I'm sure that I'm the most conclusive evidence
of Colin's naivety to invite me to be
a speaker.
Surely he should have known better.
It shows he hasn't been around too much.
But, for the Lord has prevailed and used
our brother's innocence to bring a speaker who's
not always welcomed.
So, I receive this as coming from the
Lord and believe that he wants me to
say something.
And I've been brooding over it now for
several days and through the day.
I've very much appreciated our brother Bob yesterday
commending to us that we should all publish
our biographies.
And I have.
Thirty years ago, this was the journal of
my conversion.
The story of a Jewish atheist looking for
philosophical answers to his distraught life.
Taking a year's leave of absence from the
teaching profession with a pack on my back.
Not a hippie with long hair, but an
unkempt soul and kept keeping a journal of
my experience.
So, if you want to see how God
apprehends a radical and atheistic Jew, this is
the classic statement.
It's all the more remarkable because it's not
a book written in retrospect where someone looks
back.
This is the actual journal kept by an
atheist in the process of being apprehended by
God.
Including the revelation that came to me in
the first reading of a New Testament aboard
the deck of a Trance steamer on my
way from Italy to Greece.
You've got to know that Greece was more
significant for me at that time than Israel.
Because I was more a Greek than I
was a Hebrew.
I celebrated man.
And man has his center and the steam
in all that has issued out of Greek
civilization.
In fact, in my classroom in Oakland, California,
I had a big sign over the blackboard,
Go Greek.
So, the God who has been amused by
me and has waited brought me to be
the Hebrew of his intention in Jerusalem at
the end of that journey.
And I've been serving the Lord for these
last 37 years.
Saved because of the prayer of one of
my students and her mother who had never
laid eyes on my face.
So, I'm a privileged man and the Lord
has been pleased to issue a number of
books.
Some of you may not know this.
Others have been blessed by it.
Reality.
It's also a book that goes back for
a couple of decades.
People tell me they read it annually.
And it deserves to be read annually.
You'll find some episodes out of our community
life of northern Minnesota.
For example, having to slay a pig and
a lamb side by side was one of
the most instructive experiences in my life of
how it is that the lamb died silently
and how it is that the pig died
with such groans and creaks and howls and
shrieks as I did not know flesh was
capable.
I never gave an invitation after that as
I had given them before.
I was never persuaded that a believer is
really responding until I hear his flesh screech
and howl as much as I did the
pig that day.
So, there are numbers of God's people who
have never been that deeply converted and God's
yet waiting to hear their screech and howl.
It might come today.
But if it doesn't come, here's a little
booklet on the nature of true conversion spoken
in California where the congregation went down on
its face and I knew this is a
word that needs to be recorded because when
they rose they were not again the same.
All of these books, by the way, are
in several languages and I have not lifted
my little pinky to promote any.
It would be a great tragedy if I
have to schlep back in the suitcase the
same books that I brought at great strain,
knowing the potential to touch lives and to
bring a dimension that is not to be
found in most charismatic publications.
This is a more recent one, The Spirit
of Prophecy.
We have a website with an entire book
called The Prophetic Call in which I draw
from my over 30-year experience in that
calling and someone, a brother, said, Artie, you
need a so-called urgent now with the
celebration of prophets to have a true word
on what a prophet is that you must
put something in print now.
And so this is the 50-page extract
of that something in print on the subject
of prophets for which we're getting very great
response in many places.
More recently, Apostolic Foundations.
You'll notice if you've ever heard me or
have occasionally hear me more than once, the
two words that come up most frequently in
what I have to say are the words
apostolic and prophetic.
When I speak them, I drool.
There's a little saliva that comes down the
corners of my mouth and chin because I
recognize that the church was built upon the
foundation of the apostles and the prophets.
And if these words lose their meaning and
we become undiscerning and become an easy mark
for anything that is called either apostolic and
prophetic and is not, the church is for
that reason doomed.
So I have been jealously investing myself in
what the meaning of these two great words
is and this book is devoted to an
examination of the word apostolic.
Apostolic character.
I appreciate what our brother had to say
who preceded me about character.
I was almost ready to run up on
the platform and hug him.
By the way, I'm not worthy to untie
the shoes of such a gentleman or any
of the other men who have preceded me
who have a long, much longer history in
God and more significant service.
I'm amazed to find myself on the same
platform.
But this book, Apostolic Character, Apostolic Perception, Apostolic
Proclamation, Apostolic View of Eternity, the Principalities and
Powers of the Air, foundational concepts that have
been lost to the church in modern times
and need to be restored if we are
to be the thing for which God has
called us.
And not last, and I'll be speaking from
it, so I've kept it for last, though
it's an earlier book called The Spirit of
Truth.
The church is the ground and pillar of
truth.
If it forgets that or has never known
it or does not treat truth with the
kind of deep respect, reverence, and love that
it deserves, the church is a goner.
It becomes a kind of wishy-washy, sentimental,
easy go, easy come, easy go kind of
collection of saints that have no real significance.
And I believe it's not an exaggeration to
say that every horror that is being perpetrated
in our modern society can ultimately be laid
at the door of the church for not
maintaining the standard of truth, for not being
God's plumb line.
So there are very few who are able
to read this through, but if you can
and will, I assure you, you'll be different
at the end of it than you were
at the beginning.
It's a very requiring book as you'll hear
now as I hope to speak something from
it.
I don't usually write out my prayers, but
this afternoon or this morning, I can't remember
when, I wrote out the prayer that I'm
now going to pray.
So I just ask you to join me
with your spirit because I'm asking the Lord
to use this speaking to discombobulate the foe,
the cosmic alignment of powers over this city
and the nations, and those especially that have
great sway in all the institutions that affect
the life of men through falsehood, through lying
deceptions that corrupt their values, rob them of
eternal reward and honor, and the honor and
glory of eternity itself.
