...from Cebu City, and when you get up
to the waterfront again, the floating filth, the
corruption, the pollution, the thick, stagnant water that
is a mixture of so many impure elements,
suggested to me that that is almost a
spiritual picture of what has been coming in
to the Philippines through Spain, through Catholicism, through
America, through the Orient, through China, dark spirits,
occultic things.
All of the filth has somehow been poured
in to this nation, and the waters are
very stagnant and corrupt with these elements, and
God wants to break forth a pure stream,
not only to bless the nation, but to
flow out from the nation, free from corruption
and defilement of any kind.
That's why Jim had that burden this morning,
and I have this thought also to share
with you.
I was up early this morning, and reading
about Elijah and Elisha, I may be speaking
to you about one or both of these
great prophets, because Elijah is the quintessential prophet.
That's a fancy word.
It means that he typifies and sums up
in himself what are the constituent elements of
the prophetic calling in any generation.
He was a historical personality, but there's something
about the nature of himself as a wilderness
prophet confronting the powers of government and society
and religion and apostasy that is a picture
for us in the last days.
In fact, Jesus himself said to his disciples
that he would not come again until Elijah
first comes and restores all things.
So there's something about the character of the
Elijah prophetic ministry that should occupy all of
us, because as I've said now, though we
may not all have personally a calling to
be prophets, we are called corporately to constitute
a prophetic presence within the nation as the
church.
The church that is not prophetic is not
the church.
God intends that there be a presence in
every nation by which the things that are
characteristic of the prophet, his way of seeing,
his perception of reality, his boldness and his
lack of fear and intimidation to speak directly
to those that are opposing God, even in
the places of government and religion, is something
that I think will characterize the church of
the last days.
And a man who lives by faith, by
the word of God, free from any dependency
on systems, he's the man of the wilderness,
and God can direct him by his word
through the spirit, and he's a man who's
obedient.
And so he did according to the word
of the Lord.
I remember some years ago, I said, if
ever you have occasion to bury me, just
make that one statement on my tombstone.
And so he went and did according to
the word of the Lord.
Lord, I don't want to go any further
without praying, because I know that the church
is built on the foundation of the apostles
and the prophets.
And if we have an erroneous view of
what is prophetic, if we have a romantic
view or an imaginary view, or we are
impressed with men who seem to be those
things and are not, then we threaten the
very foundation of the church itself.
And somehow there's a remarkable verse that the
spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus.
That there's a conjunction between what is prophetic
and the very nature of the Lord himself.
And that somehow to reject the prophet, and
to reject the prophetic word, is to constitute
a rejection of you yourself.
So Lord, I'm asking not only to speak
about things prophetic, but to display and to
demonstrate the genius of what the prophetic thing
is, that comes spontaneously, that is given in
the moment by God to men who are
utterly cast upon him and dependent for every
word.
Come and demonstrate by God as well as
explain and raise up by the hearing of
that word a prophetic people who will stand
for you in these last days, and individual
men who indeed may have that calling and
may not have recognized it until now.
So we bless you Lord and we ask,
we're not ashamed to ask, that our time
together this morning and in these days would
be nothing less than historic.
That the hour has come and the time
is short when something has got to come
in to the church that bears your name
in this land.
Your remnant people come Lord and so utilize
this time to lay those foundations that will
be immovable and will be down to your
everlasting glory.
We thank you and give you the praise
in Jesus name and God's people said, Amen.
One of the words that we need to
rescue as a prophetic people is the word
glory itself.
A prophetic person and a prophetic church is
concerned with language and the meaning of words.
It will not allow words to be cheapened
and for truth to lie in the streets.
It will struggle for the integrity of God's
meaning as I shared a little bit last
night.
So we're suffering an attack, an onslaught on
truth itself and what is a prophet if
he's not jealous for the truth and I
mean insanely jealous for the truth.
We came from to Philippines from Japan and
on our first morning we, Jim and I
went out for a walk.
Beautiful day.
I've been in that country before.
