliness.
But God says, until you have been circumcised,
cut the foreskins with a sharp knife.
And so many of them were cut that
they called it Gilgal, the hill of foreskins.
Because there's no Passover.
You can't eat at Passover.
You can't have a sacramental meal unless you're
circumcised.
It's okay to knock about in the religious
wilderness as the uncircumcised and go through the
lifting of a plastic cup and a wafer,
no sweat.
But when the communion, when the sacramental covenantal
meal is your enablement, when it's your life,
when it's your power, when it's being imbued
with the reality of what God is in
himself, by the eating and drinking from that
Passover table, you can't come to that table
except to be circumcised.
You better think this over.
Maybe you need more than three days to
weigh it up, what this is going to
cost, what this is going to require.
Can't we go on?
Can't Ishmael live?
Can't we go on with the present configuration
of things?
Maybe tone it up a bit?
Bring in a revival speaker?
We want to improve, but we don't want
to be radically transcendent.
We don't want to be an army of
God.
We would rather be, you know, well-meaning
pusitors.
Dear saints, if ever I know anything in
my spirit, I know that the hour has
come.
That's a perfect parallel to this text for
the church in the world.
It's time to cross over.
It's time to descend into death.
It's time to move from the mere acknowledgement
of the truth of the doctrine of resurrection
to the appropriation of its life and power,
or there'll be the taking of nothing.
So I flayed the church this morning, and
I said, you have not needed resurrection till
now.
What for?
To perform services and programs?
You only need the enablement of the power
of the risen and ascended life when you're
taking the land against fierce and opposing forces.
And that power and that enablement is only
to be found in one place, the place
of death, in going down and into a
descent into Jordan.
It's a dry ground.
The waters have been parted.
Will you follow?
So in chapter 4, the Israelites did in
verse 8, as Joshua commanded, they made a
memorial, they took up stones from the middle
of the Jordan 12, according to the tribes
of Israel, and placed them where Joshua had
designated, that they will always remember this location.
This was the place of crossing.
This is where we made the decisive break
with the religious wilderness to come into the
land of promise.
That break has got to be made.
And we need to recognize that where we
have been up till now is not that
land.
It's the place of preparation, of training and
learning.
Now we're being required for an obedience of
crossing and taking.
The Lord is now the captain of the
host and not some sappy Jesus who does
our bidding.
He's got a sword in his hand and
there's a design and something that must be
performed that completes the age.
So in verse 10, the priest who bore
the ark remained standing in the middle of
the Jordan until everything was finished.
That the Lord commanded Joshua to tell the
people, according to all that Moses had commanded
Joshua, the people crossed over in haste.
As soon as all the people had finished
crossing over, the ark of the Lord and
the priest crossed over in front of the
people.
In verse 14, on that day the Lord
exalted Joshua in the sight of all Israel
and they stood in awe of him as
they had stood in awe of Moses all
the days of his life.
For in verse 23, the Lord your God
has dried up the waters of the Jordan
for you until you crossed over as the
Lord your God did to the Red Sea
when he dried up for us until we
crossed over so that all the peoples of
the earth may know that the hand of
the Lord is mighty so that you may
fear the Lord your God forever.
Those who had not passed through the Red
Sea, who had not been baptized unto Moses
in the water and in the cloud, need
now to do that in passing through this
Jordan, preparatory to their call.
I can't say enough for the two great
sacraments I've been talking to Don about this,
baptism in water, baptism in the spirit.
These were the two provisions of God for
Israel to bring them from Egyptian slavery and
wilderness into a land of promise.
There's no taking the land without these two
profound, that's okay, provisions of God.
Have you had either one?
I'm not so persuaded that every baptism is
valid.
If you only saw that, understood it as
a religious ordinance, as a religious requirement, I
don't know that it was more than getting
wet.
Unless you recognized that it was a going
down and into, a death and a burial,
that you might be raised with him unto
newness of life, how then could it effectually
perform what God intends through this great sacrament?
We have done despite to the holy sacraments
of God, both the Passover, the Lord's table,
baptism, and baptism in the spirit.
We thought that the baptism in the spirit
was the distinctive of the Pentecostals and the
Charismatics, and we could let them do their
thing, but there was no implication for ourselves.
O you dear saints, I think I can
say with full assurance, unless we have the
full enablement of God, both in the resurrection
life in which we are joined, by joining
him in death and burial, and have also
been baptized in the cloud as well as
into the sea, we're not fit, we're not
enabled to take the land.