And in the institutions, may you Lord especially
penetrate and bring into disarray those powers that
prevail but through cunning and deceit in the
most powerful of all institutions, namely religion.
So let your word, my God, constitute an
event in this speaking that expresses your apostolic
and high priestly heart, a word that is
appointed and on time that has to do
with your glory, your power that raised Jesus
from the dead and enabled him to ascend
on high for your eternal glory, praise, and
honor.
In Yeshua's holy name I pray, amen.
And so I had thought also today of
a cloud of invisible witnesses.
You see how we apostolically minded men think?
We take into consideration those things that are
either unknown or too readily dismissed by most
Christians, namely, and I'm believing that there's a
cloud of invisible witnesses over this convocation even
now.
And what constitutes this cloud?
I'm praying that every soul who has groaned,
travailed, wept, has been stretched out before God
in an anguish of soul for the purposes
of God as it pertains to this city
and has gone on before me and has
gone on to be with the Lord will
constitute through his selection a cloud of invisible
witnesses over us now.
I've been praying for intercessors.
You see, if your word is more than
an amusement, if you're trusting that it's a
word of event that's on time and that
God has provided a platform for its urgency,
then you yourself travail for the travailers.
You know that such a word has got
to be birthed more than it is proclaimed.
And unless there's an anguish of prayer, groaning,
and travail that cannot be uttered, such an
event cannot take place.
So I've been naming the intercessors I know
and trusting Lord to stir others in this
nation and elsewhere for this very speaking and
that that cloud of invisible witnesses in which
I trust my Jewish mother is present having
been saved in the last week of her
95th year before her death is also looking
down with approval upon her Jewish son who
is no longer considered to be an enemy
but one in whom she can have a
rightful pride that is serving the God of
our fathers.
So while I've been around 37 years
and have been once a charismatic darling of
a Jewish kind on Kathryn Kuhlman's programs, full
gospel circulation, many kinds of doors that have
now since been closed and the Lord brought
me to an obscure place in northern Minnesota
and for many years people who had known
of me thought that I was dead.
And they were not far wrong because it
was to a death to which the Lord
brought me that I am immensely grateful and
all that I see and understand and express
now all over the world.
I'll be going in a few days from
this trip to Southeast Asia for six weeks,
the Philippines of which my brother spoke for
12 days, Japan, Singapore, Australia of which you
spoke, New Zealand.
I've just come back from Poland, Russia, Ukraine,
Latvia, Lithuania, Holland, Germany.
There's no end of travel because a woman
prayed for the teacher of her daughter who
came home from school every afternoon weeping for
this arrogant Jewish atheist that he might be
saved.
So I'll tell you what my perspective is.
It's been an ache now for a number
of years.
There's a great corrective that is needed by
the church, all the more by those segments
of the church that are most applauded, where
we think that we have it all together
and have the chutzpah, you know that word?
The presumption to think that we have a
full gospel and that corrective is the fact
that distinguishes the church as the church because
it pertains not to the needs of men,
either their healing so much or even yet
their salvation, however rightly desired these things should
be, but it pertains to the glory of
God realized in the coming of the king
and his theocratic kingdom, which is the consummation
of all the ages in these final and
consummating last days.
Am I glad this is recorded?
You'll need to hear that.
That's a mouthful.
What I'm saying is that a church that
is not preoccupied with the glory of God
as its central and foremost consideration or has
substituted the needs of men, however valid those
needs are, is no longer the church that
can be called apostolic.
It's a church that can be called a
culture or an institution or that accommodates and
sees to the needs of men, but it
has lost its central pivot, the preoccupation, the
jealous guarding of that which pertains to the
glory of God.
And the glory of God is going to
be realized in the coming of his kingdom.
And well, we know so little about that
and we have been so persuaded that the
kingdom of God is within that we think
of it almost exclusively as something personal, internal,
subjective, interior.
But I want to commend to you the
kingdom of God in its most awesome respect
of which we have lost note, namely as
a ruling entity over the nations.
There's a God who's actually going to rule
out of Zion.
There's going to be a law that will
go forth out of a literal and geographic
Zion so that men will not study war
no more and beat their swords into plowshares.
And nations will come up to the God
of Jacob in the place where he will
have established his sanctuary, his dwelling, and the
locus of his theocratic rule.
A restored Israel, not the Israel of today
that you're so fond to applaud and to
take interest, but a people who will come
out from that present people in a final
and searing last days time of tribulation out
of which only a surviving remnant will return
to Zion.
And in that return and in that Zion,
our God will rule.
That you don't know this has great consequence
for the church because this should be central
to our every perspective, our every preoccupation with
the faith, what it means.
I can tell you as a charismatic or
former charismatic who had a wonderful bag of
rich things from God, the Holy Spirit, government,
church, the word of God, that when the
Lord inserted the critical key of an apostolic
and prophetic perception of the centrality of Israel
as being significant and foremost in the church's
own consideration, all of these separate and isolated
good things given of God came together in
a new coherence that made the faith the
faith.
I'm praying that God will insert that key
for you, either because of the speaking or
the provocation of the speaking that will compel
you to do your homework and search the
scriptures and find that which has been lost
and needs to be restored, the centrality of
Israel.
That God has not forsaken his people, that
his promises and his covenant intent will yet
be fulfilled or how shall he then be
God.
And probably the greatest presumption of the church
is its triumphalist assumption that it now is
the Israel of God and that this ancient
and original people have missed it and lost
it and have no place of return or
restoration in God's purposes.