I had spoken to ministers in that country
and I said, if you think that the
atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was simply
a military expedient, you don't understand at all
that it was a judgment from God of
a preliminary kind from a nation that has
kept God at a distance and celebrates religions
that are self-serving for the state and
for the ruling classes called Shintoism and that
these burnings are a preliminary judgment of what
will be an eternal burning of a fire
that will not be quenched if you'll not
repent.
And a man leaped up out of his
seat and he cried out.
The minister, he said, God, he said, make
me a prophet for my nation.
What is he saying?
Give me the ability to interpret events in
my nation in its history and in its
past and things that are future in the
light of scripture so as to warn a
people.
So we took a walk on this trip
that first morning and some people were out.
It was a Japanese holiday, the New Year's.
No work, they were out.
And a man was flying a kite with
his children.
And when I saw that man, my mouth
watered.
Do you ever get that?
When the juice begins to run in your
mouth?
You don't get that?
Like, for example, when you hear the word
glory, doesn't something begin to run in your
mouth?
Truth.
I often say that if the juice is
not running, you don't yet have the truth
of it.
We're too dry-eyed and we're too dry.
We're too clinical.
We're too mechanical.
So let it dribble down your chin a
little bit.
When I saw this man, I could taste,
I so yearned for his salvation, I could
taste it.
There was something about his face that I
said, Lord, he must be with you eternally.
He must be in your kingdom.
But unfortunately, how can I communicate to him?
I don't speak Japanese.
And so I just walked by like that,
feeling so sorrowful, when the man all of
a sudden says, Do you know anything about
flying kites?
In English.
I said, Wow!
So we got into a conversation.
And I said to him, You know, I
would love to see the inside of a
Japanese home.
I want to see your life and how
you live.
We have no ulterior motives.
So I told him that we're Christians and
ministers and so on, and that he was
a Buddhist.
I said, We'll not try to convert you.
I'll only answer whatever questions you might ask.
And then he said, Well, what do you
do?
I said, Well, I travel and I've written
some books.
I said, The title of my last book
is called The Spirit of Truth.
And he looked at me, he said, What
is that about?
I said, Well, it's an examination of what
truth itself is.
And how foundational it is to our human
existence.
And I said, It's more than just measuring
something empirically.
Forgive me if I get a little fancy.
You know the way the Japanese mind works?
Truth is to measure something from this point
to that point.
Truth is something that works electronically according to
certain principles.
The Japanese have no capacity for abstract speculation
for philosophical or metaphysical or spiritual contemplation as,
for example, what is truth?
It's not something that a Japanese would think.
And so I turned to him and I
said, Do you love truth?
And all of a sudden the man went
blank.
He just shook, his eyes blinked.
He could not comprehend my question.
Do you love truth?
That's a great question for us.
Do we love truth?
Because there's a reason why you have to
love it.
Merely to admire it or to respect it
is not enough.
That will still make you a candidate for
deception.
God abandons to a lie those who forsake
the love of the truth.
Why is that?
Why is the love of the truth so
essential?
Because it is inconvenient.
Because it is difficult.
Because it is painful.
Because it is embarrassing.
Like this girl that had to cry out
in that meeting in Cairo, Egypt.
I haven't heard a word you said because
you're Jewish.
Well, okay.
But it's true.
That was her place.
That was her condition.
And it's only on the ground of truth
that the grace of God will meet us.
Never when we're phonies.
Never when we're putting on a spiritual affectation
or a show.
But when God sees truth, his grace is
there because he came full of grace and
truth.
And truth requires grace.
So I would ask you, do you love
truth?
If you're going to be a prophetic presence
in your nation, you have got to love
truth.
For your nation to allow a criminal to
make a movie within his penitentiary to celebrate
himself in some kind of romantic and dramatic
way and allow that film to be exhibited
in theaters as a profit-making motive is
a lie.
A lie that was perpetrated because money was
involved.
Profit.
Something happens to our ability to discern the
issues of truth when we allow ourselves to
remain silent when an issue of truth comes
up and we allow it to go unattended.
Now Jim and I can pack our bags
and fly home.
I just gave you something so precious it's
worth the whole trip.
But did you hear it?
Truth is a moment-by-moment consideration.
And God is looking for a church whose
ground and pillar is the truth.
The foundations of the church through and through.
Not only what we believe.