We've got to get over our fundamental and
evangelical, what's the word, distaste and fear over
that questionable realm that seems to be murky
and often is.
If it's that powerfully requisite, what will the
enemy do to make it questionable and distasteful
and spurious and something to be dismissed, but
have those who purport to have it so
deport themselves as to turn us off, to
make it questionable.
But isn't it time to grow up?
Isn't it time to come of age?
Isn't it time to recognize that God has
called us to things of such a weight
and of so momentous a kind that we
need the full enablement of God, the full
equipping of God?
Paul said, I speak with tongues more than
you all, and I don't believe he ever
spoke in tongues publicly.
It wasn't the gift of tongues that Paul
was speaking about.
He was speaking about his private, personal, devotional
life, something that I know myself in my
experience and would not give up for anything.
Maybe you need to follow me sometime at
a university encounter, as I have been in
many universities in America and overseas, and be
led by the hand from one meeting to
the other, from student union buildings to classrooms
to dormitories to fraternity houses, with the hostility
of Jewish students and their rabbis and secular
atheists ready to chew me up and spit
me out, and to be exhausted speaking four,
five, six times a day, to have a
debate with a philosophy professor at the Jewish
fraternity house, and to move away from the
table, and they were serving steak, and find
a place to prayer, feeling so absolutely inadequate.
And in that prayer, after I had spoken
all that I know to speak in my
own language to God, I moved into the
realm of spirit and spoke mysteries unto God,
and my spirit was being edified and built
up.
When I came back to that table and
opened my mouth, in five minutes, that philosophy
professor excused himself and left the building.
And I went on until two o'clock
in the morning, with Jewish students in such
demonstration of the power of God that you
would think I would be boasting if I
told you.
I walked into one meeting, exhausted, having already
had three or four, and in the five
minutes from leading from one building to the
other, under my breath, I'm praying in tongues,
in the spirit.
And when I get to the next room,
I open my mouth, and instead of fatigue
and exhaustion, something comes forth in power.
And in that meeting, some Vietnam vet came
staggering in, half-crocked on drugs, and fell
to the floor, and sat through the entire
rest of the presentation, and when I finished,
I opened for questions and answers, and there
was the usual angry, hostile response.
And this unbelieving, crocked-out Vietnam vet, who
is now the head of the entire French
work of Youth with a Mission, and has
opened the doors for me in Lausanne to
speak for five days on apostolic foundations, for
which reason, by that transcript, we have this
book.
When he heard the angry reprisals, he stood
up, shaking, and he said to these men,
what are you guys doing?
Don't you see?
Don't you understand?
God is here and got saved, and has
risen now to such a place of prominence
as to open many doors for me in
the world.
Oh, dear saints, I'm not touting Pentecostalism.
I'm one of the severest critics of the
charismatic movement that could be found.
But I know the legitimacy and the preciousness
of this baptism in the Spirit, of passing
through the cloud as passing through the sea,
or we cannot possess the land.
Your crossing over, your going down into death,
includes a death of your fear and your
trepidation and your timidity and your fundamental and
evangelical notions by which you have kept this
requirement at distance.
The very going down into the Jordan, the
very following of these priests will deal with
that and bring it to the death that
it deserves.
And when you come up on the other
side, you'll come up in the fullness of
his life and power.
So have you crossed over?
Supposing that the word came tonight, supposing that
you're the Israel of God, and you've been
in the wilderness long enough, supposing that God
is now speaking and saying it's time now,
not three days, but 30 minutes or whatever
this time is, to consider what God is
requiring, would you be as obedient as the
Israel that has preceded you?
Will you get up?
Will you move?
Will you follow the ark when you see
it lifted by the priests?
It's time to cross over, in my opinion,
and to follow the ark of the Lord
and come in and on and into the
resurrection site.
The Lord has dried up and parted the
waters by the ark of the Lord having
gone in before you, and it's time now
to follow after.
The Canaanite kings will tremble when they know
that you have passed over, that you're on
the other side and you're in another place
and represent something to them that is fearful
and foreboding, for they know that their end
is imminent.
They've had too long a sway already and
were not at all threatened or challenged so
long as the church was on the wilderness
side doing its religious thing.
But once a people cross over, they know
it's the beginning of the end.
God has opened the waters for this people.
So if you want to remain on the
wrong side, you can, but you'll be intimidated
all your life.
Instead of intimidating them, you'll be intimidated as
you largely too often now are.
Fearful powers of darkness.
It's unfamiliar.
You don't have a confidence.