That has been so tragic an error as
actually to disfigure the church and to render
the church, what shall I say, something much
less and other than the glory and power
and significance of God's intention.
The issue of Israel is central for the
church's own recognition of itself as the church,
as much as the awareness of what is
female or feminine and woman is central to
a man's own perception of himself as a
male.
To remove this aspect from our consideration is
to leave us lopsided and out of joint
and subject therefore to every whim, every passing
fad, every kind of thing that's going to
alleviate our grayness, going to fill the void
that we sense and need with some panacea,
some thing that's current which only in time
will fade and in fact which perhaps the
entire charismatic movement has been an expression and
in time is fading.
We must restore the thing that God himself
intends, that is central to ourselves, not because
Israel deserves that consideration but because God has
spoken, because God has promised, because God is
the God of covenant and will keep it
even when his own people will not, because
his mercy is greater than his judgment.
So there's a glory of God because that
kingdom is the kingdom of David.
It must be established from the throne of
David in Zion and these are not mystical,
romantic allusions.
These are concrete and specific indications of the
embarrassing specificity of God, of a people and
a place that must be the seat and
locus of his rule over creation.
That we are not jealous for that rule
is an embarrassment to the church and I
trust that our governments, our human governments, however
much we may hope in them, will invariably
show their inadequacy until when we say, come
Lord Jesus, we're not praying for escape, we're
praying for righteousness to come into the earth
through the rule of God from the place
which he has designated and which will not
be obtained except through the good office of
the church to the Jews of this last
day who will be a saved remnant.
Through the grace and mercy which you will
express to them and in so expressing will
yourself be transformed.
Oh the depth of the riches, both of
the wisdom and knowledge of God.
My heart goes out to you dear ones,
especially the catholic charismatic dear ones, who I'm
sure don't understand the word of what I'm
saying and I'm some kind of conundrum or
strange phenomenon that will soon enough pass.
I tell you dear saints, every word is
a thunderclap.
Every word is a statement of searing truth
and if you're having a difficulty in understanding
me, it's not because I'm wanting inability from
God to express, but you have been so
long neglected, so long disabused, so long kept
from any awareness of the apostolic and prophetic
dimensions of the faith that what I'm saying
sounds to you as a strange gospel.
So the crucial axis, the nub of the
consummation of that kingdom is the millennial reign
of Christ on the throne of David through
a redeemed Israel obtained in a final time
of cataclysmic judgment called the time of Jacob's
trouble and the return from the nations wherein
they are yet to be scattered, including this
nation.
So I'm putting you on alert that we
are in northern Minnesota for 25 years because
of an obedience to the same voice that
called me by name in Jerusalem and told
me when I stepped over a chain on
a property that was for sale being bankrupt
where we presently are, end time teaching center,
community refuge.
The Lord kept the word refuge on the
shelf until the season of death in that
community of about 15 years ago in which
the Lord sent me to a Lutheran seminary
to make that death real and in that
course of time and in that season of
death, the Lord began to reveal to me
the mystery of Israel.
I want to tell you dear saints that
there's a world of difference from a condescending
patronizing of present Israel and a kind of
a sentimental desire for their success as against
a recognition of the Israel yet to be
established from the ruins of that present state
and the cataclysmic judgment which is yet to
come on Jews worldwide.
It's almost a getting off the hook for
us.
It's almost a to have a mere mild
sentimental concern and a desire for their success
rather than the radical requirement that would come
for us if we recognize the Israel that
is yet to be redeemed because it will
be redeemed through the mercy that will be
extended to it by the church itself in
all nations in which that people is yet
to be scattered.
If God is going to establish a place
of refuge in northern Minnesota in that nation
with Jews have enjoyed the greatest success and
freedom, prosperity, what shall we hope for in
any nation in this time of Jacob's trouble
in which God says in Amos chapter 9,
I will sift you through all nations and
where we're told in Romans, I'm sorry in
Revelation chapter 12 that when that woman flees
that there's a place prepared for her in
the wilderness where she will be fed for
three and a half years.
If that place is not prepared, if there's
no feeding both spiritually and physically there will
not be a surviving remnant that will come
in its return to Zion with everlasting joy
upon its head and mourning and sighing fleeing
away.
You see my predicament?
In one hour I'm required to make up
for the omission of ages and therefore I'm
required necessarily to speak to you in mysteries
and send out these stabbing statements that require
remarkable amounts of elaboration which I'm not in
a position for the shortness of time to
give you which is to say there's a
great premium right now upon your own spirituality
upon just how filled with the spirit you
are just how much is the spirit the
cogent factor of your life that you can
even discern between the lines the things that
I'm not enabled to say for the want
of time and that these remarks come into
your spirit with a with a impact of
a kind that will require great alignment and
adjustment because the issue is the life and
death of the people and the establishment of
the kingdom through their returning remnant upon whose
head will be an everlasting joy after mourning
and sighing has fled away.