Not only what we say.
But what we are.
How we look.
Our faces.
Our eyes.
Our voice.
There's nothing about us that is affected, that
is phony, that is a put-on or
a show.
We are what we are by the grace
of God.
And we're moving from faith to faith and
from glory to glory.
And truth is such an urgent question because
the whole world lies in the father of
lies, in false advertising, in promotions, in every
kind of...
It's everywhere about us in the very air
that we breathe that to be vigilant for
the truth takes a moment-by-moment watch
care and jealousy because you love the truth.
And it's so demanding that I don't think
that any one of us can do it
by ourselves.
I have been saved from deception as a
mature believer many years in the Lord not
by some appeal to ambition or something like
that but what I thought was actually something
spiritual, something that has to do with my
own Jewish people and I was saved from
my deception in the community of which I
was part by something that was spoken to
me not by one of the mature members
or leaders but by one of the youngest
and weakest in the body.
He said one line to me and the
moment that I heard it my head fell
on my chest and I was convicted and
I was aware in that moment that I
had been deceived.
God saved me from deception not of a
carnal kind but of a spiritual kind through
the operation of His Spirit through one of
the youngest and weakest members in the body.
Hmm?
The whole example?
You want me to spell this out?
Oh, okay.
Well, just to be very truthful my wife
and I were having marital problems.
That's what happens when you're a Jew and
you marry a Gentile who is the complete
opposite of all that you are.
There's a lot of friction but there's a
mystery also in the God making the two
one new man.
Taking the Gentile and the Jew who have
been at historic enmity with each other throughout
history and making of them one new man.
You'll meet my wife one day and you'll
see the grace of God.
This is a woman to this day who
does not understand a single message that I
speak.
I just confuse and bewilder her.
She doesn't know why any Christian would be
interested in what I have to say and
can't you be funny like other speakers?
Well, we were having friction and it had
gone on for some time and some brother
suggested that we should leave the community because
of the intensity of the community life and
go aside with our family and have a
chance to be restored in marriage and family
relationships.
And God seemed to attest to that and
so we moved to Kansas City some 600
miles south of Minnesota and we stayed there
for a number of months.
I was not to enter into ministry that
was not the object.
I was to give myself fully to the
restoration of marriage and family life.
So what happens?
Six o'clock one morning there's a man
at my door, a Jewish doctor and he
had gotten saved and he doesn't want to
expose himself publicly by going to a church
but he needs instruction and he's heard about
me and would I be so kind to
spend some time with him in the scriptures?
Well, how can you say no to that?
And the next week it was a lawyer
and the next week and before I knew
it in a matter of weeks I had
a little Bible study going for Jewish converts
and it began to increase but just as
it was becoming important I got the message
from the community it's time to come home.
I said, oh listen to those guys.
How immature can you be?
And don't they understand what God is doing
in Kansas City which is called the heart
of America in a ministry that I was
not looking for that has simply happened by
the grace of God and they want now
to interrupt that and I should go back
up to northern Minnesota and play in the
woods with them?
Just so they have the security of having
their founder present with them?
Well, I'll go and straighten them out.
So I took two mature Jewish brothers with
me in the faith and we flew up
to Minnesota and we had a community meeting
and I rehearsed with them how it is
that we went to Kansas City and how
without seeking it these Jewish believers were coming
to me and God was doing something authentic
and spontaneous and significant and now you want
me to come back to the woods and
just stay up here and forsake all that
this tremendous potential that God is doing?
See the spiritual temptation?
And we discussed it back and forth and
back and forth and there was no no
breakthrough there was no way we were just
at ends and finally at that last moment
the way the Lord usually waits here was
this Jewish brother young, immature, weak his voice
was cracked nothing to look at, nothing impressive
well Artie said you know what we believe
here that the ministry flows out of the
life and the life flows out of the
relations and if you are not in relationship
with us then where is the ministry?
and the moment that that word came it
was like a sword right into my heart
and my head fell to my chest and
I heard the Lord saying come back and
I came back so I say all that
to say this the church the true church
the organic body of Christ that can speak
face to face one to another is God's
life saving provision to keep us from deception
in the last days and the subtlety of
deception and the subtlety of lies if we
can hear his still small voice not through
only the most mature brothers but even the
weakest saves us from our own ambitions for
God but are you in that kind of
relationship?