You want to just play it safe.
There's a confrontation coming that needs to be
faced, but it needs to be faced in
the power of God, which is the life
of God, the resurrection life, that will only
be imputed and conferred and given to those
who come into the baptism of the sea
and of the cloud.
We've been too long on the wrong side.
The Lord is lifting the ark.
It's time to cross over and become the
army of God and take the land.
It's time to take the kingdom, to assert
the accomplished triumph of God over an already
defeated and disarmed foe, to establish Zion for
the coming of the king and of his
kingdom through the power of his life obtained
in union with him on the dry ground
of the Jordan.
Well, I have a little note here for
myself to turn to page 368 of this
remarkable book that has come into my hands
by Albert Schweitzer, 386, a German theologian that
I have avoided because his reputation somehow discouraged
my reading him, but when I read the
man himself, I can't say enough in gratitude
for the remarkable perception of the faith that
this man had and of Paul at the
turn of the century.
His whole understanding is that the Holy Spirit
is not some kind of enablement to improve
our meetings or to refresh our denominations.
The Holy Spirit is the modus vivendi.
It's the operating enablement of the resurrection life,
and the resurrection life is already the statement
of the kingdom of God.
We're already in the kingdom.
We're already evidencing the kingdom.
We're already living in kingdom enablement to exhibit
the heavenly quality and character of the kingdom
by the life of the king that is
now ours in union with him through...
I didn't understand that you were being invited
to join him in death and burial, that
you might be raised with him unto newness
of life.
You need either to go into those waters
or to appropriate what those waters meant that
you did not understand and now have the
faith both to desire and to obtain.
The experience of which Paul sets before us,
the gateway to the eternal is the dying
and rising again with Christ.
If the elect who belong to the kingdom
of God are already in the resurrection mode
of existence, their redemption is an anticipation and
a participation in the kingdom while still in
their natural life.
Through union with Christ, a hidden daily dying
and rising again by which they become new
men raised above the world and above their
own natural and human limitation.
Is that descriptive of you?
You can almost say that the issue of
the success of the word of God tonight
is the question of whether it's true of
me.
If this is only a man speaking out
of his own humanity, well, it could be
an interesting novelty but not a requirement.
But if it's a man speaking out of
that union and out of that life, if
it's the word given of the Lord and
empowered of the Lord to convict and to
penetrate and to require a response, then we're
not hearing a sermon.
We're at the threshold of an event.
If the preaching of such a requirement compels
and must be performed on the basis of
resurrection, what will the obedience require?
So this union with Christ becomes actual, a
manifestation of the spirit of the being in
the kingdom of God because flesh and blood
cannot inherit that kingdom.
Flesh and blood cannot take that kingdom.
Flesh and blood may have some play and
sway in the wilderness religious side, but on
the other side in the taking of the
land and the establishing of the Lord Zion,
it has no place.
Flesh and blood cannot.
Only the life of God.
So our belief in the kingdom of God
must return to what the early church understood
in the sense that we expect its realization
not from deliberate organized measures but from a
growing power of the spirit of God.
What?
This was written in 1906, 1910?
Sounds like it's written today.
It's contemporary.
Organization cannot succeed.
Human measures cannot succeed, but only the growing
power of the spirit of God, the spirit
of the kingdom of which we become partakers
in the dying and rising again with Christ
in the true way of working for the
kingdom of God without which all other ways
are vain.
Well, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say
that this message tonight is itself a lifting
of the ark.
It's itself a requirement and a call to
consider and rise up and follow after and
come down and in and through and onto
the other side.
I'm finished, but I'm asking.
I'm going to give an invitation.
You think I'm going to let this last
message pass without giving you an opportunity to
follow the ark that has been lifted before
you tonight?
You who know you're on the wrong side
and have been there too long, comfortable and
convenient and not requiring, now are hearing an
ominous note of a very serious call that
requires your death, requires your going down and
into a Jordan of death, that you might
come up on the other side as the
army of God enabled through that union with
the ark of God who is in the
midst of that Jordan to take the land.
Are you willing?
You're not going to work this through in
your mind, and you're not going to resolve
your difficulties, your hang-ups and the problematical
things that have kept you at a distance.
Those things will be resolved in death, burial,
and union themselves.
It's being baptized into Christ that confers not
only the power of his life, but the
meaning of baptism itself.
And here we think that we can induct,
by long explanation, candidates for baptism when the
reality of what is to be understood is
part and parcel of the going down into
death itself.
So I want to give you an invitation
to follow the ark.