So this is accomplished through a self-sacrificing
church that demonstrates the very mercy of its
God and it takes place before the face
of all nations so much that as to
their acknowledgement that the God of Israel the
God of Jacob the creator of the heavens
and the earth is a lone God to
the eternal praise of his glory the issue
of Israel is the issue of God not
only the issue of the church the issue
of the nations for the nations have given
scant consideration to our God he's only a
contending deity among a whole bewildering array the
God of Jacob is a lone God and
at the demonstration of his mercy to Jacob
after that of his judgment will persuade the
world that he alone is God for they
will witness both the expulsion and the return
of his own people through their very nations
where God says I will not do this
in a corner but before the face of
all nations if this is the final and
great concluding episode of the ages for which
everything till now has been preparation and it's
about to break as we can see from
the tumult and chagrin of the conditions in
Israel in so great a security an insecurity
that a recent poll in Israel have determined
that 60 to 70 percent of present Israelis
believe that they are without hope and they're
right in that belief humanly speaking God has
engineered and brought together circumstances that will bring
about such a cataclysmic devastation in that land
and an expulsion again into the nations which
gives us our opportunity to be to the
least of his brethren that for which he
waits and I can tell you that it's
not going to be an easy requirement so
to speak of the church of the 21st
century almost makes me either to smile wistfully
or to cry because it implies that we
have a century ahead and what is God
going to do in the next century what
what ought we now to consider well I
don't think we have a century ahead I
think this is the last days we are
at the end of the age this is
the consummation we're coming to a conclusion an
anti-christ time of great severity challenge and
devastation not only upon Israel but upon the
saints to talk about a 21st century gives
us a kind of security and sense that
this is the best of all worlds and
if it's not it can be made better
and what program or what ought we to
do in conditions which we think will always
prevail what we lack and what was the
distinctive of the first church and needs to
be restored and has been lost in exact
proportion as we have lost the significance of
Israel is the eschatological and apocalyptic content of
the faith which the first church knew who
awaited the lord's appearing and gave to the
church a sense of urgency a dynamic of
great and high seriousness altogether the antithesis of
the likeness that has characterized our charismatic doings
I'm sorry for the fancy words eschatological means
things pertaining to the end apocalyptic means it
will not come without judgment violence and the
devastation that God himself brings in his righteousness
to not have these components as vital center
in our christianity disfigures our christianity and relegates
it to the kind of harmless and innocuous
culture by which the world knows us the
issue of Israel is the issue of the
church but it's the issue of Israel rightly
understood rightly apprehended and not sentimentally dismissed you
can know that you have it when it
costs you something the turning point for the
church will be the discovery of Israel in
the sense that I'm describing not in the
condescension of acknowledgment of the present state and
its success for which we all hope but
in the sense of the mystery central to
God's redemptive glory and theocratic intention a merely
benign and sanctimonious approval of present Israel in
no wise threatens our petty kingdoms and leaves
them quite intact the revelation of a redeemed
nation resurrected out of the death of the
present one shatters all our petty kingdoms all
our categories and requires and makes necessary anew
the review of our understanding even of God
as God will he go that far to
bring again a devastation upon world Jewry that
will exceed the Nazi holocaust well if we
read Jesus rightly in Matthew 24 and Luke
21 the answer is yes he will go
that far that there's yet a future catastrophe
that will eclipse the Nazi time and the
church sitting on the very threshold of this
soon to break phenomenon has not the slightest
awareness of its coming and has made no
preparation either physically or spiritually to anticipate it
you see why we need the Holy Spirit
to bring a perception of reality and of
understanding that has been so lost to us
that cannot even be humanly communicated and that
even Paul speaks of it as mystery and
he said I would that you would not
be ignorant of this mystery brethren lest you
become wise in your own conceit it's the
only mystery of which Paul was steward in
which he gave such a warning we might
miss some of the other mysteries but if
we miss this mystery there's a consequence that
is fateful for the church namely it will
become wise in its own conceit pompous inflated
it will become the Israel of God it
will be it will bring the kingdom of
God it is the kingdom of God the
kingdom now it's going to change society it's
going to do this it's going to do
that the fact of the matter is that
God has called to the church to a
humbling and secondary role we're not first fiddle
we're second fiddle we're called as a proviso
to bring back to himself a people who
are broken off of the tree into which
we have been grafted Paul says in Romans
11 have they stumbled that they should fall
God forbid that you should think that that
God has permanently disallowed them but through their
fall salvation has come to the goyim to
the gentiles so as to move them to
jealousy there's a purpose for your salvation beyond
you and I don't know have you have
you noticed what are we one or two
speakers short of the conclusion of this conference
I have yet to hear any speaker with
the exception of one make any allusion to
Israel at all that omission is more significant
than you can know it has more to
say about our condition than we can know
and I have the privilege of seeking in
the short time I have to bring a
correction to it so when we consider Israel
rightly we have to consider the God of
judgment we have to consider apocalyptic devastation we
have to consider people being dispelled again into
nations in an exile and a return we
have to consider suffering and its significance we
have to consider the meaning of the cross
we have to consider the suffering that precedes
the glory not only for Jesus but for
that nation called in Exodus I think chapter
four or three my firstborn son and that
that son that has a destiny somewhat comparable
to its pattern son and Messiah must in
great measure also follow him in a road
to Calvary look at look at present Israel
look at its arrogance look at its bumptious
conduct look at its disregard for the opinion
of the world look at the violence to
which they have been compelled look at every
loss of every moral and ethical dimension that
in which we Jews once boasted now going
down the drain and the kind of ruthless
conduct that's required for our very survival is
that a people who can bless all the
families of the earth or is God forgetting
his promise to Abraham what will it require
a transformation of such a kind from the
present character of that nation revealing its humanity
in what God has always said is the
human condition and which we would never recognize
that there's no man good no not one
to be a people who will bless all
the families of the earth not impress them
bless them because the very character of that