because I'll tell you this 10,000 Sundays
will never produce it if your church experience
is nothing more than a succession of Sunday
services there is no way that you can
come into the grit of this organic thing
by which the spirit of truth works and
that is inconvenient and that's a suffering and
that's more than most of us want to
bear we like our privacy and it's enough
Sunday and midweek service but the church in
the beginning went from house to house daily
breaking bread and the spirit of truth was
so guarded that when someone came to make
a contribution to the church and to lay
the proceeds at the feet of the apostles
Peter immediately discerned that it was a half
truth that they were not giving the full
amount that they had gotten from their sale
but they were allowing the appearance to be
communicated that it was the full amount and
Peter said you have not only lied to
men you have lied to God you have
lied to the Holy Spirit of God and
you're going to be carried out feet first
what we would have done with someone making
as handsome a contribution as that is to
at least make them an elder in the
church or put them on the board of
deacons Peter immediately discerned by the spirit of
truth of something that was being made to
stand for the truth that was only partially
true and in my book I say every
child knows the truth is the whole truth
and nothing but the truth or it's a
lie and it wasn't long after that Peter
himself was being confronted by Paul because he
did one thing with the Jewish believers and
another thing with the non-Jewish believers and
Paul nailed him publicly before all for the
truth of the gospel's sake you know why
the condition of truth is so low in
the Philippines why men make political statements political
promises and contradict them as soon as they
get in power why almost anything goes in
any kind of deception because the church itself
is not the plumb line of God a
standard by which the world can measure itself
and align itself the church is the ground
and pillar of truth and if it is
careless about truth what can we expect from
the world around it so at the heart
of the prophetic call is a jealousy for
truth and you don't love truth any more
than you love God and you don't love
God any more than you love truth for
God is the way the life and the
truth and the truth is the whole truth
and nothing but the truth or it's not
true not only what our thought is and
what our speech is but what we are
through and through the true thing and
that's so difficult in a world that is
steeped in lies that it requires the encouragement
the prayer the exhortations and the rebukes that
comes in the church from its ministers and
from the body we need to be corrected
because we all have a blind side that
cannot see certain things for itself and we'll
only see it because someone loves us enough
and loves the truth enough to speak it
to us and that we love the truth
and love the sacrifice of the saint who's
doing it with his heart and his mouth
to receive it with grace and to be
blessed by it and thankful for it and
that's the kind of church that must be
in every nation no matter what the culture
of that nation is it's timeless it's eternal
the church of Jesus Christ the eternal masterpiece
of God unto him be glory in the
church so I was looking this morning at
a little episode out of the life of
Elisha who is the successor to Elijah and
who inherited Elijah's mantle in chapter 2 of
2 Kings and I'm really asking for your
participation in this I don't have a clear
understanding but maybe as we discuss it and
interact over this the Lord will give us
an insight and a breakthrough in verse 19
of chapter 2 of 2 Kings the men
of the city said to Elisha now the
men of the city are not necessarily believers
they are secular men coming to the prophet
as I believe in the last days the
world will be coming to the church who
alone will have wisdom and understanding and they
said behold now the situation of the city
is pleasant as my Lord can see but
the water is bad and the land is
unfruitful stagnant full of all kinds of corruptions
and vile things and thick, turbid, mixed with
all of the corruptive elements that have been
swirling for generations that have come out of
America out of Spain out of Catholicism out
of the Orient out even of the indigenous
people that lived here before any one came
from outside of the Philippines don't think that
if you are descendant from Malaysians that you
are somehow of a purer kind than those
who came from abroad every people have contributed
their own particular corruption and it seems to
have become compacted and infested and just swirls
in the stink of it is in many
places the land is beautiful there is a
wonderful potential but the water is bad and
the land is unfruitful water is life and
he said bring me a new jar and
put salt in it so they brought it
to him and he went out to the
springs of water and threw salt in it
and said thus says the Lord I have
purified these waters there shall not be from
their death or unfruitfulness any longer so the
waters have been purified to this day according
to the word of Elisha which he spoke
so what interpretation do we give this historical
episode what possible application for ourself what is
the significance or the symbolism what is the
meaning of that what is the salt and
why did it require a new jar I'm