It's time to cross over.
It's time to make a symbolic, physical step.
And I don't take invitations lightly, nor do
I give them lightly.
But I think I have a confidence to
say that if God has given me the
burden for this word and is in it
and is waiting your response, that anyone who
will get up and come down and into
this Jordan will not return to their seat
the same.
Something will be transacted that waits for your
action to follow what has been lifted and
to come after.
It will not wait on further explanation.
It waits for a people who have had
a gutful of being too long on the
wrong side and who sense that there's an
hour whose time has now come that is
moving us from religion to participation in the
kingdom of God and its very taking.
So I invite you, whatever your fear, whatever
long-standing reluctance to come up and out
and into the Jordan of the Lord.
He's waiting.
The ark of God is here.
He's gone before you.
He's taken the sting out of this death.
But he requires you to enter it.
It's the end of your religious intention, your
religious ambition, your hopes for success as you
would have defined it or your denomination defines
it.
It's for the Israel of God who are
jealous for his glory and know that unless
we cross over there's no taking of anything.
And if we remain on the wrong side
after such an invitation, we face the increased
intimidation of the powers of darkness who know
that you were invited and refused to cross
and will say, we know who you are.
Jesus we know and Paul we know but
who are you?
You moral and spiritual coward whose comfort and
convenience is preferable to the risk of following
the ark.
Come on saints.
God has selected Dunville.
This is a piece of Canada.
This is Canada.
And something has got to break.
Something has got to give.
You'll not be the same.
You'll have another heart, another attitude, another disposition
of spirit.
You'll see things differently.
You'll understand differently.
Your whole framework of life, though nothing physical,
will change.
Your business remains, but it remains differently.
It's not a first priority.
It's only enablement, a secondary thing for the
true purpose of being in the army of
God.
I'm going to pray for these people and
bless them and seal them in their consecration.
This is real saints.
This is not some hokey, last kind of
thing to gratify a speaker.
This is divine transaction.
If I know anything in 36 years with
God and a generation of his service, I
know that this is a fateful, ominous night
for Dunville, Canada and perhaps for Canada itself.
So Lord, precious God on high, to the
degree, my God, that this has been your
word and your call, that you have used
this historic text to show us that we
are in approximately the same place as Israel
long before us and that it's time now
to cross over.
I ask you to receive these children in
and through who have followed the arc of
this word born by this priest and bring
them up on the other side, Lord.
Precious God on high, bring to death of
that death that only a Jordan can perform,
of those things we can't even identify that
intimidate us, that make us fearful, that make
us timid, that keep us from being the
people of God and the army of God.
Bring it to death.
Ambition, fear, we don't have to identify it.
We have only to be obedient and come
and you will perform that work.
You have already performed it.
It's a dry ground if we'll but enter.
So Lord, in Jesus' name, seal every soul
that has come before you tonight and raise
up from among them priests who go before
the people who are willing to be the
first ones in to catch the static, the
reproach, have to face the fearful thing of
a Jordan at flood stage because if they
will not go before us, there's no following.
May we see the arc of God being
lifted by the ministers of this community more
than we have had opportunity to recognize till
now because they have played it safe, have
performed what is expected admirably, but we have
not seen in them and with them the
arc of God being lifted.
They should be the first one down at
this altar tonight before anyone else is invited,
the priest first to enter.
So my God, let tonight be historic, an
event, something transacted.
Bless these children.
Prepare them for circumcision.
Cut away the flesh, my God, that has
been so long a hindrance and give them
with that cutting, my God, in the work
of your cross, a sensitivity to the most
high, to those things that lie too deep
for words.
I bless these children, Lord.
Take them in.
Seal them.
You know them by name and let them
be fitted into the army of God, each
one in his place.
Fill them with your spirit.
Let them be fools for Christ's sake and
be willing to give up the control of
their own tongue and speak foolish things that
make them an object of reproach and uncertainty
because they have died to constraint.
They have died to how they appear to
others.
They want only to be your fool.
Come, my God, and liberally endow them with
the spirit of the living God.
Overflow their banks in everything that is arid,
parched, and dry, inundated, my God, with the
Jordan of your spirit.
Let those waters come back and flow over
those that have passed through that they might
be the men and women of the spirit,
the children of the resurrection.
I bless them.
Seal them.
Thank you, Lord.
Holy One on High, we bless your great
name.
Thank you, my God, for the hour that
has come beyond messages.
Thank you for the event that has come
to Dunville, Canada that will be consequential for
all the earth.