nation has been transformed having been required through
suffering and apocalyptic last days judgments to pass
both through death and resurrection and unless there's
a people in the earth a company of
sons a son of man company who can
prophesy to those bones that they can live
they'll remain a dry heap and will not
bless the families of the earth for their
restoration their redemption out of death their resurrection
waits upon a people whom God can command
and to prophesy to those bones that they
might live God forbid in that day that
that prophecy is in any way reminiscent of
the multitudes of prophecies that we have heard
in our charismatic experience that have left us
with no more than a yawn that should
have been rebuked had there been pastors who
are more jealous for the honor and glory
of God than the disturbance of their congregations
and of the status quo we've had so
much dubious carnal expression of so-called supposed
gifts that I trust in that one historic
moment that will come when God calls us
to address those bones that the proof that
the prophecy that comes forth out of us
then will itself be an authentic resurrection phenomenon
by a people who have themselves passed through
death or they'll not be able to raise
the nation you see how imperative the whole
issue of spirit is for what is spirit
other than the issue of the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead what we have
in portion and as a token is the
glory of that power and that reality for
us to treat it lightly mock it make
it a kind of an accompaniment to our
present institutions to improve them or to renew
them is to do despite to the great
intent of God through the giving of the
spirit of his life there needs to be
a charismatic repentance to commence the 21st century
however short-lived that century will be before
the coming of the Lord also there are
many scandals that have followed in the absence
of the realities that I'm describing in the
sentimental dismissal of Israel that serves our purpose
and allows us to pinch their cheeks and
plant the tree but leaves our effectual lives
unhindered and unrequired of you can know that
you have apprehended the issue of Israel rightly
when it jostles and requires a complete realignment
of your entire understanding and the forsaking and
the foregoing of your own petty kingdoms for
the issue of Israel is the issue of
the kingdom of God if you could but
know it so we have seen in its
stead charismatic lightness for the want of the
fear of God that should come principally by
one means the recognition of God's historic present
and future dealings with that people who are
yet the apple of his eye namely the
severe judgments that have come in exile dispersal
and dealings by God with that people there
Paul says therefore fear consider the goodness and
the severity of God and if God will
not hesitate to break off that branch will
he hesitate to break you off if you
do not abide in faith therefore fear there's
a dimension lacking that despoils the church and
accounts for its likeness the want of the
awesome fear and reverence of God that would
have only been known to us essentially by
the recognition of how far he will go
with that people too bad my other book
is not on this table it's at the
printer but you can request it it's called
the holocaust where was God and I have
the temerity to suggest that God was there
and not asleep when six million of his
people were systematically annihilated by the most brilliant
quote Christian civilization in the world Germany and
that that judgment through Germany is ironic and
necessary to a Jewish people who had so
elevated German culture and civilization as being itself
the messianic ideal and that the holocaust coming
through them was God's judgment both for their
own sin and the sins of their fathers
which had not been ever lightly acknowledged that
book was dismissed in its French edition from
being exhibited at a book fair in Lausanne
Switzerland because it was considered to be something
like the protocols of Zion an anti-semitic
book because it should just the holocaust as
judgment for the sin of Israel if God
will take sin that seriously as to judge
that people that tragically how well do we
know him and what Jesus is it that
we are promoting and celebrating and feeling diffusive
about and having palpitations and other kinds of
emotions and effect is it in fact really
the son of God who is going to
judge the earth in equity and justice do
we know God as God and can we
know him if we have dismissed that revelation
of himself that is nowhere more accurately set
forth in his full triune Godhead than it
is dealing with the people Israel it's made
the absence of that has made the church
light and frivolous open to the celebration of
feeling and experience and excitement to the point
where our souls have been so indulged that
we can't even tell where soul ends and
spirit begins we can't even distinguish between the
faculty of soul and spirit and have equated
the one as the other and we'll call
the people of the spirit and our souls
are being stirred through hype through music through
loudspeakers through all of the various devices that
betray a foundational emptiness in the church for
the want of the centrality that God intended
as normative and has been lost i wonder
if that's a kind of anti-semitism i
wonder if there's a pride in the church
that does not want to give to the
jew a place of last days and final
restoration and return because they don't deserve it
well what did you deserve if that invariably
rises up out of your heart is that
not a statement that you give a scant
and outward and external acknowledgement of God's grace
as a aspect of your doctrine but where
you really live you measure by merit and
performance not only Israel not only the not
only your neighbor but yourself no wonder there's
the self-hatred and all of the disfiguring
things that happen to human personality and christian
personality of which we have heard in these
days we don't know as we ought to
know a religion has become an entertainment inane
hypnotic laughter of a kind that lord help
me where men who are servants of the
word are so affected by the so-called
spirit that they are incapable even of speaking
intelligibly but what they what they finally croak
out is that what they are experiencing now
is greater than anything that they had ever
seen performed through their preaching of the word
which in fact implies that this experience supersedes
the word and maybe the kind that in
fact it's true but if it denigrates the
word of God where is the church and
what is the gospel by which its mission
is to be expressed if laughter and experience
has come to prevail over the word of
God itself and its own ministers faint collapse
and choke up and become an object of
derision in the testimony of what they have
received quote from God well in
my book on the spirit of truth there's
a chapter on Ananias and Sapphira it's a
remarkable episode of an incident that occurred in
another age in an hour when the spirit
of God prevailed in such magnitude and purity
that the very same act which might well
be applauded today resulted in that day in
sudden judgment and death what do you mean
applauded yes let someone come with a great
contribution and we won't ask too much about
its source or anything of that kind we'll
probably give such a person a place of
honor and acknowledgement the deacon at least if
not an elder but the church that identified
the lie and was not impressed with the
sum is not the church that today is
it was a church then in its glory
because it was alert to the issue of