giving you a little taste of our prophetical
school we don't establish the school because we
have answers we establish the school because we
have questions yeah so
a good question a real question a searching
question is infinitely better than a shallow and
mechanical truth we need to learn to ask
real questions to examine something because that's what
truth requires so what do you think this
is a four verse little episode from the
life of a significant prophet of Israel and
the men who came to him were not
believers but men from the city who recognized
that their economy and their life was paralyzed
that they were condemned to a certain unfruitfulness
and barrenness because though the land itself was
pleasant and had the potential to be fruitful
it lacked clear clean pure water their water
was corrupt and mingled and so Elijah said
bring me a new jar and put salt
in it and out of that jar and
that salt sprinkled into the corrupt waters the
streams were made fresh to this day and
the land was prospered who can interpret that
what would you think that the jar represents
why couldn't any receptacle be adequate that could
hold salt but somehow the spirit of God
required in Elisha a new jar and he
thought the fact that the Lord has turned
my attention to that early this morning must
have something to do with his purposes with
us in these days and I will continue
to brood over this and maybe I'll hear
an answer out of my own mouth when
I least expect it as the Lord is
pleased to give light on that but just
as a thought now I'm wondering if the
Lord is talking about the structure of the
church itself that you can't put new wine
into old wineskins that God is looking for
another container of salt which is a preservative
what kind of properties does salt have it
preserves it brings out flavor it purifies it's
a remarkable commodity and maybe it's the word
of God the truth of God that needs
to go into the nation but God is
looking for a receptacle and that he requires
that which is new and maybe the old
forms will not lend themselves to truth maybe
that's why you have to have a new
jar I don't know but I'm just asking
you to take that into your consideration and
ponder that and think on that and ask
the Lord what does that mean what's the
application for us because if we can find
it or be it and cast that salt
into the polluted waters this can be a
very fruitful land in fact I have this
suspicion that the purified waters will not only
make this land to prosper and to flourish
but will go out from this land into
nations it's interesting where we ourselves are located
in northern Minnesota I don't know what you
know about American geography I'm a New Yorker
by birth I'm completely out of my element
where God has brought us for 21 years
but he brought us there supernaturally by his
word just as he spoke to Elijah go
by the brook Sheriff and I have commanded
the ravens to feed thee there and so
he arose and he went to the place
where the Lord had commanded him and in
the morning and the evening the ravens brought
him meat and bread and he drank from
the stream in the same way the Lord
spoke to me I was living near New
York City about 20 miles away from two
and a half million Jews and God brought
me all the way up to where we
presently are where there are no Jews at
all but a native American Indian tribe the
Chippewa Nation the native indigenous people and when
I got up there I opened a map
to see exactly where we are and we
are 20 miles away from the origin of
the Mississippi River I usually take the students
that come up to our prophetical school on
an outing and we go to this park
where you can actually lift your pants up
and take your shoes off and go in
in your bare feet into the very water
that is coming up out of the ground
that is the origin of the Mississippi River
and goes right through the heart of the
nation and goes out into the Gulf of
Mexico and into the nations and as I
opened the map the Lord dropped a plumb
line right from that point and gave the
impression that pure waters of life would spring
up in the place where we were in
the relationships in the authentic daily relationship of
a community of people living in a hard
place together that the issues of truth and
reality would be worked out in that daily
life and that water would come up and
go through the heart of the nation and
out to the nation to the nations and
that in fact is what we have been
seeing in recent years and I suspect that
there is something like that for you if
the waters of life can be made pure
by the salt of the word of the
kind that we heard this morning an exhortation
to purity of heart and holiness to confession
of sin to acknowledgement to breaking the power
of it to walking in the way to
being truthful and that's why my first question
to you before I went any further was
is there anybody having a problem with the
fact that I'm white and come from America
does that reinforce your stereotype of the ministers
who come from that country who think that
they are going to tell you what it's
all about and how to do it and
that you have a problem seeing me and
Jim by the spirit and that we need
to talk about that before we go any
further you see what I was after I
was after truth and it may have been
embarrassing for someone to say yes I have
this problem with you I see you like
some American hot shot who thinks he knows