Thank you, Lord.
You who have come forward, give the Lord
praise.
Give him thanks.
Express gratitude.
This is liberation.
Hallelujah, to come out of the muck of
wilderness living, knocking about in those things that
are pointless and profitless to be called into
the significance of the Kingdom of God and
the taking of the land.
Give him thanks for the privilege.
Thank you, my God, for the enablement.
Thank you, Lord.
Oh, bless these children, my God.
Break every fetter.
Loose the restraint, my God.
Let your spirit and your life flow through
these vessels, Lord, we pray.
Thank you, my God.
We have been in bondage too long over
this stupid dispute of a denominational kind over
the issue of the Holy Spirit.
He is too precious.
His enablement is too significant to be dismissed
as a denominational distinctive.
It's the provision of God for the army
of God.
And I ask you, my God, to bestow
these children, to fill them, my God, with
that spirit and that glory even now.
Glory to God.
Open their mouths, Lord.
Loose them.
Thank you, my God.
From fear, from intimidation, from timidity, from unnecessary
restraint, from religious intimidation, let there be the
unabashed and wholly given over sons and daughters
of God.
Oh, I bless these children.
This precious young man.
These ministers.
Oh, my God.
The day will begin.
Just as the last message was unfolded, but
the beginning, the day will begin.
For as many who have seen and heard
the offering whistled and have followed after you.
Thank you, my God.
Oh, I bless them, Lord.
Bless them, my God.
Seal their hearts and give them the joy
of heaven.
A first-proof covenant who have heard your
word and have received it as being your
word and have responded obey and cross.
Seal them.
Let Dumbledore be not tempted by their presence.
Let their pastors have to run to keep
up with them as they live at the
heels of those who are supposed to be
priests but have kept their seats.
Holy God, seal them.
Seal this, my God.
Oh, Lord.
Holy, holy unto the Lord this night, this
transaction, this call, this cross.
Hallelujah.
We give you the praise, my God.
And we await our first Passover as the
circumcised of the Lord.
Oh, we will come to your table with
a new velvet shirt.
There will be no more of that stale,
studdied moment of holding the plastic cup and
the little waker waiting for the signal.
There will be a coming with the light
that can't escape.
We'll eat from the table of the Lord.
And we'll eat from the lamb where the
manna is no more.
As you've given us the faith for a
new year, a new appropriation, a new heritage.
I bless you, sir.
Seal them.
Seal this night.
Thank you, God.
Amen.
Thank you, my God.
Oh, break in and break through.
Restain conventional, tidy, gun-filled heaven.
Shake, my God, what needs to be shaken.
Bring the reality of the divine perspective to
bear on the unsuspecting.
Thank you, my God.
Enable us to see as you see that
we might act for you.
Oh, my God, may we not come before
you ashamed in the day of your appearance.
And we are told and assured somehow that
we bless you for a privileged call to
seal every soul who has responded.
Thank you, Jesus.
Amen.
...that when fought by your spirit in any
way come back to you void, but accomplish
every purpose whereunto it was sent.
Bless these children who have come forward with
a fresh revelation of the Lord as the
captain of the host with his sword drawn.
May we see you in a new way,
Lord, we who have made you a patsy
and a convenience for our life.
May we see you in the awesome majesty
of your lordship, sword drawn, for the time
has come to take the land.
And may you give us your direction from
that place and know that we are on
holy ground.
So we thank you, Lord.
Seal this.
Put it in the archives of heaven.
We thank and give you praise for the
conclusion that you have given in these days
as holy ghost event.
Bless the fearful, bless the timid, bless those
who could not bring themselves to come up
and out and across.
My God, give them another opportunity.
May they not be like the half-tribes
of Manasseh and forgot the other who did
not cross over Ephraim and ended up becoming
herders and in the time of Jesus involved
with pigs.
My God, may there not be a melancholy
fate for those who refused to cross.
Even tonight, my God, at their bedside, however
reluctant they may have been here, let them
not close out this day with saying, Lord,
forgive me for my reticence.
And now I want to be included with
those who came.
I want to be in with the people
of God.
Receive me.
Whatever that means, whatever the implications, I'll rest
in that.
I'll trust you.
Oh, bless these children, Lord.
And we thank and give you praise for
your great love and leadership in Jesus' name.
Amen.
God bless you.
You are dismissed.
See the books while they're yet available tonight.
Anyone who wants personal prayer, I'm willing and
available.
And there's Mike and other of the ministers
that are here.
Anything in particular?