truth and deception because it knew that before
the spirit of God is the spirit of
power he is first and foremost the spirit
of truth and when truth is disallowed when
truth is compromised do you think that the
dove is going to be around to perform
the in expressions of power that serve our
need and gratify our souls if we have
forsaken him in his first designation and identity
as the spirit of truth there needs to
be a jealous regard for the truth that
Peter exercised and therefore was able to discern
the fraud of a man and his wife
giving a sum of money however impressive as
to be the whole but it was only
in part why have you allowed satan to
fill your heart and to lie against the
holy spirit Peter said when it was yours
and it remained that was it not your
own when it was sold was it not
under your control why have you conceived this
deed in your heart you've not lied to
men but to God and he heard these
words Ananias fell down and breathed his last
and great fear came upon all who heard
it almost in the next breath we hear
and with great power did the apostles give
testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ that
they brought the on litters the sick and
the halt and the insane that so much
that the shadow of Peter should fall upon
them and be healed now what follows this
respect for the spirit of God is the
spirit of truth is the spirit of God
as the spirit of power we have reversed
it we have celebrated the power the signs
the wonders and relegated the truth to a
distant consideration if indeed any consideration at all
and which of us has not played the
game of giving a part and making that
the stand as the whole well I remember
as a kid even in Brooklyn that we
used to say as the depression born in
the generation that the whole truth that the
truth is the whole truth and nothing but
the truth or it's a lie that's the
distinctive character of truth it's the whole truth
or it's not the truth and any disqualification
any cutting of corners anything less than what
is whole and full converts what seems to
be impressive into the lie you say art
why are you taking pains to to dwell
on this because it's a statement of the
church today because we have only given part
but we call that part full full gospel
full this full that when it's only a
part we have not the reticence the modesty
the humility appropriate to a church whose lord
is the lamb and his meekness because we're
full of hype and exaggeration and pompous ambition
and activity and think that that constitutes the
whole and the great part that's missing that
would have made us whole is the part
that I'm describing to you today namely the
centrality of Israel in the church's consideration for
itself as the church if you think that
I'm speaking these things because I'm Jewish you're
wrong I'm speaking these things because they're true
apostolically true and prophetically true and need to
be restored if the church was to be
the church of the last days and be
the very provision of God for the redemption
of this people whose time has come for
it is time now to obtain the kingdom
it's their kingdom not exclusive for their use
or for their enjoyment but out of the
nexus of their Jerusalem and out of their
Zion shall those things go forth to all
nations which can only go forth from them
as the redeemed people of the earth from
the throne of David and the promises that
God has made to their patriarchs and to
David and to themselves that must be fulfilled
because it's the word of God and a
deliverer must come out of Zion and take
transgression from Jacob according to the covenant that
I have made with them that I have
written the issue of Israel's restoration despite their
undeserving all the more because of their undeserving
is the issue of God the issue of
his mercy the issue of his word the
issue of his covenant keeping character and we
are jealous for this God and we're wooing
and mooning and talking about being his bride
and the love of Jesus and passion for
Jesus what is it about this passion for
Jesus that catches me in my gut that
has romanticized something in a way that sounds
icky and yet fall short of the celebration
and the love of God that that one
would think would characterize the church that is
jealous for its glory his glory and knows
it will not be obtained until he is
recognized by his own nation and they shall
see him whom they have pierced and mourn
for him so we
need to ask ourselves are we doing anything
different from what Ananias and Sapphira did when
we seek and expect the evidence of apostolicity
or power while giving ourselves only in part
while presuming to have given ourselves wholly we
all want the semblance of these things that
the comfort of the spirit the intimate communion
but we want it at the lesser price
of acknowledging truth as only being doctrinal or
the issue of being correct rather than as
the very sum substance the reality of our
lives we want to speak truth but not
to be true we want correct words we
want to acknowledge truth but not to obey
it we are bringing our partial phraseological truth
and making that to stand for the whole
as if we have the reality that we're
describing omitting reference letting let alone any repentant
acknowledgement of our own history with this people
and can i say particularly our catholic history
with this people in the inquisitions burnings at
the stake the sufferings the rack the breakings
that have followed the jewish people and not
the jewish people only but every aspect of
apostolic reality that has risen up historically before
the advent of the reformation itself can we
say that we're true and not take that
history into our reckoning can we speak about
the forgiveness of men for their sins and
not speak about our own as an institution
is that true there's a full truth that
is truth alone and it will be painful
to acknowledge but necessary or else it will
testify against us so
to decide to tolerate one deceit is to
violate the whole truth to be 99 true
or mostly true and represent that as the
whole truth is to lie utterly and to
sit in one part is to sin in
the whole the issue of belief of love
of lordship depends upon the belief or love
of submission we find easy to give but
it's where we are most tempted to keep
back for ourselves that the issue of truth
really lies what one true last thing what
one final issue what one reserve is the
thing that keeps back from that utterness toward
god that makes truth truth and brings to
the to the church and to its fellowship
the reality of his presence and his glory
how true
is true if we are still celebrating rome
over zion as being the center of god's
glory and rule you see the kind of
alignment that the issue of truth will require
in terms of our tradition our understanding that
stubbornly waits consideration and for the want of
which dislocations have set in and dispositions that
have opened us for deception for pseudo revival
for experience for emotion for the kinds of
things that are questionable and dubious at best
and may actually be demonic at worst there's
something about the proper apprehension of the centrality
of israel and the zion of god over
every other consideration the law of god must
go forth out of zion that somehow inures
us to deception it puts something into our
souls there's something about biting the bullet of
the judgments of god necessary for israel that
puts an iron in our souls that steadies
us and keeps us from being subject to
the kinds of things that would make for
deception the proper recognition of israel is the
greatest provision of god for the church than
we can know and the loss of that
provision has left us in a questionable condition