it all and you're going to tell the
church in the Philippines how to do it
I'm tired of your type well that would
have been embarrassing but I told you that
truth is inconvenience but in the end it's
glorious now if
the church is going to be a prophetic
presence in the nation it's very important even
to consider the word glory unto him be
glory in the church world without end throughout
all ages by Christ Jesus is the conclusion
of chapter 3 of the epistle to the
Ephesians by Paul unto him be glory in
the church not success and
unless this is our conscious motive and deepest
jealousy and purpose for being we will not
have that kind of church we will simply
have something by which we can have a
succession of services and programs that are calculated
for the benefit of men but we will
not have glory so if I don't say
anything else in the Philippines I want to
make this one statement the church is not
the church cannot be a prophetic presence, cannot
be an apostolic reality until it consciously has
chosen as its first purpose for being that
unto him be glory in the church not
unto us it's not for our benefit it
is for his glory and only when it
is for his glory is it to our
benefit so long as the church is predicated
on man and the benefits that they receive
by attending there's no possibility that Paul's cry
can be fulfilled I forgot where it was
whether it was Japan or Manila someone said
do you pray for the sick do you
minister to the people afterwards there are great
needs I said not as a rule I
can pray for healing and often God will
honor that but no more than any other
believer but I'm wondering if we will always
continue to be sick and always have need
of healing until we put God's glory first
so long as it's man and his need
we will always be sick in one form
or another that is our sickness and that
is the sickness of the modern church man
is at its center and not God and
his glory and if I know anything about
the Lord and his way and his word
the glory is always preceded first by a
suffering it's the suffering that precedes the glory
and the church that has no stomach for
suffering will not see the glory and true
church is a suffering before it's a glory
if your church experience is pleasant and enjoyable
it's not likely going to be a prospect
for God's glory listen I have been kicked
at, I have been spit upon I have
been insulted I have been threatened by my
own Jewish people in speaking the gospel message
to unbelieving Jews but that's nothing next to
the suffering that I have experienced for thirty
years in the church there's a quality of
suffering in the church that should not surprise
us we should not be naive and it's
not because there's anyone who is mean or
malicious or wants to go out of his
way to cause that suffering suffering in the
church is the inevitable and natural outworking of
God's sanctifying work with his people to bring
them from where they presently are to where
they need to be to bring them from
the things that are earthly to the things
that are heavenly to bring them from the
things that are soulish to the things that
are spiritual it's painful before it's glorious and
there's no reason why anyone should be willing
to bear that kind of painful reality in
the church except that they are jealous for
the glory of God most of us don't
stay long enough together or are not intensively
enough together to pass through the suffering unto
the glory just when the suffering begins in
some issue some tension is when we leave
and find another place where the services are
happier, the preaching is groovier and the music
is better, etc, etc we're a bunch of
butterflies floating around but we're not planted organically
in relationship in the locality where God has
called us and are willing to suffer the
humiliation the indignity the passing through the veil
of disillusionment not only with each other but
with yourself in a way that you would
not see it unless you were authentically in
relationship with God's people long enough and intensively
enough and you'll not run away because we
are in covenant relationship with each other and
where shall we go I hadn't planned to
say anything like this this morning it's interesting
that both Elijah and Elisha were related to
what the school of the prophets the original
word there is not school, it wasn't sitting
behind a desk it was a collegium from
which we get the modern word a community
of like minded people of the same kind
of heart and spirit and intention that are
called to be God's people together and a
prophetic presence in the land so for myself
21 years ago when the call of God
came I was living in a 17 room
house in New Jersey 20 miles from New
York City I had a Volvo car used
and it was a nice lifestyle not lush
but adequate and my wife loved that gothic
house we had privacy we had a German
shepherd dog that we loved dearly that was
more aristocratic than me he had papers he
was a blue blood and I can only
guess at what my Jewish ancestry is and
what a handsome animal but once in a
while he would get a little out of
control and the mailman would come and just
as he turns he would grab him by
the seat of the pants or do some
other embarrassing things you know what I knew
I knew that I was entering the school
of humiliation I knew that things that could
have been kept private because I was a
minister and anointed you had a chance to