that even the best of what we have
known charismatically has not been the answer and
what we have come to witness now as
we come here and to the end of
its history is a kind of melancholy of
reminiscence about some of its high points and
other times that which we benefited were moved
and now we're witness to a kind of
end of the story melancholy interesting to hear
the anecdotes and experiences shared by our brothers
but for me it sets up just a
note of sadness that the glory has departed
and maybe it could not be retained because
we had not an adequate wineskin and i'm
suggesting that the wineskin is not some institutional
or other kind of correction that was wanting
though i myself am in an apostolic community
of saints face to face in the muddy
and remote place to which god has brought
us in northern minnesota but that the wineskin
is more readily a wineskin of understanding of
uh of an apostolic prophetic way of perceiving
the faith and the issues of it and
for the want of that what what measure
of wine we have had has leaked out
and dissipated and is going away and that
the best that we can say and hope
and encourage as we heard earlier today is
that something would come in to affect our
children to maintain a standard of life and
virtue in a world that is increasingly evil
that sounds very much like the hope for
approval of and continuation of middle class values
well i'm all for that but is that
the best that can be hoped for and
is that the purpose for which god has
poured out his spirit is that the fitting
of the church for its apostolic mandate is
that a provision to ennui us against the
suffering and the opposition and persecution that will
come for our identification with jews when they
will be a hated people among all nations
unless the spirit of god and the gifts
of god are understood and seen in the
context of the apostolic framework of god's intention
as a besieged community of sanity in the
midst of a sea of hostility and worldly
hatred we make the spirit of god and
its gifts serve a lesser and other purpose
it accommodates us rather than god and you
wonder if god is in that business providing
that accommodation or that something else has come
in its place and that we have not
the discernment to recognize whether or not is
of it is of god if it seems
to bring a measure of excitement a measure
of enjoyment a measure of relief a measure
of healing that i'm sure the powers of
this world can easily provide in order to
accommodate us in a deception of that kind
the holy spirit needs to be restored to
the context of god's intention and that has
at its center the restoration of a people
who have not even the faintest notion of
their eternal destiny or a desire for it
and want only to be one among many
nations nevertheless god's word toward them and the
gifts and callings of god must be fulfilled
for they are irrevocable and without repentance or
god is not god let me try and
conclude so to speak of a
21st century is to betray a complete loss
of this eschatological and apocalyptic expectation the dynamic
that made the early church the church and
to substitute lesser excitements and to leave undisturbed
and still prevailing over many nations the kings
the rulers of the in the heavenly places
who rage against god and against his anointed
and seek to break their bands at sunder
their final defeat and the release of the
nations to that theocratic rule is the eternal
purpose of god through the church to forfeit
this calling constitutes a last day's apostasy the
great falling away of which paul spoke however
much we might be occupied with the benevolent
concerns of men for to be occupied with
the benevolent concerns of men their healing their
deliverance even their salvation is to be occupied
only in part rather than in whole it's
the occupation with the whole that is the
radically requiring aspect much more than the laying
on of hands of the sick is the
being to israel the most recalcitrant stubborn and
opposing people of whom paul says in all
candor they are the enemies of the gospel
for your sake little wonder that we shun
them and we would much rather minister to
one another and even to hippies than to
take up the central task of the church
which is the reason for our salvation so
as to move them to jealousy i ask
you who have a history in the charismatic
movement and it's in some proportion that i
myself have it where have we ever seen
even at our best that reality that would
move unbelieving and cynical jews to jealousy in
the observing of what we celebrate and delight
on delight in as charismatic interesting that paul
himself does not answer the question or give
us an asterisk at the bottom of but
this much we know it's going to take
more than anything we have been presently able
yet to perform they're going to have to
see something of a heavenly kind of a
reality that's unknown to them and least expected
in gentiles and they'll have to see it
in our conduct not so much only with
each other but in response to them especially
at that time when they will be the
least of these his brethren hated despised disfigured
grotesquely cast out discombobulated altogether out of sorts
not in their best and ungrateful for the
mercy that you will extend and be quick
to express it if you need their gratitude
if you need their approval you'll not find
it and if there's something in you that
needs that and will be disappointed in not
having received it or offended by those who
betray your expectation for their being cute you're
going to show forth a face other than
the face of god you're going to show
forth a disappointed face a the kind of
face that jews expect to see when they
look at gentiles but it'll not be the
face of which god speaks in ezekiel 20
when he says to them i will meet
with you in the wilderness of the nations
face to face i'm a believer today saved
because 37 38 years ago in my own
wilderness marched through the nations with a pack
on my back being uprooted not by persecution
but by collapsed and falling gods god revealed
himself to me through snub nose freckle face
sandy head gentile believers who picked me up
from the side of the road spoke a
word to me were kind gracious unfearful transparent
and without guile i was moved to jealousy
by something i had never seen in universities
or marxist institutes and all the more powerfully
revealed when it shines forth out of the
face that we think gentile if the spirit
of god has not brought you to that
luster that radiance that glory in the church
whose discipline and dealings and affects your character
to so to reveal it we're falling short
of the glory of god and the final
test of it will be the test that
they themselves will constitute when we will pass
when they will pass through our midst in
their last day's flight and affliction what face
will they see then what face am i
seeing now so
in the unfathomable wisdom of god i believe
that the issue of israel rightly prophetically understood
as god's provision for an errant church because
it alone provides the perspective by which the
church itself is to be understood its origins
is derived from israel for salvation is of
the jews its continuation by being grafted into
her tree and living by the life that
that is expressed through her root the church's
destiny as god's salvific agency for the restoration
of that people in moving to them to
jealousy and showing them the face of their
own god which is full of mercy and
unconditional in his love because out of that
zion comes israel's deliverance for the fullness when
the fullness of the gentiles come in this
fullness this holy ghost full charismatica when it
comes in and it will not come in
short of the work of the cross all
israel shall be saved as it is written
for the deliverer shall come out of zion
and take transgression from jacob according to the
covenant that i have made with them as
it is written there's a zion out of
which the deliverer must come you are that
zion when you have come to that fullness
of the gentiles and i'm wondering if our
charismatica our our revival our renewal our of
celebration of personalities has promoted that kind of
reality that kind of maturity or rather the
soulishness that leaves us in the rather unhappy
state in which we are that could not
yet be the zion out of which israel's
deliverance comes that's why paul was made the
apostle to the gentiles and that's why as
a jew i'm speaking to you for the
church is not the kingdom but an interim
provision for israel's restoration for it is time
now to restore the kingdom of david to
that people on david's throne on the holy
hill of zion or there's no kingdom at
all the kingdom of god will either go
forth from that place or it will not
go forth at all that means no war
going forth to the nations that means the
continuation war the continuation and armaments the continuation
and suffering the continuation and death the continuation
and incest and every kind of vile rape
slaughter mayhem that prevails over the world until
the law of god can go forth from
the one place designated by the nation redeemed
for the honor of expressing it and whose
redemption has come through a zion out of
which their deliverer comes which is the church
of the last days come to maturity come
to fullness come to glory come to truth
come to sacrifice come to the cross if
we think that we could obtain this luster
this radiance short of the dealings of god
and the deaths to which we must be
brought we are of all people most to
be deceived one can almost suggest that maybe
what was foundationally wrong with the whole charismatic
movement was some attempt to enjoy the semblance
of the spirit and its excitement without necessarily
having to experience the cross we want the
reality of the effulgence without the suffering that
precedes that glory church itself is a suffering
if you but know and until we come
to it how shall the be a company
framed from it who can speak with apostolic
and prophetic authority to the dead bones that
they might live the church is a means
and not an end in itself but by
being that means it obtains an end more
glorious than that of the redeemed millennial nation
itself we who are no people as a
church have become the people of god to
move to envy that nation that has lost
that very identity in the final frenzy that
is now brewing that will mark the experience
of jews in the last days in their
own self-opposing ignorance they may likely regard
us as enemies and the threat to their
jewishness in the anti-semitic furor of the
last day's time of jacob's trouble and we
may have to suffer this this misunderstanding this
failure to recognize that ours is a heart
of love toward them i may even have
to suffer at their hands as stephen did
a martyrdom as a crucial necessity a sacrifice
to bring by it if that alone is
the final requirement the revelation of the lord
that turns all from persecutor to apostle and
will bring that nation from opposing god to
its own apostolate to bless all the families
of the earth this is more than you
can grasp in this speaking you'll have to
hear it again on tape so our coming
under these purposes of god for israel's redemption
this firstborn among the nations is calculated for
our humility as we cannot expect their understanding
nor gratitude for our sacrifice on their behalf
and like christ dying for us as sinners
yet dead in their transgressions we also must
suffer for them while they are yet in
their transgressions and in that mutuality and in
that willingness to suffer them as he suffered
us we show forth the of their god
the truth of our condition will be revealed
in its depths and brought to a full
sanctification that would not otherwise have been seen
on that except by the crisis that the
jews of the last days will bring to
the church that is called to their redemption
well i've said my peace inadequately too briefly
i want to pray for it as i
began and lord we need a mercy to
understand what this strange man is trying to
convey if it takes a mercy to understand
it what will it take to perform it
we're sensing lord we have lived beneath the
standard of your glory we have substituted excitement
for glory we have been shallow lacking in
understanding self-centered in our christianity as it
ministers to us and brings to us a
gratification a delight and enjoyment for which we
will come by the thousands but we lost
the pivot and the access that there's a
call for our salvation beyond ourselves and outside
of ourselves and other than us toward a
people whom we ourselves would not have chosen
and for whom we have scant love or
even respect now the jew what a wisdom
of god to select them to reveal to
us the truth of our condition that would
not otherwise have been seen that sentimentalizes that
transposes that takes the tabernacle of david and
makes it to be a fanciful symbol for
something other than the theocratic rule of god
over edom and of all nations to which
that god has called we have taken liberties
my god with your word and with the
faith and with your spirit certainly you have
an intention beyond renewing what is dear to
us it's the issue of your glory and
your kingdom and it will require the power
of your life in those whose lives have
been substituted have been sacrificed and brought to
you in full nothing withheld nothing in part
making to stand for the whole but the
totality of god even that elevates zion over
rome and every other adjustment that needs to
be made in the light of these great
eschatological truths so long unknown to us bless
this people or bless this tape bless this
message let it only be a point of
beginning let it set in motion an examination
of romans 11 at least which the church
has omitted from its consideration and from which
the best of your charismatic speakers over the
years have personally confessed to me have remained
to them a mystery one that they have
circumvented and omitted from their consideration yet it
is central to paul's whole apostolic framework of
understanding in the greatest of all of his
epistles the book of romans my god let
it set in motion an examination of chapter
11 alone that we might ask how is
it that that chapter ends with the greatest
paying of praise expressed in all scripture oh
the depth of the riches both of the
wisdom and god knowledge of god who has
been his counselor who has given to him
and shall be given again for of him
and through him and to him are all
things to whom be glory forever paul's celebration
of israel is not because of a jew
to his own ethnic kind but because he
knew in his apostolic understanding that the issue
of israel's redemption in the last days which
is of god and through god and unto
god is the issue of god's glory forever
when you will know it the church will
be the church it will not need movements
it will remain steadfast in the truth and
character that god intended from the first when
it embraces the totality of its faith and
has not omitted the center let it be
lord i pray that it would not be
an exaggeration that the entire conference this entire
outing was a platform by which you could
insert this needed word let it not fall
to the ground i pray be jealous over
it lord we thank you and give you
praise for the privilege of the occasion and
the sounding of it in yeshua's holy name
and god's people said