see that last night that when people who
looked up with great appreciation and esteem at
God's man of anointing would see me on
Monday in whatever mood Monday would bring and
then they would hear things that could not
be concealed like my wife slamming the door
in my face as I went to the
morning prayer meeting and shouting as loud as
anyone could hear go tell them what a
great saint you are how do you like
to come to a prayer meeting after having
that being said and you slip into your
chair and everyone has heard it community
or true church is the place of humiliation
it's the place of suffering before the place
of glory but our present institutional model which
resembles a theater looking up to a platform
does not lend itself to this kind of
reality the scripture says that by beholding in
each other's faces we are moved from glory
to glory we had a precious Japanese girl
we're not just talking about average Christians I'm
talking about the best of God's people would
sacrifice to come up where we are in
that severe cold weather and she was a
model of a charismatic saint who had everything
together she was quiet well ordered you never
see her ruffled until within a matter of
weeks unavoidably as the tensions build up something
cracks and breaks and the stuffing comes out
of the doll and the doll loses its
image and the truth of the condition becomes
revealed and this precious little Japanese girl threw
a shoe at my wife in her exasperation
and frustration can we love each other enough
to bear that and to bear the disillusionment
that must come because God is not in
the illusion business movies are in the illusion
business they want to create illusions of grandeur,
of strength, of power of sexual vitality of
all the kinds of things that people sit
in the dark theater and suck up and
want secretly to become and live the lie
of illusion God disillusions us, he strips us
of our illusions because the church is the
ground and pillar of truth if it's going
to be a glory unto him not only
in this age but in the ages to
come and only when we remember that God
is working and building not just for this
age but for eternity then we are willing
for the sacrifice and the suffering we're required
to bear from each other so you know
what I've learned there are few in the
modern church today who have any consideration at
all for the ages to come we're stuck
in this age now this is the sum
all and the substance of all that we
think about is this present life and this
present world we have not taken eternity into
our consideration it's something that we think will
happen after we die and that we need
not consider now you know what the great
lie in the world is the unwillingness to
consider the things that lie beyond this life
Jews have no consideration for what lies beyond
the grave they just want to make it
now and you know how they affect their
eternal future by being successful now becoming famous
now establishing a fortune now but they don't
think that there's anything beyond this life you
know why they don't think it because there's
not been a church in their midst that
has demonstrated and revealed the truth of eternity
because the church like the world is fixed
in time can you follow me and if
you don't take eternity into consideration you're not
living in the truth because eternity is even
a greater truth than this present age isn't
that true?
according to the word of God heaven and
earth will pass away but the word of
God abides forever there will be a new
heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness
this is only preparation this is only just
the stage for the last and final enactments
of God's controversy with the powers of darkness
this is just a place where the church
does its basic training the real issue is
eternally ruling and reigning with Christ from heavenly
places that changes everything when you see that
the two great motives that enable us to
rise above culture above time and above place
and all of the other powerful earthly worldly
things that want to bring us down is
the glory of God forever not only in
this age but in the ages to come
and I can show you text after text
in the scripture that completely confirms that this
was the view of the early apostolic church
that made it so distinguished and glorious a
church people lived as if what matter if
I'm stripped of my goods because I have
in heaven a more enduring and glorious reward
they took their stripping with joy knowing in
themselves that they had in heaven a more
enduring substance do you know it?
I tell you dear children this is so
liberating this is so liberating or else we
will be intimidated by the world the world
seems to have all the marbles it seems
to have all the things that are impressive
prestigious, wealth, power it's a puff it will
fade away but once you glimpse the things
that are eternal you are so freed for
the present the prophetic church is the church
that brings eternity into the present now the
prophetic church is the church that brings heaven
into the secular and earthly considerations now it's
a witness to the world of the ages
to come because Paul says we have tasted
of the Holy Spirit of the power of
the ages to come you'll never be more
relevant for this life now than you will
be when you take eternity into your deepest
heart and consideration because it happens to be
the truth